WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump says he’ll take the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to the Supreme Court, but it’s unclear what he means in a coun­try in which vote tab­u­la­tions rou­tine­ly con­tin­ue beyond Elec­tion Day, and states large­ly set the rules for when the count has to end.

“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court — we want all vot­ing to stop,” Trump said ear­ly Wednesday.

But the vot­ing is over. It’s only count­ing that is tak­ing place across the nation. No state will count absen­tee votes that are post­marked after Elec­tion Day.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Joe Biden’s cam­paign called Trump’s state­ment “out­ra­geous, unprece­dent­ed, and incorrect.”

“If the pres­i­dent makes good on his threat to go to court to try to pre­vent the prop­er tab­u­la­tion of votes, we have legal teams stand­ing by ready to deploy to resist that effort,” Biden Cam­paign Man­ag­er Jen O’Malley Dil­lon said in a state­ment. “And they will prevail.”

Elec­tion law expert Richard Hasen wrote in Slate on Sun­day that “there has nev­er been any basis to claim that a bal­lot arriv­ing on time can­not be count­ed if offi­cials can­not fin­ish their count on elec­tion night.”

Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty elec­tion law pro­fes­sor Edward Foley wrote on Twit­ter Wednes­day: “The valid votes will be count­ed. SCOTUS would be involved only if there were votes of ques­tion­able valid­i­ty that would make a dif­fer­ence, which might not be the case. The rule of law will deter­mine the offi­cial win­ner of the pop­u­lar vote in each state. Let the rule of law work.”

In any event, there’s no way to go direct­ly to the high court with a claim of fraud. Trump and his cam­paign could allege prob­lems with the way votes are count­ed in indi­vid­ual states, but they would have to start their legal fight in a state or low­er fed­er­al court.

There is a pend­ing Repub­li­can appeal at the Supreme Court over whether Penn­syl­va­nia can count votes that arrive in the mail from Wednes­day to Fri­day, an exten­sion ordered by the state’s top court over the objec­tion of Repub­li­cans. That case does not involve bal­lots already cast and in the pos­ses­sion of elec­tion offi­cials, even if they are yet to be counted.

The high court refused before the elec­tion to rule out those bal­lots, but con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices indi­cat­ed they could revis­it the issue after the elec­tion. The Supreme Court also refused to block an exten­sion for the receipt and count­ing of absen­tee bal­lots in North Car­oli­na beyond the three days set by state law.

Even a small num­ber of con­test­ed votes could mat­ter if either state deter­mines the win­ner of the elec­tion and the gap between Trump and Biden is so small that a few thou­sand votes, or even a few hun­dred, could make the difference.