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Trump Sues to Limit Pennsylvania Vote by Mail: Campaign Update

Trump Sues to Limit Pennsylvania Vote by Mail: Campaign Update

President Donald Trump’s campaign is suing Pennsylvania election officials over the state’s vote-by-mail rules, just weeks after Democrats overwhelmingly cast ballots that way in a primary.

In a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania secretary of state and county officials filed Monday, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee seek to limit how absentee ballots are collected, require “secrecy envelopes” be used on all mail-in ballots and loosen restrictions on poll watchers.

The lawsuit argues that elections officials’ handling of the recent primary “provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that vote-by-mail is rife with fraud. Some Republican strategists say his criticism may be scaring GOP voters away, and there is some evidence of that in Pennsylvania already. During the June 2 primary, 1.3 million Pennsylvania Democrats requested absentee ballots, nearly two-and-a-half times the number of Republican voters who did so.

In a statement, the Biden campaign condemned the lawsuit, saying it is “just another Republican tactic to make voters lose faith in our election system and make it harder for our most disadvantaged members of society to vote.”

Coming Up

Democatic nominee Joe Biden will host a celebration of LGBTQ pride month with Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump will attend a 4th of July celebration at Mount Rushmore.

Biden will attend a fundraiser with Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth on July 7.

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for the week beginning Aug. 17 in Milwaukee, while the Republicans are slated to meet a week later with events in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida.

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