Pennsylvania Blasts Trump’s ‘Slapdash’ Lawsuit to Toss Votes
Pennsylvania Blasts Trump’s ‘Slapdash’ Suit Over 680,000 Votes
(Bloomberg) -- Pennsylvania’s top election official asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit by President Donald Trump’s campaign seeking to discard hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots because its poll watchers didn’t get sufficient access to the counting process, calling it a “slapdash” legal effort that’s already failed in other courts.
Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar moved Thursday to dismiss the suit filed earlier this week in federal court in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, by Trump’s campaign, which is seeking to block certification of the state’s election result unless about 680,000 mail-in ballots from the state’s most populous counties are excluded. Those counties, which include the cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, voted heavily in favor of President-Elect Joe Biden.
The Trump campaign alleges the ballots were tainted by fraud because poll watchers weren’t allowed to monitor workers conducting the tally closely enough. But Boockvar said in her motion that there is “no federal constitutional due process right for a political representative to stand a certain number of feet away from government employees counting ballots.”
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann scheduled oral arguments on the motion for Nov. 17. An evidentiary hearing will take place two days later.
The case is one of several filed by the Trump campaign in the wake of the president's loss to Biden. Legal experts have said the suits have little chance of success and are unlikely to change the outcome, even if they rile Trump’s supporters.
Referring to a flood of earlier lawsuits, Boockvar said in her filing that the federal case is based on “repeatedly-rejected legal theories and no evidence,” and that Trump’s campaign is seeking “radical federal intervention” to overturn the will of voters.
Trump held an early lead in Pennsylvania that was steadily whittled down by the further counting of Democratic-leaning mail-in votes, many of which were from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas. Biden was declared the winner of the presidency Saturday after major media outlets called Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes for him. His lead in the state is now more than 50,000 votes.
The Trump campaign filed several suits last week seeking to halt Pennsylvania’s count as it turned against the president, also claiming it was not being allowed to adequately monitor the counting. A federal judge in Philadelphia dismissed a case on Nov. 5 after expressing doubt “that anybody has a right to stand within a particular distance.”
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