Trump Campaign Loses Ruling on New Jersey Vote-Counting Plan
Trump Loses Effort to Block New Jersey Ballot-Counting Plan
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s campaign can’t block New Jersey’s plan to accept mail-in ballots lacking a postmark for as many as two days after Election Day, a federal judge ruled.
U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp on Tuesday denied a request from the campaign and the Republican National Committee for a preliminary injunction against the voting measures, saying New Jersey’s legislature was within its rights to set new voting rules during the coronavirus pandemic.
The judge said evidence showed that the U.S. Postal Service, which has been plagued by operational problems, sometimes failed to postmark election mail because envelopes stuck together during machine processing or employees weren’t aware it was needed for prepaid election mail. In other cases, the USPS postmarked mail at least a day after it was received.
“We disagree with the court’s ruling, which leaves open the possibility that ballots be cast even after Election Day, diminishing the integrity of the process and confidence in the results,” RNC spokesperson Mandi Merritt said, adding that the organization is “weighing our options for appeal.”
Larger Clash
The Trump campaign’s lawyer in the case didn’t return a call seeking comment on the ruling.
The RNC and the campaign alleged that the provisions violated the U.S. Constitution and federal law governing Election Day.
Republicans and Democrats are clashing in courts across the U.S. over rules for mail-in voting, with a record surge in absentee ballots expected. Democrats have largely been suing to ease the rules on absentee voting, while the president’s campaign and the RNC have claimed without evidence that a surge in the use of mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged” election.
Though Democratic challenger Joe Biden is expected to defeat the president handily in New Jersey, some of its House races are much tighter.
New Jersey’s legislature has agreed to accept ballots until Nov. 10 as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3. Shipp’s ruling covers how the state will handle ballots without a postmark.
“For primary elections in other states this year, there is evidence the USPS failed to postmark thousands of ballots,” Shipp wrote in his ruling. “There is no evidence, however, of a correlation between a ballot lacking a postmark and a ballot being mailed after Election Day.”
Shipp also denied the campaign’s request to bar New Jersey from starting to count mail-in ballots 10 days before Election Day, ruling that the state was free to do so “as long as the election is not consummated and the results reported before the polls close” on Nov. 3. He said examples of voter fraud cited by the Trump campaign had nothing to do with the early canvassing of ballots or the counting of mail-in votes lacking postmarks.
Scott Salmon, the attorney representing New Jersey in the lawsuit, said the ruling “probably means the end” of the suit, at least until after Election Day. It means in part that “there’s no emergency here,” Salmon said.
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