Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania: US Supreme Court again asked to block Biden win | Marc Levy/Associated Press

Fresh off another rejection in Pennsylvania’s courts, Republicans on Thursday again asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state, while the state’s lawyers say fatal flaws in the original case mean justices are highly unlikely to grant it. Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania and the other plaintiffs are asking the high court to prevent the state from certifying any contests from the Nov. 3 election, and undo any certifications already made, such as Biden’s victory, while its lawsuit is considered. They maintain that Pennsylvania’s expansive vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional because it required a constitutional amendment to authorize its provisions. However, in a sign that the case is likely too late to affect the election, Justice Samuel Alito ordered the state’s lawyers to respond by Dec. 9, a day after what is known as the safe harbor deadline. That means that Congress cannot challenge any electors named by this date in accordance with state law. Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016. Most mail-in ballots were submitted by Democrats. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court threw out the case Saturday. Kelly’s lawyers sought an injunction Tuesday in the U.S. Supreme Court, then withdrew it while they asked the state’s high court to halt any certifications until the U.S. Supreme Court acts. The state’s justices refused Thursday, and Kelly’s lawyers promptly refiled the case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Full Article: Supreme Court again asked to block Biden win in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Republicans Say Supreme Court Could Yet Upend Vote | Bob Van Voris/Bloomberg

Pennsylvania Republicans who sued to block additional steps to certify the state’s election results claim there’s a “reasonable possibility” the U.S. Supreme Court will take up their long-shot appeal and a “fair prospect” the justices will rule in their favor. Republican plaintiffs led by U.S. Representative Mike Kelly on Wednesday asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to grant an emergency delay of its ruling allowing state officials to complete their certification of results in favor of President-elect Joe Biden and other candidates. They said the status quo needed to be preserved while they try to appeal their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Though President Donald Trump has often mused that the Supreme Court and its 6-3 conservative majority could deliver the election to him, legal experts doubt the court will get involved in any election disputes, especially since Biden’s electoral vote lead is large enough that no one case would change the results. Pennsylvania has argued that certification of Biden’s victory over Trump is complete, but the plaintiffs claim there are several steps that remain. The Electoral College vote to certify the presidential election results doesn’t take place until Dec. 14. The lawsuit claimed that a 2019 expansion of mail-in voting in the state was illegal under the state constitution. A Pittsburgh judge initially granted them an injunction, but the state supreme court overturned that decision and threw the case out on Saturday.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Republicans Say Supreme Court Could Yet Upend Vote - Bloomberg

Trump’s Pennsylvania allies appeal legal bid to overturn the election to Supreme Court, even as Barr says there’s no evidence of widespread fraud | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

Even as the nation’s top prosecutor said Tuesday that the U.S. Justice Department had not uncovered evidence of widespread voting fraud that would have changed the outcome of the 2020 election, President Donald Trump and his allies in Pennsylvania persisted with their unsupported claims of a stolen election and sought to revive rejected legal bids to overturn the results. Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Butler), one of Trump’s top boosters in Congress, turned to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to issue an emergency order decertifying the state’s returns, which declared President-elect Joe Biden the victor by some 81,000 votes. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, continued his barnstorming of battleground states that started with a raucous GOP rally in Gettysburg last week by announcing plans for a similar event on “election irregularities” in Michigan on Wednesday. But despite the continued refusal of the president and his allies to concede his loss, Attorney General William Barr broke significantly with them Tuesday during an interview with the Associated Press, saying there was little reason to doubt the results. He said: “We have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in this election.”

Full Article: Trump’s Pa. allies appeal legal bid to overturn the election to SCOTUS, even as Barr says there’s no evidence of widespread fraud

Pennsylvania: Trump allies ask Supreme Court to reverse ruling on mail-in ballots | Robert Barnes and Elise Viebeck/The Washington Post

Full Article: Trump allies ask Supreme Court to reverse Pennsylvania ruling on mail-in ballots - The Washington Post

Pennsylvania statehouse Republican groups cling to baseless election claims as lawmaking and legal chances fade | Sam Dunklau/WITF

Pennsylvania’s state lawmaking session ended Monday, and with it, any chance for legislative intervention seeking to overturn the state’s election results. Despite courts dismissing two separate election-related lawsuits over the weekend, some Republican lawmakers have spent the session’s closing days pushing evidence-free claims about a fraudulent election. On the House side, more than 20 state representatives signed on to a co-sponsorship memo for a resolution calling on state leaders to delay vote certification — which occurred last week in the presidential race. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate. Both resolutions include baseless claims of “substantial irregularities” with mail-in voting and accuses the Department of State and state Supreme Court of infringing on the legislature’s ability to determine election matters. House GOP leaders said Saturday there isn’t enough time left in the session to consider it, but have vowed to “further investigate” the election when the next session begins in January. “Our chamber voted to call for a complete audit of the election, a process we plan to see completed into the next session as well,” House Speaker Bryan Cutler said in a statement.

Full Article: Statehouse Republican groups cling to baseless election claims as lawmaking and legal chances fade | WITF

Pennsylvania Supreme Court tosses GOP congressman’s suit seeking to throw out all ballots cast by mail | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

The last active legal challenge to Pennsylvania’s presidential election results was tossed Saturday by the state’s highest court, which balked at a request from one of President Donald Trump’s top boosters in Congress to disenfranchise some 2.6 million voters by throwing out every ballot cast by mail. Had Kelly and the suit’s seven other Republican plaintiffs been forthright in their concerns over the constitutionality of the mail-voting statute, the court found, they would have filed their legal challenge before the new law was used in a primary and general election and would not have waited only until after it had become apparent that their favored candidate had lost. “It is not our role to lend legitimacy to such transparent and untimely efforts to subvert the will of Pennsylvania voters,” Justice David N. Wecht wrote in an opinion concurring with the full court’s terse, three-page order. “Courts should not decide elections when the will of the voters is clear.” A spokesperson for Kelly did not respond to requests for comment after the ruling Saturday evening. Sean Parnell — one of the suit’s other plaintiffs, who lost a bid this month to unseat incumbent Rep. Conor Lamb (D., Pa.) — declared in a tweet: “It’s not over. This was not unexpected. Stay tuned.” (Running in the GOP primary this spring, Parnell had endorsed the new “bipartisan system” created by the state’s vote-by-mail law in a tweet and encouraged his supporters to use it.)

Full Article: Pennsylvania Supreme Court tosses GOP congressman’s suit seeking to throw out all ballots cast by mail

Pennsylvania: US appeals court rejects Trump appeal over election results | Maryclaire Dale/Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat in court Friday as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected its latest effort to challenge the state’s election results. Trump’s lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judge’s assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.” “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the three-judge panel. The case had been argued last week in a lower court by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who insisted during five hours of oral arguments that the 2020 presidential election had been marred by widespread fraud in Pennsylvania. However, Giuliani failed to offer any tangible proof of that in court. U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann had said the campaign’s error-filled complaint, “like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together” and denied Giuliani the right to amend it for a second time.

Full Article: US appeals court rejects Trump appeal over Pennsylvania race

Pennsylvania certifies its presidential election results, officially declaring Joe Biden the winner | Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

Despite weeks of extreme rhetoric and failed lawsuits from President Donald Trump, Pennsylvania’s top elections official certified the state’s presidential election results on Tuesday, officially declaring Joe Biden the winner and paving the way for him to receive the state’s 20 Electoral College votes next month. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar made the final count official three weeks after the Nov. 3 election: Biden received 3,458,229 votes, 80,555 more than President Donald Trump’s 3,377,674 votes. Biden won 50.01% of the vote to 48.8% for Trump. Gov. Tom Wolf then signed what is called the Certificate of Ascertainment to name the 20 Biden electors who will meet in Harrisburg on Dec. 14 to formally cast the votes for Biden. With the certification, the counting of votes in Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election is now complete — climaxing sweeping changes in state election law, a torrent of pre-election litigation, months of electoral preparation during the pandemic amid a flood of misinformation, abuse and even death threats aimed at election workers, and a flood of postelection legal challenges. Still, Trump’s campaign continues to press its case, dismissing certification in court filings as just “a procedural step” that could be undone with a favorable ruling before the Dec. 8 cutoff date to name electors. And the campaign touted a partisan state Senate hearing Wednesday in Gettysburg — one before a panel with only GOP members — at which it vowed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani would present the evidence for allegations he has failed to offer in court.

Full Article: Pennsylvania certifies its presidential election results, officially declaring Joe Biden the winner

Pennsylvania counties start to certify election results, despite disinformation and baseless fraud claims from Trump allies | Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

Full Article: Pennsylvania counties start to certify election results, despite disinformation and baseless fraud claims from Trump allies

Pennsylvania: In rare move, bipartisan panel rejects House request to audit 2020 election | Marie Albiges and Cynthia Fernandez/Philadelphia Inquirer

Full Article: In rare move, bipartisan panel rejects Pa. House request to audit 2020 election

Pennsylvania: In scathing opinion, federal judge dismisses Trump campaign lawsuit | Jon Swaine/The Washington Post

Full Article: In scathing opinion, federal judge dismisses Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania - The Washington Post

Pennsylvania: Some counties will miss election results certification deadline – Delays shouldn’t affect statewide certification, experts say. | Emily Previti/WITF

At least four counties home to about 800,000 voters will not have election results certified when they’re due Monday to the Pennsylvania Department of State, though three of them expect to wrap up within the next couple days. Ultimately, minor delays in a handful of counties fully certifying their results shouldn’t affect the overall certification process statewide — in part because Pa.’s election code doesn’t set a hard deadline for statewide certification by the Secretary of State, which is normally a formality, voting law experts say. Of 40 counties to respond to WITF’s inquiry, at least eight with a combined 471,000 voters had already fully certified their results and sent them to the Pa. Department of State by Friday. Another 28 counties with nearly 6.9 million of the state’s 9 million registered voters confirmed they will hit Monday’s deadline. Schuylkill County officials say they will wrap up Tuesday, while Westmoreland County doesn’t expect to finish until next week due to pandemic-driven staffing shortages and a tight state Senate race. Berks and Luzerne election boards are scheduled to certify Wednesday. “Sometimes counties lag behind – that’s not unusual,” said ACLU of Pa. elections and voting rights consultant Marian Schneider, formerly deputy secretary for elections and administration at DoS. Schneider said that’s especially true when counties are dealing with recounts, close races and/or litigation over election board decisions such as the cases out of Philadelphia and Allegheny and Bucks counties.

Full Article: Some counties will miss Pennsylvania’s election results certification deadline | WITF

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign asks court to declare Trump winner | Marina Pitofsky/The Hill

President Trump's campaign filed a lawsuit on Wednesday over election results in Pennsylvania, arguing that he should be named the winner in the battleground state and that the GOP-controlled state legislature should be given the authority to assign its electoral votes, according to reports. The suit also argues that the campaign’s constitutional rights were violated because observers were not given adequate access as election officials processed mail-in ballots. The claim was dropped in an earlier version of the lawsuit. The campaign said in its new filing said that the claim was dropped due to a miscommunication among attorneys for the president. It also argues that 1.5 million votes across the state “should not have been counted” and that they led to “returns indicating Biden won Pennsylvania.” Attorneys for the Trump campaign also criticized a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court earlier this week. The court ruled on Tuesday that election observers had adequate opportunity to watch to the vote-counting process, even if they could not see the individual ballots.

Full Article: Trump campaign asks Pennsylvania court to declare Trump winner | TheHill

Divided Pennsylvania House approves audit of 2020 election, citing inconsistencies and confusion in electorate | Ford Turner/The Morning Call

Full Article: Divided Pennsylvania House approves audit of 2020 election, citing inconsistencies and confusion in electorate - The Morning Call

Pennsylvania: Led By Giuliani, Trump Campaign Effort To Stop Certification Falters | Pam Fessler/NPR

Things did not go well Tuesday for the Trump campaign's effort to stop certification of the Pennsylvania vote count — which has Joe Biden ahead by more than 73,000 votes. At almost the same time the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was in federal court in Williamsport, Pa., complaining that Republican observers were illegally denied access to vote counting in Philadelphia and other Democratic areas, the state Supreme Court in Harrisburg concluded otherwise. By a 5-2 vote, it ruled that Philadelphia election officials had acted properly in their handling of the observation process. The Trump campaign had argued that GOP representatives were kept too far away to see whether there were any irregularities, but the court said they were able to view election workers "performing their duties," as required. It was a major loss for the president and his campaign's flailing effort to overturn the election results. Republicans have filed suits in several states seeking to invalidate thousands of votes, but have lost almost every case so far. While the election observer claim was removed from the Pennsylvania lawsuit, Giuliani told U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann that he hoped to reinsert it with an amended complaint.

Full Article: Trump Effort To Stop Pennsylvania Certification, Led By Giuliani, Falters : NPR

Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects complaints about Philadelphia election observations | Zach Montellaro and Josh Gerstein/Politico

Full Article: Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects complaints about Philadelphia election observations - POLITICO

Pennsylvania: Trump’s legal push to disrupt election results is on its last legs. What’s his campaign still fighting in court? | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

While Trump’s campaign continues to pursue legal challenges, there was no active case left with enough ballots in question to reverse Joe Biden’s 69,000-vote advantage in the state as of Monday afternoon. Trump campaign lawyers now say their goal isn’t to overturn Biden’s lead but to whittle his 1.01-point lead down to 0.5 points and trigger an automatic recount. And this week is likely to prove decisive in the one case on which the campaign has pinned its remaining hopes — a suit seeking a court order barring Pennsylvania from certifying its final vote tally. It’s worth noting again that despite the outsized rhetoric from the president and his allies about widespread and systemic voter fraud, none of the suits his campaign has filed so far has contained even one allegation — let alone evidence — of a single vote being deliberately cast illegally. What’s more, campaign lawyers, when pressed by Pennsylvania judges in court, have consistently acknowledged that they are not alleging voter fraud but are instead seeking to disqualify ballots submitted by lawful voters based on legal technicalities.

Full Article: Trump’s legal push to disrupt Pa.’s election results is on its last legs. What’s his campaign still fighting in court?

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign presses election cases as attorneys abandon key claims, courts deny legal challenges | Emily Previti/WHYY

Quairah Tucker votes in every election, but this year brought a lot of firsts. She’s one of millions of Pennsylvanians issued a mailed ballot. Since hers never arrived, Tucker was among more than 100,000 who voted provisionally at the polls. More than a week later, she received a letter in the mail, saying her ballot was being challenged. “When I was at the polling place, I thought that my vote counted,” Tucker said. “I didn’t expect to have to come in and fight for my rights, for my vote counting.” Tucker and more than 1,000 other Delaware County voters had their provisional ballots challenged by the Trump campaign for any number of reasons: signing in the wrong spot, using the wrong date, failing to seal the ballot envelope properly and so on. In Tucker’s case, she put her name in one spot, but not the other where voters are supposed to sign. “I filled out the ballot, like I was told to do. I was instructed to only fill out one box. And I guess that was not enough,” she said. The campaign has challenged thousands of provisional ballots in several majority-Democrat counties, including in Northampton, Montgomery, Chester and Allegheny. That’s in addition to its unresolved lawsuits in courts across the commonwealth. Plus, the petition before the U.S. Supreme Court initiated by Pennsylvania Republicans — which the Trump campaign has since joined — could invalidate about 10,000 ballots that arrived after polls closed on election night and before 5 p.m. on Nov. 6.

Full Article: Trump campaign presses election cases in Pennsylvania as attorneys abandon key claims, courts deny legal challenges - WHYY

Pennsylvania: 2nd Trump lawyer asks to pull out of case challenging election | Alex Hosenball/ABC

A second lawyer who was helping lead President Donald Trump's effort to contest the outcome of the 2020 election has asked to step aside, according to a new federal court filing. Republican attorney Linda A. Kerns submitted papers with the U.S. District Court Monday saying she had "reached a mutual agreement that Plaintiffs will be best served" if she withdrew. She was joined in the motion by two other attorneys -- colleagues who only recently signed on to the case with her. Kerns is a veteran of election law battles in Pennsylvania and has written publicly about her desire to see voter ID laws passed to prevent election fraud. She had served as the primary attorney on the central Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania challenging the election's outcome. It is not clear why she has asked to step aside. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign asked the court to sanction lawyers at a firm helping defend the state in the case, saying someone from the firm left a harassing message on Kerns' voicemail. Lawyers from Ohio firm of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur recently asked to withdraw from the federal lawsuit the Trump campaign filed in Pennsylvania to challenge the election results there.

Full Article: 2nd Trump lawyer asks to pull out of case challenging Pennsylvania election - ABC News

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against election results | Jon Swaine and Elise Viebeck/The Washington Post

Full Article: Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against Pennsylvania’s election results - The Washington Post

Pennsylvania secretary of state will not order a recount | Tal Axelrod/The Hill

Pennsylvania’s top elections official confirmed Friday she will not be ordering a recount or recanvass of her state’s election results as Republicans rail against officials there over groundless voter fraud claims. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D) said the races for president, state attorney general, auditor general and state treasurer will not face recounts or recanvasses after unofficial returns submitted by the state’s counties showed no statewide candidate lost by less 0.5 percent, the margin at which such recourses would be triggered. "We are extremely grateful to all 67 counties who have been working overtime and putting in an extraordinary effort to count every vote, with so far more than 6.8 million votes having been counted," Boockvar said in a statement. "The counties continue to adjudicate and count the approximately 100,000 provisional ballots issued to voters at the polls on Election Day, as well as the more than 28,000 military and overseas ballots that were cast in this election." With ballots still being cast, Biden currently holds a nearly 60,000-vote lead in the state, a margin that has mushroomed  since the state was called for him last weekend and could grow more.

Full Article: Pennsylvania secretary of state will not order a recount | TheHill

Pennsylvania: As DOJ probes election, Republicans’ pursuit of voter fraud hits hurdle — a lack of evidence | Daniel Moore/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, said he had not yet seen evidence of election fraud, yet backed the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement this week it would probe any allegations of voting irregularities in states President Donald Trump lost to former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. “If I’m looking at this through a lens of someone who used to be a magisterial district judge, the evidence is not there yet,” Mr. Reschenthaler acknowledged in an interview Tuesday. “But it’s also premature to predetermine the outcome.” The comments by Mr. Reschenthaler — who sits on the House Judiciary Committee and is a member of the House Republican leadership circle — are another sign of Pennsylvania Republicans straddling the line between backing the president’s unsubstantiated claims of a victory while also ignoring Mr. Biden’s win. Mr. Reschenthaler — who last week won a second term in Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District by about 30 percentage points — compared the current moment to the aftermath of the 2000 election, in which the outcome was not known for several weeks after Election Day.

Full Article: As DOJ probes election, Republicans’ pursuit of voter fraud hits hurdle — a lack of evidence | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania appellate court sides with Trump in fight over ID deadlines for voters, tossing small number of ballots | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

A Pennsylvania appellate court handed President Donald Trump’s campaign a minor victory Thursday, barring counties from including in their final vote tallies a small pool of mail ballots from people who had failed to provide required ID by a Monday deadline. In a two-page order, a Commonwealth Court judge struck down a decision by the Wolf administration to give voters more time, post-election, to fulfill the ID requirement. Though state law only requires first-time voters to show ID at the polls, all voters who applied to vote by mail had to be validated their identification against state records by Nov. 9. Two days before the election, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar pushed that date back by three days, citing a court decision earlier this year that allowed late-arriving mail ballots to be counted as long as they had been mailed by Nov. 3 and received within three days of that date. But it was unclear just how many ballots statewide would now be thrown out. The number is likely to be vanishingly small compared to the larger pools of votes Republicans are seeking to have tossed in other ongoing court fights across the state.

Full Article: Pa. appellate court sides with Trump in fight over ID deadlines for voters, tossing small number of ballots

Pennsylvania: Trump’s campaign is challenging mail and provisional ballots at record rates in Philadelphia and its suburbs | Jeremy Roebuck and William Bender/Philadelphia Inquirer

Even as President Donald Trump’s campaign is waging a well-publicized legal war on the broad rules governing the presidential election in Pennsylvania, its lawyers are engaging in lower-profile but no less important, county-by-county trench battles to disqualify individual votes in Philadelphia and its suburbs over technicalities. In hearings before county Boards of Elections and Common Pleas Court judges, campaign attorneys have pushed for several thousand mail votes to be cast aside due to voter mistakes like failing to date the envelope. Meanwhile, they are pursuing record numbers of challenges to “provisional” ballots, in some cases for grounds as small as the name of the county being misspelled. But just as with the more sweeping lawsuits that Trump has filed in state and federal courts across the state seeking to cast doubt on the overall integrity of the electoral system, few of these county-level skirmishes have anything to do with the allegations of widespread and deliberate voter fraud that Trump and his allies have pushed without evidence for days. Instead, their filings ask courts and county boards to disenfranchise potentially thousands of legitimate voters in Philadelphia and its suburbs over procedural errors made when filing their ballots.

Full Article: rump’s campaign is challenging mail and provisional ballots at record rates in Philly and its suburbs

Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers to probe unverified fraud claims in election they largely won | by Cynthia Fernandez and Marie Albiges/Philadelphia Inquirer

As President Donald Trump continues to question the integrity of Pennsylvania’s election while repeating unverified claims of voter fraud, state Republicans are once again seeking greater powers to investigate the voting process. Roughly two dozen House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday called for the creation of an investigatory committee with subpoena power to conduct an immediate audit, saying they had fielded widespread doubts about the fairness of the Nov. 3 presidential election. House Republicans championed a similar proposal before the election but abandoned it after Democrats raised concerns it would be weaponized to impound ballots, interrogate election officials, and delay the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results. At the state Capitol, Rep. Dawn Keefer (R., York) said the assembled lawmakers' offices had been “overwhelmed with calls and emails and other messages from constituents who are confused and outraged by the circumstances surrounding this election.” … Pennsylvania already has safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy of election results, experts told Spotlight PA and Votebeat. In addition to routine reviews in each county required by law, the state has started to pilot “risk-limiting” audits, a process that verifies whether a sample of paper ballots matches results captured electronically by voting machines.

Full Article: Pa. GOP lawmakers to probe unverified fraud claims in election they largely won

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign moves to bar state from certifying election results in new lawsuit | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a new legal effort Monday aimed at stopping the certification of election results in Pennsylvania and potentially invalidating thousands of votes cast by mail statewide. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Harrisburg, accuses state and county officials of grossly mismanaging the process of voting by mail and shrouding the tabulation of mail ballots in secrecy by denying Republican monitors sufficient access to inspect them as they were being counted. Though many of its claims have already been presented and litigated in courts across the state — many which ruled against the president’s campaign — the new 86-page filing presented GOP lawyers' most comprehensive case yet in attempting to undermine public confidence in Pennsylvania’s election results. “The very officials charged with ensuring the integrity of the election in Pennsylvania have so mismanaged the election process that no one — not the voters and not President Trump’s campaign — can have any faith that their most basic rights under the U.S. Constitution are being protected,” wrote attorneys Ronald L. Hicks Jr. and Carolyn B. McGee, of Pittsburgh, and Linda Kerns, of Philadelphia. “Nothing less than the integrity of the 2020 presidential is at stake in this action.”

Full Article: Trump campaign moves to bar Pennsylvania from certifying election results in new lawsuit