Pennsylvania appellate court delivers another loss to Trump’s GOP allies seeking to void the state’s election results | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

A Pennsylvania appellate court on Wednesday denied the latest in a string of legal challenges seeking to roll back certification of the election results, ending the last active court battle in the state over the outcome of the race. In a four-page opinion, Commonwealth Court President Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt dismissed the suit brought by a group of nine GOP state lawmakers, led by Rep Daryl Metcalfe (R., Butler), saying they had waited too long to file their challenge. They “are unable to demonstrate a clear right to relief or likelihood of prevailing on the merits because their underlying action … is really an improper and untimely election contest,” she wrote. Metcalfe’s suit, filed Friday, followed a string of other recent lawsuits filed by President Donald Trump’s allies in the GOP, even as Trump himself appears to have abandoned his campaign’s efforts to bludgeon its way to victory through the courts. The ruling from Leavitt, a Republican, came a day after the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request from U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, a Republican also from Butler County, to void the state’s certified results, which declared President-elect Joe Biden the winner in Pennsylvania by some 81,000 votes. Metcalfe’s suit in state court sought a similar goal. But unlike Kelly, who had argued that the law that widely expanded voting by mail in the state was unconstitutional, Metcalfe zeroed in on decisions by elections administrators and the state’s Supreme Court that which he called “so severely flawed it is impossible to certify the accuracy of the purported results.”

Full Article: Pa. appellate court delivers another loss to Trump’s GOP allies seeking to void the state’s election results

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey calls Trump’s campaign to overturn election ‘completely unacceptable’ | Jonathan Tamari/Philadelphia Inquirer

Sen. Pat Toomey said Tuesday that it’s “completely unacceptable” for President Donald Trump to pressure state lawmakers to overturn Pennsylvania’s election result, a rare rebuke from an elected Republican as Trump continues his effort to subvert the will of the voters. “It’s completely unacceptable and it’s not going to work and the president should give up trying to get legislatures to overturn the results of the elections in their respective states,” Toomey, Pennsylvania’s most prominent elected Republican, said in a phone interview. His comments came a day after it emerged that Trump called the Republican state House Speaker to seek help in undoing the outcome. Toomey, one of fewer than 30 congressional Republicans to openly acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory, said he spoke with the president-elect by phone late last week, congratulated him, and discussed some of the few areas where they might be able to cooperate, such as on international trade. “We had a very pleasant conversation,” Toomey said. He added that the outcome was “clear” and that “Joe Biden won the election.” The call, and Toomey’s rejection of Trump’s latest maneuvers, stood out as an unusually direct Republican response to the president’s unprecedented attempts to thwart the election result. His stand put Toomey at odds with many fellow Republicans in Congress, the Pennsylvania state legislature, and some in the state’s congressional delegation, who have either sued to throw out Pennsylvania’s results — effectively disenfranchising the entire state — or who plan to oppose formal recognition of their own state’s outcome in Congress. Their opposition to the outcome comes despite the Trump campaign’s failure to produce evidence of even a single Pennsylvania vote intentionally cast illegally.

Full Article: Trump campaign to overturn Pennsylvania election results 'unacceptable,' Pat Toomey says

Pennsylvania: Supreme Court denies bid by Trump allies to overturn election results | Robert Barnes/The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a last-minute attempt by President Trump’s allies to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania. The court’s brief order provided no reasoning, nor did it note any dissenting votes. It was the first request to delay or overturn the results of the presidential election to reach the court. The lawsuit was part of a blizzard of litigation and personal interventions Trump and his lawyers have waged to overturn victories by Democrat Joe Biden in a handful of key states. Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make an extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state. But Speaker Bryan Cutler told the president he had no authority to step in, or to order the legislature into special session, a Cutler spokesman told The Washington Post. Republican members of the legislature and Congress supported the Supreme Court challenge to the changes they had made to Pennsylvania’s voting system in 2019. A group of Republican candidates led by Rep. Mike Kelly (R) challenged Act 77, a change made by the Republican-controlled legislature to allow universal mail-in ballots. Their charge was that the state constitution’s requirements on absentee ballots meant the legislature didn’t have the authority to open mail-in balloting for others. But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said the challenge was filed too late — only after the votes were cast and the results known. Democrat Joe Biden won the state by a more than 80,000-vote margin. The unanimous order blamed petitioners for a “complete failure to act with due diligence in commencing their facial constitutional challenge, which was ascertainable upon Act 77’s enactment.” It added that some of the petitioners had urged their supporters to cast their ballots using the new mail-in procedure.

Full Article: Supreme Court denies bid by Trump allies to overturn Pennsylvania election results - The Washington Post

Pennsylvania: Trump asks House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state | Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey and Rachael Bade/The Washington Post

President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make an extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result. The calls, confirmed by House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, make Pennsylvania the third state where Trump has directly attempted to overturn a result since he lost the election to former vice president Joe Biden. He previously reached out to Republicans in Michigan, and on Saturday he pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors. The president’s outreach to Pennsylvania’s Republican House leader came after his campaign and its allies decisively lost numerous legal challenges in the state in both state and federal court. Trump has continued to press his baseless claims of widespread voting irregularities both publicly and privately. “The president said, ‘I’m hearing about all these issues in Philadelphia, and these issues with your law,’ ” said Cutler spokesman Michael Straub, describing the House speaker’s two conversations with Trump. “ ‘What can we do to fix it?’ ” A White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls to Cutler, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors, Straub said. But late last week, the House speaker was among about 60 Republican state lawmakers who sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s congressional representatives urging them to object to the state’s electoral slate on Jan. 6, when Congress is set to formally accept the results.

Full Article: Trump asks Pennsylvania House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state - The Washington Post

Pennsylvania: With time running out, GOP state reps file new challenge to election results, citing already rejected claims of fraud | eremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

They requested the court withdraw Pennsylvania’s final vote tally — a case they supported with already debunked conspiracy theories and a bevy of complaints that have previously been rejected by state and federal judges in earlier legal fights. Meanwhile, in a separate filing, several of the same lawmakers joined more than 30 other GOP state House colleagues in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a push from U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.) to roll back Pennsylvania’s certified results based on his arguments that the state’s vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional. All this came as President Donald Trump’s lawyers waged a smaller-scale — but likely equally quixotic fight — over roughly 2,000 mail ballots they are seeking to disqualify in Bucks County in what has become the campaign’s last active legal challenge in the state. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where the campaign is pressing that case, already rejected similar suits involving ballots from Philadelphia and Montgomery County challenged over identical issues.With legal briefs flying, Lyndsay Kensinger, a spokesperson for Gov. Tom Wolf, dismissed the Republicans’ latest efforts Monday as “just another attempt … to spread disinformation and ignore reality.”

Full Article: With time running out, GOP state reps file new challenge to Pa.’s election results, citing already rejected claims of fraud

It didn’t need to take that long: What Pennsylvania’s election could have looked like with earlier counting | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Polls had been closed in Florida for only a few hours last month when elections offices started closing up shop for the night, too. Almost all the votes were counted and reported, and there just wasn’t much left to do at that moment. News organizations had already projected President Donald Trump as the state’s winner. Things in Tampa, for example, shut down by 1 a.m., the county supervisor of elections said. In Philadelphia, meanwhile, elections officials weren’t even halfway through a 50-hour stretch without sleep, at the start of an around-the-clock vote counting process that would continue for days. “I wanted to take a 12-hour break to let people get some sleep, and it was just impossible,” said Lisa Deeley, Philadelphia’s chief elections official. “And there was no way I would be able to get away with that, because the sky would fall, and all anybody wanted was for us to keep counting.” It wasn’t until Saturday, four days after Election Day, that enough Pennsylvania votes had been counted for news organizations to declare that Joe Biden had won the state — and with it, the presidency. The long wait created an opening for false claims of fraud that Trump and his supporters have exploited. There are multiple reasons the full picture of Pennsylvania’s results took longer to emerge than in other large battleground states this year, but one stands out: Pennsylvania doesn’t allow mail ballots to be opened until Election Day. That prohibition was the major factor for the timing of Pennsylvania’s vote count, elections officials and experts said, and an Inquirer analysis of results reported by the Associated Press shows other large battleground states that began counting ballots earlier reported their results much sooner.

Full Article: It didn’t need to take that long: What Pennsylvania’s election could have looked like with earlier counting

Pennsylvania: U.S. Supreme Court moves up deadline in congressman’s bid to upend election results | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

The U.S. Supreme Court moved up a key deadline Sunday for Pennsylvania officials to respond to a last-minute bid by one of President Donald Trump’s top boosters in Congress to decertify the state’s elections results. Previously, Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who oversees emergency matters arising out of Pennsylvania for the court, had given state election administrators until Wednesday to file their response to the appeal from U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Butler), who has argued that Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional and that every mail ballot cast in the state should be thrown out. But on Sunday, Alito moved up the schedule in Kelly’s case by a day, ordering state officials to respond by 9 a.m. Tuesday, instead. The difference of just a day is significant, given that the previous deadline of Wednesday fell one day after what is known as the “safe harbor date,” the federal cutoff date for states to resolve any remaining election disputes and lock in their slate of electors for the Dec. 14 Electoral College vote. Many legal observers read Alito’s initial selection of Dec. 9 as a sign that the court had no intention of acting on the Kelly’s case in a way that would interfere with Pennsylvania awarding its 20 electoral votes to President-elect Joe Biden. The new deadline falls on the same day as the “safe harbor date” and now would give the court a few hours Tuesday to act on Kelly’s request if it chooses to do so — though Alito did not offer any explanation Sunday for the change in schedule.

Full Article: U.S. Supreme Court moves up deadline in congressman’s bid to upend Pa. election results

Pennsylvania: Supreme Court order, state GOP leaders effectively end Trump’s hope for legislators to reverse election results | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

If its fate had not been abundantly clear already, President Donald Trump’s dream of having Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled legislature overturn the state’s election results received what appeared to be its final death blows Thursday with a late-night order from the U.S. Supreme Court and an unequivocal statement from the General Assembly’s Republican leadership that they had no intention of doing so. The Supreme Court order came in response to a request from one of the president’s top boosters in Congress, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.), who has asked the justices to declare the state’s vote-by-mail law unconstitutional and to “decertify” Pennsylvania’s results, which cemented President-elect Joe Biden’s victory by roughly 81,000 votes last week. But just hours after Kelly filed that appeal Thursday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. crafted a telling schedule for the case, giving state officials until Dec. 9 to file their reply. The date set by Alito — who oversees emergency petitions arising from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware for the court — comes one day after what is known as the “safe harbor date,” the federal deadline for states to resolve outstanding challenges to their elections. Once it has passed, the state’s slate of appointed electors is considered to be locked in for the Dec. 14 Electoral College vote.

Full Article: Supreme Court order, state GOP leaders effectively end Trump’s hope for Pa. legislators to reverse election results

Pennsylvania GOP Lawmakers Make Clear They Won’t Overturn The Election As Trump Wants | Alison Durkee/Forbes

Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania will not make any attempt to overturn the state’s popular vote by appointing their own presidential electors, the legislature’s leadership said in a statement Thursday, killing the Trump campaign’s hopes of contesting President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state even as other Pennsylvania Republicans take an election challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court. Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, House Speaker Bryan Cutler, Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward and House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff said they “cannot take steps to appoint electors for this election,” as the Trump campaign has expressly asked state lawmakers to do. The Trump campaign pushed the tactic at a recent unofficial hearing with some Pennsylvania Republicans and has asked the courts to order that lawmakers step in, as part of a broader long-shot strategy targeting GOP-led legislatures in battleground states that elected Biden. The lawmakers said the state legislature “lacks the authority...to overturn the popular vote” by appointing its own electors and would violate Pennsylvania’s Election Code and Constitution if they did, as well as set a bad precedent.

Full Article: Pennsylvania GOP Lawmakers Make Clear They Won’t Overturn The Election As Trump Wants

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

President Trump’s allies said Tuesday that they have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a decision by Pennsylvania’s highest court dismissing a challenge of the state’s mail-in voting system. The lawsuit is one of many protesting the results in the swing state’s elections, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Saturday said that the suit’s “extraordinary” request to throw out millions of ballots came too late. The Republican lawsuit challenged Act 77, the 2019 statute in Pennsylvania that allows voters to cast mail ballots for any reason. Their argument is that the law, passed by the Republican-led legislature and signed by the state’s Democratic governor, violated the state constitution’s requirements on who could receive a mail-in ballot. Trump’s allies asked the state court to invalidate all votes cast by mail in the general election — more than 2.5 million in total — or direct the state legislature to appoint its own slate of presidential electors. The state Supreme Court dismissed the case on Saturday, ruling that petitioners waited more than a year to sue, and only then after the results of the election were clear. “The want of due diligence demonstrated in this matter is unmistakable,” the justices wrote, noting that some of the petitioners included candidates for office who had urged supporters to cast their ballots by mail.

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

Pennsylvania counties rushed Monday to certify their results from the Nov. 3 election, even as President Donald Trump and his Republican allies continued their increasingly long-shot legal effort to disrupt the cementing of the state’s final vote tally. But as county boards of elections convened for what is normally little more than a sleepy formality, the impact of the president’s campaign to undermine trust in the integrity of the vote repeatedly reared its head.In at least three of the state’s most populous counties, the boards split their votes along party lines. And small groups of voters speaking at public meetings urged elections administrators to reject vote tallies in several others. Many speakers cited unsupported allegations of widespread fraud, malfunctioning voting machines and claims about mail-in ballots that Trump and his supporters have spread without evidence in recent weeks. Joe Gale, the Republican vice chair of the Montgomery County Election Board and only member to vote against certification, decried the widespread use of mail voting and called for the U.S. Supreme Court to review of the state’s results, echoing requests made by the president’s lawyers in recent days. “There is no way to certify the authenticity of one half of the votes cast this year,” he said Monday. “All 67 counties across the Commonwealth are experiencing electoral uncertainty.” Board votes in Allegheny and Luzerne — which Trump carried by 14 points — also split along partisan divides. But in all three counties, the dissenters were among the minority and the certifications were ultimately approved.

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

An attempt by Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled legislature to audit the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election failed Monday when a bipartisan panel rejected it, citing its redundancy. The Legislative Budget and Finance Committee voted 2-1 against the audit, which was requested by the House last week. The two Democrats on the panel voted against the measure, with one Republican in favor and another absent from the meeting. In rejecting the request, the panel’s two Democratic members — Sen. James Brewster (D., Allegheny) and Rep. Jake Wheatley (D., Allegheny) — said it would duplicate the efforts of an ongoing Department of State audit, which is mandated by law. “There are other ways of validating our election results, making sure we had a fair return in our election process. And I would encourage us to not prolong this wasted effort,” said Wheatley, who is treasurer of the committee. “I would just really suggest that we put this to bed now and move forward with some of our other prioritized reports and audits.”

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

 

A lawsuit brought by President Trump’s campaign that sought to block the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results was dismissed by a federal judge on Saturday evening. U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann granted a request from Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to dismiss the suit, which alleged that Republicans had been illegally disadvantaged because some counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots. The judge’s decision, which he explained in a scathing 37-page opinion, was a thorough rebuke of the president’s sole attempt to challenge the statewide result in Pennsylvania. Brann wrote that Trump’s campaign had used “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” in its effort to throw out millions of votes. “In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” Brann wrote. In a statement, Trump’s attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and legal adviser Jenna Ellis said they would appeal the decision and expected the case to reach the Supreme Court. “We are disappointed we did not at least get the opportunity to present our evidence at a hearing,” their statement said.

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

A deeply divided state House on Thursday voted to approve a Republican-sponsored measure that sets up an audit of the 2020 election, citing inconsistencies and confusion in the electorate as evidence the process must be improved for future contests. The vote was 112 in favor of the audit and 90 against, with all Republicans and three Democrats voting in favor. “There is no need to fear this audit. I welcome it. We all should welcome it, to find out what went right and what went wrong,” said Bedford County Republican Rep. Jesse Topper, the prime sponsor of the audit resolution. The intent, he said, is not to look for fraud but to get an in-depth assessment of how the Nov. 3 election was carried out, in time to possibly take legislative action early next year to improve the system. The resolution directs the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee ― a bipartisan committee with members from both House and Senate ― to oversee a “risk-limiting” audit. It allows the committee to hire an outside contractor to do the work. It may begin almost immediately and is expected to be complete by early February, at the latest. Democrats attacked the proposal, calling it unconstitutional, damaging to democracy and unnecessary. Gov. Tom Wolf issued a written statement during the debate, saying any audit done by this approach would be “incomplete, duplicative and unreliable.”

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

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 5-2 on Tuesday that observers’ rights to watch ballot counting was sufficient in Philadelphia, rejecting a claim from President Donald Trump’s campaign that poll observers didn’t get “meaningful access.” The Trump campaign argued that observers were stationed too far away to actually see the process of counting votes, and a lower court initially agreed with them, ordering that they be allowed closer to the process. The state Supreme Court, which had previously rejected other Republican arguments, vacated that lower court order on Tuesday. “We conclude the Board did not act contrary to law in fashioning its regulations governing the positioning of candidate representatives during the precanvassing and canvassing process, as the Election Code does not specify minimum distance parameters for the location of such representatives,” the court wrote in its majority order. “Critically, we find the Board’s regulations as applied herein were reasonable in that they allowed candidate representatives to observe the Board conducting its activities as prescribed under the Election Code.” The Trump campaign called the ruling “inexplicable” and signaled the legal battle wasn’t over. "This ruling is contrary to the clear purpose of the law,” Jenna Ellis, a campaign senior legal adviser, said in a statement. “The lower court rightly recognized that the intent and purpose of the Pennsylvania law is to allow election watchers from both parties to actually see the ballots close enough to inspect them, and thus prevent partisan ballot counting in secret.“

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

President Trump’s campaign on Sunday scrapped a major part of its federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania. Trump’s attorneys filed a revised version of the lawsuit, removing allegations that election officials violated the Trump campaign’s constitutional rights by limiting the ability of their observers to watch votes being counted. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal attorney, have said repeatedly that more than 600,000 votes in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be invalidated because of this issue. Trump’s pared-down lawsuit now focuses on allegations that Republicans were illegally disadvantaged because some Democratic-leaning counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots. Counties have said this affected only a small number of votes. Cliff Levine, an attorney representing the Democratic Party in the case, said on Sunday evening that Trump’s move meant his lawsuit could not possibly change the result. “Now you’re only talking about a handful of ballots,” Levine said. “They would have absolutely no impact on the total count or on Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump.”

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