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.“
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