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(Reuters) – US President Donald Trump’s campaign dropped a significant portion of a lawsuit it filed on Sunday to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying its presidential election results, narrowing the case down to a small number of votes.
In an amended lawsuit filed in federal court, the Trump campaign dropped a claim that election officials illegally blocked observers from seeing the mail-in ballot counts in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
The reduced lawsuit now centers on a claim that Democratic-leaning counties illegally allowed voters to correct errors on their mail-in ballots in violation of state law. Officials have said the dispute affects a small number of ballots in the state, where Democrat Joe Biden is projected to win by more than 60,000 votes.
Pennsylvania officials have asked a judge to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit, saying that election observers were allowed to evaluate the processing of mail-in ballots and that all counties in the state were allowed to inform residents if their Ballots mailed were deficient, even if they were. it was not mandatory that they do so.
In the populated Montgomery County of Pennsylvania, fewer than 100 voters fixed the ballots with technical errors, a county official testified at a court hearing on Nov. 4.
The Trump campaign continues to seek a court order preventing the Pennsylvania secretary of state from ratifying the result.
Biden secured the election after the media and Edison Research called him the winner in Pennsylvania, putting him above the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Edison Research said on Friday that Biden had won 306 votes in the electoral college to Trump’s 232.
Trump appeared to briefly acknowledge Biden’s victory on Sunday, but then backed off, saying he would soon present new challenges. His campaign has presented a series of long-running lawsuits in various states of battle.
On Twitter Sunday, Trump said that many of the cases filed were not from his campaign.
“Our big cases showing the unconstitutionality of the 2020 elections and the outrage of the things that were done to change the outcome, will soon be shelved!” He tweeted.
Legal experts say the lawsuits have little chance of changing the outcome of the elections. A senior legal advisor to Biden has dismissed the litigation as “theater, not really lawsuits.”
Pennsylvania must certify the election results on November 23.
(Jan Wolfe report; Lincoln Feast edition.)
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