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President Donald Trump’s campaign is withdrawing a central part of its lawsuit that seeks to stop the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump to capture the state and help win the White House.
Ahead of Tuesday’s (local time) hearing in the case, the Trump campaign dropped the allegation that hundreds of thousands of absentee and vote-by-mail ballots (682,479, to be precise) were illegally processed without the presence of their representatives.
Evan Vucci / AP
President Donald Trump’s campaign is withdrawing a central part of its lawsuit that seeks to stop the certification of election results in Pennsylvania.
The campaign’s streamlined lawsuit, filed in federal court Sunday, upholds the goal of preventing Pennsylvania from certifying a victory for Biden in the state, and upholds its claim that Democratic voters were treated more favorably than Republican voters. .
The Associated Press called the presidential race for former Vice President Joe Biden on Nov. 7, after determining that the remaining ballots remaining to be counted in Pennsylvania would not allow Trump to catch up. Trump has refused to budge.
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The remaining claim in the lawsuit centers on the disqualification of ballots cast by voters who were given the opportunity to fix mail-in ballots that were to be disqualified on a technicality.
The lawsuit charges that “counties with large numbers of Democrats” violated the law by identifying mail-in ballots before Election Day that had flaws, such as the lack of an internal “secret envelope” or the failure to sign the voter in the outer envelope, so the voter could fix it and make sure their vote counts, called “cure.
Counties with large numbers of Republicans “followed the law and failed to provide a notice and cure process, depriving many,” the lawsuit says.
Cliff Levine, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee, which seeks to intervene, said it is unclear how many voters had a chance to fix their ballot.
But, he said, it is minimal and certainly less than the margin, almost 70,000, that separates Biden and Trump.
“The numbers are not even close to the margin between the two candidates, not even close,” Levine said.
In either case, there is no provision in state law that prevents counties from helping voters fix a ballot that contains a technical deficiency. Levine said the lawsuit does not contain any allegation that someone voted illegally.
“They really should sue the counties that didn’t allow [voters] to make corrections, ”Levine said. “The goal should be to make sure every vote counts.”
Lindsey Shuey / AP
Untold provisional ballots are found at the polls at the Schuylkill County Elections Office in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, responded in court Sunday and asked the judge to dismiss the case. State courts are the proper jurisdiction for the matter, and the lawsuit contains “no plausible claims for relief on any legal theory,” the state’s attorneys wrote.
Counties were reported to have received more than 2.6 million ballots by mail, and state or county election officials or a prosecutor have not reported fraud or any other problems with the accuracy of the count.
A key theme of Trump and his supporters has been their claim that Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold where Trump lost a lot, had not allowed representatives of the Trump campaign to see the processing and tabulation of absentee and mail ballots.
However, Republican attorneys have acknowledged in a separate federal court proceeding that they had certified observers observing mail ballot processing in Philadelphia. Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration has said that poll watchers from all parties had observers throughout the process and that “any hint to the contrary is a lie.”
