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By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania federal court on Monday to prevent state officials from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
The lawsuit, filed by the campaign and two registered voters, alleged that Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail system “lacked all of the transparency and verifiability stamps that were present for in-person voters.”
The lawsuit claims that Pennsylvania officials violated the United States Constitution by creating “an illegal two-tier voting system” in which voting in person was subject to more supervision than voting by mail.
He ran against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the boards of elections in Democratic-leaning counties including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Bookcvar’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president, who has spent months trying to undermine election results with unproven fraud allegations, has vowed to go ahead with a legal strategy that he hopes will overturn the statewide results that gave Biden the victory in Tuesday’s vote.
The Trump campaign and Republicans have filed numerous lawsuits since Election Day for alleged election irregularities. Judges have already thrown out cases in Georgia and Michigan.
Separately, some Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania said in a press release Monday that they would “call for a legislature-led audit of the 2020 election and demand that the election results not be certified, nor that voters sit until the audit to be completed. “
In the United States, a candidate becomes president by obtaining the most “electoral” votes rather than by winning the majority of the national popular vote. Voters generally cast their vote for the winner of the popular vote in their respective states. They are scheduled to meet on December 14.
Edward Foley, who specializes in electoral law at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, said the Pennsylvania legislature could not stop the certification of the vote without changing the law.
“To do that, they would have to try to amend the state statute and that will be vetoed” by the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Foley said.
The Pennsylvania case was assigned to US District Judge Matthew Brann, appointed by former President Barack Obama.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; additional reporting by Tim Reid and Karen Freifeld; Editing by Chris Reese, Sam Holmes, Noeleen Walder, and Aurora Ellis)
