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President Donald Trump’s campaign has withdrawn a central part of its lawsuit that seeks to stop the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump to capture the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 a hearing Tuesday in the case, the Trump campaign on Sunday dropped the allegation that 682,479 vote-by-mail and absentee ballots were illegally processed without their representatives watching.
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.
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 lack of signature of a voter in the outer envelope, so fix it up and make sure your vote counts, a move called “curation.”
Republican-dominated counties “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 was unclear how many voters had a chance to fix their ballot. But, he said, the number was minimal and certainly less than the margin, nearly 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 did not contain any allegation that someone illegally voted.
“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.”
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 claim for relief on any legal theory,” the state’s attorneys wrote.
Counties reported receiving more than 2.6 million ballots by mail, and state or county election or prosecutor officials have not reported fraud or accuracy issues.
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.”
