In a Pennsylvania court case, the Trump campaign has sought “to stop counties from allowing voters to submit ballots in drop boxes.” They’ve also attempted to stop counties from “counting absentee ballots that are not in a secrecy envelope or that have markings revealing the voter’s identity, political affiliation or candidate preference,” as Democracy Docket explains. Now, the Pennsylvania federal court that is handling the case has denied the Trump campaign’s request for an order to keep ballots that are cast via drop boxes separate from the rest of the ballots.
🚨BREAKING: Pennsylvania Federal Court DENIES Trump campaign motion to segregate ballots cast in drop boxes or without an inner secrecy envelope in order to prevent commingling and to preserve the campaign’s ability to challenge those ballots later.https://t.co/xHdwqx0X0B pic.twitter.com/MNY1N77Hef
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) September 9, 2020
The Trump campaign was concerned that mixing ballots from drop boxes and from everywhere else would limit their ability to challenge the usage of drop boxes, which they allege provide opportunities for fraud. Challenges related to the upcoming presidential election could be rendered moot if the ballots were mixed. Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan, who’s handling the case, pointed to a separate case that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will soon consider as making the urgent order that the Trump campaign had requested unnecessary. Ranjan did maintain an allowance for the campaign to bring challenges in the future — he denied their motion for immediate relief “without prejudice.”
In the ongoing case with Ranjan, he had previously ordered the Trump campaign to provide any evidence that they had indicating that drop boxes (or mail-in voting) had been connected to any instances of fraud in the state’s 2020 primary election, when both processes were used, but the Trump campaign failed to provide a single piece of supporting evidence. Their case is speculative — and they alleged that they didn’t even need to provide evidence under the original terms of the lawsuit, no matter the judge’s order.
Kenneth Huston, who serves as president of NAACP Pennsylvania and whose organization intervened in the lawsuit, commented to local media:
‘The right to vote is at stake. Literally 55 years ago, the Voting Rights Act was passed. The Trump administration is systemically trying to diminish our right to vote. Particularly for Black and brown people This is a critical time, this is critical issue. We can’t sit idly by. We won’t, as the NAACP of Pennsylvania, and allow these attacks to occur.’
The president has consistently been complaining about mail-in voting. He sounds paranoid about the possibility of losing if Americans make their voices heard.
