Judge Delivers Another Humiliating Trump Court Loss In Pennsylvania

0
1123

So far, Trump’s lawsuits have not turned out very well for him. He won a small victory in Pennsylvania when the Supreme Court ordered election officials in Pennsylvania to separate mail-in ballots that arrived past November 3 from votes cast earlier, but another 27 lawsuits have turned up no positive results for Trump.

The 28th lawsuit came on Wednesday, a lawsuit asking the courts to dismiss ballots that had not been dated by hand by election officials. Nicole Ziccarelli, a Republican candidate for the Senate of Pennsylvania, asked the court to invalidate more than 2,000 mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but didn’t arrive until later. Lawyers for Ziccarelli said “she was not claiming any voter fraud regarding the challenged ballots.”

Judge James’ ruling said that:

‘The Court agrees with the Board that the Section 3150.16(a) date provision is directory not mandatory. Specifically, the use of the word “shall” does not make a statutory phrase mandatory. It is well settled Pennsylvania law that election laws should be construed liberally in favor of voters, and that “[t]echnicalities should not be used to make the right of the voter insecure.”’

The judge not only ruled that the ballots must count, but said that even without a handwritten date, the ballots are valid. It isn’t as if there are no other ways, the judge said, to ensure the validity of those ballots.

‘The ballots at issue here are sufficient even without a voter supplied date. They were processed in the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (“SURE”) system and timestamped when they were timely delivered to the Board on or before November 3, 2020. They were signed and have been otherwise properly completed by a qualified elector.’

No matter how many times Trump insists that rampant fraud has happened, no evidence of fraud has turned up in any of these cases. Judge James confirmed that there was no fraud involved in these ballots, and that no fraud was even being alleged. In that case, the ballots must count.

‘In light of the fact that there is no fraud, a technical omission on an envelope should not render a ballot invalid. The lack of a written date on an otherwise qualified ballot is a minor technical defect that does not render it deficient. The Court finds that the Board properly overruled Petitioner’s objections to the 2,349 challenged mail-in ballots. These ballots must be counted.’