Suit over ballots, polls law is tossed

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Saturday threw out a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign, dismissing its challenges to the battleground state’s poll-watching law and its efforts to limit how mailin ballots can be collected and which of them can be counted.

The ruling was made by U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan — who was appointed by Trump.

Trump’s campaign said it would appeal at least one element of the decision, with barely three weeks to go until Election Day.

The lawsuit was opposed by the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, the state Democratic Party, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP’s Pennsylvania office and other allied groups.

“The ruling is a complete rejection of the continued misinformation about voter fraud and corruption, and those who seek to sow chaos and discord ahead of the upcoming election,” Wolf’s office said in a statement.

The state’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat whose office fought the Trump campaign’s claims, called the lawsuit a political stunt designed to sow doubt in the state’s election.

“We told the Trump campaign and the president, ‘put up or shut up’ to his claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro told The Associated Press.

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that it looked forward to a quick decision from the appeals court “that will further protect Pennsylvania voters from the Democrats’ radical voting system.”

The lawsuit is one of many partisan battles being fought in the state Legislature and the courts, primarily over mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, amid concerns that a presidential election result will hang in limbo for days on a drawn-out vote count in Pennsylvania.

In this case, Trump’s campaign wanted the court to bar counties from using drop boxes or mobile sites to collect mailin ballots that are not “staffed, secured, and employed consistently within and across all 67 of Pennsylvania’s counties.” Trump’s campaign said it would appeal the matter of drop boxes.

More than 20 counties — including Philadelphia and most other heavily populated Democratic-leaning counties — have told the state elections office that they plan to use drop boxes and satellite election offices to help collect the large number of mail-in ballots they expect to receive.

Trump’s campaign also wanted the court to free county election officials to disqualify mail-in ballots where the voter’s signature may not match their signature on file and to remove a county residency requirement in state law for certified poll watchers.

In guidance last month, Wolf’s top elections official told counties that state law does not require or permit them to reject a mail-in ballot solely over a perceived signature inconsistency. Trump’s campaign had asked Ranjan to declare that guidance unconstitutional and to block counties from following it.

Separately, a federal judge in Texas on Friday blocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s move to limit counties in the state to one ballot drop-off site each.

“The public interest is not served” by the governor’s order, Judge Robert Pitman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas said in granting a preliminary injunction against the order.

The Texas League of United Latin American Citizens and other civil rights organizations had sued the governor over his order. The plaintiffs showed that the move “likely violates their fundamental right to vote,” Pitman said in his ruling, which the state is likely to appeal.

Spokesmen for Abbott and the secretary of state, Ruth Hughs, who is also named in the suit, did not immediately respond Saturday to requests for comment about the ruling.