Trump campaign, local Republicans sue state over ‘unmonitored’ mail-in voting
President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and several local Republican congressmen are suing Pennsylvania and the election boards of its 67 counties for their alleged “hazardous, hurried and illegal” implementation of mail-in voting.
In a lawsuit filed this week in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign and other Republican plaintiffs claim that the “single greatest threat to free and fair elections” is “unmonitored” mail-in voting, which they say “[undermines] ballot security.”
Alleging that the electoral bodies overstepped their authority in administrative actions leading up to the June 2 primary, the Republicans are urging the court to act now to prevent “chaos” and fraud during the Nov. 3 general election.
“Shifting from an absentee voting system to one that pushes unmonitored vote-by-mail creates opportunities for fraud, and encourages ballot harvesting where paid political operatives try to collect and deliver loose ballots,” said Jenna Ellis, the campaign’s senior legal adviser, in a statement.
“This lawsuit seeks to restore integrity into the process and mandate the ability of campaigns to monitor the casting, collecting, and counting of all votes.”
Democrats, meanwhile, deemed the lawsuit politically motivated and alleged it was another effort by Mr. Trump and his Republican allies to limit the access to voting.
“The truth is that Trump and nearly all his cronies and lackeys vote by mail — but they would rather spread misinformation about voting by mail because they want to prevent the rest of us from using the same process,” said Maddie McComb, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. “Pennsylvanians see this lawsuit for what it is: a blatant attempt to suppress the voice of the voters, and they’ll hold Trump accountable for it.”
The plaintiffs — which include Western Pennsylvania Reps. Glenn Thompson, Mike Kelly and Guy Reschenthaler — specifically take issue with many counties allowing voters to return absentee and mailin ballots to locations other than their respective county elections offices during the primary.
Some counties permitting ballot returns to “unmonitored ad hoc drop boxes,” for example, would allow “illegal [absentee] and mail-in voting, ballot harvesting, and other fraud to occur and/or go undetected, and will result in dilution of validly cast ballots,” according to the GOP’s suit. They’re asking the court to declare this unconstitutional and cease the activity.
The campaign of Mr. Trump’s presumptive opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, shot back this week and said that expanding options for vote-by-mail and in-person voting would make it so no Pennsylvanian has to choose between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote.
“That isn’t a partisan issue, but Pennsylvania Republicans and the [Republican National Committee] are clearly more concerned with demonstrating their fealty to Donald Trump and his conspiracy theories than they are with making it easier for Pennsylvanians to vote this fall,” said Emma Riley, a regional communications director for the Biden campaign.
The Republican lawsuit also asks the court to prevent counties from counting absentee and mail-in ballots that lack a secrecy envelope, and those that “contain on that envelope any text, mark, or symbol which reveals the elector’s identity, political affiliation, or candidate preference.”
Poll watchers, the Republicans wrote, should be allowed to watch over all locations where votes are cast, including where absentees or mail-ins are returned before or on Election Day.
They, too, shouldn’t be limited to poll watching only in the county of their residence, the suit recommends.
“The Commonwealth has no legitimate interest in arbitrarily restricting the right of any of its qualified voters from serving as a poll watcher to monitor the drop off of absentee and mail-in ballots before Election Day, regardless in what county those ballots may be cast,” the lawsuit reads.
Spokespersons for the state and Allegheny County — whose elections board is named as a plaintiff — declined comment.