‘Discarded’ ballot probe fuels mail-in vote debate
HARRISBURG » The news release froma U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania was provocative: Ninemailed-in military ballots had been “discarded” by the local election office in a swing county of one of the most important presidential battleground states.
All of them were marked for President Donald Trump, it said. Then came another news release with key details changed but still little explanation of what had happened and whether investigators believed a criminal act had occurred.
Despite the information vacuum, the White House press secretary told reporters “ballots for the president” had been “cast aside.” The Trump campaign’s rapid-response arm pushed out the release fromTrump’s Justice Department under the headline, “Democrats are trying to steal the election,” ignoring the fact that the local government, Luzerne County, is controlled by Republicans. Conservative voices used the news releaseas rocket fuel to amplify the investigation on social media.
Thursday’s kerfuffle and accompanying internet outrage over the ballots is likely a taste of what is to come in the month left before the presidential election, being held amid the global pandemic that has triggered a wave of absentee ballot requests as Trump continues to launch unsubstantiated attacks on mail voting.
It was Trump, after being briefed on the case by Attorney General William Barr, who first revealed publicly that the discarded ballots had been cast for him. He did so in an interview earlier Thursday with Fox News Radio in which he used the investigation to further sow doubt about mail-in voting. The radio interview was hours before the U.S. attorney’s office in Pennsylvania issued its news release about the probe to reporters.
By Friday, more details had emerged in the Pennsylvania case. Federal officials were considering whether a recently hired, temporary election worker may have mishandled the ballots. Aside from the unknowns about the investigation, questions persist over how the Justice Department handled the matter.
The firstwordof a federal investigation into unspecified “issues with a small number of mail-in ballots” came in a statement Tuesday by the local district attorney in Luzerne County. There was no mention of Trump, and there was little attention to the case beyond local news reports.
That all changed when the office of U.S. Attorney Dave Freed issued Thursday’s statement, an unusual step given U.S. Department of Justice guidance to refrain generally from commenting on any investigation, especially one involving an election in which voters already are casting ballots. In addition, the mention of which presidential candidate the ballots favored raised concerns among election law experts and voter advocacy groups. Ballots include races for all kinds of offices and issues, not just the race for president.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Pennsylvania notified senior officials at Justice Department headquarters earlier this week about a small number of ballots that were found to be discarded, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. Barr told Trump that the Justice Department was going to look into the matter before the department publicly confirmed the investigation, the person said.
The U.S. attorney’s office had received inquiries from local reporters about the ballots, the person said, and released the statement, which included specific details about the ballots, after Trump revealed the existence of the investigation in the interview with Fox News Radio. The person could not discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The Justice Department is permitted to advise the White House of pending investigations or cases, but according toamemodictating the scope of such contacts, that notification is to be made “when — but only when — it is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.” The memo acknowledges that such communication may be more regular when it comes to matters of national security, such as a terrorist attack.
“This is clear politicization of the Justice Department’s work in themiddle of an active general election,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It seemed like a thinly veiled attempt to breathe life into President Trump’s false claims about mail ballot fraud.”
The number of public Facebook and Instagram posts mentioning the discarded ballots quickly skyrocketed, receiving nearly 900,000 interactions — likes or comments — in less than 24 hours, according to Facebook’s CrowdTangle, which tracks public posts.