Trump Campaign Lawsuit Seeking to Block Pennsylvania Vote Certification Heads to Court
A federal lawsuit by President Donald Trump’s campaign seeking to prevent Pennsylvania officials from certifying the vote results on grounds of inconsistent practices around “curing” ballots, is on track for a court hearing on Tuesday.
The Trump campaign wants to prevent certification of results that could give Democrat Joe Biden the state’s 20 electoral votes, suing over election procedures that were not uniform across the state. Biden’s margin in the state is now nearly 70,000 votes.
The legal challenge centers on how some counties let voters fix, or “cure,” mail-in ballots that lacked secrecy envelopes or had other problems. The suit claims counties’ inconsistent practices violated constitutional rights of due process and equal protection under the law and resulted in the “unlawful dilution or debasement” of properly cast votes.
“Democratic heavy counties,” the lawsuit alleges, notified voters about the lack of secrecy envelopes or other problems in time for some to fix them, but counties in Republican regions “followed the law and did not provide a notice and cure process, disenfranchising many.”
The lawsuit seeks to stop Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and election boards in seven Biden-majority counties that are co-defendants from counting absentee and mail-in ballots that the Republican president’s campaign claims were “improperly permitted to be cured.”
Boockvar’s lawyers have described Trump’s claims as generalized grievances and speculative injuries that would not warrant throwing out the election results.