Pennsylvania High Court to Consider Some Trump Ballot Claims

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said it will consider claims by President Donald Trump’s campaign that around 8,000 Philadelphia mail-in ballots should be disqualified because they weren’t filled out properly.

According to the campaign, the ballots should be tossed because the voters signed but did not further hand-write their names, addresses or dates on the outside of the return envelopes. A Philadelphia court denied the campaign’s request on Friday, noting voters’ names and addresses were already pre-printed on the envelopes and that state election law was ambiguous on what it means to “fill out” ballots.

The state high court said Wednesday it would exercise emergency jurisdiction to determine whether those ballots should be disqualified, absent any allegation of fraud or irregularity.

Though Trump and his allies have publicly claimed that the president’s election defeat was the result of widespread fraud, especially in Democratic-leaning counties, many of their legal challenges do not allege fraud and instead focus on invalidating “defective” ballots cast by eligible voters.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pennsylvania-high-court-to-consider-some-trump-ballot-claims/ar-BB1b8CIL?li=BBnbfcQ&ocid=DELLDHP

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If they disqualify those he'd still need 74,235 + 1 votes to reverse Pennsylvania.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/pennsylvania-2020/?itid=sn_election-2020&itid=lk_inline_manual_39

[underpants]

1. Oh please please let Rudy argue it

Pleeeease

[George II]

16. He was already thrown out of court today with the judge all but laughing at him.

[mr_lebowski]

2. How would you even know which of the 8000 ballots had this 'problem' with their envelopes?

Once the info on the envelope is accepted as valid, isn't the ballot separated from the envelope, and no longer matchable to the envelope?

I mean, if it's NOT, then our votes are not anonymous ... which is a problem IMHO.

Seems to me even if the Judge was inclined to agree, there's no way to do what they're asking anyway.

[yaesu]

6. I'm not sure if these were the ballots mention but I know the elections officers segregated some

ballots either because of lower courts requesting it or for probable challenges.

[mr_lebowski]

7. Okay ... yeah if they were already segregated/put into their own bucket then you could do this

I had only read of ballot segregation due to challenges to the late-arrival status, maybe there were other classes of ballots they did the same with.

Good thinking

[IsItJustMe]

8. Even if the votes were segregated

They were still counted which means that they were separated from their original envelope. Their Supreme Court would have to throw all of them out or none at all. I don't see their Supreme Court invalidating all those votes. But hell, I have seen some crazy shit over the past four years, so bottom line, who knows?

[yaesu]

9. yeah, the court may be doing all they can so if the case gets kicked up to the supreme court it will

die a quick death.

[L.Pharmstrong]

12. They typically are opened

in the presence of persons representing each of the parties. The ballots are examined and either party can object. If an objection is made, the ballot and accompanying envelope would be set aside so a judge can later determined if the ballot should be counted.

[mr_lebowski]

13. Sure but the article (at least what's in the OP) isn't clear they were segregated at the time

the envelopes were opened, hence my question.

[L.Pharmstrong]

15. The article isn't a model of clarity.

My assumption is that they had to be tallied so the State could count them so they ultimately can be included in the vote tallies that are certified by the State. In any event, all courts — even conservative ones — are loath to disenfranchise voters and impinge on a fundamental First Amendment right without a very good reason. To the extent that there is ambiguity in the state election law, that should result in the law being construed in favor the voters, and in a manner that will not result their disenfranchisement. A tie goes to the runner, and the voters here are the runner.

[Trueblue Texan]

17. Oh...well.... that's an easy one!

They'll just throw out 8,000 Biden votes, natch!

[yaesu]

3. enabling tRump false claims. nt

[madaboutharry]

4. I'm beginning to think the PA court is trolling Trump.

It seems like they’re enjoying this.

[Iliyah]

5. Not all 8,000 are for Biden . ..

I think these are the "segregated ballots".

[still_one]

10. True, but even if they were all trump he still lost. This is just his sadistic way to delay the

transition

[BumRushDaShow]

11. Well Biden just tipped over the 50% mark (so far today)

81,348 difference from the above snapshot taken this afternoon.

As a note about the voter info on the back of those outer envelopes, there is also a block on the back in the opposite corner from where the voter declaration block is that includes a pre-printed "label" with the voter's name, address, voting wards/district, AND a barcode + a QR code that encodes all that voter info, which makes it easy for the election canvassers to scan the envelope in and prevent duplicates.

So hand-filling anything other than a signature (assuming the voter completed their own ballot and didn't need a 3rd party to complete the ballot and they would fill out another section on the back), would literally be like duplicating what is already there, although obviously they want you to do that anyway. I cannot vouch for whether all counties in PA did their envelopes like that (which may be a concern if they have no other area for an address and that section was left blank), but here in Philly, ours were like that with the pre-printed info already there.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. That's the fraud?!

That's a loophole to discard a ballot on a technicality. The fraud is in the White House.

[radius777]

18. Just another attempt to disenfranchise black voters.

Note the Trump campaign is not looking for any irregularities in rural white areas, only in urban and diverse areas.

I doubt the court will go along with this, as the name/address were printed outside and to disenfranchise these voters on a such a minor technicality would be absurd.