U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew Brann told lawyers for Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and the county and state election officials it has sued that they must show up and “be prepared for argument and questioning” at the Williamsport, PA, federal courthouse.
The Trump campaign wants to prevent certification of results that give President-elect Joe Biden the state’s 20 electoral votes, suing over election procedures that were not uniform across the state.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar has asked to have the lawsuit thrown out, calling its allegations in court filings “at best, garden-variety irregularities.”
Brann scheduled the hearing to discuss the campaign’s request for a temporary restraining order as well as the defendants’ request to have the case dismissed.
After Pittsburgh lawyers dropped out of representing Trump’s campaign on Friday, Philadelphia election lawyer Linda Kerns and two Texas lawyers also withdrew Monday.
Camp Hill lawyer Mark Scaringi, a losing candidate in the 2012 Republican U.S. Senate primary, notified the judge he was stepping in, but did not get the delay he sought.
Press tallies projected Biden the winner of the presidential contest, but Trump, concerned about election irregularities, has refused to concede. With Georgia the only uncalled state, Biden has collected at least 290 electoral votes.
The state votes have not been certified, nor have electoral votes been officially certified and sent to Congress and concerns have arisen about how ballots were tabulated in several states. That will be addressed in other lawsuits, yet to be entered.
This Trump legal challenge centers on how some counties let voters fix, or “cure,” mail-in ballots that lacked secrecy envelopes or had other problems.
The president’s campaign’s lawsuit 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 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 described Trump’s claims as generalized grievances and speculative injuries that would not warrant throwing out the election results.
The Associated Press claims there is “no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.”
In fact, election officials from both political parties have stated publicly that the election went well and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities.”
However, other news sources report that at least one of the vetting councils had members on it that were associated with the Dominion ballot counting system company alleged to be involved in counting disparities.
—AP stories contributed to this report.
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November 17, 2020 at 10:54PM
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Pennsylvania judge to hear one election case on Tuesday - Rome Sentinel
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