Alice and Len Sayles, Rittenhouse Square residents, return their ballots in the drop box outside City Hall in Philadelphia.
Kimberly Paynter / WHYY
Ballot battle intensifies with new lawsuit, Trump campaign videotaping people at drop box
The state attorney general's office warned that videotaping voters at drop boxes could be illegal intimidation
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Marc Levy/The Associated Press
Kimberly Paynter / WHYY
Alice and Len Sayles, Rittenhouse Square residents, return their ballots in the drop box outside City Hall in Philadelphia.
Be patient: Results of the Nov. 3 election in Pennsylvania, and across the country, likely won’t be known for days. Here’s how WITF’s newsroom will cover election night and beyond.
(Harrisburg) — Another lawsuit filed Thursday challenged Pennsylvania’s court-ordered extension of the deadline to receive mail-in ballots in the presidential election, as a new legal fight brewed over the Trump campaign’s videotaping of people dropping off multiple ballots in Philadelphia.
Plaintiffs — including four registered voters from Somerset County and a Republican congressional candidate — asked a federal judge in Pittsburgh to block the deadline extension in the presidential battleground state from going into effect.
The state Supreme Court last month ordered county election officials to receive and count mailed-in ballots that arrive up to three days after the Nov. 3 election, until Nov. 6, even if they don’t have a clear postmark, as long as there is no proof it was mailed after the polls closed.
Thursday’s lawsuit came 12 days before the election and three days after the U.S. Supreme Court, divided 4-4, rejected a Republican plea making a slightly different argument than Thursday’s lawsuit.
Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes are being hotly contested by President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Gerry Broome / AP Photo
A workers prepares absentee ballots for mailing at the Wake County Board of Elections in Raleigh, N.C., Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020.
The new lawsuit said the court’s deadline extension and the lack of a postmark requirement “will allow for late and otherwise unlawful ballots to be counted.”
That is unconstitutionally unfair to in-person voters and exceeded the court’s authority by exercising a power that is constitutionally vested in Congress and the Legislature, it said.
With the plaintiffs seeking expedited consideration, the new argument could theoretically arrive at the U.S. Supreme Court after Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, is sworn in, providing a tie-breaking vote before the election.
Most states make Election Day the deadline, but more than 20 states have a post-Election Day deadline.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Trump’s campaign opened possibly a new front in what Democrats say is a campaign of voter intimidation and suppression to blunt a vote deficit in the Democratic bastion that Trump will have to make up elsewhere in Pennsylvania if he is to win the state.
A lawyer for the Trump campaign — which has already sued to ban the use of drop boxes — wrote to city election officials last week to request that they end the use of “unmanned drop boxes.”
Philadelphia and many other heavily populated counties in Pennsylvania are using drop boxes to help collect an avalanche of mail ballots under a year-old law greatly expanding such voting.
In the letter, the lawyer, Linda Kerns, wrote that video taken by a campaign representative shows three people dropping off as many as three ballots in a limited time period Oct. 14.
Pennsylvania law, in most cases, requires voters to deliver their own mail-in ballots, Kerns wrote, although it makes an exception for voters with disabilities.
Kerns suggested the images amount to “blatant violations” of state election law and said the campaign would sue, unless the city’s election office “commits to remedy this problem immediately.”
She asked for copies of city surveillance video at City Hall, for a list of voters who dropped ballots in the Philadelphia City Hall drop box on Oct. 14, and that the ballots be set aside “until an investigation can determine whether the ballots were personally delivered” by the voter.
In a response, a city lawyer, Benjamin Field, wrote Monday to Kerns to reject her assumption that the law was violated. Third-party delivery is permitted in certain circumstances, he wrote.
Margo Reed / Philadelphia Inquirer
A worker organizes mail ballots in Chester County. Pennsylvania counties have been flooded with mail ballot requests, and the days-long process of counting them can’t begin until Election Day under current state law.
Though the city had forwarded the campaign’s information to the district attorney’s office, Field said, the elections office does not track whose ballots are dropped into particular drop boxes.
In a statement, the office of District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, said it is committed to investigating “any and all” allegations of voter intimidation and harassment. The office of the state attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, warned in a statement that videotaping voters at drop boxes could be construed as illegal voter intimidation.
In any case, Shapiro’s office said, Trump’s campaign had provided similar photos and videos in a lawsuit in federal court in its effort to ban drop boxes. A judge threw out the case.
Several lawsuits — including another filed against Philadelphia by Trump’s campaign — are currently being fought over how Pennsylvania’s election is being conducted. The wave of court cases has prompted concerns that the presidential vote count will be heavily litigated and dragged out for weeks.
With about 2.9 million mail-in ballots requested so far, registered Democrats have requested about 1.1 million more mail-in ballots than Republicans, or 1.8 million to 700,000, according to state data.
Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo contributed to this report.
Sometimes, your mornings are just too busy to catch the news beyond a headline or two. Don’t worry. The Morning Agenda has got your back. Each weekday morning, host Tim Lambert will keep you informed, amused, enlightened and up-to-date on what’s happening in central Pennsylvania and the rest of this great commonwealth.
