A federal judge has upheld the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s mail ballot drop boxes, county residency restriction for poll watchers, and other voting rules, rejecting claims of “voter fraud” as too “speculative” and supported by “scant” evidence.
The ruling, in Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar, will ensure that eligible Pennsylvania voters can vote safely this year.
On June 29, President Trump’s reelection campaign, the RNC, several members of Congress, and several individual voters sued Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, originally seeking an injunction banning the use of mail ballot drop boxes altogether.
After the PA Supreme Court ruled that PA election law permits the use of ballot drop boxes, federal litigation resumed. In today’s ruling, the Judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ remaining claims and granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants and defendant-intervenors.
The plaintiffs’ challenge was based on the false premise that voting by mail “invites fraud and undermines the public’s confidence in the integrity of elections.” After extensive discovery, the plaintiffs produced no credible evidence for this claim.
In opposing the suit, @PennFuture and @SierraClub, represented by the Brennan Center and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, argued that the plaintiffs sought to impose unnecessary burdens on Pennsylvanians’ ability to vote.
“The plaintiffs sought to reduce the choices Pennsylvania voters have for casting their ballots at a time when those choices are more important than ever,” said @myrna_perez_.
"Today’s ruling represents a big step forward in the fight to preserve voting rights against efforts to diminish our democracy,” said @Myrna_Perez

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More from @BrennanCenter

5 Oct
BREAKING: We’re suing Texas Governor Greg Abbott to block him from limiting absentee ballot drop-off sites to only one per county. His plan will make it unreasonably difficult for Texans to vote by mail, and it goes beyond his legal authority.
The plaintiffs — @ADLAustin, @ADLSouthwest, @ADL Texoma, and @CCauseTexas — argue with only one drop-off location per county, many voters would have to travel far and spend substantial amounts of time to cast their ballots.
“Many of the Texans who qualify to vote absentee have disabilities and are elderly, and they rely on public transportation,” said @antgutierrez.
Read 5 tweets
5 Oct
Yes there are flaws in our electoral system, @mawaldman and @wendyrweiser write in @politico, but let’s all take a deep breath. There are many reasons why we shouldn’t panic about the November election. politico.com/news/magazine/…
First, the states are in charge of elections, not the president. Most have taken measures to ensure safety against cyberattacks and system failures and both red and blue states have expanded absentee voting.
Second, it’s really really hard to steal an election. Trump’s statements that polls will be watched by law enforcement are alarming but what he’s promising is simply illegal.
Read 8 tweets
25 Sep
BREAKING: A U.S. District Court issued an order last night blocking the Trump administration’s attempts to rush the 2020 Census. This is a victory for an accurate census that counts everyone!
Under the Court’s order, the census count will continue through October 31 as the Census Bureau had planned, and its data processing will continue under a timeline that allows for a full, fair, and accurate overall tabulation and reporting of the total population.
The Trump administration’s accelerated census timeline would have cut a crucial four weeks from the actual count and four months from the time for processing and reporting the data.
Read 8 tweets
19 Sep
We mourn the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazer, cultural icon, and powerful force for good matched by few in American history. Her life testified to the promise of American democracy and the struggle to make real its most compelling ideals.
She fought not just for herself, but for the generations of women to come.
Throughout her career she showed the positive power of the law. Like Thurgood Marshall before her, she was as noteworthy for her work as a pioneering lawyer for women’s equality as for her service on the bench.
Read 9 tweets
11 Sep
BREAKING: A federal appeals court today upheld a Florida law that created wealth-based hurdles to voting. The decision denies voting rights to hundreds of thousands of people with past felony convictions. #Amendment4 brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…
The case, Jones v DeSantis, concerned Senate Bill 7066, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019. This law made voting rights for people with past felony convictions contingent on payment of all legal financial obligations.
It directly undermined Florida voters' overwhelming passage of the Voting Restoration Amendment 4 in 2018, which had restored voting rights to over a million people with past felony convictions.
Read 7 tweets
8 Sep
@TexasNAACP and @ADLSouthwest filed a petition in intervention in State of Texas v. Chris Hollins, a lawsuit seeking to block the Harris County clerk from sending election materials and resources, including ballot-by-mail applications, to the county’s registered voters.
The Texas Attorney General brought the case on August 31, arguing that the interim county clerk, Chris Hollins, lacks the legal authority to conduct the planned mailing. In fact, the clerk has clear authority to implement his plan.
The lawsuit also contends that the mailing will create confusion, and that it will facilitate fraud. The state doesn’t cite any evidence that the planned mailing will likely lead to fraud.
Read 10 tweets

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