Here is where things stand today on the pending Trump/GOP legal challenges:
- Nevada Rs (Trump campaign not a party) filed in federal court last night challenging computer software to verify signatures and claiming media wasn't allowed to observe counting assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7325…
- The new NV case repeats a Trump campaign allegation from yest. of people casting ballots who weren't eligible to vote in the state, but note the case isn't asking to invalidate ballots — at most, they're asking for absentee ballots to be verified by people and not a computer
- The Commonwealth Court of PA is holding arguments right now (no remote access, unfortunately) in PA Republicans' case seeking to block counties from allowing absentee voters with deficient ballots to cast provisional ballots to "cure" votes
- The Commonwealth Court of PA yest. ordered that PA segregate absentee ballots where the voter didn't cure a missing ID by Nov. 9 — that's pending a ruling on the merits of Trump campaign's arg that the SoS was wrong to extend the voter ID cure deadline from Nov. 9 to Nov. 12
- The Trump campaign has a pending motion to intervene in the case before SCOTUS about whether PA can count absentee ballots that arrived between Nov. 4-6 — note that the vote tallies reported out of PA so far do not include the post-Election Day ballots at issue
- The PA Supreme Court hasn't ruled yet on whether to take up Philadelphia's challenge to a lower court order that granted the Trump campaign's request that poll watchers be allowed to stand physically closer to the counting operation
- There's also a case brought yest. by Republicans in Northampton County, PA, appealing an order that denied their challenge to county election officials disclosing the ID of cancelled ballots during pre-canvassing — don't have more details based on the filings avail. so far
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The Trump campaign announced a new lawsuit in Maricopa Cty, AZ, and it's a variation on the prev. debunked "Sharpiegate" — it's alleging Trump voters may have had their ballots rejected because poll workers manually overrode error messages cdn.donaldjtrump.com/public-files/p…
Trump released a statement earlier saying, "Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court."
Legal efforts by Trump's campaign and state GOPers so far have failed to meaningfully change results, or been tossed outright. Here's where things stand:
- Judges have been unimpressed so far with the evidence that Trump/state Republicans have presented as proof that things were amiss at polls or counting sites: buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
- There is a case pending before SCOTUS about PA. But that only affects mail-in ballots that arrived after Nov. 3 through Nov. 6, and the PA Sec. of State has said they do not expect the number of ballots at issue to be enough to change the results: usatoday.com/story/news/pol…
New: PA Republicans filed an emergency application asking SCOTUS to order PA to segregate post-Election Day absentee ballots. The SoS already directed counties to do this, but Rs say they still want SCOTUS to order it (HT @joshgerstein for the doc) beta.documentcloud.org/documents/2040…
PA Rs don't present evidence that any county is failing to segregate the post-Nov. 3 absentee ballots at issue, but they argue "in the fast-paced and chaotic pace of postelection events in Pennsylvania" they haven't gotten affirmative confirmation that all counties are doing it
New: Justice Alito has entered an order that PA counties must comply with PA SoS's directive to segregate absentee ballots that arrived post-Election Day. This is pending SCOTUS considering PA GOP's emergency request earlier today for a specific court order re: ballot segregation
In the latest case filed by Republicans in Nevada (challenging use of computer software to check signatures and alleging lack of public access to observe counting), the judge has set a hearing for today at 2pm PST/5pm EST
Here's the NV SoS oppo to Rs' motion to block the use of computer software to verify signatures and ensure observer access: assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7326…
They say: 1) The voter plaintiff who claimed someone else cast her mail-in ballot was given a chance to fix it and declined
2) The purported Trump campaign observer also claimed to be a member of the media (the filing notes he's a polit. strategist and Fox News contrib), and those come with different rights re: access to counting. But regardless, they say no evid. counting happened without observation
There's an 11:30am ET hearing in the Trump campaign's case in Michigan alleging the state isn't complying with rules about election inspector access to absentee ballot counting and election challenger video access to ballot boxes. It will be streamed here: youtube.com/channel/UCIUqx…
Here's the Trump campaign's emergency motion, which seeks to halt counting in Michigan until an election inspector from each party is present and video of ballot boxes is available to challengers assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7297…
Campaign presented one challenger who claimed exclusion
New: In one of the Trump campaign's cases, the Commonwealth Court of PA issued an order directing the local court in Philadelphia to enter an order requiring all observers and candidate reps be allowed to observe ballot counting w/in 6 feet + other COVID measures
The Trump campaign had appealed after a Philadelphia judge denied (see attached) the campaign's request for "closer observation" of counting, finding election officials were following the law.
This does not stop the counting of ballots in Philadelphia.
The Trump campaign had also asked the Commonwealth Court to order Philly election officials to segregate/preserve ballots that were already canvassed so they could check to make sure they complied with election law, but the court's order today doesn't address that