Despite Trump's tweets today, the campaign is NOT pressing forward with the argument that GOP observers were prevented from meaningfully watching the counting process.
This is the heart of the cured ballot allegations.
The theory is that these concededly accurate votes should not be counted because certain GOP-heavy counties declined to notify voters that their mail-in ballots were invalid while four Dem-heavy counties did.
In addition to the other problems with this theory (see prior thread QTed above), I don't see how to identify *just* the putatively improperly cured ballots.
At this point they're just provisional ballots, how do you sort okay provisional ballots from the bad ones?
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Pennsylvania hearing in Trump's challenge to the election is getting started. Automated phone system says there are 3,999 people listening. (Out of a max 4,000 capacity.)
Right now they're doing appearances. This is just where the judge confirms who's present for which party. Most a physically present. A few were appearing telephonically.
Giuliani just confirmed that he will be the lead attorney for plaintiffs.
Giuliani says they want to amend the complaint a second time to restore one of the due process claims they deleted in the filing on Sunday.
This reminds me of the time Kris Kobach decided to argue a federal case and ended up being ordered by the judge to do six hours of CLE on civil trial basics.
As I recall, Kobach was eventually found in contempt of court and had to pay the other side's attorneys fees.
I'm just saying, court appearances are not an afternoon trip to the Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
So there's two levels of election claims going on right now. There's the actual legal challenges, which mostly are about whether observers could "meaningfully observe" despite COVID restrictions and whether certain small-ball ballots should be counted.
And then there's what Rudy Giuliani is doing. This morning he told an alt-right web show that he had secured affidavits from secret whistleblowers that will show that computer software changed millions of votes in multiple states.
If you haven't heard of this "Dominion software" theory, it's not your fault. This is a deep-in-the-fever-swamps theory that isn't remotely in the realm of a possibility, but they claim to believe it is real with all their hearts.
Coming back to this, I did manage to get a hold of this complaint. It underwhelmed. There are tgree major claims, but none are well-pleaded. It also contains the debunked 120 year-olds voting claim and the vote tabulation error claim. bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/wnem.com/conte…
First, they say some GOP observers were kept out of the counting center at times while Dem observers were allowed in.
But in the same paragraph they write that "unlimited" numbers of media were allowed to observe, which undercuts the case for shenanigans.
And the second major claim involves the treatment of GOP observers who were allowed inside.
They say that GOP observers who were present could not "meaningfully" observe because of social distancing. This is an argument over what "meaningful" means.
This new lawsuit is against the PA secretary of the commonwealth and four election boards in heavily-Democratic counties.
It raises due process, equal protection, and electors clause claims and is premised on two specific complaints about procedures in PA.
The Trump camp. alleges that:
(1) Trump camp. observers were prevented from meaningfully observing pre-canvassing, counting, and mail-in counting.
(2) The Democratic election boards allowed voters to cure bad ballots prior to election day, whereas other counties did not.
There is some pre-buttal in here about what "meaningfully observe" means and its importance to election integrity, since even the Trump campaign is grudgingly admitting that GOP observers were actually present in the room.
Such a stark disconnect between the lawsuits the Trump campaign has filed and the absolutely wild fraud claims being passed around the Trumposphere.
At some point, you'd think they'd wonder why the Trump campaign isn't suing under the "a computer did it!" theory.
So far none of the Trump campaign lawsuits would lead to Trump taking the electoral vote lead.
And the only two claims that could even come close to changing the EV are the supposed "a computer did it" and "we saw Democrats drive up with new ballots" theories.
Nobody has sued under those theories, and I know why and you know why. But what do they think the excuse is?