Lawsuit alleges two-tiered voting system in Pennsylvania

The Epoch TimesThe Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit alleging the Pennsylvania election process violated the Constitution by creating different standards of verification and transparency for mail-in and in-person voters.

In a statement on Nov. 9, the Trump campaign said that the “two-tiered” system violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Elections and Electors Clauses of the Constitution.

“Voters in Pennsylvania were held to different standards simply based on how they chose to cast their ballot, and we believe this two-tiered election system resulted in potentially fraudulent votes being counted without proper verification or oversight, as well as many voters being disenfranchised simply for casting their votes in-person,” said Matt Morgan, general counsel for the Trump campaign.

The campaign claims in the lawsuit (pdf) that both the system and the way it was enacted created a lower barrier for mail-in ballots, and “diluted” the weight of legally-cast in-person ballots.

The two-tiered system argument calls back to the winning argument in Bush v Gore, where in that case different counties had wildly different standards for vote counting rather than a single uniform standard statewide. This situation is somewhat different as mail-in ballots are inherently different from in person ballots, but they are also clearly being held to different standards. For example, in person ballots have to be voted by election day, while mail in ballots are allowed up to three days after election day even without postmarks; in person ballots have signature verification but mail in ballots do not.

It's unclear exactly what the remedy will be should the Trump campaign win, but a win does seem likely.

This entry was published Tue Nov 17 12:39:59 CST 2020 by TriggerFinger and last updated 2020-11-17 12:39:59.0. [Tweet]

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