Trump campaign sues to stop Pennsylvania certifying Biden win.

Philadelphia, November 9 (RHC)-- In a new lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania on Monday, the campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump sued Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, and a handful of county boards of elections, alleging they had run an unfair election in the state.

The Trump campaign is asking the court to issue an emergency order stopping election officials from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state, and a permanent injunction requiring county election boards to invalidate ballots that were allowed to be “cured.”

“Curing” a ballot is a completely legal process; if a voter sends their mail ballot without a secrecy envelope or signature, an official calls to tell them they are allowed to vote by provisional ballot.

Trump has refused to concede defeat in the U.S. presidential election, even though Biden declared victory on Saturday after U.S. media networks projected him as the winner.  The Trump campaign has made unsubstantiated claims about widespread voter fraud and launched legal challenges in several key battleground states.

In Monday’s lawsuit in Pennsylvania, the campaign alleged three main issues with the election: a lack of transparency, the unequal “curing” of ballots, and concerns about mail-in ballots received after Election Day on November 3rd.

The campaign alleged Republican poll watchers had “no meaningful access” to review ballots.  The lawsuit says poll watchers were in the room, but too far away to see ballot counting.  The campaign says an unmonitored election can result in fraud.  However, a Pennsylvania court ruled that poll watchers could be within six feet of ballot counting, and a Trump campaign lawyer admitted in court that there was “a non-zero number of people in the room.”

The campaign also raised concerns about the “curing” of ballots.  Before Election Day, some counties reviewed mail ballots to see if they lacked the required secrecy envelopes or signatures, and then notified those voters to allow them to cast provisional ballots on Election Day in a legal process known as “curing.”

The only allegations of “fraud” in Monday’s Trump campaign lawsuit affected fewer than a dozen votes. The Trump campaign said there were two Pennsylvania counties with suspected instanced of mail ballot fraud; in Fayette County, two voters received ballots that were already filled out, and in September 2020, officials in Luzerne County found an election worker had thrown out nine military ballots.  Of those nine, seven were votes for Trump. The election worker who discarded the ballots was removed from service.