The Trump campaign was slapped back hard by a federal district court judge in Pennsylvania Sunday in its attempt to keep the state from conducting a safe and fair election in November. The judge effectively stopped Trump's effort to keep the state from expanding mail-in voting and installing ballot drop boxes, staying the suit while state court cases about voting are in the works. The icing on this is that Nicholas Ranjan of the US District Court in the Western District of Pennsylvania, is a Trump appointee. Take that, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
"After carefully considering the arguments raised by the parties, the Court finds that the appropriate course is abstention, at least for the time being. In other words, the Court will apply the brakes to this lawsuit, and allow the Pennsylvania state courts to weigh in and interpret the state statutes that undergird Plaintiffs' federal-constitutional claims," Ranjan wrote Sunday. Trump sued Pennsylvania in June to try to stop mail-in balloting. The campaign argued that the ballot drop boxes were used unconstitutionally in the June primary in Pennsylvania, and should not be used in November.
The Trump suit argued that the state "sacrificed the sanctity of in-person voting at the altar of unmonitored mail-in voting and have exponentially enhanced the threat that fraudulent or otherwise ineligible ballots will be cast and counted in the forthcoming general election," but provided no evidence of that fraud. They argued that elections officials acted outside of their legal authority in installing ballot drop boxes and mail-in ballots in the state and that the legislature is the only body that has the power to make those decisions. The Trump campaign also argued against a residency requirement for poll watchers, allowing poll-watchers from any part of the state could serve at any other polling location.
Pennsylvania passed a new law last year that took effect in early March, giving voters more time to register to vote and providing no-excuse mail-in voting. It did not explicitly allow for drop boxes, part of the Trump campaign's argument. The campaign asserted in its case that the drop boxes invite fraud, to which the judge—the Trump-nominated, McConnell-confirmed judge—told the campaign to provide evidence of actual fraud, which the campaign declined to do. Because it had none. Actually, it argued that it didn't need to to win the case. Apparently the judge disagrees.
Pennsylvania is one of the states that received notification last month from the U.S. Postal Service that delays in its service jeopardizes the November election.
