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WILLIAMSPORT – The Trump campaign has renewed its legal fight to prevent Commonwealth Secretary Kathy Boockvar from certifying the November 3 election results.
Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and two people on Sunday filed an amended lawsuit in the United States Intermediate District Court that alleges disparate treatment of mail-in and mail-in votes across the state in violation of the equal protection.
They also allege a violation of election and election clauses in that Boockvar and the election commissions of seven counties did not have the power to provide an opportunity to remedy defective postal ballots.
“In a rush to count the mail-in ballots and make sure Democrat Joe Biden gets elected,” Pennsylvania created an illegal voting system that devalued some votes, they say.
They report that officials in some counties notified voters whose mail-in ballots were insufficient and gave them the opportunity to vote provisionally while others did not.
The state’s electoral code does not provide for such a procedure and only the legislature can change the law, say the Trump people.
The new complaint cites Snyder County’s decision not to provide notice and a healing process after Republican Commissioner Joe Kantz checked with county attorney.
The two individual plaintiffs, David John Henry of Lancaster County and Lawrence Roberts of Uniontown, say they learned after the election that their ballots had been spoiled and therefore had no opportunity to “cure” them.
The Trump campaign claims it was denied legal votes in heavily Republican counties that “followed the law” and did not use the notice and cure process.
As with the original complaint, the news claims that the Trump campaign has not had a meaningful opportunity to review and assess the mail ballots. The counties of Philadelphia and Allegheny were cited as examples.
The Trump campaign claims it contains numerous affidavits of misconduct related to mail-in ballots that accounted for more than 2.6 million of the roughly 6.75 million votes cast in Pennsylvania.
The remedy sought by the amended complaint is essentially the same as the original one.
He wants Judge Matthew W. Brann to order or issue an injunction prohibiting Boockvar and the election commissions in Allegheny, Center, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Northampton and Philadelphia counties from certifying the election results.
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In the alternative, he asks the judge not to allow the defendants to certify the results which include the totaling of the votes whose cure is authorized.
Defense motions to dismiss the original complaint are moot because they target a document that is no longer operational, according to the Trump campaign.
The amended complaint acknowledges that part of the original complaint could no longer be pursued due to an opinion issued Friday by a panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
Written by Chief Justice D. Brooks Smith, it upheld a directive from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that allowed election officials to count mail-in ballots received up to three days after the polls closed.
The Trump campaign says it disagrees with Smith’s opinion but has eliminated its due process claims from the amended complaint.
A lawsuit by four people who claim their right to vote was violated by vote dilution is also pending before Brann because illegal ballots were cast and counted.
LaMarr Pirkle, Theodore Dannerth and Lauren Danks, who live in Center County, and Casey Flynn, a resident of Montour County, sued Gov. Tom Wolf and Boockvar in an attempt to stop the certification of the results.
They initially sought to consolidate their complaint with Trump’s case, but then withdrew that request.
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