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Meanwhile, some Pennsylvania Republicans led by Rep. @MikeKellyPA are asking a state court to declare that the state's entire vote-by-mail system, violates the state constitution and that millions of votes cast this year must now be invalidated.
The lawsuit is marked as having been filed at 4 a.m.
The lawsuit is a challenge to Act 77, which it says is "another illegal attempt to override the limitations on absentee voting" in the state constitution. The act was approved more than a year ago; the lawsuit doesn't say why they waited until after this election to challenge it.
The lawsuit claims that to expand mail-in voting, Pennsylvania would need to amend its constitution, which it didn't do, so the whole thing is illegal.
Here's the portion of the PA Constitution the Republicans think makes mail-in voting illegal. Notably, the state Supreme Court referenced this very section in a case earlier this year in which it construed Act 77 and said not a peep about unconstitutionality.
So Rep. @MikeKellyPA argues, the mail-in part of Pennsylvania's election was actually invalid, the state legislature can swoop in to choose the winner.
The lawsuit filed today by Rep. @MikeKellyPA is explicitly asking a Pennsylvania court to say that 2.5 *million* votes must be thrown out and shouldn't count when the state certifies its election results.
(Or, in the alternative, he's asking a court to tell the General Assembly to pick the winner of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, which means the state would still count the many votes he says were illegal in other races, including his own?)
The lawsuit is here: https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20413920-620-md-2020-petition-for-review-filed
It faces some obvious challenges, not the least of which is why the plaintiffs waited more than a year - until after their preferred candidate lost the election - to bring the challenge.
It faces some obvious challenges, not the least of which is why the plaintiffs waited more than a year - until after their preferred candidate lost the election - to bring the challenge.
Here, meanwhile, is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit praising the mail-in voting system he now says is illegal and encouraging people to use it, though now saying that the votes of those who took this advice should not count -> https://twitter.com/seanparnellusa/status/1249872115450478593
The plaintiffs in this case have now also moved to intervene in Trump's federal case, alleging that thousands of ballots invalid were "cured" illegally. They want an order directing the state to "only count such ballots as were lawfully cast."
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057.200.0.pdf
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057.200.0.pdf
They included as evidence the results of a telephone survey of some Republican voters who requested absentee ballots that did not end up being counted for various reasons.
The crux of their argument is that Pennsylvania officials went out of their way to help people whose votes otherwise wouldn't have been counted because they made a mistake, and this should basically invalidate the results of the election. It was therefore not a "fair election."
Here's the brief they filed in support of intervention. They promise not to delay the litigation. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057/gov.uscourts.pamd.127057.201.0.pdf
