PENNSYLVANIA (KXAN/CNN) — Six lawsuits filed by Pres. Donald Trump’s campaign have failed to get nearly 9,000 absentee ballots in Pennsylvania invalidated, CNN reports.
On Friday, two judges threw out the cases, which the Trump campaign complained should not be counted because their outer envelopes lacked names, dates, and/or addresses.
Ultimately, the judges ruled the ballots were valid and they will be processed.
In one case, Judge Richard Haaz, of the Montgomery Court of Common Pleas ruled that 592 mail-in ballots will be counted because the state doesn’t require voters to fill out the envelope sections. Additionally, the instructions on the ballots didn’t tell voters to do so.
Haaz wrote in his ruling, “Voters should not be disenfranchised by reasonably relying upon voting instructions provided by election officials.”
The Trump campaign says it wasn’t claiming these ballots were fraudulent, just that they had questions about whether or not they followed the rules. Had the lawsuits been successful, however, the discounting of these 9,000 ballots wouldn’t have been enough to topple Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.
With nearly a week since the 2020 Presidential Election was called for President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump campaign has pushed forward with lawsuits attempting to discredit validity of thousands of votes based on still unsubstantiated or fully discredited claims of fraud.
The votes being disputed are notably from states which were called for Biden, or in which Biden is currently leading.
2020 ELECTION COVERAGE
LATEST UPDATES
- President Donald Trump granted a full pardon to former White House aide Steve Bannon as part of a wave of pardons and commutations he issued during his final hours in office.
- Calls are getting louder for the 25th Amendment to be invoked in order to remove President Donald Trump from office. This comes after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol Wednesday.
- Three Republican Virginia delegates signed a letter asking Vice President Mike Pence to nullify the commonwealth's certified election results.
- All eyes are on Washington as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will come together Wednesday to certify the 2020 Presidential Election results.
- Wednesday's congressional joint session to count electoral votes has taken on added importance this year as congressional Republicans allied with President Donald Trump are pledging to try and undo Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and subvert the will of the American people.
- President Donald Trump put forth a dizzying array of fuzzy accounting and outright false claims in an extraordinary phone call to Georgia's secretary of state seeking a reversal of his election defeat, fabricating a slew of votes that he said should've been counted in his favor.
- WASHINGTON (AP) — Wednesday's congressional joint session to count electoral votes has taken on added importance this year as congressional Republicans allied with President Donald Trump are pledging to try and undo Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and subvert the will of the American people. The Republicans — a dozen senators and many more House members […]
- Vice President Mike Pence filed Thursday to dismiss Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert’s lawsuit against him. Pence’s legal team stated that the vice president is not the proper defendant in the case.