Local GOP Pushes Trump Voters to Cast Ballots After Election
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 4 years ago • 0 commentsBy: Lachlan Markay, Sam Stein (MSN)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Hours before President Donald Trump went on national television Thursday to declare the inherent illegitimacy of ballots received after Nov. 3, local Republican officials recruited volunteers to call Pennsylvania voters and urge them to get their ballots in by Friday—three days after Election Day.
© Provided by The Daily Beast MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
The request, election lawyers say, appears to flagrantly run afoul of state law. Under Pennsylvania law and a recent state Supreme Court decision, absentee and mail-in ballots are valid as long as they were postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 6. Any Trump supporter who sends in their ballots either Thursday or Friday would not have it postmarked within the acceptable deadline—creating the precise situation that the president himself has deemed fraudulent and corrupt.
The email, which was sent by the group Kenosha For Trump and forwarded to The Daily Beast, said it was marshaling the effort on behalf of Trump Victory, the committee established by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee to run the field program for the president's re-election.
It went out just after 5 p.m. to a group of Trump supporters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. "Trump Victory urgently needs volunteers to make phone calls to Pennsylvania Trump supporters to return their absentee ballots," the email said. "These phone calls will help President Trump win the election!"
"This seems like encouraging people to improperly submit ballots that should not be counted," according to Jonathan Diaz, the legal counsel for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center. "That would be exactly what the president and his campaign are accusing Democrats of doing."
While legal experts said it was clear that any pool of ballots that mailed Thursday or Friday would not meet the legal requirements, they differed in their theories as to why the Trump campaign was encouraging it. Some considered it a recognition from the president's campaign that Pennsylvania's vote count, which remains too close to call, would tilt in favor of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Others speculated that the campaign was encouraging these votes in hopes that one would be accepted, at which point they could petition courts to invalidate the entire pool of absentee ballots—including those properly postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by the Friday deadline— by claiming the whole batch was tainted by fraud. Pennsylvania election law currently holds that ballots received after Election Day without a clear postmark would be presumed valid though subject to rebuttal. Currently, the running tally of votes as reported by the Pennsylvania Secretary of State's Office on Thursday did not include legitimate absentees arriving after Election Day, which have been segregated in anticipation of future litigation.
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