Looks like a big legal challenge just went President Donald Trump’s way as he continues his fight with legal challenges over the election.
A Pennsylvania judge just ruled in his favor that the state may not count votes where the voters failed to provide proof of identification and did not cure that problem by Nov. 9.
Pennsylvania state law says that voters have to cure the failure to provide id within 6 days of the election. But as with other issues, Pennsylvania Secretary of State just changed the rules and said that if the ballots could be accepted until three days after Election Day, November 6, that then voters could have six days from then, until November 12 to cure the problem.
The judge basically said that the Secretary of State doesn’t have the authority to just change state law.
“[T]he Court concludes that Respondent Kathy Boockvar, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, lacked statutory authority to issue the November 1, 2020, guidance to Respondents County Boards of Elections insofar as that guidance purported to change the deadline … for certain electors to verify proof of identification,” Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt said in a court order.
This was in line with the Trump campaign’s argument, which was that there was no basis in the state’s law to extend the identification deadline, and that Boockvar did not have the power to unilaterally change it.
The judge ruled that those who provided proof of id in between November 10 and November 12 could not not be counted because it was too late according to state law. It’s not clear how many ballots fall within those parameters.
The Trump campaign has other challenges going in Pennsylvania including that thousands of ballots were counted despite lacking required information and a U.S. Supreme Court challenge of the decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that allowed a three day extension to accept mail-in ballots which was not allowed by state law. That would be a big one. If Trump were to win that one, it could theoretically stop the count back when he was leading and disallow all those subsequent ballots.
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