A PA Judge Asked the Trump Campaign for Evidence of Mail-in Voter Fraud; They Couldn't Find Any

President Trump has said that vote-by-mail initiatives around the nation will hurt his reelection efforts. There is scant evidence to support his theory, but he remains convinced. So, his campaign is attempting to stop the states from implementing mail-in and similar systems for the November election.

Recently, the Trump campaign brought suit in Pennsylvania to block the use of official ballot dropboxes in November. The use of such drop-off locations was developed by the commonwealth to protect voters during the pandemic and to reduce long lines at polling places on election day. In his lawsuit, Trump argued that the practice “provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”

In response, US district judge Nicholas Ranjan, a Trump appointee, ordered the campaign to prove their allegations of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, including fraud related to dropboxes and vote-by-mail systems.

The Trump campaign filed a 524 page response to the Judge's request last week, but could not cite any evidence of mail-in voter fraud in Pennsylvania. They brought up a few older, well known instances of voter intimidation and a judge who altered vote totals, but no cases of fraud related to mail-in or drop-box voting. None.

The Intercept: “Not only did the campaign fail to provide evidence that voter fraud was a widespread problem in Pennsylvania, they failed to provide any evidence that any misconduct occurred in the [recent] primary election or that so-called voter fraud is any sort of regular problem in Pennsylvania,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of Common Cause PA, one of the parties in the lawsuit."

The Guardian: "The campaign also offered no evidence of fraud specifically linked to dropboxes or mail-in ballots...."

Even though he was appointed by Trump, it's very unlikely that Judge Ranjan will grant the President's request to ban the dropboxes. And, such dropboxes are contemplated in many other states to protect voters and reduce the workload for the US Postal Service.

#news #2020election

By: Don Lam & Curated Content