A Pennsylvania judge shut down an election official’s effort to hand count ballots in his district Tuesday, as courts are weighing in on the ballot-counting process in the presidential election, with a slew of rulings expected as the votes are tallied—particularly in battleground states.
A voter enters the Bucks County Administration building to drop off their ballot in Doylestown, ... [+]
Pennsylvania Hand Count: A state judge rebuked a local election judge in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, who insisted on hand-counting the area’s ballots himself, issuing an order that says if Judge Vincent Manetta doesn’t comply, law enforcement will be sent to respond to the issue and move the election materials to a different location.
Courts Impact Voting Hours: Courts have stepped in to extend hours at a number of polling locations Tuesday after bomb threats were reported, particularly in Georgia, and a lawsuit has been filed seeking to extend hours in Navajo County, Arizona, due to voting machine issues—though in Kentucky, a state judge denied a similar request to extend hours in response to electronic issues.
RNC Loses Georgia Case: A federal judge struck down an effort by the Republican National Committee to stop counting votes in seven Democratic-leaning Georgia counties that were hand-delivered—ruling the lawsuit had “no likelihood of success under the law at all” and the GOP was “patently inviting me to tip the scales of this election … based on [voters’] past political preferences.”
Maricopa County Voting Systems: A state judge denied Republicans’ request to bar Maricopa County, Arizona, from using a particular voting system because they claimed its password system violated state rules, with the judge ruling the plaintiffs’ delay in bringing the case was “unjustified” and they “presented no bases for waiting weeks, months, or years to file” their complaint.
Lawsuits are expected to continue being filed and ruled on in the days ahead. It will likely take days for the full election results to come in and the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is expected to be extremely close, giving both sides reason to go to court to fight any alleged issues.
It’s been widely expected that the November election would prompt a flood of litigation, as hundreds of lawsuits were filed ahead of Election Day and the RNC ramped up efforts on “election integrity” aimed at challenging perceived voting issues in court. Polling ahead of Election Day suggested Harris and Trump were virtually tied, making it could take days to determine a winner and pave the way for numerous lawsuits over how even small numbers of ballots are counted. Trump and his allies filed approximately 60 lawsuits in the 2020 election aimed at challenging the vote count or trying to overturn the results, including while ballots were being counted. While their efforts were almost entirely unsuccessful, the Trump campaign did win one minor lawsuit in Pennsylvania, as a court ordered some mail-in ballots that were fixed during an extended deadline were not valid. That lawsuit did not have any impact on President Joe Biden’s win in the state.