Yesterday in an impromptu press conference in Philadelphia that had to be moved because of "Count Every Vote" protestors, Eric Trump, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced a lawsuit by the Trump campaign to allow closer observation of the ballots there. Counting of the ballots should always involve equal participation from both sides of the aisle to ensure confidence and transparency in the vote. The Trump campaign has repeatedly emphasized the importance of counting legal votes.
An excellent twitter thread from yesterday explains what the campaign is up against in this election:
President Trump's son, Eric, opened the press conference yesterday, transcript here, with the following observations:
"There is video after video of them passing out collateral material in polling sites all over Philadelphia. They’re trying to cheat. They’re trying to cheat. They have three by five printed, big posters in polling locations, all over the city, saying to vote for Biden and Harris, which is totally illegal. They’re passing out flyers. The supervisors of elections, we have them on video, certain ones wearing literally Biden/Harris face masks in polling locations, which is totally illegal. And now they won’t let, and we brought one great gentleman here with us today, Jeremy, who’s a poll watcher down at the convention center." He went on to say that the poll watcher was segregated "behind the fence . . . 40-50 yards away where [he] actually can't see the counting happening . . . making a mockery of the election [in] this country."
As of yesterday, President Trump was "up by almost a half a million votes, with 86 percent of the vote reported and plenty of red counties left to go," Eric Trump continued. He then introduced Rudy Giuliani who is leading the charge to file lawsuits in Philadelphia, Detroit and Wisconsin—with the potential for more lawsuits across the country due to illegal counting practices and mail in ballots.
Rudy Giuliani stepped up to remind the citizens of Philadelphia that the city is the "birthplace of our democracy." He then commented on the unprecedented challenges election polls face with regard to universal mass mail-in ballots—something President Trump has discussed repeatedly as a serious barrier to a timely and fair election. Mr. Giuliani explained:
"Again, let me be specific what it is, this whole new thing that never happened before in our country, these mail-in ballots, which has been a cause of real concern for everyone because they can easily be fraudulent. Well, one of the things that the law attaches to that is the rights of both parties to observe the ballot, the way we do with absentee ballots. You make certain it’s properly signed on the outside, there’s a signature. You make sure that it’s properly postmarked. You make sure that it’s properly addressed, and then you pass on it. A number of these are often challenged by the Democrat representative or their Republican representative. We never got a chance to look at a single one of them."
At the time of the press conference yesterday morning, Giuliani stated that the assigned poll watcher had told the Trump campaign that "about 100,000 ballots went through that process in the 20 plus hours in which they wasted his time by not allowing him to see a single ballot. Well, that’s 120,000 ballots that should just be taken out of the count. So you want to look at that number, that 120,000 should come out." He also mentioned worries that this is happening elsewhere in the state. Philadelphia is notorious for election fraud.
Giuliani also observed that this is the kind of thing that happens when a city is run by one party for "20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, 100 years . . . [it] leads to corruption of all kinds. Voter fraud is one of the biggest because that’s how you keep your power. I’ve never heard of a count where you’re ahead by 400,000 with 80 plus percent counted, and they haven’t called it for you yet. They called California the moment the polls closed. How many votes do you have to be ahead to win, for a Republican to win here? How many votes do we have to be ahead? 400,000 is not enough with 80 plus percent counted? I think there’s only 14 percent of the vote to go. Do you think we’re stupid? You think we’re fools?"
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that election integrity was at stake and described what they faced there. She confirmed the visible "police barricade all the way around the perimeter [that was] keeping our poll watchers back, approximately 30 feet, at least 30 feet." She went on to observe that a man "by the name of Seth Bluestein, who is an assistant to a city commissioner [was] wearing a badge the size of a baseball, and as far as I know, he’s not a sworn law enforcement officer. So it looks like intimidation to me, with a police barricade and a man wearing a huge badge around his neck." 18 U.S. Code 594 prohibits voter intimidation of any kind at the polls.
A volunteer poll watcher, Jeremy Mercer was present at the press conference to offer his observations:
"I was at the pre-canvas yesterday from 7 a.m. until just after midnight, back again this morning just before 8 a.m. until around 2:30. And has been described very well we’re there, supposedly observing, but we can’t see. We’re further away than I am from you all here. Hundreds, at least 100 feet away from open ballots that go back out of our sight. We can’t see them. We don’t know what’s happening to them. It’s just, there’s no way for us to meaningfully observe the process from where they have us." He estimated that at least 125,000 ballots had been counted without proper and equal observation.
Yesterday they won the lawsuit and were allowed to observe the count.
However, today, in direct violation of the court order, the observation came to an abrupt halt. Apparently, a posse of city lawyers needed to review the order to determine "what the order means."
Local attorney, Linda Kerns, had filed several motions on Nov. 3 with regard to several observed violations of election code including: disclosures about votes cast, failure to properly surrender ballots (worry over double votes), Biden campaign T-shirts being worn inside polling places, ejection of certified poll watchers from "upwards of 30 of the city's 700 polling places," and a later motion detailed in press conference seeking proper, proximate access to ballot counting.
Meanwhile, many tweets that indicate voter fraud and improper conduct on behalf of polls across the country are being censored on Twitter. The one below does not allow a retweet until you open it in the "view" portion of the tweet.
Only then does one finally see the information and it cannot be retweeted due to Twitter's rules. It does seem a bit shady that the public is not even allowed to view phone numbers to help report election fraud.
Rudy Giuliani and President Trump experienced the same censorship earlier today. The Trump Team captured the President's tweet below so that it could be retweeted.
Some are saying that President Trump should not be stopping the vote count. However, that is not an accurate characterization of the campaign's wishes. The Trump campaign is merely asking for a fair count of the legal votes so that all votes are properly tallied. The campaign and President Trump clarified that today once again.
As of today, Glenn Beck, in an interview concerning the Pennsylvania vote with Steve Burguiere, executive producer of the Glen Beck Show, stated that, " President Trump is at 50.5 percent of the vote and Joe Biden is at 48.4 percent. The difference is 140,000 votes . . . it is going to get a lot closer than this . . . there is a lot of vote counting to happen." He added that the votes that have been counted have largely been in-person votes and that one would expect the mail-in votes to largely favor Joe Biden. You can view that discussion from today here.
Pennsylvania officials announced a potential completion of the vote count this evening or early in the morning.
