In the days following the 2020 election, multiple lawsuits have been filed and others are in the process of being filed by various parties, including the Trump campaign, to challenge the ballot count in five battleground swing states. There is speculation that fraud occurred elsewhere but the focus is currently on the five states because it is in those states that the most significant voter fraud seems to have occurred. The electoral college currently has Trump with 229 electoral votes and Biden with 279.
The Justice Department issued a press release on Nov. 2, announcing its plans for "voting rights monitoring in jurisdictions around the country."
Yesterday, Breitbart released a report with a statement by Attorney General Barr stating, in part, that investigations “may be conducted if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state.” AG Barr's memo can be found here.
The five states currently being litigated are Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan. There is a recount underway in Wisconsin. As of Friday morning, Insider and Decision Desk HQ, have Biden as the projected winner.
Pennsylvania cases
On Wednesday of last week, the Republican Party filed a lawsuit (U.S. Supreme Court case: Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar) in state court alleging that Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar "illegally extended the deadline for mail-in voters to supply any missing ID requirements." Ballot counting was supposed to be completed on Nov.3. The state legislature, not the Secretary of State is responsible for changing election law. Fox News reported that per Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Lawrence Tabas, "The U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures, not state courts, authority to govern federal elections." NBC News Philadelphia reports that those "ballots add up to about 53,000, and are divided among Democrats, Republicans and independent voters."
Per the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Boockvar stated in her guidance that voters "could use provisional ballots if they did not successfully vote an absentee or mail‐in ballot, so long as those mail-in or absentee ballots were surrendered at the polling place. The guidance also stated voters could use provisional ballots if they felt their mail-in ballot had been wrongly rejected or if voters were unable to show identification." The request went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who agreed with the Secretary of State.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito then issued a temporary order on Friday to require that "all ballots received by mail after 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 be segregated and kept in a secure, safe and sealed container separate from other voted ballots, and that all such ballots, if counted, be counted separately."
Another lawsuit (Pa. Commonwealth Court: Hamm, Kelly, Allred, Horner, Connor and Hauser v. Boockvar) came from local GOP candidates in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Joseph Ham and Mike Kelly "brought legal action to prevent the curing of defective mail-in ballots, like those not enclosed in both secrecy envelopes." According to the Pennsylvania Record Newsletter, the request reads as follows:
“Petitioners, by counsel, hereby move pursuant to Rule 1532 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Appellate Procedure for special relief in the form of a preliminary injunction enjoining respondent Kathy Boockvar, from permitting invalidly-submitted absentee and mail-in ballots to be ‘cured’ by the submission of provisional ballots and prohibiting defendants from disclosing identifying information about voters who have submitted ballots that must be rejected for non-compliance with the Pennsylvania Election Code." The suit was filed against Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar. The docket containing the order can be viewed here.
Commonwealth Court Judge P. Kevin Brobson blocked most of the action filed by the Republicans but he asked Boockvar to require that legally-cast ballots for voters who had already submitted absentee or mail-in ballots received by Election Day be segregated from provisional ballots statewide. Officials would later decide the validity of the provisional ballots. The court said it would rule on the validity of the ballots at a later date.
In a lawsuit brought by the Trump Campaign (Pa. Commonwealth Court: Trump for President v. Boockvar) the campaign asked the court to move a deadline from Nov. 12 to Nov. 9 for allowing voters to provide identification so they can have their ballots counted. The court merely ordered the ballots to be segregated.
The wide-ranging and lengthy lawsuit requires a stand-alone column as it covers multiple cases of alleged fraud. UncoverDC Editor-In-Chief, Tracy Beanz went into greater detail and explanation of the lawsuit in the video "Election in Flux: Detailing the PA Lawsuit Filed by President Trump" which you can watch here.
Finally, NBC News reported that the Trump campaign brought a lawsuit in the Philadelphia lower court to request that "poll watchers be allowed inside the city’s satellite elections offices." The judge rejected the request and the Trump campaign appealed it according to CBS Philly. Later a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court judge overturned the lower court order.
"Poll watchers are now allowed to be within six feet of ballot counting at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, rather than the previous 20-foot perimeter." The order was presented by former Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski. The order went into effect at 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 5.
Polling locations defied the court orders. When the poll watchers actually arrived at the polls, many were not allowed in and those that did gain access were not allowed to get close enough to actually watch the counting. Some were so far back they had to use binoculars.
Former Mayor Giuliani held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping on Saturday where several witnesses, who have signed affidavits, gave first-hand accounts of what they encountered. Giuliani said he had many more certified poll watchers who were willing to share their experiences and signed affidavits. Giuliani said they were "uniformly deprived of their right to inspect any single part of the mail-in ballots." Democrat poll watchers were, however, allowed access. The press conference can be viewed here and the lawsuits were filed on Monday.
Finally, on Tuesday local news channel CBS21 reported a Pennsylvania GOP assembly call for a bipartisan audit of the 2020 election due to "a number of very troubling issues that have come to our collective attention . . . as a result we have grave concerns for the future of our commonwealth." The spokesperson explained that there have been overwhelming numbers of phone calls and emails from "constituents who are confused and outraged by the circumstances of this election." Therefore the call for the resources needed to proceed with the investigation should be "immediately activated" to address those concerns regardless of the outcome of the race.
In addition, the state of Missouri and nine other states have filed an amicus brief in support of the Pennsylvania GOP.
As of today, Nov. 10, Biden has 3,370,073 votes and Trump has 3,322,548 with 99 percent reporting in Pennsylvania.
Nevada cases
According to local news channel News3lv, the Trump campaign reached a "settlement in a state court case to expand observation access at a Clark County ballot-counting facility. Under the agreement, Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria would allow the public to have more access to ballot duplication so that all tables would be visible to public observers."
According to CNBC news, on Thursday, the campaign said it would "file a federal lawsuit in Nevada seeking to block “illegal votes” from people, including those who became non-residents during the coronavirus pandemic or who are dead."
Yesterday, members of the Trump campaign, including Matt Schlapp and the former Attorney General of the state of Nevada held a press conference to speak about serious "widespread voter irregularities." Campaign officials explained that Nevada was completely inadequate to handle the task of processing the extraordinary number of mail-in ballots because of the short 90-day notice. The allegations of fraud having to do with mail-in ballots included:
- Improper voter rolls with underage and deceased people who voted, and ballots cast by people who had moved out of state—9,000 of whom have already been identified.
- Issues with signature verification
- Six-hundred thousand ballots that were never observed by a human being.
- Forensic evidence that a man named Joe Gloria admitted in court that he had reduced factory settings to 40 percent—a system setting that would needed to be tested for "months and months" and examined by many experts and it "simply was not done." Two-hundred thousand votes were processed through that system and no one can guarantee they were processed properly.
- A whistleblower who reported tampering in the tallying of votes, one who had to quit because he or she after having worked on approximately 14,000 ballots was asked repeatedly to put them in the tally by a supervisor even though they were improper with no way to remedy them.
- Another whistleblower who described witnessing a van "marked with Biden/Harris" signage filled with ballots driving up to the "center where ballots were opened with letter openers . . . and resealed in envelopes." When the workers realized he/she was watching, they "formed a human shield" around their activities.
The campaign ended the conference saying they would "review all legal options" and "seek legal remedies." The area where it seems as though the campaign has a solid case refers to the voters who had moved out of state and were allegedly still found to have voted in the election. As previously stated, 9,000 of those voters have already been identified.
In Nevada, as of today, Biden has 670,613 votes and Trump has 634,339 with 95 percent reporting.
Georgia
On Thursday, Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass, in the state of Georgia, dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump campaign claiming that ballots were being accepted after 7 p.m. on Election Day. Bass said "The Court finds that there is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7 p.m. on Election Day, thereby making those ballots invalid," according to the Hill.
Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) will lead a recount due to the razor-thin margin in the state. Joe Biden has 2,469,359 votes and Trump has 2,457,067 votes with 99 percent reporting.
Arizona
The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit on Saturday involving incorrect tabulation of the ballots. In one location, Sharpie pens were used to mark the votes which caused ballots to be rejected because of ink bleed on the paper. Under normal circumstances, when this happens the voter should receive another ballot and vote again to ensure the proper vote. Instead, in many cases, the election workers instructed the voter to just go ahead and "press the green" button on the tabulation machine. When one does that, the vote will not be counted. What the election worker should have done is to set the ballot aside for later review and give the voter a new ballot. The Trump campaign has set up a website called DontTouchTheGreenButton.com for voters who think this may have occurred for them at the polls.
AZcentral.com reports that the "state has about 61,500 ballots left to verify and count." Currently, Joe Biden has 1,648,642 votes and President Trump has 1,633,896.
Michigan
A lawsuit has been filed in Wayne County alleging, with multiple signed affidavits, "massive fraud in the election vote-counting procedures," per NBC25news. A full list of the alleged offenses are detailed here. The list includes:
- Counting ballots that have no voter name on the ballot.
- Processing ballots that arrive after the election deadline.
- Witness reports of election workers inserting new names into the QVF and recording these new voters as having a birth date of Jan. 1, 1900.
- Election workers "coaching voters to vote for Joe Biden and the Democrat Party.
Whistleblowers, some from USPS, have also stepped up to report backdating on ballots and other fraudulent activity.
There is also a credible eyewitness account by former Michigan State Senator Patrick Colbeck who is an expert on election procedure and served as a supervisor on the floor in the 2020 election. He has started a website called letsfixstuff.org whose mission is to "share real news, real data, and real solutions that are increasingly being scrubbed from the public square by big tech and big government."
Currently, Joe Biden holds 2,790,648 votes and President Trump has 2,644,525 with 99 percent reporting.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin will hold a recount. The margins are razor-thin with Joe Biden holding 1,630,570 votes and President Trump with 1,610,030 with 99 percent reporting.
