President Donald Trump’s legal team is withdrawing a central part of its lawsuit seeking to hold the certification of election results in the state of Pennsylvania, where his rival and President-elect Joe Biden beat him to capture the key state cementing his White House win. Ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled hearing, the Trump campaign dopped the allegation of nearly 682,479 absentee ballots.
Since last week, when the Associated Press’s exit polls projected Biden’s win in the state and nationally, Trump has repeatedly refused to concede to victory. It has resulted in a delay in the transition of power.
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On Sunday, the Republican legal team trimmed down the lawsuit, but they still aim to block the certification of results in the state, arguing that Democratic voters were treated favorably better over Trump supporters. The remaining part of the lawsuit urges the court to reject the ballots cast by the voters who were given a chance to fix postal ballots that were going to be rejected or disqualified.
It further alleges that the Democratic-heavy counties did not follow the law by identifying the defective mail-in ballots before the voting day so that the voter could make the corrections and make sure that their vote would count. However, it says the Republican-heavy counties followed the law and did not provide the voter an opportunity for corrections.
On the other hand, the lawyer representing the Democratic National Committee stated that it was not clear how many voters were allowed to correct. But he added that it is certainly lower than the margin between the incumbent President and the President-elect. Cliff Levine, a Democrat, further maintained that there is no provision in the law stopping the county officials from fixing the ballots that contain a technical fault.
Levine said that the Republican lawsuit in Pennsylvania does not contain any specific allegation. He added, “They really should be suing the counties that didn’t allow (voters) to make corrections.” Furthermore, Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania top election official, responded in the court proceedings on Sunday, asking the judge to dismiss the case. She argued that the lawsuit has no plausible claim for relief on any legal theory.
Nearly 2.6 million mail-in ballots were received by the county officials and there had been no reports of fraud or mismanagement by any state or county officials. Additionally, in separate federal court proceedings, Republican layers acknowledged that their poll watchers were observing the process.
