[direwolf]

Originally Posted by activeStick

Saw that the courts in Pennsylvania ruled against Trump's efforts to deem ballot drop boxes as unconstitutional. The federal judge who gave the ruling was appointed by Trump.

Of course the Trump campaign is planning to appeal the ruling, but you have ot think they're quickly running out of time. By the time this makes it through the appeal process, election day will have come and gone.


https://www.npr.org/2020/10/10/92267...n-pennsylvania

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has thrown out a lawsuit by the Trump campaign that tried to limit the battleground state's use of drop boxes in the current presidential election.


The lawsuit also challenged the Pennsylvania secretary of state's guidance that mail-in ballots shouldn't be rejected if the voter's signature doesn't match the one on file, and a state restriction that poll watchers be residents of the county where they are assigned.


All of these claims turned on a common theme: the idea that without sufficient security measures, people might commit voter fraud. The campaign argued that that fraud would then "dilute" lawfully cast votes, in violation of the state and U.S. constitutions.


In reality, voter fraud is extremely rare, though Trump has repeated baseless claims about it being widespread.

Ultimately the court found that the election regulations furthered important state interests without significantly burdening any right to vote, and were therefore constitutional.


In his 138-page ruling, the judge — a Trump appointee — also noted that the Trump campaign had offered no hard evidence that voter fraud would actually occur. Instead, Ranjan wrote, the campaign had simply provided a series of "speculative" assumptions: They assume that "potential fraudsters" might try to fill drop boxes with forged ballots, and that the election security measures in place won't work to prevent that fraud.


"All of these assumptions could end up being true and these events could theoretically happen," Ranjan wrote. "But so could many things." Speculation, Ranjan concluded, isn't enough to let the plaintiffs bring their case.


"Today is another loss for Republicans' effort to make voting more difficult and a victory for democracy and the millions of Pennsylvania voters who will vote by mail," Marc Elias, a Democratic election lawyer, told The New York Times. "This court joins a chorus of other courts in rejecting the false claims of fraud Trump and the Republicans continue to advance for cynical political reasons."

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, called Saturday's ruling "a win for voters and our democracy."


The Trump campaign plans to appeal the decision.