True the Vote filed a federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathryn Boockvar to contest illegal ballots counted in the November 3 election.
The organization said the suit is part of its “Validate the Vote” initiative and is on behalf of four Pennsylvania voters.
The lawsuit is available here. It was filed in the U.S. District Court For the Middle District of Pennsylvania Williamsport Division.
Changes to Pennsylvania’s voting laws in 2019 were supposed to have made the system more convenient and secure, Wolf said.
The lawsuit alleges that evidence exists to cast sufficient doubt on the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, based on illegal votes in the counties of Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware and Allegheny.
“The Pennsylvania election process was an embarrassment to our country and an affront to our deep-seated value of protecting Americans’ basic Constitutional right to vote,” True the Vote Founder and President Catherine Engelbrecht said. “This lawsuit seeks to discover the facts about what happened in Pennsylvania’s presidential election and the truth about illegal ballots that were counted, which could impact the final election results.”
The lawsuit calls for the invalidation of ballots from the counties identified, claiming that the unlawful ballots were mixed in with and cannot be separated from lawful ballots.
Statewide, the presidential election vote count shows Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by only 44,930 votes, True the Vote said.
“The acceptance of unlawful ballots by election officials in these four counties draws into question the veracity of Biden’s lead,” said True the Vote Legal Counsel James Bopp Jr. “True the Vote’s lawsuit seeks to discover the facts and shine a light on the widespread illegal actions that took place in Pennsylvania’s election.”
The plaintiffs claim:
- In Philadelphia County, some voters were advised they needed to cure ballot defects while others were not, while poll watchers were excluded from access to canvassing locations.
- In Montgomery County, a poll watcher overheard unregistered voters being advised to return later to vote under a different name that was registered in the poll book, and voter turnout was 88.5 percent, 19 percent higher than statewide turnout of 69.3 percent.
- In Delaware County, voters that were recorded to have received mail-in ballots were given regular ballots and not required to sign the registration book. Additionally, poll watchers were granted extremely restricted access to a back room counting area, and ballots received on Election Day were not separated from ballots received after 8 p.m. that day, as ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Voter turnout was 75.87 percent, 6.5 percent higher than statewide turnout.
- In Allegheny County, voters were required to vote provisionally because the records indicated they had requested to vote by mail when they had not. Poll workers were reported to be close enough to voters so as to observe the actual vote. Voter turnout was 74.54 percent, 5.2 percent higher than statewide turnout.
- Throughout the state, voters received mail-in ballots without applying for them, in some cases receiving more than one.
- Throughout the state, in-person voters were advised they must vote provisionally because they had asked for and received a mail-in ballot, when no such request was made. In some cases, they were outright denied the right to vote.
- It is estimated that over 680,000 ballots were processed without observation in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties.
Also, the plaintiffs say they will provide further evidence based on thorough data analysis comparing state mail-in, absentee, provisional, and poll-book records with state voter-registration databases, United States Postal Service records, Social Security records, criminal-justice records, department-of-motor-vehicle records, and other sources to determine the extent of illegal voters and illegal votes. These could include double votes, votes by ineligible voters, votes by phantom voters, illegal felon votes, non-citizen votes, and votes cast via illegal ballot harvesting.
The lawsuit calls for action to be taken before the Dec. 8 election certification deadline.
True the Vote’s website says it is a 501(c)3 voters’ rights organization, founded to inspire and equip volunteers for involvement at every stage of the electoral process.
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
