ROUND ONE: Trump vs. Boockvar. The Mammoth Scope of Philadelphia’s Corruption

On a Monday evening that saw CNN rescind its Arizona call for Biden and Real Clear Politics deny it had called Pennsylvania for the former Vice President, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in the Middle District of Pennsylvania asking for a temporary injunction seeking to prevent the state from certifying the results of the November 3rd election.  The complaint offered the public its first opportunity to view the quality and magnitude of the allegations against Pennsylvania’s elections boards.

The complaint, obtained by thefederalistpages.com and linked on its website, describes a process so chaotic and corrupt that the only remedy appears to be a do-over.  For example, the complaint alleges that  “Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties alone received and processed 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots without review by the political parties and candidates” in direct contradiction to the Pennsylvania Election Code.  It goes on to point out that these “are unprecedented numbers in Pennsylvania’s elections history.”

Pennsylvania’s actions have been so brazen, the lawsuit points out, that it has essentially created a dual system of voter scrutiny offensive to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Constitution’s Elector and Election Clauses.  The complaint observes that while in-person voters were “required to sign voter registrations, have those signatures checked against voter rolls, vote in a polling place monitored by statutorily-authorized poll observers, and have their votes counted in a transparent and verifiable open and observed manner,” the nearly 2.65 million votes cast through a “mail-in” required nothing more than a signature for verification. Additionally, the scrutiny applied to voters differed depending on the county in which he or she voted, a process that favored urban, Democrat voters over rural Republicans.

Through witness testimony, the Trump campaign also cited scores of examples of gross violations in the manner in which the mail-in ballots were handled.  For example, in a flagrant disregard of the legislature’s mandate that only votes post-dated on or prior to election day be counted, many ballots appearing in counties since the November 3 deadline have been accepted.  The magnitude of the votes involved is startling.  To quote the complaint:

. . . in Delaware County, the county’s Wednesday, November 4 report indicated that Delaware County reported it has received about 113,000 mail-in ballots and counted approximately 93,000 voted ballots. On the next day, November 5, the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s 4:30 report reflected that Delaware County had received about 114,000 ballots. Several hours later, the Delaware County solicitor reported to an observer that the County had received about 126,000 mail-in ballots and counted about 122,000. As of Sunday, November 8, 2020, the Department of State’s website reflects that the County has counted about 127,000 mail-in ballots. Plaintiffs have received no explanation for where the additional 14,000 voted ballots came from, when they arrived, or why they are included in the current count.
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152. Also in Delaware County, an observer in the county office where mail- in ballots were counted witnessed a delivery on November 5, 2020, of v-cards or USB drives in a plastic bag with no seal and no accompanying paper ballots. The v- cards or USB drives were taken to the back counting room, where observer access was limited. There was no opportunity to observe what happened to the v-cards or USB drives in the back counting room. 

In light of the myriad of violations, the campaign asks the court for the drastic intervention of prohibiting the state from certifying its elections.  Alternatively, it request the court prohibit Pennsylvania from tabulating absentee and mail-in ballots which observers were prevented from watching or improperly cured.

On a related note, the Thomas More Foundation discovered that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg contributed millions to judges responsible for deciding ballot issues in Philadelphia in addition to providing grants to open 800 polling places and increase voting by about 800,000 votes. The story, which includes links to actual documents can also be accessed in thefederalistpages.com’s News page.

With more lawsuits being filed today, the scope of the corruption already appears to be overwhelming to the system.  Whether the courts will allow the President the opportunity to make his case and the manner in which it proposes the situation be remedied remains to be seen.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Federalist Pages column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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