Republican leaders in Pennsylvania are recruiting volunteers to mail-in ballots after Election Day as President Donald Trump’s lead in the state narrows.
An email sent by a group called Kenosha for Trump emailed supporters in Kenosha, Wisconsin to make phone calls to supporters in Pennsylvania and encourage them to return their absentee ballots. “These phone calls,” they say, “will help President Trump win the election!”
However, any ballot that was not dated on or before Nov. 3 can not be counted in the state. Further, even those ballots must be received by today, Nov. 6.
That decision was made just recently, in fact, after Republicans challenged a Pennsylvania law that ballots postmarked by Election Day can still be counted. The decision was rejected by its Supreme Court, which ruled that the law was a state matter, not a federal one.
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The Daily Beast is exclusively reporting that Kenosha For Trump said in an email it was “marshaling the effort on behalf of Trump Victory, the committee established by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee to run the field program for the president’s re-election.” The email was forwarded to the site.
“This seems like encouraging people to improperly submit ballots that should not be counted,” according to Jonathan Diaz, the legal counsel for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center. “That would be exactly what the president and his campaign are accusing Democrats of doing.”
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The rationale for the tactic varies, according to experts. One theory, the report says, is that Philly’s local GOP hoped these late ballots would be accepted, “at which point they could petition courts to invalidate the entire pool of absentee ballots — including those properly postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by the Friday deadline — by claiming the whole batch was tainted by fraud.”
“I wonder if they’re doing this in hopes of slipping one through and then waving it around as an example of the flawed process,” said Ben Geffen, an attorney at the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia. “The real story is it sounds like the Trump campaign is promoting cheating.”
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