Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar

On November 9, 2020, President Trump’s campaign filed a federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the boards of elections of six counties. The Trump campaign claimed that its election observers were unable to stand close enough to watch the count of mail and absentee ballots in several counties. The campaign also asserted that it was illegal and unconstitutional for only some counties to notify and allow voters to correct mistakes with the declarations on the envelopes of their mail and absentee ballots. The lawsuit asked the court to issue an order to prohibit the commonwealth from certifying its presidential election results.

On November 10, the ACLU, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, and co-counsel filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of eight impacted voters, Black Political Empowerment Project, Common Cause PA, League of Women Voters of PA, and NAACP Pennsylvania State Conference, which the judge granted on November 12. We then filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the Plaintiffs’ claims about technical irregularities could and should have been brought in state court earlier in the process, when they could have been cured, and that even if there were minor technical problems the Plaintiffs have produced no evidence of fraud or ineligible voters casting ballots to justify disenfranchising a single voter, much less 6.8 million.

On November 21, Judge William Brann dismissed the lawsuit, saying, “(T)his Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations…unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state.” On November 27, the Third Circuit upheld the district court’s decision.