Looking for fraud: A personal expedition through the Pennsylvania 2020 election court cases

On January 6, 2020; rioters violently entered the U.S. Capitol building with apparent intent of somehow changing the results of the 2020 Presidential election through force. I have been incredibly affected by what transpired on that day – influenced not by just the violence that ensued but by the motivations for such an extreme act. These rioters were motivated by extraordinary claims that their fellow Americans had somehow rigged the election against them – that the election was somehow riddled with fraud and a strong belief that the opposing side had somehow cheated their way to victory.

But what really disturbed me was the claims that the numerous court cases that the Trump campaign has initiated were also somehow unfair.

“What are we supposed to do? The Supreme Court is not helping us. No one is helping us. Only us can help us. Only we can do it” yelled one rioter just before the violence got out of hand. This comment caused me to be very interested in the false claims and the court cases that have been filed by the Trump lawyers. How did these courts fail the American people and the country?

I began a study of the actual court documents and judicial opinions. I plan to do this with every state in question, but for now, I am getting started with Pennsylvania.

President Trump and his supporters, in their claims that the election was stolen, have included the state of Pennsylvania as one of the locations where fraud in the electoral process has taken place.

To start with let us consider Senator Josh Hawly’s claims during his objection to the electoral college vote that Pennsylvania violated its constitution by allowing mail-in voting. His objection was to Act 77 which was passed by the Republican-led Pennsylvania General Assembly in October of 2019 which allowed no excuse mail-in-voting. U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly had initiated several court cases in both the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as well as the US Supreme Court concerning Act 77. To make a long story short, opposition to Act 77, by Kelly, was denied because basically it was too late. After all, the law had been in effect for over a year; and ironically, opposition to it came up only after the election and Trump’s defeat. It was too late, after all, many Pennsylvanians had already cast their votes based upon the law. In one paragraph, the very long and legal response to Kelly’s Supreme Court appeal states;

“Regardless of whether Petitioners’ challenge is substantive or procedural, their claims are barred because they request retrospective relief—to undo the presidential election and disenfranchise voters who cast ballots in accordance with (and in reliance on) the directions of the [Pennsylvania] General Assembly.”

So, based upon Pennsylvanian law. Mail-in-voting was not fraud. It was law.

There is another claim that no Trump campaign observers were allowed in the Philadelphia Convention Center. A review of the court documents demonstrates that this cannot be true. There were several court cases that occurred during counting of votes in Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign argued over how close the observers were allowed to be. It appears at first due to COVID fears the observers were kept very far away, then after the grievances were filed with the court, they were allowed to get closer. The court documents also demonstrate something else, that being that “publicly available video recordings” were reviewed by the court. If there was election fraud, one would think that evidence of that would exist on those tapes. But no evidence was ever referenced or submitted to the court.

On the topic of lack of evidence, Texas vs Pennsylvania alleged that Philadelphia used Dominion voting machines when in fact the city does not use them. This claim that voting machines were giving votes to Biden in error is a common claim, but little evidence of this claim has been offered in any court – as far as Pennsylvania is concerned. I will likely revisit this claim when I produce studies of other states’ court cases.

Back to the topic of observers. In his dissent, Justice Sayors makes the point that throwing out legitimate votes due to what he refers to as a “isolated procedural irregularities” is “misguided”. So again, this issue is not related to fraud. It is law, and an agreement about observers was arranged by the courts successfully.

Another common claim related to Pennsylvania is that people fraudulently voted under a dead person’s name. Unfortunately, I have to rely on the media as a source here because the Trump campaign never brought this claim before any court. Of course, Trump, Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, and Corey Lewandowski – just to name a few – have made this claim through social and traditional media, obviously places that don’t require legitimate evidence and sworn statements.

On November 21 there was a case put before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking that the state not certify the vote.

This case deals claims that Secretary Kathy Boockvar was unfair is what is referred to as a notice and cure policy as well as the previously mentioned claim that Trump observers were not allowed to view the counting of votes. Notice and cure is basically an action where a county will notify a mail-in voter that their ballot did not meet the requirements and then offer the voter an opportunity to correct this by submitting a provisional ballet. Trump lawyers claimed that Boockvar only initiated this policy in Biden-leaning counties, not Trump ones.

Judge Matthew Brann rejected these claims saying that the Trump lawyers offered insufficient evidence of these claims. He stated in the opinion;

“One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens."

That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.”

So the Judge here, was simply the following the law in that evidence of claims must be presented. Since no evidence of wide spread fraud was presented, we have to conclude that there was none.

To be fair, the notice and cure action may violate the Pennsylvania election code, something brought up in Texas vs Pennsylvania. In Texas vs Pennsylvania Trump lawyers made the claim that “Section 3146.8(g)(1.1) provides that the first look at the ballots shall be “no earlier than seven o’clock a.m. on election day.” Texas v Pennsylvania was denied for lack of standing – that is the Court decided that Texas can not interfere with how another state conducts its elections.

Before the notice and cure policy was initiated, the Pennsylvania Democratic party queried the Pennsylvania Supreme Court whether notice and cure violated the election code. The court really didn’t give a good answer. The issue with notice and cure has not been properly addressed in any court as far as I can tell. However, the problem with notice and cure does not rise to the level of fraud. If it did, Judge Brann would have had to do something about it, and he didn’t.

The last one to consider is the issue of signatures. There have been claims by the Trump lawyers that Pennsylvania election code requires that the election board verify each signature on each mail-in ballot. In an October 23, 2020 Pennsylvania Supreme Court Case, the Court analyzed the election code on the question of rejecting ballots based upon signatures, it was decided;

“For all of the aforementioned reasons, we grant the Secretary’s petition for declarative relief, and hold that county boards of elections are prohibited from rejecting absentee or mail-in ballots based on signature comparison conducted by county election officials or employees, or as the result of third-party challenges based on signature analysis and comparisons.”

Admittedly, the fact that signature policies for mail-in votes differ to in person votes – that is, in person votes can be challenged based upon signature analysis according to Pennsylvania election code and mail-in vote cannot—is a bit disturbing. But the argument for this provision is that with a mail in ballot; the voter is not given an opportunity to dispute any signature claim, whereas with in-person, they obviously could do so at the polling site in a face-to-face interaction. As stated in the court document;

“Thus, unlike in-person voters, mail-in or absentee voters are not provided any opportunity to cure perceived defects in a timely manner.”

Again, this is Pennsylvania law—not fraud.

As I stated at the beginning of this. I am disturbed by claims that somehow the court system of the United States is somehow unfair and did not following proper procedures. This was a review of the court cases in the state of Pennsylvania that deal with the 2020 Presidential election, granted it does not include every case.

Granted there do seem to be issues relating to mail-in voting. But a claim that the Courts are somehow acting outside of the law by rejecting these cases brough forth in Pennsylvania by the Trump lawyers is not true. Another thing that seems evident from analyzing these court cases is that there doesn’t appear to be evidence of wide spread voter fraud.