Government

PA Judge Tosses Effort By GOP Congressmen To Throw Out Military And Overseas Ballots

For America!

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Don’t ya just hate it when this happens?

Plaintiffs delayed too long to file their action, they lack standing, they have failed to join indispensable parties, and they have failed to articulate a viable cause of action. Hence, we will grant the Secretary’s motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ amended complaint without further leave to amend, and we will deny as moot plaintiffs’ motion for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. An appropriate order shall issue.

Thus endeth the preposterous challenge to overseas and military ballots filed September 30 by six Republican congressmen in Pennsylvania, flicked away like a stray piece of lint adhering to US District Judge Christopher Conner’s robes. The effort to block counting military and overseas ballots, filed after 25,000 of them have been sent out by the Pennsylvania Secretary of Commonwealth, runs aground, felled by the doctrine of laches, the Purcell principle, and half the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

The plaintiffs’ argument was, as they say, hard to characterize. Their theory seems to have been that Pennsylvania’s Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt and his Deputy Secretary for Elections Johnathan Marks broke the law when they “issued directives and guidance to county officials to exempt [overseas and military voting] applicants entirely from any verification requirements.”

Which would make complete sense, except that:

  1. The challenged directive was issued upwards of two years ago;
  2. Generalized whining that the law hasn’t been followed does not constitute standing to challenge state action;
  3. Ditto for claims of “vote dilution”;
  4. Defendants Schmidt and Marks lack the authority to order the 67 county election boards to take the action requested, a fact the defendants were made aware of before they amended their complaint and failed to add the responsible parties as defendants;
  5. The amended complaint seeks a declaratory order based on the Supremacy Clause, which contains no private right of action; and
  6. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act [UOCAVA] expressly instructs states to accept registration applications from overseas voters with a simple attestation of citizenship and no other documentation.

But other than than, bang up job, boys!

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If anything, the dismissal order understates how nuts this complaint was. Reps. Reschenthaler, Kelly, Meuser, Perry, Thompson, and Smucker tried to read a federal law that explicitly says that the Federal Post Card Application “shall” serve as “simultaneous voter registration application and absentee ballot application” as permitting the state to impose additional requirements upon registrants … and their argument somehow rested on federal preemption???

On the other hand, the plaintiffs can now point to the ruling as further evidence of a Deep State plot to enable large scale voting by non-citizens, aided by a feckless judiciary, and which will be directly responsible for any and all Republican losses next week. And if that was the goal, it’s a winner!

Reschenthaler v. Schmidt [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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