A state court in Philadelphia county on Friday rejected legal challenges filed by the Trump campaign in an attempt to challenge over 8,300 votes cast in the 2020 presidential election.
Earlier this week, the Trump campaign filed five separate petitions to the court for a review of the Philadelphia County Board of Election’s decision to count votes that appear to have errors or irregularities because voters did not print their name or their address in the space provided on the outer envelope.
The Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County on Friday denied each request. The court said that the ballot already contains the voter’s name and address on the pre-printed exterior envelope and that neither filling out the printed name and address sections are “requirements necessary to prevent fraud.”
“The envelope provided to the elector from the secretary of state of the commonwealth contains a direction in the form of a checklist on the back of the envelope that directs the elector to sign the declaration, but makes no mention of filling out the date or other information,” the orders state.
The court added that after reviewing the claims and the county’s response, it concluded that the campaign was “not contending that there has been fraud, that there is evidence of fraud, or that the ballots in question were not filled out by the elector in whose name the ballot was issued.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
The Trump campaign is facing an uphill battle in its legal challenges filed in several battleground states aimed at protecting the integrity and accuracy of elections.
Trump and his campaign have been vocal about the need to protect the sanctity of the ballot box, arguing that only “legal votes” should be counted. They argue that mail-in ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 but received after Election Day shouldn’t be counted and that votes that were counted without Republican observers present in the ballot-counting centers should also be considered “illegal votes.” The campaign is also challenging allegations of irregularities occurring on election day or on mail-in ballots, such as the cases in Philadelphia county.
On Friday, the Trump campaign dropped its suit in Arizona that was seeking a review of ballots that were cast by overriding the tabulating machine’s rejection of the vote.
Meanwhile, a Michigan judge on the same day denied a request to block the certification of the election and to order an audit of the results in a third-party lawsuit that alleged instances of voter fraud.
The lawsuit was brought by two poll challengers—Cheryl Costantino and Edward McCall—who are alleging that election officials allowed various fraudulent processing of votes, including telling poll workers to backdate ballots, not verify signatures on absentee ballots, ignore signature mismatches, and push through ballots despite questionable validity.
