K: you seem to have no problem disenfranching millions upon millions of voters,
if one vote is “invalid”…that is some more of your “crazytalk” you love to engage in…
you simply cannot disenfranchise million of voters who voted legitimately and within the law,
for a couple of voters who may or may not have voted legitimately…
to punish millions of voters for the wrongs a few is undemocratic, (not that you care
about democracy) and unjust, (again, not that you care) and it is simply wrong,
no matter what standard you use…
The Trump campaign’s equal protection argument was bad. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (against whom the Trump campaign brought suit) issued uniform, non-discriminatory guidance to all counties: i.e., during pre-canvassing, " voters whose completed absentee or mail-in ballots are rejected by the county board for reasons unrelated to voter qualifications may be issued a provisional ballot." IOW, some voters whose ballots were rejected could be given the opportunity to cure their ballots and not lose their vote. PA state election code does not prohibit this. PA Supreme Court had earlier said, in effect, that there was no “requirement” to give voters this opportunity, but also did not say that it was prohibited. GOP brought a separate suit arguing that the law prohibited it, where on Nov. 4th U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Savage pointed out: “Is that exactly what was said or is what was said was that there is no mandatory requirement that the election board do that?..Wasn’t the legislative intent of the statute we are talking about to franchise, not disenfranchise, voters?” Thus, the Pennsylvania Department of State did nothing wrong in issuing the same, lawful guidance to all counties across the state. It is unfortunate that some counties chose neither to afford their voters this legal opportunity nor to seek more clarification from the state or the judicial system in advance of the election if they took issue.
As a secondary question, the remedy sought by the Trump campaign (to render null citizen votes in entire counties) is wildly nonsensical and disproportionate to the claimed harm. Even if the Trump campaign’s equal protection argument had passed muster, it would make more sense to invalidate only cured ballots across the state, not all the ballots of the entire state (or entire counties). That’s absurd. Based on that precedent, in any future election, you could effectively have counties that purposely interpret election code in a manner so as to bring about unequal application of the law, and the state would be unable to certify its votes, thereby disenfranchising the voters of the entire state. That is the remedy and the precedent the Trump campaign sought, which would be magnitudes of order more harmful than the claimed harm.
Finally, although you haven’t acknowledged it yet, the details of this case clearly hinge on legal arguments about equal protection, not on evidence of election fraud. So all the bluster about Giuliani not getting to show his evidence of fraud in a hearing is irrelevant to the facts of this case. After going on and on about fraud in opening statements and posturing, Giuliani himself told the judge in court that the legal arguments in this case were not about fraud.
