Trump campaign targets Centre County in lawsuit alleging ‘fraudulent votes’ in Pa.
Centre County is among seven Pennsylvania counties facing a lawsuit from President Donald Trump’s campaign, alleging the creation of an “illegal two-tiered” voting system used in the 2020 general election.
The 105-page suit — filed Monday evening — alleges that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the boards of elections in Allegheny, Centre, Chester, Delaware, Philadelphia, Montgomery and Northampton counties held voters to a different standard based on how they cast their vote in the November election.
“We believe this two tiered election system resulted in potentially fraudulent votes being counted without proper verification or oversight, as well as many voters being disenfranchised simply for casting their votes in person,” Matt Morgan, Trump campaign general counsel, said in a statement. “We will not stop fighting for transparency and integrity in our electoral process and ensuring all Americans can trust in the results of a free and fair election.”
The lawsuit asks the court to prevent the state and named counties from certifying the results of the election.
The suit, which does not cite specific evidence, came one day before the deadline for counties to submit results to the Department of State, which will certify final results on Nov. 23.
“Unfortunately, it’s not the first lawsuit we’ve seen this year,” Centre County Commissioner Michael Pipe said Tuesday. “When it comes to the elections process, I think our focus is making sure that we finish out today, we see if there’s any recounts or potential recounts, but just keeping our eye on the ball from that standpoint.”
This is the latest in a series of litigation filed by Trump’s campaign team and includes a series of unsubstantiated claims about the commonwealth’s voting system.
In Centre County, the suit alleges that a poll worker saw mail-in ballots being “improperly spoiled,” out-of-state voters were provided provisional ballots at Centre County precincts and that poll watchers were not granted “meaningful access” to observe actions in the ballot precanvassing room.
There is no law that prohibits out-of-state voters from attempting to vote at a local precinct, but their vote would be thrown out amid the checks and balances process, Pipe said.
“The essence of a provisional ballot is to make sure that anybody who comes to vote, can at least cast a ballot,” Pipe said. “But then, there’s a strict verification process, so in that circumstance, say if somebody’s not registered in Centre County and they voted provisional ballot, it’s not going to count.”
Voters who applied to vote by mail and decided to vote in person instead were asked to bring the ballot to their polling place and sign a declaration and surrender their mail-in ballot before voting at the polls. How to handle forfeited mail-in ballots was covered during county-led election worker training sessions, Pipe said
“During the training, we did three trainings for poll workers, they essentially would put the spoiled ballot and the declaration inside that blue bag, zip it up and then, return that Election Night,” Pipe said. “So that was the protocol that the judges of elections followed.”
Pipe said there were aspects of the election he wishes he could do differently — organization of the precanvassing room at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center and provisional ballot process — but overall, the board expressed confidence in the election.
“I do think, given the time we had, given the resources we had, and we had much more ample resources than previous years, we were able to pull off something that, I think, a lot of people thought wouldn’t be possible,” Pipe said. “We did the absolute best we could do.”
Of the more than 112,000 registered Centre County voters, 33,057 cast their vote by mail in the general election, according to county data. The majority of mail-in ballots were processed in the three days after the election.
“My overall impression is that it went very well,” Commissioner Steve Dershem said. “Some of the angst that I have includes some of the direction given to us at the last minute from the Department of State. I think that we should have had a little bit tighter protocol in place and maybe some direction as to what the do’s and don’ts need to be, particularly in the ballot room.”
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, dismissed the new Trump lawsuit as “meritless,” saying it is another attempt to throw away legal ballots and cast doubt on the electoral system.
“For months, the vast majority of these lawsuits have been dismissed and found to have no merit by courts at all levels, and this one is no different,” Shapiro said in a statement. “I am confident Pennsylvania law will be upheld and the will of the people of the commonwealth will be respected in this election.”
