Pennsylvania election lawsuit surge shows why it’s top prize in hotly contested presidential race

Pennsylvania is emerging as the jackpot in the hotly contested presidential race, drawing both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in frenzied campaigning on the eve of the election, along with a surge in legal cases from both sides.

Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes are the most of the seven swing states that will effectively decide the winner of Tuesday’s contest. And the state has become a hotbed of litigation from both sides seeking to gain any advantage in addition to their get-out-the-vote efforts.

A Republican Party bid to stop potentially tens of thousands of mail-in ballots from being counted was rejected Friday by the US Supreme Court. Republicans won another case over ballots missing hand-written dates in Pennsylvania’s highest court. And a judge is weighing whether to block Trump-backer Elon Musk’s daily million-dollar voter giveaway.

The outsized focus on Pennsylvania is a result of the idiosyncrasies of the Electoral College that decides US presidential elections. The arcane system that allows whoever captures a state to win all of its electors can spotlight a single state — or several  — that could help one candidate or the other gain more than 270 electors to win the presidency.

In the 2024 election, the focus has been on Pennsylvania, and to a lesser degree Georgia among the seven states seen most likely as a toss up in polls. Georgia has been a flashpoint for election allegations since 2020, when President Joe Biden won the state by less than 12,000 votes and Trump made unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud.

So far, the 2024 lawsuits have focused on the kinds of disputes that are typical in hotly contested presidential elections. 

Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court late Friday rejected the GOP effort to stop Pennsylvanians from getting a second chance to vote if their mail-in ballots are rejected as incomplete.

Republicans appealed after Pennsylvania’s highest court ruled the state must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots are disqualified for failing to include an inner envelope around the ballot for secrecy — commonly referred to as “naked” ballots.

Pennsylvania was also the focus of election litigation in 2020, when conservative US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ordered late-arriving mail ballots set aside amid a fight over whether those votes would count. State officials later said that fewer than 10,000 ballots were received during a disputed three-day period – not nearly enough to overturn Biden’s 80,555-vote victory margin.

Bucks County

The Trump campaign on Oct. 29 filed a suit alleging Bucks County election officials improperly turned away voters who were waiting in line to apply for a mail-in ballot and simultaneously fill it out and drop it off, a process known as “on demand” absentee voting.

The suit followed allegations by Trump supporters on social media that, after waiting in long lines, they were being told to leave without receiving ballots. County officials said in social media posts that there was a “miscommunication” and that some individuals who were in line were “briefly told they could not be accommodated.”

A judge quickly extended the deadline by two days, finding that the county violated the state’s election code. The county, located near Philadelphia and with about 600,000 residents, didn’t object to extending the deadline.

Missing Dates

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court late last week sided with Republicans in a suit over missing dates on mail-in ballots that are otherwise valid, blocking them from being counted in the 2024 election. The case challenged a rule passed by Pennsylvania lawmakers requiring voters to write the current date on the envelope of their mail-in ballot. Without it, the votes aren’t counted.

An intermediate state appeals court ruled on Oct. 30 that the ballot-dating provision was an unconstitutional barrier to voting resulting in the “baseless rejection of thousands of timely ballots.”

The RNC appealed, arguing the ruling effectively changed voting rules too soon before Election Day and undermined election integrity. The RNC also argued the lower court was wrong to find that the date requirement restricts the “fundamental right to vote.”

Elon Musk

The Musk case doesn’t involve typical election claims over voting procedures or ballot counting but demonstrates how unusual the 2024 election has been. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, called the giveaways a “grift” at a hearing Monday to challenge the billionaire’s PAC awards to randomly selected signatories of a petition calling for free speech and the right to bear arms. 

But Musk lawyer Chris Gober said it wasn’t an illegal lottery because the winners weren’t chosen “by chance.” He said that they were selected on their “suitability” to be a public representative of Musk’s political action committee. 

Georgia

The Georgia Supreme Court is considering an emergency appeal by the RNC objecting to the counting of 3,000 absentee ballots sent at the last minute to voters in Cobb County, an Atlanta suburb, if they arrive after Nov. 5. On Friday, a state court judge ordered the county to extend its deadline and send those voters ballots overnight with prepaid express return by Nov. 8 – three days after Election Day.

On Sunday, the RNC also filed a federal lawsuit in Savannah to prevent Fulton County and six other counties around Georgia from allowing advance voting over the weekend and on Monday. The RNC and Georgia Republican Party claimed the practice violated state law.

Georgia’s election code explicitly permits counties to accept absentee ballots returned during this time and in this way, the Democratic National Committee argued in court papers.

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