by Peter Hall, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
October 29, 2024
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit Tuesday by six Republican Pennsylvania members of Congress that sought to set aside military absentee ballots, claiming they were vulnerable to fraud by foreign operatives.
(Win McNamee/Getty Images)
U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Conner in Harrisburg granted a motion to dismiss the case by Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, who argued the suit was baseless and appeared to be intended to sow confusion about the upcoming presidential election.
The suit claimed Pennsylvania Department of State guidelines that say military voters and their spouses are exempt from voter identification and eligibility verification requirements violate the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).
Conner, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, said the congressmen waited until it was too late to file the suit, lacked standing, failed to include county boards of elections as defendants and did not state a viable reason for the court to grant an injunction.
“An injunction at this late hour would upend the Commonwealth’s carefully laid election administration procedures to the detriment of untold thousands of voters,” Conner said. “To say nothing of the state and county administrators who would be expected to implement these new procedures on top of their current duties.”
In an election briefing Tuesday, Schmidt said the suit was frivolous and he was pleased it was dismissed.
Asked why they filed the lawsuit only weeks before the election when the state guidance on handling military ballots has been in place for more than two years, lawyers for the congressmen told Conner they were concerned after U.S. Justice Department officials revealed a three-year-old indictment charging several Iranian nationals with election interference.
The lawyers said the congressmen found the information “very concerning,” but the indictment revealed no vulnerabilities in Pennsylvania’s systems, Conner said.
“Plaintiffs cannot rely on phantom fears of foreign malfeasance to excuse their lack of diligence,” Conner wrote in his 21 page memorandum.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of U.S. Reps Dan Meuser (R-9th District), Glenn Thompson (R-15th District), Guy Reschenthaler (R-14th District), Lloyd Smucker (R-11th District), Mike Kelly (R-16th District), and Scott Perry (R-10th District). All six are up for reelection in 2024. The conservative voting access group PA Fair Elections is also a plaintiff.
The lawsuit was one of several filed by the GOP that challenged military and overseas voting in battleground states, including Michigan and North Carolina.
They followed a Sept. 23 social media post from former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president, who claimed without evidence that Democrats were “getting ready to CHEAT!” by using the UOCAVA Act to send ballots overseas.
The Michigan and North Carolina lawsuits were dismissed last week. A North Carolina appeals court affirmed the decision Tuesday.
“Donald Trump called fallen members of our military ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’ so it’s no surprise that he doesn’t think our brave men and women in uniform or the families who support them should be able to vote,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Charles Lutvak and DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd said in a statement. “Democrats believe that those serving abroad to defend our democracy should be able to participate in it at home, and this ruling protects that fundamental right.”
In the Pennsylvania suit, the Department of State and Schmidt argued that the congressmen had failed to show how the commonwealth’s handling of military and overseas ballot applications had harmed their electoral prospects and Conner said he agreed.
“The hypothetical concerns the individual plaintiffs raise about the impact of UOCAVA votes in their individual elections are purely speculative, so their status as candidates, without more, gets them nowhere,” Conner wrote.
Even if they had concrete evidence that the state’s guidelines resulted in inaccurate vote counts, the Department of State has no authority to direct county boards of elections how to handle ballots, Conner said, noting that the state Supreme Court recently vacated a decision dealing with undated mail-in ballots because the county boards of elections were not named as defendants.
“We cannot enjoin the Secretary to do anything that would actually affect UOCAVA ballots, more than 25,000 of which were delivered by the time plaintiffs instituted this action in late September,” Conner wrote. “The Secretary has no authority to direct the counties to segregate those ballots or to take steps to verify UOCAVA voters’ identities.”
Finally, Conner found the congressmen lack a cause of action because only the U.S. attorney general may file suit to enforce HAVA and UOCAVA. The laws direct the states to establish procedures for administrative grievances, and Conner noted that PA Fair Elections brought a complaint that is on appeal in Commonwealth Court.
“They may not rush to federal court to attempt an end-run around that process,” Conner said.
Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-17th District), who was among more than 100 veterans and military family members to sign an open letter condemning the lawsuit as a “betrayal,” said in a statement Tuesday that justice had prevailed. “This bad faith lawsuit was a desperate attack on the voting rights of our overseas military service members and Americans living abroad. I’m glad it was dismissed,” Deluzio said.
This story was updated at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 29, 2024 with comment from Rep. Deluzio and at 8 p.m. with comment from the Harris-Walz campaign.
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