A Pennsylvania court gave President Donald Trump’s moribund presidential bid a small jolt of energy Thursday—though not enough to bring it back to life.
Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt rescinded Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar’s guidance to county boards of election to allow mail-in voters who failed to provide required identifying information to supply the proof by Nov. 12. This left the cut-off at Nov. 9, and the state may no longer count the ballots of those who furnished the evidence afterward.
Boockvar’s office did not respond to questions about whether they intended to appeal the ruling to a higher court, nor did it provide a figure for how many votes it would disqualify. Leavitt had already ordered counties to segregate and not count the ballots in question, so the ruling does nothing to affect Biden’s 55,000-vote lead in the state.
This suit is distinct from another fight over guidance from Boockvar that permitted voters who made errors on their postal votes to cast a provisional ballot, a fight Pennsylvania Republicans waged with little success starting on Election Night.
