Accusing the president of trying to sow doubt in November’s elections by using Pennsylvania’s courts to advance vote-suppressing litigation, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said his office “will be ready” for a legal battle on Election Day — and in the days following Nov. 3 — if the need arises.
In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Thursday, Mr. Shapiro said he will “continue to battle every lawsuit that comes filled with baseless allegations of voter fraud by the president or anyone else” — and acknowledged that Mr. Trump could challenge the system on the day of the election with a “unique set of attacks on our democracy.”
“And then, beginning at 8:01 p.m. when the polls close, we expect there to be a different set of attacks on our system,” Mr. Shapiro said, “and I can assure the people of Pennsylvania that we have been spending a long time preparing for this. We will be ready. And we will ensure that their vote is secured, protected and counted.”
Mr. Shapiro’s foreshadowing comes as Republican leaders ready thousands of volunteer attorneys and poll watchers across the country to prepare for legal battles in key states on Election Day and in the days after — a potentially sprawling litigious blitz that Politico reported in late September. Mr. Trump himself hasn’t yet committed to a peaceful transfer of power if the results show he loses, and has instead railed against the widespread use of mail-in ballots and warned of an attempted “Democrat assault on election integrity.”
Pennsylvania — a swing state that could ultimately decide the race between Mr. Trump and Democrat Joe Biden — already has been at the center of legal battles so far. This is where Mr. Trump’s campaign has been fighting for months in federal court to warn of voter fraud as a result of mail-in voting, and where it continues to seek limitations to the use of drop boxes, among other requests.
Mr. Shapiro’s office has been representing Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s top elections official, in that case. He said he takes the responsibility seriously of protecting the right to vote and making sure the votes of every Pennsylvanian are counted this November, and that there’s increasingly been a legal role for his office because of lawsuits by Mr. Trump “and his enablers” — which he sees as an attempt to suppress the vote.
The attorney general insisted they’ve been winning the legal battle. His office was responsible for filing a petition in the state Supreme Court on behalf of Ms. Boockvar that resulted in the court extending the deadline that counties are permitted to tally mail-in ballots by three days — so long as the ballots are postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. The court also ruled that counties are allowed to install drop boxes and open satellite offices to collect hand-delivered ballots.
But the landscape remains complex and ever-changing, and several actions are pending before various courts. For example, Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, and Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the state court’s ruling on the received-by deadline.
Mr. Shapiro said he recommends that voters “drown out the noise coming from Donald Trump and his enablers.”
“Let us do the lawyering,” Mr. Shapiro said, noting that voters should instead make a plan to vote, “whether they vote in person or whether they vote in a satellite center or through the mail.”
The attorney general, a Democrat, has alleged that it’s Mr. Trump’s ultimate goal to “sow doubt” in the electoral process and make voters feel like their ballots won’t be counted. Mr. Trump and his supporters, meanwhile, have argued that the mail-in voting system is flawed and could very well be abused by partisan actors.
When asked in federal court to present evidence of how mail-in voting can “sow chaos” in an election, Mr. Trump’s campaign did not file evidence of a flawed and insecure mail-in system encouraging rampant and widespread fraud — instead pointing to a series of specific examples that it said made their case that any fraud is too much fraud and that it could be exacerbated.
Mr. Trump mimicked this strategy on the debate stage last week, pointing to two specific incidents in Pennsylvania to suggest there’s a threat to a free and fair election.
His citing of those incidents — which left out key facts of what happened — are proof that Mr. Trump is deliberately trying to sow doubt, Mr. Shapiro said.
As it relates to Luzerne County, where federal investigators last month found that nine ballots were improperly opened by elections staff and discarded, Mr. Trump and his defenders “didn’t even let law enforcement do the job we need to do to find out what happened before he and his folks were out talking and tweeting about how this was fraud,” Mr. Shapiro said.
“It turns out it wasn’t fraud at all,” Mr. Shapiro said. “It was a clerical error that can now be corrected.”
Mr. Trump also referred to “bad things” happening in Philadelphia, where he alleged poll watchers were improperly turned away from the first day of early in-person voting. Mr. Shapiro noted correctly that no poll watchers were certified — and even if they were, state law doesn’t allow poll watchers in satellite election offices.
The attorney general added that he’s prosecuted Republicans and Democrats for incidents of election fraud, but that it’s not “anything like what Donald Trump is describing.” Voting rights advocates and officials told the Post-Gazette last week that the real threats to election integrity are less Machiavellian and blatantly partisan than they are logistical and procedural.
Julian Routh: jrouth@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1952, Twitter @julianrouth.
First Published: October 8, 2020, 10:08 p.m.
