(Photo : Getty Images/Mark Makela)
PHILADELPHIA, PA - OCTOBER 27: A man photographs himself depositing his ballot in an official ballot drop box while a long line of voters queue outside of Philadelphia City Hall at the satellite polling station on October 27, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With the election only a week away, this new form of in-person voting by using mail ballots has enabled tens of millions of voters to cast their ballots before the general election. Vying to recapture the Keystone State's vital 20 electoral votes in order to bolster his reelection prospects, President Donald Trump held three rallies throughout Pennsylvania yesterday.
In Pennsylvania, a small triumph for the Donald Trump campaign transpired. A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that many first-time voters' mail-in ballots would not be counted as the voters failed to confirm their identity before November 9.
First-Time Voters Without Confirmation of identity
On Thursday, Commonwealth Court President Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt ruled that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar did not have the authority when she issued a guidance indicating that the ballots should be counted if voters' identification could be confirmed by November 12.
According to the Trump campaign in a court ruling, "If the deadline is calculated as the statute is written, then as it pertains to the November 3, 2020 General Election, this deadline for voters to resolve proof of identification issues is Monday, November 9, 2020, not November 12, 2020," the Trump campaign," reported KLIF.
The Trump campaign questioned an extended deadline permitting voters to correct their mail-in ballots with voter identification issues through November 12. They challenged whether those ballots would count as Pennsylvania's presidential race continues to have a slim margin, reported Forbes.
The president's campaign filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, calling into question Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar's resolve to extend a deadline for voters whose mail-in ballots were not accompanied by a proof of identification, changing the deadline from the 9th of November to the 12th of November.
The judge ruled that Secretary of State Boockvar, who permitted the extension of the deadline, had no authority to do so.
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This concerns the Trump campaign's wider legal effort to dispute the integrity of the Pennsylvania election results.
They set forth with their courtroom fight to challenge the state's election results to invalidate over 10,000 votes in the Philadelphia area.
The Pennsylvania judge's ruling affects a small cluster of absentee and mail-in ballots that do not begin to approach the estimated 53,000-vote lead held by Democrat candidate Joe Biden in Pennsylvania.
As the case is underway in court, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court had earlier ordered that ballots fixed during the extended deadline to be segregated.
Judge Leavitt stated election officials are "enjoined from counting any ballots" that were fixed during the extended deadline.
On Thursday, the battleground state's officials asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit set forth by the president's campaign to prevent the state from certifying its presidential race results.
In the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, court filings were issued by attorneys for the Pennsylvania secretary of state and seven of the key battleground state's counties remarked the case made vague and unsupported claims based on consistently-rejected legal theories and lack of evidence.
The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit on November 8 in the Middle District of Pennsylvania claiming the state's mail-in voting system "lacked all of the hallmarks of transparency and verifiability that were present for in-person voters," reported Reuters.
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