Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge James Crumlish denied five petitions from the Trump campaign to overturn Board of Elections decisions to count a total of 8,329 mail-in ballots where the outer envelopes were signed but missing the voters' printed name, date, address or some combination thereof.
"The Election Code provides that a voter shall 'fill out, date and sign the declaration' on the outer envelope. The term 'fill out' in the code is not a defined term and is ambiguous," Judge Crumlish wrote in the five, largely identical orders. "The pre-printed ballot already contains the elector's name and address on the preprinted exterior envelope. Neither a date nor the elector's filling out of the printed name or of the address are requirements necessary to prevent fraud."
In the suburb of Montgomery County, Court of Common Pleas Judge Richard P. Haaz made a similar ruling Friday regarding 592 ballots that were missing the address on the outer envelope, noting that the state's Election Code explicitly requires the address of any witness who helps a voter fill out an absentee or mail-in ballot, but does not state the same requirement for the voters themselves.
"The petitioners urge the court to construe 'fill out' ... to mean 'fill out your address in order for your vote to be counted,'" wrote Judge Haaz. "The Election Code does not explicitly state as such and the court will not add language to the statute imposing a voting condition which the legislature did not specifically include."
Trump's election-night lead in Pennsylvania evaporated as mail-in ballots were counted throughout the state, and those ballots eventually tipped the state to former Vice President Joe Biden, giving him the electoral votes to cement a win.
The campaign and its Republican allies have filed challenges to ballots around the state for technical deficiencies, for arriving after the original election night deadline that was extended to Nov. 6 by the state's supreme court in September, or for not getting "meaningful access" by campaign observers in Philadelphia as they were being counted. The campaign is seeking to block Pennsylvania from certifying its election results over the latter dispute.
But despite Trump's unsubstantiated Twitter claims that many votes in Pennsylvania were fraudulent, Judge Crumlish noted that no one was claiming the incomplete ballots were illegitimate.
"Petitioner is not contending that there has been fraud, that there is evidence of fraud or that the ballots in question were not filled out by the elector in whose name the ballot was issued ... Petitioner does not allege fraud or irregularity in the canvass and counting of the ballots," he wrote.
Heather Ziccarelli, a Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania state Senate not directly affiliated with the Trump campaign, filed a similar challenge Thursday in Allegheny County, where a split Board of Elections voted to count ballots without dates on their envelopes. Ziccarelli was running just 30 votes behind her opponent as of the case's filing, holding a 6,100-vote lead in the part of her district in neighboring Westmoreland County, but a 6,130-vote deficit for Allegheny County.
"We are very pleased with the court's decision, which upholds the rights of citizens to have their votes counted," said Raymond McGarry of Brown McGarry Nimeroff LLC, one of the attorneys representing Montgomery County.
A representative for the city of Philadelphia also praised the court decision.
"We are very pleased with the court's decision, which thwarted the latest attempt by the Trump campaign to disenfranchise voters in Philadelphia, upholding the Board of Elections' decision to count 8,329 ballots that complied with all mandatory sections of Pennsylvania's Election Code," the spokesperson said.
Representatives of the Trump campaign and for the Philadelphia election board did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
The Trump campaign is represented by Linda Kerns of the Law Offices of Linda A. Kerns LLC.
The Philadelphia County Board of Elections is represented by Benjamin H. Field and Lydia Furst of the City of Philadelphia Law Department, and Michele D. Hangley and John G. Coit of Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller.
The Montgomery County Board of Elections is represented by Joshua M. Stein of the county solicitor's office, and Raymond McGarry and Mary Kay Brown of Brown McGarry Nimeroff LLC.
The cases are In re: Canvass of Absentee and Mail-In Ballots of November 3, 2020 General Election, case numbers 201100874, 201100875, 201100876, 201100877 and 201100878, in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Donald. J. Trump for President Inc. v. Montgomery County Board of Elections, case number 2020-18680, in the Court of Common Pleas for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
--Editing by Adam LoBelia.
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