The Donald Trump Campaign and the Pennsylvania GOP won a huge victory today in their efforts to force the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, government to permit voters to request mail-in ballots in person.
The campaign filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, documenting how county officials broke state law and turned away voters hours before the deadline (see Trump Campaign Suing Over Voter Suppression in Major Swing State). This was after video surfaced of a police officer and skeevy individuals, some later identified as local Democrat activists, wearing “Voter Protection” badges but with no visible identification credentials shutting down the line at 1:45 p.m. when the law required the line to stay open to 4:30 p.m.
The lawsuit, filed in Common Pleas Court, maintains county officials ignored guidance from the Pennsylvania Department of State that anyone in those lines by 5 p.m. Tuesday — the deadline for requesting a mail ballot — should have been able to file their request.
Instead, the suit alleges, voters were repeatedly turned away — in some cases as early as 2:30 p.m. — as queues grew so long outside the county’s administration building and satellite election offices that it would take staff the rest of the office’s hours of operations to work through them.
“Instead of complying with the letter and spirit of the Election Code, as well as the directive from the Secretary of the Commonwealth, the board ordered security officials to remove some voters … some of whom had been standing in line for hours only to be turned away,” wrote Wally S. Zimolong, a GOP election lawyer representing the campaign in their suit.