PENNSYLVANIA (KXAN/CNN) — Six lawsuits filed by Pres. Donald Trump’s campaign have failed to get nearly 9,000 absentee ballots in Pennsylvania invalidated, CNN reports.
On Friday, two judges threw out the cases, which the Trump campaign complained should not be counted because their outer envelopes lacked names, dates, and/or addresses.
Ultimately, the judges ruled the ballots were valid and they will be processed.
In one case, Judge Richard Haaz, of the Montgomery Court of Common Pleas ruled that 592 mail-in ballots will be counted because the state doesn’t require voters to fill out the envelope sections. Additionally, the instructions on the ballots didn’t tell voters to do so.
Haaz wrote in his ruling, “Voters should not be disenfranchised by reasonably relying upon voting instructions provided by election officials.”
The Trump campaign says it wasn’t claiming these ballots were fraudulent, just that they had questions about whether or not they followed the rules. Had the lawsuits been successful, however, the discounting of these 9,000 ballots wouldn’t have been enough to topple Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.
With nearly a week since the 2020 Presidential Election was called for President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump campaign has pushed forward with lawsuits attempting to discredit validity of thousands of votes based on still unsubstantiated or fully discredited claims of fraud.
The votes being disputed are notably from states which were called for Biden, or in which Biden is currently leading.