The Trump campaign is continuing to lose its legal campaigns around the country.
Thursday afternoon marked the end of Republicans' challenge to mail-in votes in Montgomery County outside Philadelphia, where the GOP wanted to invalidate absentee ballots that were "cured" after they were submitted. And in the already-called Michigan, a judge threw out another Trump campaign complaint looking for more oversight over the ballot count there.
In Pennsylvania and much of the country, people who submit ballots early are allowed to fix, or "cure," their ballot if an elections official finds a problem with it — a missing signature or an unsealed envelope, for instance. Republicans filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the legitimacy of those fixed ballots, arguing Pennsylvania's Supreme Court had already decided those ballots can't be counted. But U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Savage was clearly skeptical in a Wednesday hearing, Politico reports.
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The Montgomery County case was especially consequential given that it's a heavily Democratic area where votes could tip the whole state of Pennsylvania — and thus the whole presidential race — into Democratic nominee Biden's favor. But the GOP withdrew its case Thursday afternoon in one of several losses to its legal challenges around the country, with no cured ballots coming down with it.
Michigan meanwhile already went in Biden's favor Wednesday night, but the Trump campaign still launched a lawsuit to challenge the count of ballots in the battleground state. Trump's team demanded Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson allow poll watchers to view ballot counting and hand over video of ballot drop boxes around the state. But a Michigan judge determined Thursday that Benson had already allowed "meaningful access" for poll watchers, and that there was no legal basis for the surveillance, the Detroit Free Press reports.
