2024 US Presidential Election: Republican lawsuit targeting Pennsylvania’s overseas votes rejected by US judge

A U.S. judge on Tuesday dismissed a Republican lawsuit seeking to force the election battleground state of Pennsylvania to strengthen its procedures for verifying ballots submitted by military and overseas voters.

Six Republican members of the US House of Representatives seek re-election on November 5 Lawsuit filed against top Pennsylvania election officials Republicans had argued that the state improperly exempted voters abroad from having to verify their identity documents, creating a vulnerability to fraudulent voting.

Pennsylvania is one of a handful of closely contested states expected to decide the outcome of the US presidential race Republican Donald Trump against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner dismissed the case in Harrisburg, ruling that the plaintiffs had waited too long to file their complaints because the procedures in Pennsylvania had been in place for years.

The case was one of dozens across the country in which Republicans are challenging voting procedures or trying to purge voter rolls to ensure people don’t vote illegally. This legal assault is faltering. Over the past three weeks, Trump’s allies have suffered at least 11 court losses.

Conner also said the plaintiffs’ attorney, Erick Kaardal, did not present evidence of foreign influence on Pennsylvania’s overseas ballots. The judge wrote that when he pressed Kaardal to produce such evidence at an Oct. 18 hearing, the attorney “effectively admitted that all he had were his concerns.”

“Plaintiffs cannot rely on imagined fears of stranger abuse to excuse their carelessness,” Conner wrote.

“We do not want votes from Iran or Russia, or invalid vote counts,” Kaardal said at a hearing in Harrisburg federal court on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee and Pennsylvania’s top election official.

Kaardal did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

This month, judges in the battleground states of Michigan and North Carolina also rejected lawsuits filed by the Republican National Committee to block the votes of some Americans living abroad.

In those cases, Republicans argued that states improperly allowed U.S. citizens living abroad who had never lived in those states to vote there.