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Election litigation working through courts weeks after election

The election was held three weeks ago and it’s been at least a week that the outcome — at least on the presidential level — has been clear.

But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t many challenges working their way through the state court system.

While there have been no ballot challenges in Warren County, many of the challenges throughout the state are for issues that the Warren County Board of Elections approved.

Case in point are a series of cases which the Supreme Court has rejected the arguments by the Trump campaign.

The Philadelphia County Board of Elections approved 1,211 ballots with just a signature on the declaration, 1,259 with the address not on the declaration, 533 with no printed name, 4,466 with no printed name or address and 860 without the address on the declaration.

A case with similar challenges is working through the system out of Bucks County.

Ballots such as those were counted by the Warren County Board of Elections.

In Allegheny County, a state Senate candidate, Nicole Ziccarelli has challenged the “acceptance, canvassing and computation of certain mail-in ballots containing undated voter declarations” by the Allegheny County Board of Elections.

A total of 2,349 ballots are part of this challenge.

The case was dismissed by the county court of common pleas and wound its way to the Supreme Court, which recently ruled that the ballots are to be counted.

The Supreme Court also shut down a challenge from the campaign regarding how close poll watchers would be permitted to be at ballot counting sites.

A Montgomery County case brought by the Trump campaign challenged 600 mail-in votes where the address below the declaration on the outer envelope was not complete.

The county court ruled that the Board of Elections didn’t require the signatures and that, as a result, “voters should not be disenfranchised by reasonably relying upon voting instructions provided by election officials which are consistent with the Election Code.”

Additional cases out of Westmoreland County are challenging the counting of provisional ballots with envelope and signature issues. Those cases appear to have been brought by state Senate candidates.

The broadest challenge was brought by a group of people including Congressman Mike Kelly. The group is attempting to have the law that instituted mail-in voting, approved by a Republican legislature, deemed unconstitutional. They ask, in addition to that finding, that the court prohibit the certification of the vote.

That case is currently with the Commonwealth Court, one step below the state Supreme Court. Briefs and answers were filed on Tuesday.

A new case out of Chester County alleges discrepancies between signatures in the poll books and votes cast, specifically in regards to a state Senate race.

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