Judge rules against Pennsylvania GOP in poll watching suit
U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert on Thursday ruled that Pennsylvania GOP volunteers can not travel to other cities to monitor polls.
{mosads}The decision comes after the Pennsylvania Republican Party filed a lawsuit in late October arguing that the GOP volunteers have a constitutional right to watch polls anywhere.
Pappert argued that allowing such monitoring would mean that “poll watchers would be allowed to roam the commonwealth on election day for the first time in the Election Code’s seventy-nine year history.”
“There is good reason to avoid last-minute intervention in a state’s election process,” the judge wrote according to Bloomberg.
The judge also also noted that the GOP waited to file the lawsuit until 18 days before Election Day.
In the lawsuit, the Pennsylvania Republican Party argued that as a result of the restriction, “candidates, political parties and political bodies are unjustifiably burdened in their attempts to locate available, qualified registered electors who can serve as poll watchers.”
According to the GOP group, the purpose of the lawsuit was “to ensure the integrity of the vote on behalf of its numerous federal and state electoral candidates,” Bloomberg reported.
The legal complaint launched against the state came in the wake of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s call for election poll watchers.
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