The PA GOP is contesting the votes even before the polls open

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Opinion staff
| USA TODAY

After months – years – of anticipation and rhetoric, Election Day is finally here. After a final pitch to voters in the pivotal states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have reached the end of their unprecedented campaigns.

Almost 78 million Americans have already cast their ballots earlyand millions more will head to the polls on Tuesday, including our columnists. And while all eyes are on Trump vs. Harris – just be another political contest or a the fight to save American democracydepending on who you ask – the next president of the United States it’s not the only race that captivates voters. Or us.

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In Pennsylvania, the polls hadn’t even opened before local boards of elections began filing thousands of challenges to ballots cast by people living abroad.

The experts from Save our Republica non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to protecting elections, discussed it in a press briefing Monday afternoon.

John Jones III, a former Pennsylvania federal judge appointed by then-President George W. Bush, noted that a lawsuit filed by six Republican members of the US House of Pennsylvania tried the same maneuver last month before being struck down in federal court.

“Thousands of ballots were contested,” Jones said. “So the election offices will have to go through them and make a decision.”

Jones also predicted that councils “will be pretty quick to work through these and deny the challenges” as they tend to follow the same approach.

The gist of the argument: I argue that state election officials are not doing enough to verify the identities of US military service members and their spouses who vote while stationed in other countries.

Response by US District Judge Christopher Conner Last week – members of Congress waited too close to the election, had no standing to sue and “failed to articulate a viable cause of action.”

— Chris BrennanUSA TODAY