World News – CA – Investigation into ‘rejected’ military ballots in Pennsylvania becomes fuel of campaign scandal – likely a taste of what to come next month

HARRISBURG, PA – The press release from a US lawyer in Pennsylvania was provocative: Nine mailed military ballots had been « rejected » by the local election office in a county swing of one of the most important states of the presidential battlefield

All were marked for President Donald Trump, he said Then came another press release with key details changed – the presidential choice was unknown on two of the ballots because they had been resealed – but still little explanation of what happened and whether investigators believed a criminal act had been committed

Despite the information vacuum, the White House press secretary told reporters that « the ballots for the president » had been « rejected. » The rapid response arm of the Trump campaign has pushed the release of Trump’s own Justice Department under the headline « Democrats try to steal elections » – ignoring the fact that the Luzerne County local government is Republican-controlled Conservative voices have used press release as fuel to amplify the survey on social networks

Thursday’s hubbub and the accompanying internet outrage for a handful of ballots are likely a taste of what will happen in the month leading up to the presidential election, which is being held in the amid a global pandemic that has sparked a wave of mail-in ballot demands as Trump continues to launch unsubstantiated mail-in-ballot attacks

It was Trump, after being briefed on the case by Attorney General William Barr, who first revealed publicly that the rejected ballots were cast for him He did so in an interview earlier Thursday with Fox News Radio in which he used the survey to cast doubt on postal voting The radio interview took place hours before the US Pennsylvania attorney’s office released its press release on the investigation to reporters

“If the past is a prologue, we’ll see more,” said Wendy Weiser, election specialist and democracy program director at the Brennan Center for Justice “We are in an unprecedented situation where a sitting president of the states -Unis and a candidate for re-election have long sought and sought to undermine and discredit the election »

Weiser said it was important for officials to provide detailed information on any voting issues that arise, which occur in each election cycle For example, officials with the US Postal Service said this week he was investigating a report that an unknown number of ballots were among other mail found in a ditch near a freeway intersection in Wisconsin, another presidential battlefield state

Officials have so far released little information in this case, including whether the ballots were blank and on their way to voters or whether they had been filled out and returned to the local election office

Experts say lack of information in these cases opens the door to speculation and conspiracy theories

More details emerged in the Pennsylvania case on Friday Federal officials questioned whether a newly hired temporary election worker might have mishandled the ballots Besides unknowns about the investigation itself, questions persist about how the justice ministry handled the case

The first word of a federal investigation into « unspecified problems with a small number of mail-in ballots » was released in a statement from the Luzerne district attorney on Tuesday There was no mention of Trump, and there was little attention to the case beyond local reporting

That all changed when the office of US Attorney Dave Freed released Thursday’s statement, an unusual move given US Justice Department guidance to generally refrain from commenting on any investigation – especially one involving a election in which voters are already voting In addition, the mention of the favored presidential candidate by the ballots has raised concerns among electoral law experts and voter advocacy groups (the ballots include races for all kinds of functions and issues, not just running for president)

The US Pennsylvania attorney’s office informed senior officials at Justice Department headquarters earlier this week of a small number of ballots that had been rejected, a person familiar with the case said. to the Associated Press Barr told Trump the Justice Department will look into the matter before the department publicly confirms the investigation, the person said

The US attorney’s office had received requests from local reporters about the ballots, the person said, and released the statement – which included specific details about the ballots – after Trump revealed the ‘existence of investigation in interview with Fox News Radio The person was unable to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity

Department of Justice policy places limits on contact with the White House in order to guard against politicization of law enforcement issues, although various memos issued over time have allowed the department to inform the White House of pending investigations or cases in specific circumstances The memos recognize that such communication may be more regular when it comes to matters of national security

“This is a clear politicization of the work of the Justice Department in the midst of an active general election,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law “It sounded like a thinly veiled attempt to bring President Trump’s false mail fraud claims to life »

The number of public Facebook and Instagram posts mentioning rejected newsletters quickly skyrocketed, receiving nearly 900,000 interactions – likes or comments – in less than 24 hours, according to Facebook’s CrowdTangle, which tracks public posts

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Many of the most popular articles on rejected ballots have been published by the Trump campaign, pro-Trump accounts, or conservative news outlets and used to support Trump’s doubts about the voting process by mail In particular, the ballots in question came from soldiers, who are sent out earlier than other voters in each election.

Freed, a Republican nominated by Trump, said in a letter sent Thursday night to the local election office that the FBI had recovered nine military ballots from a trash can Seven of them were ballots filled out without the envelopes voters mailed, and all were chosen for Trump The other two ballots had already been handed out in envelopes by unidentified election officials, Freed said Four other empty envelopes for postal votes were also recovered

Freed said Pennsylvania law prohibits polling stations from opening mail-in ballots before election day Investigators have learned that military mail envelopes and absence request envelopes are so similar that election officials « believed that following the protocol for keeping unopened envelopes » would cause them to miss voting requests, so they opened them

However, it is still unclear how or why they ended up in the trash Friday, a statement from the county manager called it an ‘error’ discovered by an official and reported to law enforcement

When asked why he leaked information about the voter-backed presidential candidate, Freed said in an email to the PA that the ballot information was factual and that he was « vital that voters who sent military ballots be made aware of the possibility that their ballot has been opened and rejected »

JJ Abbott, executive director of Commonwealth Communications, a liberal advocacy group, expressed concern that Freed provided information on Trump ballots without much context on what happened

« I just think that given the high level of rhetoric, especially from the President, on the postal vote, this is of great concern given the lack of details provided, » Abbott said.

Cassidy reported from Atlanta Editors Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press in Washington; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Anthony Izaguirre in Lindenhurst, New York; and Amanda Seitz in Chicago contributed to this report

Ballot, Donald Trump, Pa., United States Department of Justice