Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has once again called on the Supreme Court to block North Carolina’s absentee ballot play after failing to strike it down in U.S. federal appeals court.
Trump is determined to block North Carolina in the state’s plan to count absentee ballots that arrive after the Nov. 3 Election Day, according to Reuters [1]. This comes after the Trump campaign suffered a defeat last week when the U.S. federal appeals court left the plan in place in North Carolina.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 12-3 vote last Tuesday to deny the Trump campaign’s request to stop the North Carolina State Board of Elections from tallying ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 that arrive before Nov. 12. The Trump campaign had teamed up with the North Carolina Republican Party to argue in court that the plan violated the state’s election code.
The Trump campaign sent a filing to the Supreme Court on Sunday calling for the plan to be halted.
“An emergency injunction is urgently needed to ensure that our federal election is governed by the statutes enacted by the people’s duly elected representatives, and not by the whims of an unelected state agency,” the Trump campaign wrote in the filing.
Fourteen Democratic state attorney generals, plus Karl Racine of Washington, D.C., spoke out on Monday in a friend-of-the-court brief to urge the Supreme Court to deny Trump’s request. They argued that North Carolina’s new deadline was a reasonable accommodation amidst COVID-19 and possible delays with the Postal Service.
“As the primary managers of the election process and protectors of the public health, states have an obligation to protect each citizen’s constitutional right to vote while ensuring that this right can be exercised safely,” they wrote, according to The Hill [2].
This ruling could be a game changer for the election, given the fact that North Carolina is seen as a crucial battle state, with polls suggesting that the race between Trump and Joe Biden is particularly tight there.
This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on October 26, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette [3] and is used by permission.
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Trump Attacks Biden For Being ‘Disrespectful’ To Obama [5]
Joy Behar Calls For Trump To Be Arrested And Charged With ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ [6]