Election officials and lawyers are bewildered by a press release from the Department of Justice, in which the department said it had begun an inquiry into a handful of military ballots in a northeastern Pennsylvania county.
On Thursday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced it had opened an inquiry into nine ballots that were found "discarded," without elaborating on what exactly that meant. All nine ballots had been cast for Trump, the release said. "We're just really confused", said one election official we talked to. "I mean one day, President Trump literally tells us to get rid of the ballots and then the next day—when we follow through with the President's request—the Department of Justice begins an investigation. It's just really confusing." The election official was referring to a press briefing at the White House, On Wednesday night, when President Trump—who was responding to a question about whether or not he would peacefully transition power if he was to lose the election—said, "Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very...there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation". President Trump weighed into the controversy earlier in the day on Fox News Radio. "These ballots are a horror show. They found six ballots in an office yesterday in a garbage can. They were Trump ballots -- eight ballots in an office yesterday in -- but in a certain state and they were -- they had Trump written on it, and they were thrown in a garbage can," he said. David Laufman, a DOJ veteran, weighed in on the conversation and shared some thoughts on why this kind of response from the DOJ is not only problematic, but also unprecedented.
There is, however, a decent cause for some concern. In Pennsylvania, ballots cannot be opened or discarded until 7 a.m. on Election Day. A letter from U.S. Attorney David Freed, released after the statement, provided some new details of the problem, and seemingly attributed at least part of the problem to sloppy work by election administrators — who might have confused actual completed ballots with mere applications for ballots. "[O]ur investigation has revealed that all or nearly all envelopes received in the elections office were opened as a matter of course," read the letter from Freed, addressed to Shelby Watchilla, the director of elections for Luzerne County. "It was explained to investigators the envelopes used for official overseas, military, absentee and mail-in ballot requests are so similar, that the staff believed that adhering to the protocol of preserving envelopes unopened would cause them to miss such ballot requests." The Department of Justice did not respond to our request for further comments. For now, this is a wait and see, but apparently the ballots President Trump was asking to get rid of, were not the ballots being cast for him. |