Courtesy of Pam Martens
Presidential candidate Joe Biden has called for Americans to have patience as states continue counting their legitimately filed ballots. Donald Trump, instead, attacked the legitimate counting of these votes in numerous states and declared himself the winner around 2:30 a.m. this morning from the East Room of the White House. Trump said he wanted all vote counting to stop and would be taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump’s fit of pique over the continued counting of mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania is like the defendant who has killed his parents and is now demanding that the Judge show him mercy because he’s an orphan.
It was the Republican State Legislature in Pennsylvania that earlier this year refused the request by counties to be allowed, because of the pandemic, to begin counting the mailed-in ballots prior to election day. As of this morning, more than 1.4 million, timely received, mailed-in ballots remain to be counted in Pennsylvania.
After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that mailed-in ballots that are postmarked before or by election day can be received in the mail up to three days later and still be counted, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania sought to overturn that decision at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declined to take up the matter, stating that “there is simply not enough time at this late date to decide the question before the election.”
The delay in receiving mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania and other states may have been intentionally engineered by Trump’s Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, who is being sued in D.C. Federal Court by the NAACP. Members of the U.S. Senate, including Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, have filed an Amicus brief in that matter, telling the court the following:
“Amici therefore have a substantial interest in ensuring that this Court recognizes that when the Postal Service and Postmaster General failed to follow the procedures set forth in 39 U.S.C. § 3661—which requires that the Postal Regulatory Commission and members of the public have the opportunity to weigh in before the Postal Service implements certain changes—they not only violated the plain text of § 3661 but also acted counter to Congress’s plan in enacting that legislation…
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