Trump sues Bucks County over long lines, cut-offs for voters seeking to cast mail ballots

Donald Trump’s campaign sued Bucks County on Wednesday after long lines at county elections offices left some voters unable to request and cast their mail ballots in-person before a key state deadline this week.

The lawsuit, filed in Common Pleas Court, maintains county officials ignored guidance from the Pennsylvania Department of State that anyone in those lines by 5 p.m. Tuesday — the deadline for requesting a mail ballot — should have been able to file their request.

Instead, the suit alleges, voters were repeatedly turned away — in some cases as early as 2:30 p.m. — as queues grew so long outside the county’s administration building and satellite election offices that it would take staff the rest of the office’s hours of operations to work through them.

“Instead of complying with the letter and spirit of the Election Code, as well as the directive from the Secretary of the Commonwealth, the board ordered security officials to remove some voters … some of whom had been standing in line for hours only to be turned away,” wrote Wally S. Zimolong, a GOP election lawyer representing the campaign in their suit.

The filing — which also names the Republican National Committee and the campaign of GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick as plaintiffs — asked a judge to briefly extend the state’s deadline for requesting a mail ballot until 5 p.m. Wednesday for anyone who was turned away.

But four hours before that requested deadline, the judge assigned to the case had not scheduled a hearing on the request.

» READ MORE: Republicans are frustrated over long lines, early cut-offs for in-person mail voting in Bucks County. It underscores limits of Pa.’s law.

The lawsuit — first touted by Michael Whatley during a Trump campaign rally Tuesday evening in Allentown — is the latest in a flurry of litigation and complaints over voting that is buffeting Pennsylvania, a key battleground state that could play a decisive role in deciding the victor of next week’s presidential contest.

Also Wednesday, the state Democratic Party sued Erie County over ongoing mail ballot issues that it said had affected between 10,000 and 20,000 voters. Meanwhile, the state Commonwealth Court issued a ruling that injected fresh uncertainty into the hotly contested debate over whether undated mail ballots should be counted in the official tallies.

Responding to those issues, Trump took to his social media platform Wednesday morning to falsely declare: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before.”

State and county election administrators maintain he and his allies are capitalizing on the types of routine issues that arise and are resolved by the system during every election cycle, to paint a false picture of chaos and fraud.

Bucks County officials declined to comment on Trump’s lawsuit Wednesday. But as lines were cut off Tuesday afternoon outside the county administration building, elections workers distributed stacks of mail ballot applications on clipboards to those at the end of the line.

Voters were given the chance to fill out an application and choose whether they wanted it mailed to them or to pick them up Wednesday.

And despite the frustrations of those who’d waited hours to cast a mail ballot in person only to be turned away, they still had — and still have — other options for casting a ballot.

Before Tuesday’s ballot request deadline, they could have applied for a mail ballot online — rather than wait in line for hours — then could have either mailed-in their ballot or dropped it off at county offices at any point before Election Day.

Those who missed the deadline can still vote at the polls on Nov. 5.

Staff writer William Bender contributed to this article.