Sean Parnell and Luke Negron — who are challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. Representatives Conor Lamb and Michael Doyle, respectively — filed suit Friday against the Allegheny County Board of Elections claiming the satellite offices met the Pennsylvania Election Code's definition of polling places where poll watchers should be allowed, since voters are able to request their ballots, fill them out and return them in the same visit.
"It is incontrovertible that the satellite offices are places where the citizens of Allegheny County can vote — at least for this year — and there is no question that thousands of voters have already exercised that right," the complaint said. "Defendants' denial of plaintiffs' right to have poll watchers at the satellite offices constitutes disparate treatment of voting locations in Allegheny County."
The candidates filed their lawsuit in Pittsburgh's federal court and are seeking an injunction allowing poll watchers into the satellite offices, as well as a ruling on whether tens of thousands of ballots already cast are valid.
Thomas King of Dillon McCandless King Coulter and Graham, general counsel to the Pennsylvania Republican Party and representing Parnell and Negron in the case, pointed to Allegheny County Elections Division Manager David Voye's announcement on Oct. 14 that due to an error by vendor Midwest Direct, almost 29,000 voters had gotten ballots with potential misprints.
Rather than sending those voters provisional ballots, Voye said the county's vendor would print and send corrected ballots and election staff would set aside any ballots returned from the affected batch.
King asserted that the reissued ballots violated the election code and set up the potential for errors, including voters returning the wrong ballot or bringing back a second ballot — which he said bolstered the case for poll watchers to be present who could compare the voters returning their ballots against the list of voters affected by the misprint.
"It's such a significant number of voters that it calls out for transparency," King told Law360 Monday.
King added that the Pittsburgh-area satellite offices were distinct from the ones used in Philadelphia — where a state-court judge ruled on Oct. 9 that poll watchers had no right to monitor election offices — because the Pittsburgh-area offices lacked the additional function of being a place where citizens could register to vote. The Philadelphia court's decision is awaiting a review by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.
"The satellite offices in Allegheny County are significantly for voting only," King said.
Allegheny County's Board of Elections announced the seven additional office locations in September, holding the first two weekends of voting and ballot returns on Oct. 10-11 and Oct. 17-18. An estimated 26,625 ballots were returned between the two weekends at the satellite locations and the main elections office in downtown Pittsburgh, county officials said. The offices are scheduled to be open for one additional weekend, Oct. 24-25, according to the complaint and the county's schedule.
On Oct. 14 and 15, two would-be poll watchers — at King's direction in his capacity as the state Republican Party's general counsel — applied for certification as poll watchers for the satellite offices, the lawsuit said. They were both denied the same day they applied because "poll watcher's certificates were not available and had not yet been printed," according to the affidavits they attached as exhibits to the complaint.
And while the U.S. District Court had previously rejected broader election challenges from President Donald Trump's reelection campaign so that the state's courts could weigh in on questions of state election law, King said the two weeks before Election Day — the deadline for Pennsylvanians' mail-in ballots to be postmarked — and the two weekends that poll watchers had already been denied access to the satellite offices weighed against the court making a similar abstention from hearing the candidates' case.
Representatives of Allegheny County declined to comment Monday.
The Republican candidates are represented by Thomas W. King III, Thomas E. Breth and Jordan P. Shuber of Dillon McCandless King Coulter, and Graham LLP.
Allegheny County is represented by Virginia Spencer Scott, Andrew F. Szefi and George M. Janocsko of the county law department.
The case is Parnell et al. v. Allegheny County Board of Elections et al., case number 2:20-cv-01570, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
--Editing by Steven Edelstone.
Update: This article has been updated with a case number and counsel information for Allegheny County.
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