The campaign filed suit last week alleging that the city's Board of Elections had run afoul of state law by blocking poll watchers from accessing the newly opened satellite offices on grounds that the sites did not constitute official polling places as contemplated under Pennsylvania election law.
The suit came after Trump, as part of a broader barrage of questionable voter fraud claims he's made in recent weeks, warned during his debate with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden that the move to bar his poll watchers was a sign that "bad things happen in Philadelphia."
But Judge Gary Glazer in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas suggested during a virtual hearing in the case on Tuesday that a major expansion of mail-in voting enacted by the state legislature last year made no mention of poll watchers as it tasked local election officials to provide on-site service giving mail-in ballots to voters and accepting completed ballots.
"I'm just talking here, but it seems to me that if I were to grant the plaintiff the relief requested, I would be amending the election statute," he said. "I would be adding poll watchers where they weren't really mentioned."
The court battle comes as the Board of Elections last week opened the doors to its first seven of a planned 17 new satellite offices in Philadelphia designed to provide a one-stop shop for voters to request, receive, complete and return mail-in ballots.
Linda Kerns, an attorney representing the Trump campaign, told Judge Glazer on Tuesday that the board had essentially converted the offices into polling places by allowing voters to request, complete and return mail-in ballots in one trip.
"Ask anyone who is walking into those offices what is going on there," she said. "They all say the same thing: voting."
But Benjamin Field, an attorney with the city solicitor's office, countered that state law provisions pertaining to poll watchers clearly applied only to activities on Election Day itself and that "polling places" were strictly defined as "the room provided in each election district for voting."
"We cannot change that meaning by colloquially using the word 'vote,'" he said.
Kerns asserted that the General Assembly had failed to contemplate that a local elections board could move to open the kind of satellite offices Philadelphia has launched, but Judge Glazer suggested that the General Assembly's failure to address the situation didn't give him leeway to impose additional obligations.
"I'm a judge, I'm not supposed to be the legislature," he said. "That's why we have a legislature."
Statutory specifics notwithstanding, Kerns said that as a public policy matter, it was important to ensure transparency in the electoral process.
"We want to be there and shine a light on the process," she said. "Are people bringing or voting more than one ballot at a time? Are people being improperly asked for information they shouldn't be asked for, like a Social Security number? Problems do happen in Philadelphia, judge."
Judge Glazer said he would issue a ruling "in due course."
The Trump campaign is represented by Ronald Hicks Jr. and Carolyn McGee of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP and Linda Kerns of the Law Offices of Linda A. Kerns LLC.
The city is represented by City Solicitor Marcel Pratt, and Benjamin Field, Sean McGrath and Michael Pfautz of the City of Philadelphia Law Department.
The case is Donald J. Trump for President Inc. v. Philadelphia County Board of Elections et al., case number 200902035, before the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.
--Editing by Steven Edelstone.
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