I have a better understanding, now, of both what the GOP is trying to claim and what we're waiting for immediately.
First, a quote from Tuesday from Rudy G. that I totally agree with:
“The Trump campaign has been treated totally differently than the Bush campaign,” Giuliani said
It went uncorrected and unchallenged in court. Must be true!
The basis of the Giuliani request to throw out all those ballots is a combination of unequal access to watching and unequal handling of "curing" ballots. The first of those is already in deep trouble, as that question has been resolved against them by a
different court case:
The state’s highest court rejected the argument that workers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh processed approximately 700,000 mail-in ballots out of sight of GOP onlookers. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, said campaign officials couldn’t check the ballots for errors or inconsistencies, as is required.
~per numerous sources
The second claim is totally true, but not helpfully so for any number of reasons. The total number of "cured" ballots was in the low hundreds, so tossing them does no good. The claim, then, is that somehow the courts are supposed to address the many ballots in other places whose casters were
not permitted to cure them, but this is odd, because the Trump campaign is not suing
those counties!
But that argument faces a further hurdle, one frequently encountered in cases about mandamus but which seems to apply here, as well: the Pennsylvania law
permits actions by the election officials to contact a voter to get a ballot cured, but
it does not require them to do so, which makes it discretionary and that sort of difference by officials is expressly permitted, not rising to a difference between how citizens are treated unless it is done unevenly by officials within an individual jurisdiction (county, city) rather than from one county to the next. NYT notes that "Before the election, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, advised county election officials that “curing” absentee ballots (the term for fixing mistakes like a missing signature) was permitted but not required." The GOP knew this and their failure to challenge that position prior to the election is also key. It gives a very strong scent of "but it would have been okay, had we won" that courts frequently find odious.
The Trump beef is with the counties that
chose not to provide their voters with that option.
And it still would not have amounted to enough votes to make a dent in the 82,357 vote lead.
That leaves them hoping the federal courts will in essence overrule the PA Supreme Court, though this is not an appeal of that decision. Even then, they have a further couple issues. One is an election day decision, again per the NYT: "On Election Day, Republican lawyers acknowledged in court that the party’s observers were present at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia when votes were being counted. “I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?” Judge Paul S. Diamond of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania asked." He nonetheless permitted them to get a bit closer - but it is going to make tossing those votes out a lot harder.
And, again, if there was no such suit in Allegheny County, then the basis for retroactive relief is tough.
But right now, we're waiting to find out the results of the motion to dismiss that the state and counties made, a response to which was supposed to have been entered last night by 5pm.
Poll
5 (45.5%)