Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron to join legal action against Pennsylvania mail-in ballots

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron is joining the Republican Attorneys General Association to bring legal action against the process of counting mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

He is one of 10 Republican attorneys general who signed onto an amicus brief supporting a Republican lawsuit arguing that absentee ballots received after November 3 should not be counted in Pennsylvania and urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.

The lawsuit is unlikely to change the outcome of the election, experts say.

“Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” said Eric Schmitt, the Attorney General of Missouri in a press conference about the brief. “We have to ensure that every legal vote cast is counted and every illegal vote cast is not counted.”

Cameron was originally slated to be a part of the press conference, but had a “scheduling conflict.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 4-3 last month that ballots should be counted if they were postmarked by Election Day and received by November 6. Republicans are in the process of appealing the ruling.

While the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a motion to put the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling on hold while Republicans appealed, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday ordered all Pennsylvania counties to keep any ballots received after November 3 separate. Most counties were already complying with Alito’s demands, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

At least three members of the U.S. Supreme Court — Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch — have indicated that they would block the decision to allow a longer deadline for receiving ballots.

“This one seems to be entirely political,” said Josh Douglas, an election law expert at the University of Kentucky. “That’s an interesting legal question, but it’s not going to determine the outcome of the election, because the margin is a lot larger than the number of those ballots.”

It is unclear how many ballots would be put into question, but Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro told CNN the number would be several thousand ballots. President-elect Joe Biden is ahead of President Donald Trump by around 45,000 votes in the uncertified election tally, so it is unclear whether a Supreme Court ruling not to count ballots after Election Day would affect the outcome in Pennsylvania.

Biden also leads Trump by a razor thin margin in Arizona and Georgia. If he were to maintain victories in those states, whether or not he won Pennsylvania would not affect the outcome of the election.

Douglas said that the issue before the Supreme Court is basically who can decide to extend the deadline for absentee ballots. If the Supreme Court were to rule that only a state legislature could make that decision, it would throw Kentucky’s election process into question.

Kentucky counted ballots so long as they were postmarked by Election Day, because of a bipartisan agreement between Secretary of State Michael Adams and Governor Andy Beshear.

“If that’s the issue, Kentucky allowed ballots to come in after November 3rd,” Douglas said. “Did [Cameron] have a problem with that?”

In a statement on Twitter, Cameron indicated that the difference between Kentucky and Pennsylvania, is that Pennsylvania was able to count ballots where the postmark was not legible.

“What happens in other states during a presidential election matters to Kentuckians because we are electing our President and Vice President,” Cameron wrote. “Legal matters like the one involving Pennsylvania set a judicial precedent that not only affects this election, but future elections as well.

There have been no legal challenges to Kentucky’s decision to disallow ballots postmarked by Election Day.

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