New Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump appeared to misunderstand how elections work on Fox News Sunday as she defended a lawsuit filed last week in the state of Nevada by the RNC and the Trump campaign.
The Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign and the Nevada Republican Party on Friday announced a lawsuit against Nevada’s secretary of state for allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to four days after the election . The four-day law was passed by Democrats in 2021, but ballots must be postmarked by the end of Election Day to be considered valid.
The campaign’s goal is to invalidate mail-in ballots that are not counted on Election Day. This is the first lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign this year, but the RNC has filed other lawsuits in other states across the country, including Mississippi and North Dakota. According to the Associated Press, 19 states allow mail-in ballots to be received and counted after the election.
An RNC press release announcing the Nevada lawsuit described the move as a “critical step in our unprecedented election integrity operation to fight for voter trust and fair elections across the country.”
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement: “Nevada’s ballot receipt deadline clearly violates federal law and undermines the integrity of the state’s elections. Ballots received within a few days of Election Day should not be counted.
Nevada’s Democratic Secretary of State, Francisco Aguilar, told the Associated Press: “I hope the RNC spends as much time and energy educating voters on how to participate in elections as it does in dedicated to prosecuting the State of Nevada. »
On Sunday, Lara, married to the former president’s second-eldest son, Eric Trump, defiantly echoed her party’s message. However, it appears she may have forgotten a fundamental point about how elections work: It is the counting of votes, not a day on the calendar, that signals the end of an election.
Bartiromo: I see the RNC is filing a lawsuit in a battleground state to stop counting ballots after Election Day.
Lara Trump: Yeah. Well, that’s absolutely true. You cannot have ballots counted once the election is over. pic.twitter.com/P1FENwGt0l
– Acyn (@Acyn) May 5, 2024
Talk with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, she asserted: “You can’t have the ballots counted, Maria, once the election is over. And right now, this is one of many lawsuits that we’re filing across this country to ensure that that happens, that we have free, fair, transparent elections.
“So in Nevada, as you pointed out, we say we want Election Day to be the last day that mail-in ballots can be counted,” she continued.
Trump faced backlash following comments on social media, including from former American tennis star Andy Roddick: “I have a super weird meter…….. An election is not cannot be completed until the votes have been counted. So…” he wrote on Xechoing similar comments critics.
“It would disenfranchise foreign military personnel,” Roddick added.
Lara Trump: Republican voters want RNC to pay Donald’s legal bills
Trump then boasted of a victory in the Pennsylvania courts; however, the case clarified whether mail-in ballots should be counted after Election Day if they were not properly postmarked. Last month, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling from November that said mail-in ballots could be counted up to three days after Election Day if they were received but not were not correctly postmarked.
“If this decision stands, thousands of Pennsylvania voters could lose their votes because of a trivial administrative error,” Mike Lee, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in a press release. “The ballots in question in this case come from voters who were eligible and who met the filing deadline. By passing the Civil Rights Act, Congress put in place a safeguard to ensure that states do not erect unnecessary barriers that disenfranchise voters. It is regrettable that the court did not recognize this principle. Voters are losing because of this decision.”
Trump still claimed victory: “A few weeks ago, we won a major lawsuit in the state of Pennsylvania. They wanted, of course, to remove the dates from mail-in ballots, the Democrats, in an effort to make it easier to cheat. We pushed that back. We won, and it set a precedent for the whole country.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
Get the Daily Beast’s biggest scoops and scandals delivered straight to your inbox. Register now.
Stay informed and get unlimited access to The Daily Beast’s unrivaled reporting. Subscribe now.
yahoo
