Trump’s Lawsuit Building The Case For Discrediting The Election

Voters rights advocates in Pennsylvania are already pushing back against the Trump camp's claims, saying the lawsuit, is "an attempt to undermine the common-sense reforms that Pennsylvania’s elected officials, including Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and all 67 county board of elections members, implemented to ensure that voters are able to exercise their constitutional right to vote without risking their health during the COVID-19 pandemic."

The statement, by Scott Seeberg, state director of All Voting is Local, said the Pennsylvania action, along with a GOP-led attack on voter access in "Wisconsin in April are an all-out assault on the rights of voters to safely exercise their rights in the general election. Limiting voters’ access to vote by mail is no way to run a democracy. Pennsylvania’s elected officials are responsible for ensuring that the residents of the Commonwealth are able to vote safely at all times. This is nonnegotiable."

It's also proven immensely popular. As the Capital-Star's Cassie Miller reported last week, mail-in ballots were more popular than in-person voting in more than a third of Pennsylvania counties, including such Democratic strongholds as Allegheny, Bucks, and Montgomery counties, as well as Philadelphia.

Delegitimizing mail-in balloting is the first step toward driving down turnout in a critical battleground state. And if Trump should lose the Keystone State on Election Night, and that's currently a real possibility, the campaign will seize on mail-in balloting as a way to discredit the state-level results, and with it, the general election results overall.

The campaign needs to be careful what it wishes for. Along with the Philly suburbs, mail-in balloting was also hugely popular in Pennsylvania counties Trump carried in 2016, including Luzerne County, which birthed a whole cottage industry of "Where it Went Wrong for Democrats" books.

If Trump succeeds in short-circuiting mail-in balloting in Pennsylvania, he may also prompt his own supporters to stay home, winning a battle, but ultimately losing the war.

An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.