New Trump campaign lawsuit targets late-arriving Georgia mail ballots

The Trump campaign on Wednesday filed a lawsuit that seeks to require election officials in Chatham County, Ga., to identify and separate allegedly late-arriving mail ballots, presumably so the votes can be more easily tossed if the campaign ultimately prevails in its legal challenge.

Included with the lawsuit is an affidavit from a registered poll watcher who says he witnessed 53 mail ballots that arrived after the state’s 7 p.m. Election Day deadline being mixed in with timely ballots.

“We will not allow Democrat election officials to steal this election from President Trump with late, illegal ballots,” deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said in a statement. “President Trump and the Georgia Republican Party have filed suit to require all Georgia counties to separate any and all late-arriving ballots from all legally cast ballots to ensure a free, fair election in which only legal, valid ballots count.”

President Trump leads Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 1 percentage point in Georgia with an estimated 95 percent of the vote counted there, according to The New York Times.

The Trump campaign has filed a flurry of litigation in several states as Biden’s projected lead in the Electoral College has widened.  

Several Trump campaign lawsuits in Pennsylvania, which holds the most electoral votes of the states that remain in play, also seek to invalidate certain mail ballots, a voting method that Biden supporters favored over Trump’s backers.