- Patricia McCullough and Carolyn Caruccio are battling for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the Pennsylvania primary election on May 16, 2023.
- Both Caruccio and McCullough have voiced their disapproval of the state’s broader mail-in voting laws.
- Allegations of election fraud and opposition to Pennsylvania’s expanded mail-in voting law continued during the 2021 and 2022 Republican primaries.
As President Donald Trump continues to make unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the fairness of elections and Pennsylvania’s mail-in balloting law are at stake in the state for vacant Supreme Court justice seats. It is a major issue in the Republican primary.
Two Republican primary rivals competing for a state Supreme Court seat in Tuesday’s primary this year have voiced their disapproval of Pennsylvania’s extensive mail-in voting law.
Montgomery County Judge Carolyn Caruccio said in an appearance last month that the vote-by-mail law is “bad” for the state and confidence in the election. She suggested the election was too “secret” and promised that she would be “willing to consider” the bill if it were introduced to the High Court.
Meanwhile, statewide Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough has repeatedly emphasized her decisions in election-related litigation, including a vote to repeal the vote-by-mail law.
“Election integrity, that seems to be the most important issue for the public right now,” McCullough told an interviewer on public TV in Erie last month.
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Both parties will select high court candidates to run in the general election in November. The state Supreme Court currently has four justices elected as Democrats and two as Republicans. The seat remains vacant following the death of Chief Justice Max Baer last fall.
Allegations of electoral fraud and opposition to Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot law continue in the 2021 and 2022 Republican primaries, and how Trump’s extreme and unsubstantiated election claims will influence the Republican campaign. indicates whether
In last year’s gubernatorial race, for example, all nine Republican candidates vowed to repeal a 2019 law that provided for no-excuses mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
A vote-by-mail ballot drop-box is set up outside Philadelphia City Hall on October 24, 2022. Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot law is a prominent issue in the state’s Republican primary for Supreme Court seats. (ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)
A third Republican-supported challenge to the vote-by-mail law is pending in state court, and Republicans have repeatedly appeared in court to force ballots cast by legitimate voters to be destroyed due to technical errors such as lost envelopes. signature or date.
Philadelphia’s Democratic primary is likely to determine the next mayor, but there are no clear favorites at this time.
President Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud have tended to target mail-in ballots and big cities such as Philadelphia.
During his campaign, McCullough has repeatedly spoken about overriding mail-in ballot laws and presiding over post-election legal challenges in 2020 that would tip Trump to victory in presidential battleground states.
“In the 2020 presidential election, I was the only judge in the nation to order the governor to suspend the election certification due to constitutional objections to the Mail-in Voting Act,” she said at Greencastle in March. told an audience at a rally. .
It provoked cheers and applause.
The lawsuit asked the court to discard 2.5 million mail-in ballots, about 70% of which were cast by Democrats. The state high court quickly overturned McCullough’s order.
Last year, McCullough participated three to two in a federal court ruling that allowed a separate challenge by Republican lawmakers to overturn the law. The judges’ votes followed partisan lines, with Republicans declaring the bill unconstitutional and Democrats constitutional, with the state’s Democratic-majority high court overturning it.
At the time, then-government Democrat Tom Wolfe accused Republicans of trying to obliterate the law for the “big lie” of President Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud allegations.
At the Erie County Republican Forum last month, Mr. Caruccio appeared to suggest that if challenged again in the High Court, he would run against a mail-in ballot law called Section 77.
“I welcome that it is brought before me again. It’s been very bad for our legitimate beliefs, ‘the system,’ Caruccio told the audience, answering questions about the law.
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She criticized how the state Supreme Court ruled in a case over mail-in ballots, suggesting that elections are too secretive to be trusted.
“We need to go to the polls and understand that our votes matter and that there is no hunky-panky going on behind the scenes,” she told the audience.
When asked to clarify Mr. Caruccio’s comments, his campaign cited “conflicting and sometimes unclear” court rulings on hand-dated mail-in ballots and “elections being barred from polling places.” He said he was referring to “a number of anecdotal comments I’ve heard from volunteers.” Philadelphia.
