Pennsylvania is asking the state's highest court to use its extraordinary authority to take over another election-related lawsuit with critical questions that it says must be settled as soon as possible in a partisan fight between Democrats and Republicans in the presidential battleground state.
In a Sunday night filing, state lawyers asked the state Supreme Court to take over a case filed last month by the state Democratic Party and currently pending in a lower court.
The defendant is the top election official for Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.
In many ways, the Democratic Party's lawsuit is asking state courts to rule the opposite of what President Donald Trump's campaign and the national Republican Party are seeking in federal court in Pittsburgh.
“These issues are unquestionably of immediate public importance,” the state attorney general's office wrote in its 60-page filing. “Both voters and election officials need clarity on these critical election issues as soon as possible.”
The state's filing came three days after Wolf's administration, citing a warning by the U.S. Postal Service about its delivery times, asked the court to extend deadlines for mail-in ballots to be received in the November election.
This lawsuit also asks the court to allow the use of drop boxes and uphold the requirement in state law that poll watchers be registered voters from the county.
