Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano discussed the case of nine discarded military ballots found in Pennsylvania on Friday with comments critical of the prosecutors.
Napolitano said, “Usually an investigation of election irregularities doesn’t occur until after Election Day, because there’s no such thing as an irregularity until all the votes are counted.”
He continued, “When you vote by absentee or when you vote by paper ballot, they send you a package. You fill out the ballot, you don’t sign it, you seal it in an envelope, and you sign the envelope. Then you must put that envelope containing your ballot in another envelope, and you put that whole package in the mail. If, when the package arrives, there is no inner envelope, then the ballot is deemed — their word, not mine — naked and the vote does not count. That may seem unfair, but it’s the law in every state in the union that has this practice. It’s a fact as I myself have followed when I have voted before Election Day, pursuant to procedures here in New Jersey. When these nine military ballots arrived, the election people made the mistake of opening them up, and when they opened them up, they separated the ballots from their envelope. Therefore they were deemed naked. That is harshly unfair to the nine military people who voted, but they have the opportunity, comparing handwriting, etc., to reassemble everything so those votes can count.”
John Roberts said, “These were opened to see if they were applications or if they were actual ballots and as you said, they were deemed to be naked ballots and so they were discarded. Is there any chance those would ever be counted, and if this is happening here in Luzerne, is it happening across Pennsylvania?”
Napolitano said, “Well, that’s a legitimate fear and John that fear, there may be a basis for that fear elsewhere. Forty million Americans voted by mail. We didn’t hear any complaints. This year it’s going to be more than 80 million, and a lot of the election officials are unfamiliar with and, in my opinion, unprepared for the onslaught of mail they are going to get.”
He added, “First of all, those ballots shouldn’t have been opened until Election Day, but as you say, the observation of the outside of the ballot, containing the inner envelope which contained the ballot, looked like an application for the absentee ballot. That’s the government’s fault. They shouldn’t make these ballots confusing to even the government officials that authorize them. And, this is what’s made this incendiary, John, the feds, the federal prosecutors should not have revealed that these votes were for President Trump. This just feeds fuel to the fire. When they investigate an election, they don’t say who the votes were for until after the investigation was over, because it may prove that there was no wrongdoing.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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