TOMS RIVER, NJ – President Donald Trump’s political campaign and the Republican National Committee and the New Jersey Republican Party have filed a lawsuit in federal court to block Governor Phil Murphy’s attempt to usurp the 2020 election by ordering a vote-by-mail election and making it difficult for voters to cast their ballot in person.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday night seeks to invalidate Governor Phil Murphy’s Executive Order 177.
“This unconstitutional order violates New Jerseyans’ 14th Amendment right to vote, as well as the Elections Clause and the Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The unlawful power grab by New Jersey Democrats has demonstrably opened the state’s election system up to fraud and will lead to the disenfranchisement of New Jersey voters,” Trump’s campaign said in the filing. “In defense of free and fair elections, the Trump Campaign cannot allow for Democrat party bosses to undermine the integrity of our democracy.”
“In a direct usurpation of the legislature’s authority, Governor Murphy issued Executive Order 177 purporting to rewrite the election code for the November 2020 election. This brazen power grab was not authorized by state law and violates both the Elections Clause and Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” Trump said.
In New Jersey, the Governor is not the Legislature and thus cannot exercise legislative power.
“Across the country, the Democrat Party is launching an alarming assault on the safety and security of our elections,” Matt Morgan, Trump 2020 General Counsel said. “In the state of New Jersey, where their universal vote-by-mail system has already resulted in fraud and disenfranchisement, Governor Murphy continues to remove safeguards against abuse. With a stroke of his pen, the governor told his people their votes may not count – they may even be stolen – and that’s fine by him. Despite constant attacks on our election system, President Trump and the Trump Campaign will continue to defend our democracy.”
“Governor Murphy’s executive order is not only an abuse of power, but a recipe for disaster. In New Jersey’s primary election, dead people voted, a mail truck carrying ballots actually caught fire, countless voters saw their ballots rejected, and the Democrat Attorney General is prosecuting multiple people for fraud, yet Democrats still want to implement a rushed transition to an all mail election,” said Ronna McDaniel, Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. “This decision will sow chaos and risk disenfranchising New Jersey voters.”
Trump said Murphy’s Executive Order 177 violates New Jerseyans’ 14th Amendment right to vote, as well as the Elections Clause and the Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution and that the order treats in-person voting – the most secure voting method – as second class by deeming every in-person ballot cast as merely a provisional ballot.
“This is a clear admission that New Jersey’s election infrastructure cannot handle universal vote-by-mail,” Trump said.
Trump’s campaign echoed most of what Shore News Network has been reporting since the failed July election.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy called the state’s transition to universal vote-by-mail “overwhelmingly a success,” and quipped that New Jersey has “a higher probability of being hit by lightning than we do uncovering voter fraud.
“If he’s right about the odds, citizens of New Jersey should take shelter—they’re about to get struck by lightning,” Trump said.
In the last election, 10% of mail-in ballots were rejected, disenfranchising voters.
A 2016 investigation found 2,460 active voters on the state’s voter rolls who had been dead for at least five years, including nearly sixty who had cast ballots after their death. Under the New Jersey governor’s new order, all active registered voters – including the dead – would be sent ballots. Fraudsters in New Jersey have already been caught bribing voters with cash for their mail-in ballots. For New Jersey’s May primary, Governor Murphy shut down every polling place and embraced universal vote-by-mail. In Paterson New Jersey, there was evidence of massive voter fraud.
“In his haste, the Governor created a system that will violate eligible citizens’ right to vote. By ordering universal vote-by-mail, he has created a recipe for disaster. Fraudulent and invalid votes dilute the votes of honest citizens and deprive them of their right to vote in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Trump said.
As reported by Shore News Network, The July primary was plagued with voting problems. To begin, more than 40,000 ballots were rejected. That’s eight times as many rejected ballots as the 2016 primary election. Hudson County alone had over 6,000 rejected ballots this year, more than the entire state for 2016.
“To make matters worse, the primary suffered from constant delays. Although the Secretary of State had set a deadline of July 24 for counties to certify their election results, seven counties did not meet that deadline. The Secretary of State did not certify the results until over a month after the election,” Trump stated in the lawsuit.
Trump also noted that Republican candidate Hirsh Singh contested the results of the primary because “[t]ens of thousands of ballots remain uncounted, rejected or lost, disenfranchising tens of thousands of New Jersey voters.” For example, a number of ballots were mistakenly returned to voters due to confusion at the post office. Other ballots were misprinted and mailed to the wrong voters. And one county clerk reported that “her office got back about 1,500 ballots that they sent out,” attributing the mistake to “‘garbage data’ in the system.”
You can read the full complaint here.