A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from President Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday that aimed to stop New Jersey’s Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy from sending hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots to all registered voters.
U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote that the Trump campaign’s concerns about the potential for voter fraud “are largely conjectural, hypothetic, and lacking in imminence,” according to Bloomberg.
But recent reports prove that New Jersey’s elections have been seriously tainted by voter fraud.
Just this summer, a New Jersey judge ruled that an election in Paterson, N.J., was too fraudulent to be counted and ordered a new vote to be held. And during the July 7 primary, more than 1,600 ballots in Sussex County were left uncounted for more than two months.
Shipp, however, claimed that state election officials have taken steps since then to implement new security measures, including bar codes on each ballot and laws making it a third-degree crime to engage in voter fraud.
“Any suggestion of these measures’ imminent failure is also speculative,” he wrote.
The Trump campaign cited the recent examples of Paterson and Sussex County, but also reminded the court that a mail carrier in New Jersey was recently arrested for allegedly discarding mail, including 99 general election ballots.
However, Shipp argued these “unfortunate circumstances” do not indicate widespread voter fraud.
“Perhaps it will recur. But perhaps not,” Shipp wrote. “It is difficult—and ultimately speculative—to predict future injury from evidence of past injury.”
The Republican National Committee responded to Shipp’s ruling and said the GOP legal team will assess its options.
“Governor Murphy, who has disingenuously quipped that New Jersey has ‘a higher probability of being hit by lightning than we do uncovering voter fraud’ better seek shelter,” Samantha Zager, the Trump campaign’s deputy national press secretary, said in a statement.
“[H]e only has himself and his liberal legislature to blame for the chaos and confusion we’ve already seen ahead of November 3,” she added.
