President Trump filed an election lawsuit in New Mexico, yet another legal challenge to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory more than a month after the contest.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Mexico by Trump and his legal team on Monday, alleges New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver violated the state’s election code by letting voters deposit absentee ballots in drop boxes at voting locations rather than giving them to the location’s presiding judge in person, according to a statement from the Republican Party of New Mexico.
Trump and his team claim the drop boxes should be subject to the same requirements as “secured containers” under the law and asked the court to delay New Mexico’s certification of electoral votes, which took place on Monday. The suit also requested a statewide canvass of New Mexico’s absentee ballots, including investigations into every voting location that had a drop box.
In addition, the president’s legal team requested the segregation of all absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes and for county officials to contact all voters who dropped off a ballot and confirm a family member or a caretaker personally dropped off the ballot. In some counties, Trump requested all absentee ballots to be invalidated.
The lawsuit mirrors another one filed by New Mexico’s GOP in October, which also focused on drop boxes, asking for video monitoring at all these locations and naming two county clerks as being lax on security measures. The party eventually withdrew its complaint.
Alex Curtas, a spokesman for Toulouse Oliver, told the Washington Examiner that the dropped lawsuit by the state’s Republican Party should reflect its acknowledgment that it sees ballot boxes as legal and dismissed the Trump campaign’s new suit as an attempt to “silence the voices of lawful voters throughout the country.”
“Donald Trump is making a desperate attempt to undermine our lawful election in New Mexico predicated on a misunderstanding of election laws,” Curtas said. “We look forward to its swift dismissal.”
Drop boxes were propped up across the country to give voters an alternative, safer method of voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump said over the weekend that his team has no plans to stop its legal efforts, adding that there are a number of legal challenges in battleground states won by Biden still in play.
Certified state vote tallies gave Biden 306 votes and Trump 232 votes on Monday.
A joint session of Congress will vote on certification of the results on Jan. 6, the last step before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
