WILKES-BARRE - There's a limit on spoils for the victor, a federal judge has ruled in a lawsuit challenging the voting process in Luzerne County.
Jamie Walsh sued last year over what he claimed were voter registration and mail-in ballot issues, but he won election to the state's House of Representatives. Thus, federal judge Matthew Brann ruled April 28, he lacks standing due to a lack of injury.
"Allowing parties who have suffered no injury to challenge electoral practices opens the floodgates to bad actors, who may seek to wield the judicial process for other purposes," Brann wrote.
"(Standing requirements)... are critical safeguards to the integrity of our constitutional order and the electoral process itself, and ensure that the scope of judicial intervention in that process is properly constrained."
Brann's decision follows a colleague's in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, magistrate judge Daryl Bloom, who ruled in March against plaintiffs hoping to challenge how Pennsylvania handles federal elections.
Citizens, a candidate and United Sovereign Americans alleged the state mishandled the 2022 election. Bloom said they all lacked standing because worries that the integrity of future elections will be compromised is not a "particularized injury."
Walsh, according to Brann, similarly wrote that Walsh's election concerns didn't give him standing. He filed suit in late October and had to cancel his request for an injunction because of timing issues with the court.
Walsh, a Republican, was unopposed on Election Day after winning his primary by just four votes. He continued to make claims Luzerne County election officials were refusing to process 2,500 new applications for voter registration and were failing to count several thousands mail-in vote requests.
His suit said Luzerne County violated the rights to vote of its citizens, yet he is the only plaintiff.
Brann said there is no authority that allows one plaintiff to protect the rights of all Pennsylvania voters. To do so as a third party, he would still have to assert his own legal rights were violated.
"Walsh never suffered any injury as a result of the electoral practices he alleged, and as an unopposed candidate faced no non-speculative risk of injury even at the time, before Election Day, when he filed suit," Brann wrote.
"And any fear of future injury in the 2026 election is both conjectural and not ripe."
Walsh was involved in litigation over his slim primary victory, with the state Supreme Court stepping in this past September to trim his lead from 5-4 by finding one voter's provisional ballot was invalid.
And Walsh was among witnesses who testified before a U.S. House committee in 2023 in a hearing over Luzerne County's election troubles in 2022.
The county ran out of ballots that year. About 40 of the county's 170 polling locations were impacted by the shortage.
That led to a lawsuit against the county by plaintiffs who won a settlement in October. They had tried to vote but their precincts ran out of ballots.
Though defendants rarely admit wrongdoing in settlements, this one was different.
"The ballot paper shortage on Nov. 8, 2022, needlessly disrupted administration of the election and was not an adequate discharge of County officials' duties to ensure, as nearly as possible, the seamless administration of the election," it reads.
Terms of the settlement include:
-Finalization of election-related policies and procedures consistent with state and federal law, with requirements for ballot paper, stocking reserve supplies and supplying sufficient ballot paper;
-Continuation of orders of 80 pounds of ballot paper (a recommendation of Dominion Voting Systems) after every completed election;
-Retention of Timothy Gates of Myers, Brier & Kelly to revise policies and train personnel;
-Training and orientation for county election officials; and
-$30,000 to the plaintiffs and their lawyers.
Though the language at the top of the agreement acknowledges the faults in Luzerne County's 2022 Election Day, the settlement includes that it admits to no liability.
The county's district attorney in 2023 blamed the shortage on a lack of training and employee turnover.