What Really Happened With Those Nine Discarded Ballots In Luzerne County

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Major news is coming in over the "case" of the nine "discarded" ballots from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania that President Donald Trump revealed to Fox News Radio on Thursday.

Here's what appears to have happened, and we're going to bullet point this so it's easy to follow.

• The ballots were discarded by a temporary, or "contract" worker assigned to sort the mail who appears to have been following direction.
• The ballots were military ballots, not absentee or other by-mail ballots.
• The county immediately reported what happened to federal officials, who appear to have immediately politicized the issue.
• "Because these ballots were returned in envelopes similar to absentee ballot requests, elections officials opened them," The Washington Post reports. "If the ballots weren't then enclosed in another envelope which shielded the actual vote being cast, they may have been considered 'naked ballots,' a term used to describe mail ballots returned without the voter's intent being protected.
• The Trump campaign and the Pennsylvania GOP in a lawsuit argued that "naked ballots" should not be counted. They won that lawsuit. These nine ballots appear to be "naked ballots," and that appears to be the reason they were thrown out.

Here's how MSNBC's Chris Hayes sums it up: It's the GOP's fault.