It doesn’t appear that the Trump campaign nor Republicans are making any headway in their crusade to overturn the presidential election.
Pennsylvania’s high court has dismissed a lower court’s order blocking the battleground state from certifying the Nov. 3 race. The state supreme court universally threw out the order, saying that the Republican-led lawsuit was “filed months after the law allowed for challenges to Pennsylvania’s year-old mail-in voting law,” The Guardian reports.
The judges also commented on the lawsuit’s insistence that the election is invalidated retroactively: “They have failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted,” Justice David Wecht stated in a concurring opinion. The state’s attorney general backed the court’s decision, saying it was “another win for democracy.”
Spearheaded by Pennsylvania Republican congressman Mike Kelly, the lawsuit alleged that the state’s mail-in voting law is unconstitutional. The Republican plaintiffs were either looking to discard the 2.5 million mail-in ballots that were lawfully submitted—and were heavily Democrat—or to get rid of the election results and have the state’s Republican-controlled legislature choose Pennsylvania’s presidential electors.
Wecht wrote that having the state’s lawmakers select the presidential electors defies the state's nearly century-old law, which says that electors are to be picked by the state’s popular vote.
On Tuesday, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf said he certified Joe Biden as the presidential victor in Pennsylvania. The news arrived after U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann dismissed a case filed by the Trump campaign, which sought to invalidate millions of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania. Then, on Friday, the campaign attempted to appeal Brann’s decision but was shot down again.
The latest ruling in Pennsylvania is the campaign’s 38th court loss in nationwide election lawsuits.
