Pennsylvania's highest court rejects a Republican lawsuit that sought to wipe out ALL 2.5 million mail-in ballots in the state in bid to thwart Joe Biden's victory
Pennsylvania's highest court on Saturday night threw out bid by Republicans to wipe out all 2.5 million mail-in votes cast in the state.
The state Supreme Court, rejected a lower court's order preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests on its November 3 election ballot in the latest lawsuit filed by Republicans attempting to thwart President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the battleground state.
In a unanimous decision, the court threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the expiration of a time limit in Pennsylvania's expansive year-old mail-in voting law allowing for challenges to it.
Justices also remarked on the lawsuit's staggering demand that an entire election be overturned retroactively.
'They have failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted,' Justice David Wecht wrote in a concurring opinion.
The state's attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the court's decision 'another win for Democracy.'
President Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, have repeatedly and baselessly claimed that Democrats falsified mail-in ballots to steal the election from Trump. Biden beat Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.
In a unanimous decision Saturday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of mail-in ballots in the state. Justice David Hecht wrote that the suit 'failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted'
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania a week ago filed a lawsuit that had challenged the state's mail-in voting law as unconstitutional, but the state's highest court decided the time limit on challenges to the law had passed months ago
The campaign of President Donald Trump filed a number of lawsuits across six battleground states this month as he tried to upend the 2020 election. Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani have repeatedly and baselessly claimed that Democrats falsified mail-in ballots to steal the election from Trump
A canvas observer photographs Lehigh County provisional ballots as vote counting in the general election continued in Allentown, Penn., on November 6
The week-old lawsuit, led by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania, had challenged the state's mail-in voting law as unconstitutional.
As a remedy, Kelly and the other Republican plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5 million mail-in ballots submitted under the law - most of them by Democrats - or to wipe out the election results and direct the state's Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania's presidential electors.
In any case, that request - for the state's lawmakers to pick Pennsylvania's presidential electors - flies in the face of a nearly century-old state law that already grants the power to pick electors to the state's popular vote, Wecht wrote.
While the high court's two Republicans joined the five Democrats in opposing those remedies, they split from Democrats in suggesting that the lawsuit's underlying claims - that the state's mail-in voting law might violate the constitution - are worth considering.
Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, elected as a Republican in 2009, had issued an order Wednesday to halt certification of any remaining contests in Pennsylvania, including apparently contests for Congress. The state's Supreme Court tossed that order Saturday
Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, elected as a Republican in 2009, had issued the order Wednesday to halt certification of any remaining contests, including apparently contests for Congress.
It did not appear to affect the presidential contest since a day earlier, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, had certified Biden as the winner of the presidential election in Pennsylvania.
Wolf quickly appealed McCullough's decision to the state Supreme Court, saying there was no 'conceivable justification' for it.
The lawsuit's dismissal comes after Republicans have lost a flurry of legal challenges brought by the Trump campaign and its GOP allies filed in state and federal courts in Pennsylvania.
The state's attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the court's Saturday decision 'another win for Democracy'
On Friday, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the Trump campaign's latest effort to challenge the state's election results.
In that lawsuit, Trump's campaign had complained that its observers had not been able to scrutinize mail-in ballots as they were being processed in two Democratic bastions, Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which is home to Pittsburgh.
Trump's lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judges' assessment that the 'campaign's claims have no merit.'