by Pennsylvanias highest court has thrown out a lower courts order that was preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests from the 3 November election.
In the latest Republican lawsuit attempting to thwart president-elect Joe Bidens victory in the battleground state, the state supreme court unanimously threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the law allowed for challenges to Pennsylvanias year-old mail-in voting law.
Justices also remarked on the lawsuits 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 states attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the courts decision another win for democracy.
The week-old lawsuit, led by Pennsylvania Republican congressman Mike Kelly, had challenged the states mail-in voting law as unconstitutional.
As a remedy, Kelly and other Republican plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5m mail-in ballots submitted under the law most of them by Democrats or to wipe out the election results and direct the states Republican-controlled legislature to pick Pennsylvanias presidential electors.
The request for the states lawmakers to pick Pennsylvanias presidential electors also flies in the face of a nearly century-old state law, which grants the power to pick electors to the states popular vote, Wecht wrote.
While the high courts two Republicans joined the five Democrats in opposing those remedies, they split from Democrats in suggesting that the lawsuits underlying claims that the states mail-in voting law might violate the constitution are worth considering.
On Wednesday, commonwealth court judge Patricia McCullough, elected as a Republican in 2009, had issued the order to halt certification of any remaining contests, including apparently contests for Congress.
A day earlier, Democratic governor Tom Wolf said he had certified Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election in Pennsylvania. Biden beat president Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.
Wolf had appealed McCulloughs decision to the state supreme court, saying there was no conceivable justification for it.
The defeat followed Fridays decision by a federal appeals court to to dismiss a separate challenge to the Pennsylvania result and back a district judge who likened likened the presidents evidence-free and error-strewn lawsuit to Frankensteins monster.
The three-member federal panel confirmed unanimously a lower courts decision last week to rebuff the arguments made by Trumps legal team, led by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, that voting in Pennsylvania was marred by widespread fraud.
Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here, judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the 3rd US circuit court of appeals.
The judge denounced as breathtaking a Republican request to reverse certification of the vote, adding: Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections. [The] campaigns claims have no merit.
The ruling, which was the Trump teams 38th court defeat in election lawsuits nationwide, reaffirmed US district judge Matthew Branns earlier view of Giulianis complaint, delivered after he listened to five hours of oral arguments last week. The lawsuit, Brann said, was: like Frankensteins Monster haphazardly stitched together.
with Associated Press
