Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismisses another election case brought by Republicans
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit Saturday night from US Rep. Mike Kelly and other Republicans, after they had tried to invalidate absentee voting and block the certification of votes in recent weeks.
The dismissal adds to a growing number of losses in court for Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump, who have tried to attack voting systems in the wake of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. The lawsuits have failed almost uniformly.
The court was unanimous in deciding against Kelly and others, and refusing to block vote certification on Saturday. Five of the seven judges wrote that they believed the lawsuit had been filed far too late, a year after absentee voting procedures had been established in the state and weeks after millions of Pennsylvanians voted in good faith.
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“It is beyond cavil that Petitioners failed to act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim,” the court wrote in its majority opinion.
The high court said the Republicans couldn’t reconfigure their complaints and try again.
Lower courts in the state had said the lawsuit, which was filed weeks after Election Day, could stop counties from certifying votes, but that move had essentially become irrelevant.
Pennsylvania counties had already certified their vote counts, making Biden the winner of the battleground state by an 80,000-vote margin.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Pennsylvania dealt a death blow to the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn Biden’s presidential win by dismissing a closely watched lawsuit that sought to invalidate millions of Pennsylvania votes. That case was essentially the last major case seeking to throw out or block enough votes that could swing a key state in Trump’s favor.
Judge Matthew Brann of the US District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania called the Trump campaign’s case “Frankenstein’s monster” for its poorly stitched together legal theories.
On Friday, a federal appeals court dealt the Trump campaign’s effort another blow, with a Trump-appointed judge writing in a scathing opinion that the campaign’s lawsuit lacked proof and that its allegations in Pennsylvania “have no merit.”
The court opinion also rejected Trump’s motion to undo Pennsylvania’s certification of votes, calling it “unprecedented” and “breathtaking” relief where no fraud had been alleged.
This story has been updated with additional information.
