The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday handed a defeat to President Donald Trump and Republicans seeking to throw out up to 2.5 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania as they try to undo the election loss, with the justices refusing to block the state from formalising President-elect Joe Biden’s victory there.
The court in a brief order rejected a request by U.S. congressman Mike Kelly, a Trump ally, and other Pennsylvania Republicans who filed a lawsuit after the Nov. 3 election arguing that the state’s 2019 expansion of mail-in voting was illegal under state law.
Pennsylvania was one of the pivotal states in the election, with Biden, a Democrat, defeating Trump after the Republican president won the state in 2016. State officials had already certified the election results.
Trump has maintained that he won re-election, making contentious claims about widespread voting fraud in states including Pennsylvania.
Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of aiming to reduce public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and undermine democracy by trying to subvert the will of the voters.
“This election is over. We must continue to stop this circus of ‘lawsuits’ and move forward,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter.
The Supreme Court also must decide what to do with another election-related case brought on Tuesday. Republican-governed Texas, hoping to help Trump, mounted an unusual effort to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania and three other states – Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin – by filing a lawsuit against them directly at the Supreme Court.
The Republican plaintiffs argued that the universal, “no-excuse” mail-in ballot program passed by the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature in 2019, enabling voters to cast ballots by mail for any reason, violated the state’s constitution.
Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes and received a much higher proportion of the mail-in votes than Trump.
