WASHINGTON (AP) – Undeterred by dismissals and admonitions from judges, President Donald Trump’s campaign continued its unprecedented efforts to reverse the results of the Nov. 3 election Sunday, saying it had filed a new petition in the Supreme Court.
The petition seeks to overturn a trio of Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases related to post-in ballots and asks the court to reject the will of the voters and allow the Pennsylvania General Assembly to propose its own voter list.
While it is extremely unlikely that the highest court in the country would throw away the results of democratic elections based on baseless allegations of voter fraud, it would not change the outcome. President-elect Joe Biden would be the winner even without Pennsylvania because of his wide margin of victory in the Electoral College.
“The petition is seeking all appropriate remedies, including denouncing the nomination of voters committed to Joseph Biden and allowing the Pennsylvania General Assembly to select their replacements,” Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a statement.
He asks the court to act quickly so that it can decide before Congress meets on Jan. 6 to count the votes of the Electoral College, which confirmed Biden’s victory. with 306 electoral votes against Trump’s 232. But the judges will not meet again until January 8, even privately, two days after Congress counts the votes.
Pennsylvania certified Biden last month as the winner of the state’s 20 electoral colleges after three weeks of voting and a series of failed legal challenges.
Trump’s campaign and his allies have now filed about 50 lawsuits for alleged widespread voting fraud. Almost all have been rejected or withdrawn because there is no evidence to support their claims.
Trump has lost to judges from both political parties, including some he has appointed. And some of his strongest reprimands come from conservative Republicans. The Supreme Court has also declined to hear two cases – decisions Trump has scorned.
The new case is at least the fourth case involving Pennsylvania that Trump’s campaign or the Republican allies have filed before the Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn Biden’s victory in the state or at least court rulings regarding to revert to mail-in votes. Many more cases were filed in state and federal courts. About 10,000 post-in ballots that came in after the polls closed but before a court-imposed deadline remain in limbo, pending the highest court’s decision as to whether or not they should be counted.
The Trump campaign’s Sunday filing appears to be against three Democratic-majority decisions of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
In November, the state’s highest court upheld a Philadelphia judge’s ruling that state law only required election officials to allow partisan observers to see the post-in ballots being processed, and not be close enough to election officials. To see the writing on individual envelopes.
It also ruled that more than 8,300 Philadelphia post-in ballots challenged by the Trump campaign due to minor technical errors – such as a voter not writing their name, address, or date on the outer ballot envelope – should be counted. In October, the court unanimously ruled that provinces are prohibited from refusing post-in ballots simply because a voter’s signature does not resemble the signature on the person’s voter registration form.
The Pennsylvania Republican Party is pending a petition on the state’s deadline for the post-in-vote, in which the party specifically says in its appeal that it acknowledges the issue will not affect the outcome of the 2020 election .
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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.