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US election 2020: Trump loses another challenge

The US state of Pennsylvania’s supreme court dismisses another legal challenge to the election by supporters of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump boards Marine One at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, for the trip back to the White House. Picture: AFP
Donald Trump boards Marine One at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, for the trip back to the White House. Picture: AFP

The US state of Pennsylvania’s supreme court dismissed another legal challenge to the election by supporters of President Donald Trump on Saturday night (Sunday AEDT), further reducing his already near-impossible odds of overturning the results.

A Republican lawsuit had sought to invalidate mail-in ballots in the battleground state that president-elect Joe Biden won by about 81,000 votes — or to throw out all votes and allow the state’s legislature to decide the winner.

The court dismissed both claims in a unanimous decision on Saturday night, calling the second one an “extraordinary proposition that the court disen­franchise all 6.9 million Pennsyl­vanians who voted in the general election”.

The lawsuit argued that a Pennsylvania law from last year allowing universal mail-in voting was unconstitutional.

The judges said that their November 21 challenge to the law was filed too late, coming more than a year after it was enacted and with the election results “becoming seemingly apparent”.

“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 reported by the Associated Press.

The request for the state’s politicians 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, Justice 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.

The state’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, called the court’s decision “another win for Democracy”.

Pennsylvania officially certified Mr Biden’s victory there on November 24. The lawsuit had also sought to stop certification.

Saturday’s decision follows a long line of similar ones, including a ruling the day before in which a federal appeals court flatly dismissed Mr Trump’s claim that the election was unfair and refused to freeze Mr Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.

Mr Trump has refused to give up on his claims of fraud in the November 3 election despite his repeated court defeats, tweeting conspiracy theories and vowing to continue his legal fight.

On Thursday (Friday, Australian time), he said for the first time that he would leave the White House if Mr Biden is officially confirmed the winner by the Electoral College on December 14. But the next day he tweeted that: “Biden can only enter the White House as president if he can prove that his ridiculous ‘80,000,000 votes’ were not fraudulently or illegally obtained.”

Mr Biden, who is to be sworn in on January 20, won 306 votes in the Electoral College to Mr Trump’s 232.

The Democrat president-elect has said that Americans “won’t stand” for attempts to derail the vote outcome.

AFP

Read related topics:Donald TrumpJoe Biden

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/us-election-2020-trump-loses-another-challenge/news-story/73b33536ae3dce17b43876b34d45c0e4