2020 ELECTION CORONAVIRUS MORE

The Pennsylvania Supreme

Court just dismissed a GOP
bid to overturn the election
Trump’s terrible week in court continues
with another Pennsylvania ruling.
By Cameron Peters @jcameronpeters Nov 29, 2020, 11:21am EST

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President Donald Trump speaks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House on
November 26. | Erin Schaff/Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s terrible week in court

continued Saturday with yet another adverse
ruling from a Pennsylvania court.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled

unanimously that a suit brought by Rep. Mike
Kelly and other Republicans challenging the
state’s mail-in voting law — passed in October
2019 — was filed too long after the law was
passed, and because of that, rejected a
requested review of the law.

“The want of due diligence demonstrated in this

matter is unmistakable,” the court wrote in an
unsigned per curiam opinion. “Petitioners filed
this facial challenge to the mail-in voting
statutory provisions more than one year after
the enactment of Act 77.”

Aaron Martin @WP… · Nov 28, 2020

#BREAKING: PA Supreme Court dismisses
lawsuit attempting to invalidate more than a
million mail-in ballots and stop the
certification of the election. In the ruling,
justices say the challenge wasn’t filed in a
timely manner, i.e. when mail-in balloting
was expanded in 2019

Aaron Martin
@WPXIAaronMartin

The lawsuit was filed by several

Republicans including Rep. Mike Kelly
and congressional candidate Sean
Parnell. The justices pointed out that
allowing the petition to move forward
would result in the disenfranchisement of
millions of PA voters. Here’s the full order

6:25 PM · Nov 28, 2020

557 316 people are Tweeting about t…

The court also overturned a lower court

injunction blocking Pennsylvania from moving
ahead with certifying its election. The suit was
dismissed with prejudice, putting a permanent
end to that avenue of challenge.

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00:00 06:09

As Democratic voting-rights lawyer Marc Elias

pointed out on Twitter, the lawsuit, had it
succeeded, would have had an additional, likely
unintended effect: It would also have blocked
certification of Kelly’s own election results in
Pennsylvania’s 16th District.

Pennsylvania certified its presidential election

results on Tuesday, sealing President-elect Joe
Biden’s win in the crucial swing state. But a judge
instituted a temporary injunction on the
certification that same day — one the secretary
of state planned to challenge in the state
Supreme Court. With Saturday’s ruling, that
certification is cleared to proceed. Biden beat
Trump by more than 80,000 votes in the final
tally to claim Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.

Kelly was joined in the suit by onetime

Pennsylvania congressional candidate Sean
Parnell and six other state residents, including a
state House candidate who claimed just 5.5
percent of the vote in her last race. The
plaintiffs alleged that the state’s mail-in voting
law was flat-out unconstitutional, and proposed
two possible remedies: either the invalidation of
all mail ballots cast in the election or allowing the
Republican-controlled Pennsylvania general
assembly to select a slate of presidential
electors, rather than Pennsylvania voters.

Either remedy would have disenfranchised

voters on a scale unprecedented in the modern
era, while handing the state to Trump — and both
were rejected out of hand by the court.

“It is beyond cavil that Petitioners failed to act

with due diligence in presenting the instant
claim,” the court wrote. “Equally clear is the
substantial prejudice arising from Petitioners’
failure to institute promptly a facial challenge to
the mail-in voting statutory scheme, as such
inaction would result in the disenfranchisement
of millions of Pennsylvania voters.”

The Trump campaign can’t stop losing in

court
As Pennsylvania Lieutenant Gov. John Fetterman
pointed out in a tweet after the state Supreme
Court decision was published, Saturday’s ruling
is by no means the only recent loss by the Trump
campaign and GOP members looking to overturn
the results of the 2020 presidential election.

John Fetterman
@JohnFetterman

If the President’s campaign doesn’t stop

losing, the Cleveland Browns are gonna
sue for trademark infringement.

Jeremy Roebuck @jeremyrroebuck

BREAKING: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
dismisses GOP Congressman Mike Kelly's bid
to throw out every mail ballot cast in the state -
- this was the case that led to Wednesday's
quickly stayed order barring further
certification of state results.

6:42 PM · Nov 28, 2020 from Braddock, PA

16.4K 2.2K people are Tweeting abou…

In Pennsylvania alone last week, the Trump

campaign lost twice in quick succession in
federal court. Most recently, a Trump-
nominated judge on the Third Circuit Court of
Appeals, Stephanos Bibas, wrote in a scathing
decision that the president’s lawsuit challenging
Pennsylvania election results had “no merit.”

“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our

democracy,” Bibas wrote in the 21-page
unanimous decision. “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.”

In total, the president’s flailing legal strategy has

resulted in a 1-39 record before various state
and federal courts around the country,
according to Elias. No evidence of voter fraud
or other irregularities has surfaced anywhere,
despite false claims by Trump and his allies
otherwise, and a federal election certification
deadline on December 8 is closing in.

That, however, hasn’t put a damper on the

president’s nonsensical arguments about
election fraud.

“The number of ballots that our Campaign is

challenging in the Pennsylvania case is FAR
LARGER than the 81,000 vote margin. It’s not
even close. Fraud and illegality ARE a big part of
the case,” Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday,
though there is no evidence of any fraud or
illegality and Pennsylvania has already certified
its election results.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The number of ballots that our Campaign

is challenging in the Pennsylvania case is
FAR LARGER than the 81,000 vote
margin. It’s not even close. Fraud and
illegality ARE a big part of the case.
Documents being completed. We will
appeal!
3:49 PM · Nov 28, 2020

348.4K 126.2K people are Tweeting a…

Even as Republican court challenges fail, other

potential avenues for Trump to overturn the
election results — and the democratic process —
are fading fast.

In particular, one fringe theory promulgated by

Trump holds that Republican-controlled state
legislatures, like the one in Pennsylvania, can
appoint their own slate of Trump electors,
regardless of how the state voted. Trump
tweeted as much last week, writing that
“hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will
have the COURAGE to do what has to be done,”
and Republicans hoped the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court would pave the way for the
legislature to get involved there.

It’s not, however, a feasible scheme. Beyond the

fact that the court rejected the idea, the theory
isn’t backed by anything “even remotely close to
a relevant majority” of state lawmakers, and
even if it were, it would certainly face a veto from
Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor and a swift
series of legal challenges.

That the US Supreme Court might somehow

overturn the election results — a strategy alluded
to by Trump senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis in a
Friday tweet after the campaign’s Third Circuit
loss — is also vanishingly unlikely to succeed.
According to University of Texas law professor
Steve Vladeck, “the Trump campaign has the
right to ask #SCOTUS to review this decision,
and it has the right to ask the Court for an
injunction pending appeal. But as Judge Bibas’s
opinion makes clear, try as they might, this
lawsuit has no chance of succeeding.”

Steve Vladeck @st… · Nov 27, 2020

Replying to @steve_vladeck
As Judge Bibas writes:

"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."

Steve Vladeck
@steve_vladeck

The Trump campaign has the right to ask

#SCOTUS to review this decision, and it
has the right to ask the Court for an
injunction pending appeal. But as Judge
Bibas's opinion makes clear, try as they
might, this lawsuit has no chance of
succeeding.
12:33 PM · Nov 27, 2020

3.6K 531 people are Tweeting about t…

Ultimately, the Trump campaign never had

evidence for its claims of fraud, as a number of
judges and justices have now pointed out. And
its other efforts have failed, or are actively in the
process of failing, as states move forward with
certifying their election results. The president
may keep tweeting otherwise — but starting at
noon on January 20, 2021, he won’t be the
president any longer. Biden will be.

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