US President Donald Trump turns to Supreme Court again, challenges Pennsylvania loss now

Source:-https://theprint.in

Washington: President Donald Trump’s campaign said it turned to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the election results in Pennsylvania, filing yet another long-shot appeal despite weeks of courtroom defeats and an Electoral College vote last week that formalized Joe Biden’s victory.

The latest filing, announced on Sunday, takes the unorthodox step of trying to overturn three separate Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions with a single appeal. Although all three decisions are weeks old, the campaign asked the court to put the cases on an ultra-expedited track with the goal of a ruling before Congress meets Jan. 6 to count the electoral votes.

The Supreme Court has already rejected two efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in pivotal states, each time without any justice publicly dissenting. On Dec. 8, the court turned away a bid by Republican lawmakers to reverse Biden’s win in Pennsylvania. Three days later the court refused to let Texas sue to challenge the results in four states.

The new Trump appeal centers on the 2.6 million mail-in ballots cast in Pennsylvania. The campaign is challenging an Oct. 23 ruling that said election officials shouldn’t try to verify that the signature on the ballot envelope matches the one on file. The appeal also seeks to overturn a Nov. 23 ruling that said officials shouldn’t reject ballots because they lack a name, address or date on the envelope.

In addition, the appeal challenges a Nov. 17 ruling that said Trump campaign representatives had adequate access to observe the vote-counting process in Philadelphia. The campaign says the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unconstitutionally changed the election rules established by the state legislature.

Overturning the Pennsylvania results wouldn’t be nearly enough for Trump to reverse Biden’s overall victory. Even if Biden somehow lost the state’s 20 electoral votes, he would still have 286 votes, comfortably above the 270 needed for victory.-Bloomberg