The Michigan Supreme Court has newly rejected a lawsuit in which the right-wing Thomas More Society sought to block the certification of presidential election results in Michigan, where President-elect Joe Biden won with a clear and decisive leading margin. The group sought to compel the separation of certain ballots from the rest of the tallies, voting rights lawyer Marc Elias explains. In total, Trump and his allies have lost in at least 53 court cases around the country, according to Elias’s tally, with just one win. That record isn’t exactly a sign of a strong case against the election results — to say the least.
🚨BREAKING: Michigan Supreme Court DENIES right wing effort to segregate ballots and delay the Michigan’s certification of the Presidential election.
Trump and his allies are now 1-52 in post election litigation.https://t.co/guIT59Vgfj
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) December 9, 2020
Like states across the country, Michigan’s election results are already certified, and the so-called “safe harbor” deadline in the electoral college process has passed, making future court challenges against the election outcome even more difficult than before. This year’s so-called safe harbor deadline was on December 8, and election law professor Rebecca Green recently explained to the Associated Press that “[what] federal law requires is that if a state has completed its post-election certification by Dec. 8, Congress is required to accept those results.” In other words, successful challenges to the election results might require some kind of change to federal legal precedent, in addition to the responsibility of the Republican plaintiffs to prove their allegations of systematic fraud.
Ongoing court challenges include a case that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, announced this week in which he’s seeking to invalidate the election outcome in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia, all of which he alleges unconstitutionally expanded mail-in voting in the time before the election. There’s no particular indication that the U.S. Supreme Court, which has jurisdiction over the inter-state lawsuit, will rule in Paxton’s favor, no matter Trump’s own public support for the lawsuit. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge from Pennsylvania Republicans against the election results in their state.
Local election officials of both major parties from around the country, the Department of Homeland Security, and Attorney General Bill Barr himself have all confirmed that there’s no evidence of election outcome-altering fraud. When will the fool’s errand of the numerous Trump-allied lawsuits over the election finally end?
