The Wisconsin Supreme Court docket on Thursday rejected a Trump marketing campaign lawsuit that aimed to invalidate greater than 200,000 votes soli
The Wisconsin Supreme Court docket on Thursday rejected a Trump marketing campaign lawsuit that aimed to invalidate greater than 200,000 votes solid in two of the state’s Democratic bastions, narrowing one more authorized avenue by which the departing president has tried to overturn the outcomes of the election.
The conservative-leaning court docket’s 4-to-Three vote to say no to take the case stopped one a part of a multipronged try by President Trump and his supporters to upend Wisconsin’s complete system of absentee voting, which the Trump marketing campaign had sought to solid as violating state regulation.
The court docket’s three liberal justices and one conservative justice who joined them mentioned that the Wisconsin Supreme Court docket was not the correct venue for the Trump marketing campaign’s lawsuit and steered that it refile the swimsuit in a decrease state court docket.
“We do effectively as a judicial physique to abide by time-tested judicial norms, even — and possibly particularly — in high-profile instances,” wrote Justice Brian Hagedorn, the conservative who sided with the liberals. “Following the regulation governing challenges to election outcomes is not any risk to the rule of regulation.”
Late Thursday, the Trump marketing campaign’s Wisconsin lawyer, James Troupis, filed new, separate lawsuits in Dane County and Milwaukee County that aimed to invalidate votes within the two Democratic areas at problem within the case that the Supreme Court docket declined to listen to.
However Mr. Troupis and the Trump marketing campaign are operating brief on time for any authorized motion to vary the fact of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 20,000-vote victory in Wisconsin. The deadline to exhaust authorized challenges to state certifications is Tuesday, and the Electoral Faculty is ready to fulfill on Dec. 14 to formally vote to make Mr. Biden the following president.
Whereas Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that the presidential election was “rigged” in lots of states, his marketing campaign and its Republican allies haven’t argued that the election in Wisconsin was marred by fraud. As a substitute they’ve argued that the methods and guidelines Wisconsin has used for its final 11 statewide elections have been unlawful.
For the final two weeks, Mr. Troupis has argued that the acceptance of in-person absentee ballots by municipal clerks earlier than Election Day violated state regulation — although native elections officers have been finishing up the method on the route of the Wisconsin Elections Fee, a bipartisan physique that oversees the state’s elections.
“I’ve but to see a reputable declare of fraudulent exercise throughout this election,” Dean Knudson, a Republican member of the elections fee, mentioned throughout the physique’s assembly on Tuesday. “The Trump marketing campaign has not made any claims of fraud on this election. These are disputes in issues of regulation.”
The Trump lawsuit additionally argued that municipal clerks mustn’t have been allowed to finish tackle kinds for witnesses to absentee ballots, which the elections fee had given them permission to do. State regulation requires absentee voters to have witnesses signal their poll envelopes. The lawsuit additionally requested the court docket to invalidate ballots that have been collected by the Madison municipal clerk at October gatherings in metropolis parks, although these occasions have been additionally blessed by the elections fee.
The Trump marketing campaign challenged ballots solely in Milwaukee County and Dane County, which incorporates Madison, the state capital and residential of the flagship College of Wisconsin campus. The 2 counties are the most important and most Democratic within the state.
The marketing campaign late Wednesday filed an analogous lawsuit in federal court docket in Milwaukee looking for to undo the results of the state’s election completely and have Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral Faculty votes be decided by its Republican-controlled State Legislature.Two different fits — one within the federal courts and one other pending earlier than the Wisconsin Supreme Court docket — are additionally looking for to problem the state’s election.
Few senior Republican officers in Wisconsin believed the Trump marketing campaign’s arguments would result in the results of the election being overturned and the state’s 10 electoral votes going to Mr. Trump as a substitute of Mr. Biden.
“The issue for the courts is — even when they settle for the argument of the president’s attorneys — what’s the treatment?” former Gov. Scott Walker, a Trump loyalist, wrote on Fb on Tuesday.
Wisconsin regulation, as Mr. Walker famous, stipulates that if municipalities decide after the election that an absentee voter mustn’t have solid a poll, the elections clerk is to choose a poll at random and discard it, since there is no such thing as a method at that time to attach a poll to the voter who solid it.
The Trump marketing campaign’s lawsuit, if it had been profitable, wouldn’t essentially have invalidated ballots solid by the style it claims was unlawful. It merely would have diminished the variety of votes from the state’s two most Democratic counties with out addressing ballots solid in an similar method within the state’s different 70 counties.
Alan Feuer contributed reporting.