Trump Lawyers Want Supreme Court to Intervene in Pennsylvania Mail Ballot Deadline Matter

President Donald Trump’s attorneys are seeking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant the president ability to join the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s pending lawsuit, which is seeking to challenge a three-day mail ballot deadline extension.

ABC News reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously rejected Pennsylvania Republicans’ requests to block the extension, but four justices last month did signal openness to potentially take up the case on the merits after Election Day. […] The controversy stems from a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision, which initially granted the extension for county election officials to receive and count mailed-in ballots that arrive up until Nov. 6, even if they don’t have a clear postmark, as long as there is not proof it was mailed after the polls closed. Republicans have said the matter of counting votes should be left to the state legislature not the state’s highest court. […] It remains unclear if the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the matter. It’s also unclear whether the justices’ involvement would have any impact on the outcome in Pennsylvania.

“Given last night’s results, the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next President of the United States. And this Court, not the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, should have the final say on the relevant and dispositive legal questions,” Trump lawyers wrote in the filing.

Earlier Wednesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) stated that there remained “millions” of mail-in ballots yet to be counted in the key battleground state.

“And there are 3 million — millions of mail-in ballots that are being counted, and that takes longer than the way we used to do it with the stand-in, in-person voting,” Wolf said during a press conference. “So we may not know the results either today, but the most important thing is we have accurate results. Again, even if that takes a little longer than we’re used to.”

Meanwhile, Trump has declared victory in Pennsylvania and other battleground states, citing his existing vote margins as evidence.

“We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead,” the president wrote on Twitter.

“Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!” he added.

In a separate legal action, Justin Clark, Trump campaign deputy campaign manager, said the campaign will sue in Pennsylvania “to stop Democrat election officials from hiding the ballot counting and processing from our Republican poll observers,” adding that the campaign seeks “to temporarily halt counting until there is meaningful transparency and Republicans can ensure all counting is done above board and by the law.”