West Virginia AG Backs States Seeking to Intervene in Pennsylvania Ballot Count

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has backed multiple states in calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule Pennsylvania’s decision to extend the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots.

WOWK reports:

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey says the coalition argues that under the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures must choose the point to stop receiving absentee ballots and start counting votes, not state courts such as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The coalition says the Pennsylvania Supreme Court improperly repealed the Commonwealth’s 50-day deadline that voters have to return their absentee ballots prior to Election Day. They say the Pennsylvania Supreme Court replaced it with a new postmark deadline and a three-day-after-Election-Day cutoff.

Morrisey said in a statement:

This is a clear example of courts legislating from the bench, and the impact shakes the very core of our democracy. Pennsylvania’s legislature wrote clear instructions concerning the deadlines for absentee ballots. Now its Supreme Court has decided it knows better than elected lawmakers. We absolutely urge the U.S. Supreme Court to review this case without delay.

Morrisey joins Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, and Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter in the legal challenge.

“We have constantly reminded the American people that we represent and stand up for the rule of law,” Landry, the chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, said during a press conference Monday. “As such, we believe the voting system should be free of outside, undue influence.”

“We believe that’s exactly what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did,” he added.

Meanwhile, GOP Pennsylvania House of Representatives members have called for an audit of the election results and want the results to “not be certified, nor electors be seated, until the audit is complete.”