Pa. Supreme Court Dismisses Request From Mike Kelly And Sean Parnell To Declare Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional In State, Deny Results From 2020 Election Mail-In Ballots
HARRISBURG, Pa. (KDKA/AP) -- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has dismissed the lawsuit from Congressman Mike Kelly and congressional candidate Sean Parnell to declare universal mail-in voting unconstitutional in the state and deny the votes of the majority of Pennsylvanians who voted by mail in the Nov. 3 election.
The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the law allowed for challenges to Pennsylvania's expansive year-old mail-in voting law.
The state's attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the court's decision "another win for Democracy."
The week-old lawsuit, led by U.S. Rep. Kelly of Butler, had challenged the state's mail-in voting law as unconstitutional.
As a remedy, Kelly and the other Republican plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5 million mail-in ballots submitted under the law — most of them by Democrats — or to wipe out the election results and direct the state's Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania's presidential electors.
Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, elected as a Republican in 2009, had issued the order Wednesday to halt certification of any remaining contests, including apparently contests for Congress.
RELATED STORY: Judge Orders Halt To Further Vote Certification, Prompting Quick Appeal To Pennsylvania Supreme Court
A day earlier, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said he had certified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election in Pennsylvania. Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.
Wolf had appealed McCullough's decision to the state Supreme Court, saying there was no "conceivable justification" for it.
The lawsuit was filed last weekend. Both Kelly and Parnell are registered Republicans.
"The election was conducted illegally, an unconstitutional method of voting," Greg Teufel, attorney for Kelly and Parnell, told KDKA's Jon Delano on Nov. 24.
(Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.)