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MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) – The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday refused to hear the trial of President Donald Trump trying to overturn his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in Battlefield State, saying the case should first to end up in lower courts.
The legal defeat was the latest in a string of losses for Trump’s post-election lawsuits. Judges in several battlefield states have dismissed his allegations of fraud or irregularities.
Trump had asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots in the state’s two largest Democratic counties, alleging irregularities in the way postal votes were administered. His trial echoed claims that had previously been rejected by election officials in those counties in a recount that barely affected Biden’s margin of victory of around 20,700 votes.
Trump had wanted the Tory-controlled Supreme Court of Wisconsin to take the case directly, saying there was not enough time to fight the legal battle starting with a lower court given the impending date of the December 14 where the presidential voters cast their ballot. But attorneys for Governor Tony Evers and the State Department of Justice argued the law required the trial to begin in the lower courts.
The court ruled 4-3 against Trump, with Judge Brian Hagedorn joining three Liberal judges in dismissing the petition. The order said Trump could file a complaint with the circuit court.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump would continue to pursue the case in lower courts. Her campaign spokesperson did not immediately return a message asking for comment. Trump filed a similar lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday.
Hagedorn said the law is clear that Trump must take his case to lower courts where factual disputes can be resolved.
“We do well as a judicial body to live up to time-tested judicial standards, even – and perhaps especially – in high-profile cases,” Hagedorn wrote.
Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, writing for the minority, said she would have taken the case, referred it to lower courts for factual findings, which could then be sent back to the Supreme Court for decision.
She noted that by not taking the case now, “there are significant time constraints that may prevent us from deciding important legal issues that require resolution by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.”
Trump’s trial challenged procedures that have been in place for years and that have never been found to be illegal.
He claimed there were thousands of mail ballots with no written request on file. He argued that the electronic journal created when a voter requests a ballot online – the way the vast majority is requested – does not follow the letter of the law.
He also challenged over ballots where election clerks filled in the missing address information on the certification envelope where the ballot is inserted, even though the practice has long been accepted in Wisconsin and the commission State Election Center told clerks that everything was fine.
And Trump has challenged mail-in ballots where voters have declared themselves ‘indefinitely confined,’ a statute that exempts them from presenting photo ID to vote, and which has been used significantly more this year. due to the pandemic. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in March that it was up to individual voters to determine their status.
Lawyers for Democratic Governor Tony Evers called the lawsuit an “assault on democracy” and urged the court not to accept the original jurisdiction of the case.
“President Trump’s (trial) seeks nothing less than to overturn the wishes of nearly 3.3 million Wisconsin voters,” Evers lawyers said in documents filed with the court. “It is a shocking and scandalous attack on our democracy. … He’s just trying to grab the Wisconsin electoral votes even though he lost the statewide election.
Two other lawsuits filed by conservatives are still pending with the Supreme Court of Wisconsin seeking to invalidate the ballots in the presidential election. In addition to Trump’s federal trial, there is another in federal court with similar claims from Sidney Powell, a conservative lawyer who has been removed from Trump’s legal team.
Wisconsin certified Biden’s victory this week, paving the way for a Democratic voters list chosen earlier to vote the state’s 10 electoral votes in his place.
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