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The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit aimed at overturning more than 200,000 votes cast in two of the state’s Democratic strongholds, narrowing yet another legal avenue through which the outgoing president tried to overturn the results of the election.
The conservative-leaning court’s 4-to-3 vote to refuse to take the case ended part of President Trump and his supporters’ multi-pronged attempt to overthrow Wisconsin’s entire absentee voting system , which the Trump campaign had sought to label as a law-breaking state.
The three liberal justices of the court and a conservative judge who joined them said the Wisconsin Supreme Court was not the appropriate venue for the Trump campaign to be tried and suggested he send the case back to a court in Lower state.
“We do well as a judicial body to uphold proven judicial standards, even – and perhaps most importantly – in high-profile cases,” wrote Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Conservative who sided with the Liberals. . “Following the law governing the contestation of election results does not constitute a threat to the rule of law.”
Late Thursday, Trump campaign lawyer in Wisconsin, James Troupis, filed new, separate lawsuits in Dane County and Milwaukee County to strike down votes in the two Democratic regions involved in the case that the Supreme Court refused to hear.
But Mr. Troupis and the Trump campaign are running out of time for any legal action aimed at changing the reality of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 20,000-vote victory in Wisconsin. The deadline to exhaust legal challenges to the state’s certifications is Tuesday, and the electorate is due to meet on December 14 to formally vote on making Mr. Biden the next president.
While Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the presidential election was “rigged” in many states, his campaign and his Republican allies did not argue that the election in Wisconsin was tainted with fraud. Instead, they argued that the systems and rules Wisconsin used for its last 11 statewide elections were illegal.
Over the past two weeks, Mr Troupis has argued that accepting postal ballots in person by city clerks before election day violated state law – even though local election officials were leading the process under the leadership of the Wisconsin Election Commission, a bipartisan body that oversees state elections.
“I have yet to see a credible allegation of fraudulent activity in this election,” Dean Knudson, Republican member of the electoral commission, said at the forum meeting on Tuesday. “The Trump campaign made no allegations of fraud in this election. These are legal disputes. “
The Trump trial also argued that city clerks should not have been allowed to fill out address forms for absent ballot witnesses, which the election commission had given them permission to do. State law requires absent voters to have their envelopes signed by witnesses. The lawsuit also asked the court to invalidate the ballots collected by Madison’s city clerk during the October rallies in city parks, though these events were also blessed by the election commission.
The Trump campaign only contested the ballots in Milwaukee County and Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital and home to the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin. The two counties are the largest and most democratic in the state.
The campaign Wednesday night filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in Milwaukee to overturn the state’s election result entirely and have the 10 Wisconsin Electoral College votes determined by its legislature d State controlled by Republicans. another pending in the Wisconsin Supreme Court – also seeking to challenge the state election.
Few of the senior Republican officials in Wisconsin believed that the Trump campaign arguments would lead to the overturning of the election result and the state’s 10 electoral votes awarded to Mr. Trump instead of Mr. Biden.
“The problem for the courts is – even if they accept the argument of the president’s lawyers – what is the remedy?” Former Trump Gov. Scott Walker wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
Wisconsin law, as Mr. Walker noted, states that if municipalities determine after the election that an absent voter should not have voted, the election secretary must choose a ballot at random and reject it, because there is no way at this point. to link a ballot to the elector who voted it.
The Trump campaign trial, had it been successful, would not necessarily have invalidated the ballots in the way it claims to be illegal. It would simply have reduced the number of votes in the state’s two most democratic counties without treating ballots cast the same way in the state’s other 70 counties.
Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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