A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed six Pennsylvania Republican congressmen’s lawsuit that could have thrown thousands of overseas ballots into question in the key swing state.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner tossed the challenge on multiple grounds: waiting too long to file it, lacking legal standing, failing to include required parties and having no viable cause of action.
The six Pennsylvania Republicans asked that overseas votes be segregated, claiming the state was opening the door to fraud by not taking required steps to verify the ballots.
The request would have thrown into doubt the roughly 25,000 overseas ballots Pennsylvania has sent out this year, court filings show, a sizeable margin as polling indicates a razor-tight race in the state between Vice President Harris and former President Trump.
State election officials pushed back and said federal law exempts overseas ballots from the verification steps.
“An injunction at this late hour would upend the Commonwealth’s carefully laid election administration procedures to the detriment of untold thousands of voters, to say nothing of the state and county administrators who would be expected to implement these new procedures on top of their current duties,” Conner wrote in his ruling.