The ball is now in the court of the Supreme Court of the United States, with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court throwing out a big victory for the Trump legal team. The top court of the Keystone State has a terrible track record, allowing changes in election law that the state legislature did not authorize, so this story from the AP is no surprise:

Pennsylvania’s highest court on Saturday night threw out a lower court’s order preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests on its Nov. 3 election ballot in the latest lawsuit filed by Republicans who are attempting to block the victory of President-elect Joe Biden in the battleground state.

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the expiration of a time limit in Pennsylvania’s expansive year-old mail-in voting law allowing for challenges to it.

Mark Levin is scathing in his response:

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One good thing about the state supreme court’s action is that it was so prompt, allowing time for appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

But in a lengthy post, William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection expresses pessimism about whether the Supreme Court of the United States will take up the case.

Two things are possible: The mail-in procedures violated the PA Constitution, and the petitioners waited too long to raise that objection. As I’ve written many times, one of the Republican legal problems in these litigations is what the remedy would be. Throwing the case to the legislature based on the mail-in procedure after the vote is asking alot, perhaps too much.

In this circumstance, I think it will be hard for the petitioners to get four SCOTUS judges to hear the case, much less five to reverse. Maybe I’ll be surprised, but that’s my initial reaction.

My non-lawyer take on the Supreme Court is that the justices will have to face the overwhelming evidence that the presidential election was stolen. There are too many anomalies, too many signs of chicanery for a sane person to conclude that it was not stolen. The justices then have to make the most consequential choice in the history of the court. Do they turn a blind eye and let a corrupt presidential election stand? If they do so, the end of the Republic as founded is at hand. And roughly half the country will withdraw legitimacy from the federal government, including the very court on which they sit.

But throwing out tainted ballots and handing the election to Trump will face a similar backlash from the half of the country that voted for Biden – at least from the portion of the Biden vote that represents real human beings eligible to vote.

Because conflict will happen no matter which way the court rules, why not stand up against fraud?