US election officials in Pennsylvania can certify results that currently show Democrat Joe Biden winning the state by more than 80,000 votes, a federal has judge ruled.
The ruling deals President Donald Trump’s campaign another blow in its effort to invalidate the election.
US Middle District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, turned down the request for an injunction by the Trump campaign.
In his ruling, Judge Brann said the Trump campaign presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations unsupported by evidence.”
“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth-most-populated state,” the ruling read.
“Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.”
Mr Trump had argued that the US constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law was violated when Pennsylvania counties took different approaches to notifying voters before the election about technical problems with their submitted mail-in ballots.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the seven Biden-majority counties that the campaign sued had argued Mr Trump had previously raised similar claims and lost.
They told Judge Brann the remedy the Trump campaign sought, to throw out millions of votes over alleged isolated issues, was far too extreme, particularly after most of them had been tallied.
“There is no justification on any level for the radical disenfranchisement they seek,” Ms Boockvar’s lawyers wrote in a brief filed Thursday.
The state’s 20 electoral votes would not have been enough on their own to hand Mr Trump a second term.
Counties must certify their results to Ms Boockvar by Monday, after which she will make her own certification.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf will notify the winning candidate’s electors they should appear to vote in the US Capitol on December 14.
