President Trump boosted Pennsylvania state Republicans’ efforts to contest the results of the presidential election with a Saturday tweet.
“So much credit to all of the brave men and women in state houses who are defending our great Constitution,” Trump wrote. “Thank you!”
The post came one day after GOP members of the Pennsylvania state senate and house filed resolutions trying to assert their power to appoint the slate of electors that will cast the state’s 20 votes in the Electoral College when it meets Dec. 14.
“There is mounting evidence that the PA presidential election was compromised,” state Sen. Doug Mastriano tweeted Saturday. “If this is the case … the state legislature has the sole authority to direct the manner of selecting delegates to the Electoral College” under the US Constitution, he claimed.
Mastriano led the Wednesday public hearing on alleged election irregularities that featured a phone-in appearance by the president.
Meanwhile, a state judge issued an opinion late Friday that a separate legal challenge to the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot rules is likely to succeed on the merits — throwing the results of the Keystone State’s Nov. 3 election into further confusion.
Judge Patricia McCollough defended her earlier ruling ordering a halt to the election’s certification, based on a lawsuit filed last week by US Congressman Mike Kelly and others.
The Kelly suit, which claims that the state’s universal, no-excuse mail-in ballot system violates specific restrictions defined in Pennsylvania’s state constitution, will be argued in a Monday hearing.
The case — combined with Friday’s unanimous rejection of the Trump campaign’s election challenge by the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals — is likely to increase the odds that the conflicting rulings will ultimately force the US Supreme Court to settle the matter.