Former President Donald Trump’s final legal appeal of the 2020 election results is as dead as a parrot in a Monty Python sketch. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday it would not hear a challenge to the presidential election results from Wisconsin.
“The latest appeal contended that the Wisconsin Elections Commission violated the U.S. Constitution by setting up mail-in voting rules that ignored state law,” Bloomberg News reported. “A federal appeals court panel consisting of three Republican appointees unanimously rejected the challenge, with Trump-appointed Judge Michael Scudder writing the opinion.”
President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by over 20,000 votes. Despite the size of the margin of victory, the Trump campaign first requested a recount of Wisconsin’s votes, netting Biden more votes. Then the Trump campaign launched a series of lawsuits in a fruitless effort to overturn Wisconsin’s election results.
Trump’s allies in the Republican Party of Wisconsin also attempted to use the recount process to get legally-cast ballots thrown out. In addition, several Republican state legislators joined lawsuits to throw out Wisconsin’s votes, Congressman Tom Tiffany (R-WI) joined a lawsuit that would have completely upended federalism to give the election to Trump, and Republican legislators even called for the state legislature to decide the election.
Meanwhile, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) promoted conspiracy theories about the election and promised to challenge Wisconsin’s electoral votes on January 6. Johnson did not follow through on his threat after the violent insurrection at the Capitol disrupted the meeting of Congress (which Johnson has said was possibly caused by the Capitol police, Antifa, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi). However, Tiffany and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) did vote to throw out Wisconsin’s votes despite the violence.
The final Trump legal challenge to Wisconsin’s votes rejected by the Supreme Court centered on the decision by the Wisconsin Election Commission to allow secure absentee ballot drop boxes, according to CBS News. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the challenge by Trump, pointing out the campaign should have challenged the use of the drop boxes before the election.
Wisconsin Republicans have introduced a bill that would limit the use of drop boxes to one per municipality, regardless of size.
(The “long national nightmare” line is from a quote by President Gerald Ford after being sworn in after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.)
