Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Overturn Election Results

There remains one last-ditch chance for electoral votes to be tossed. On January 6, the Senate and the House will convene to count the electoral votes and officially declare the winner of the election. The joint session of Congress is required by law to ratify presidential results, but also allows "members to object to the returns from any individual state as they are announced," according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Procedure calls for Vice President Pence to open each state's "certificate of ascertainment" — documents prepared by the state after it has completed its vote count and ascertained the official results. He will then present the certificate to four "tellers," who announce result tallies. Once a candidate reaches 270 electoral college votes, Pence will declare the winner.

Lawmakers may object to the results — even if it's not their home state — leaving the door open for representatives who support Mr. Trump's unproven claims of widespread election fraud to interrupt the typically ceremonial process.

According to a Washington Post survey, only 25 congressional Republicans have acknowledged President-elect Biden's victory. And 222 Republicans — in the House and Senate — will not say who won the election. Some may lodge their objections during the January 6 session. Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks has already said he would challenge Georgia and Pennsylvania's results, claiming flawed election systems, Politico first reported.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electoral-college-presidential-...

It's really silly to believe that Democrats were able to orchestrate a massive conspiracy to fraudulently flip votes, and do it in such a masterful way that no one has been able to find sufficient evidence to get a court case to last long enough for a trial, yet somehow forgot to do anything about the Senate.

This is not a fraud case - Rudy Giuliani https://youtu.be/Wuwl2p9TIDE

The defeated candidate clearly would be able to articulate the kind of particularized harm necessary to establish standing. For some of the fact claims involved, insofar as they might raise a legally cognizable case, in-state political parties and other groups and possibly in some cases particular voters have claims (e.g., where an equal protection claim is raised based on differential treatment of voters within the state, voters on the disadvantaged side would potentially have standing.)

OTOH, having jumped through the standing hoop, Trump and pro-Trump litigants have fallen down on actually being able to establish anything illegal, despite having tried in each of the affected states, in both federal and state courts, in well over 50 different lawsuits total.

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

In cases where there is a "controversy between the states," as the Texas suit falsely claimed it to be, The Supreme Court is the appropriate venue for first filings (i.e., as trier of facts, or the original jurisdiction).

For all other matters the Supreme Court is strictly an appellate court (hearing appeals after inferior courts have already ruled).

The Supreme Court has only very rarely denied such cases, as it's the only jurisdiction for them.

Thomas and Alito thought that the case should at least be accepted.

However, and it's a big however, both "dissenting" justices joined with the other seven in denying the "injunctive relief" requested by Texas (IIUC, delaying the appointment of electors in GA, MI, PA and WI).

Since that relief wouldn't have been granted (that denial was unanimous), the certified electors would have been seated on Monday to cast their votes in each state.

Remember, this isn't an appellate case. In these cases, SCOTUS sits as the trial court.

Unless the court heard each side make their case, enter evidence, examine and cross-examine witnesses, rule on any further motions, objections, etc., heard closing arguments, debated amongst themselves, came to a decision and wrote an opinion prior to Monday (60 hours or so from now), the electors would have already cast their votes.

Once that's done, it would render the the proceedings and the suit (because the relief requested by Texas was to invalidate the certified votes and the elections in all four states and have the respective legislatures appoint new electors) moot since the electors had already voted before they could rule.

So. No. Unless the justices had granted the preliminary injunction, there was pretty much no way they could (let alone would) rule for Texas, since the relief requested would no longer be available.

N.B. IANAL.

Edit: Reorganized for clarity.