Members of the Pennsylvania Republican Party and the former US President Donald Trump, since the conclusion of the US Presidential elections in November 2020, have been urging the US Supreme Court to permit a detailed review of the electoral college of Pennsylvania due to a three-day extension of the deadline for ballot submission. The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the challenges made to the extension, which was induced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

US President Joe Biden, representing the Democratic party, defeated Trump by a substantial margin of 80,555 votes in the state while the three-day extension added about 10,000 ballots, which would have barely made a dent in the election results, reported Politico. 

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While Trump’s election challenge was rendered moot by the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas was the only judge who made statements about the verdict. Thomas, who is known to lean towards the conservative side, spoke in a critical manner and emphasised that the court should have granted a review. 

He wrote, “That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future. These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable”, reported Politico. 

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With a series of decisions made by the Supreme Court of the US which were not in favour of the unimpeached former President, any political ambitions held by Trump seem to be fading away. With one of the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a US President and other legal cases looming over him, the Supreme Court handed Trump two more defeats.