Still, Trump lawyers soldiered on six days after the election, just as personal counsel Rudy Giuliani had promised they would during a surreal weekend press conference outside a landscaping storefront in northeast Philadelphia.
Giuliani denounced the city's vote count — which fell about 4-1 for Biden, giving the Democrat the win in both Pennsylvania and the US election — as "extremely troubling."
Across the country, Republicans have complained about problems with the signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on ballots, the inability of their poll watchers to scrutinise them and the extensions granted for mail-in ballots to arrive.
However, judges across the country largely rejected the Republican challenges over the past week as the campaign sought to interrupt the vote count as it leaned toward Biden.
Trump has yet to concede the election, even as Biden claimed victory and got to work on his transition plans.
At the US Supreme Court, 10 Republican state attorney-generals filed an amicus brief today to support a challenge to Pennsylvania's decision to count mail-in ballots that arrived by Saturday.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had unanimously upheld the three-day extension set by Democratic state officials concerned about Postal Service delays and the Covid-19 pandemic. The attorneys-general say the court usurped a power reserved for state lawmakers.
The US Supreme Court had declined to fast-track the challenge, but the vote was 4-4, and three justices expressed reservations. Republicans now hope to try again with new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the court.
"The decision provided a window of time after election day, when the preliminary results were announced, in which unscrupulous actors could attempt to influence a close presidential election," the Republican Attorneys General Association said in the brief.
Earlier, an anti-abortion law centre in Michigan filed suit to complain about vote counting procedures in Wayne County. An appeals court in Michigan asked the Trump campaign to refile a case submitted last week, saying the appeal was incomplete.
And in Arizona, the Trump campaign asked in a lawsuit filed on Sunday for the right to inspect thousands of in-person ballots filled out on election day in the Phoenix area, alleging that poll workers had mishandled them.
In Georgia, where Biden has a small lead over Trump but the race remains too early to call, a state election official pledged today to investigate any ballot problems they find.
"When the margins are this tight, every little thing matters," said Gabriel Sterling, who led the state's implementation of a new voting system for the secretary of state's office.
Still, he expressed frustration over efforts to shake the public's faith in the electoral system.
"The facts are the facts, regardless of outcomes," Sterling said.
- AP
