By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a Republican challenge to a lower court decision that extended the deadline to receive mail-in ballots in the election battleground state of Pennsylvania where Democratic President Joe Biden defeated former Republican President Donald Trump.
The justices turned away appeals by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania and Republican members of the state legislature of the ruling by the state’s top court ordering officials to count mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later. Three conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, dissented from the decision not to review the case.
Biden won the state by more than 80,000 votes. The dispute concerned just 9,428 ballots out of 6.9 million cast in the state. The Supreme Court already had rejected a Republican request to block the lower court ruling.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
