MILWAUKEE (NewsNation Now) — President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging Wisconsin’s election results in the state’s Supreme Court.
The petition alleges that election officials were directed to fill in missing information on ballot envelopes, issued absentee ballots without receiving applications and allowed people to improperly claim a “confined” absentee voting status.
The petition, filed on behalf of Trump, his campaign and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, also takes issue with voting events in city locations outside of polling stations, according to court filings.
The petition alleges 221,323 absentee ballots were improperly filed. Biden edged out Trump in Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes.
The Trump campaign and its supporters have filed lawsuits challenging Biden victories in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, so far without success.
On Monday, Wisconsin certified Biden as winner of the state, further dimming the Trump campaign’s long-shot bid to overturn the results. The campaign is seeking withdrawal of that certification.
The state’s highest court, controlled 4-3 by conservatives, also is considering whether to hear two other lawsuits filed by conservatives seeking to invalidate ballots cast during the presidential election. Separately, two Wisconsin Republicans filed a new federal lawsuit Tuesday that mirrors some of Trump’s claims and asks a judge to declare him the winner in Wisconsin.
The petition is at least the third one filed by Trump or his supporters in the state’s supreme court since Nov. 23 challenging the election results.
Biden campaign spokesman Nate Evans called the lawsuit “completely baseless and not rooted in facts on the ground.” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said it was “without merit.”
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, noted that the lawsuit doesn’t allege that anyone was ineligible to vote, but instead seeks to create a two-tiered election system where voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties are disenfranchised “under much stricter rules than citizens in the rest of the state.”
Trump’s Wisconsin attorney, Jim Troupis, said in a statement that voters “deserve election processes with uniform enforcement of the law, plain and simple.”
Last month, the Trump campaign demanded recounts in two of the state’s most populous and most heavily Democratic counties. A recount in one, Milwaukee County, ended with Biden receiving a net gain of 132 votes.
Late Wednesday night, the Trump campaign filed another lawsuit in federal court, echoing many of the claims in its state lawsuit, as well as in two other lawsuits brought by Republicans over Trump’s loss in Wisconsin.