Pennsylvania GOP asks Supreme Court to enforce segregation of late-arriving ballots that officials have already set aside

Even if the high court were to grant the request, the impact would likely be muted: Pennsylvania officials said they are already setting aside the small number of mail ballots that have been arrived since Tuesday.

But the move was part of a broader scramble in the courts by President Donald Trump's campaign and other Republican figures as Biden improved his lead in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada.

The GOP has sought to halt or delay the ballot count in a number of lawsuits filed or revived this week around the country since Tuesday. At least 35 lawyers - including newly appointed "legal directors" in those states and Arizona - have been drafted by the campaign to bring cases alleging voting irregularities or missteps by election officials in the wake of an election that ran largely smoothly on Nov. 3.

But judges have responded skeptically as Republicans struggle to provide specific evidence to support Trump's claim of widespread fraud or irregularities, leading them to deny GOP claims or dismiss complaints outright in key battleground states.

On Thursday, judges in three states rejected lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign that challenged the ballot-counting process. Friday brought additional defeat for the president in Michigan, as judges rejected a pair of lawsuits by the Trump campaign and a conservative nonprofit alleging rules were broken during vote-counting.

The GOP's most intense focus was in Pennsylvania, where Biden pulled ahead of Trump in the vote count early Friday.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party filed a new request with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to keep state officials from counting mail ballots received after Election Day, even though election officials have already set those aside and are not including them in their current tallies.

Under a ruling by the state Supreme Court, election officials in Pennsylvania are allowed to count ballots that were postmarked by Tuesday and arrive by 5 p.m. Friday. But state officials agreed to segregate ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day because of pending legal challenges by Republicans.

Despite that, the state GOP said Friday that an official order from the court was necessary to ensure the ballots have been segregated.

The filing acknowledged that the Republican Party did not know of any county not already complying with an order from Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to segregate the ballots received in that three-day window.

The filing said that party representatives contacted all 67 counties and that 42 affirmed that they were segregating the relevant ballots. Because the party did not get a response from the rest, the filing said that raised the possibility that the order might not be being enforced in all counties. It also said that Boockvar might change her order at some point.

The court usually requires more proof in an injunction request that an emergency is at hand.

Boockvar has said a very small number of ballots are at stake and that the current count only includes ballots that arrived by Election Day.

"So I think no matter what happens, I don't think it's going to be a tremendous impact on this race," she told CNN Thursday.

In Philadelphia, for example, just 500 ballots came in Wednesday and Thursday, according to city officials.

The Supreme Court has twice passed up the chance to stop the deadline extension for receiving ballots approved by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. But three justices said they think that court's order might be unconstitutional, and that they were open to granting a case that looks at the issue. It is because of that state officials agreed to keep the ballots segregated.

Also in Pennsylvania, a state court judge ordered election officials to segregate certain provisional ballots, granting a GOP request in part; another dismissed a similar case.