U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has moved up the deadline for Pennsylvania officials to respond to a lawsuit led by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of Butler that seeks to overturn the state's election results.

Alito on Sunday asked the commonwealth to file briefs by 9 a.m. Tuesday — the state's “safe harbor” post-election deadline.Alito last week had set a 4 p.m. Wednesday deadline for the state to respond to the emergency appeal Kelly, R-16th, filed with the Supreme Court. Alito handles emergency appeals from Pennsylvania for the court.Under federal law, if a state certifies its presidential electors at least six days before the Electoral College meeting, which is Dec. 14 this year, those electors cannot be challenged.Kelly and several other Republican candidates and voters on Dec. 1 asked the Supreme Court for an emergency injunction to halt and nullify certification of the commonwealth's 2020 federal election results.That appeal came three days after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court nixed the lawsuit that sought to throw out 2.5 million mail-in ballots cast in the Nov. 3 election.Gov. Tom Wolf, one of the defendants in the lawsuit, on Nov. 24 certified Democratic candidate Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election in the state.According to the results, Biden defeated Trump by a margin of 80,555 votes.But the petitioners, who include Sean Parnell, a GOP candidate for the 17th District that encompasses a small part of Butler County, claim Pennsylvania's universal, no-excuse mail-in ballot law violated the state's constitution.They argue the state legislature lacked authority to act on its own in 2019 when it expanded the availability of remote voting, contending that such a move required an amendment to the state constitution.Along with Wolf, the litigation named Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the Republican-controlled General Assembly as defendants.The state Supreme Court on Nov. 28 dismissed the petitioners' suit, ruling Kelly and the others waited too long to challenge the state's mail-in voting law known as Act 77.The suit was filed Nov. 21, or 18 days after the election and a little more than a year after enactment of the law to allow mail-in ballots.Justices for the state's high court cited the law's 180-day time limit on filing legal challenges to its provisions, as well as the onerus demand that an entire election be overturned retroactively.

Judge Samuel Alito