“Don’t talk….don’t talk that…don’t talk that way to me.”

From “Appeals Court Rejects Trump Election Challenge in Pennsylvania,” posted today by N.Y. Times:

“In a blistering decision, a Philadelphia appeals court denied on Friday the Trump campaign’s attempt to challenge a lower court loss that had sought to stop — or even reverse — the certification of election results in Pennsylvania.

The 21-page ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was a complete repudiation of Mr. Trump’s effort to halt Pennsylvania’s certification process and a full-throated affirmation of a decision last Saturday by Judge Matthew W. Brann of Federal District Court in Williamsport, Penn., who dealt the Trump campaign its initial defeat in the case.

“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, wrote on behalf of the appeals court. “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

“Voters, not lawyers, choose the President,” Bilbas stated. “Ballots, not briefs, decide election.”.

“The ballots here are governed by Pennsylvania election law. No federal law requires poll watchers or specifies where they must live or how close they may stand when votes are counted. Nor does federal law govern whether to count ballots with minor state-law defects or let voters cure those defects.

“Those are all issues of state law, not ones that we can hear. And earlier lawsuits have rejected those claims. Seeking to turn those state-law claims into federal ones, the Campaign claims discrimination. But its alchemy cannot transmute lead into gold.”