LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Michigan election officials on Monday certified President-elect Joe Biden's 154,000-vote victory in the state, another defeat for President Donald Trump in his effort to undermine the results of the Nov. 3 election through legal challenges and claims of fraud.
Trump's effort to stave off the inevitable is facing resistance from the courts and fellow Republicans with just three weeks to go until the Electoral College meets to certify Biden's victory.
Trump's challenges and allegations of conspiracy and fraud have been met with rejection as states move forward with confirming their results.
In Michigan, the Board of State Canvassers, which has two Republicans and two Democrats, confirmed the state results on a 3-0 vote with one GOP abstention. Trump and his allies had hoped to block the vote to allow time for an audit of ballots in Wayne County, where Trump has claimed he was the victim of fraud. Biden surpassed the president by more than 330,000 votes there.
Under Michigan law, Biden claims all 16 electoral votes. Biden won the state by 2.8 percentage points - a larger margin than in other states where Trump is contesting results like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
"The board's duty today is very clear," said Aaron Van Langevelde, the Republican vice chair. "We have a duty to certify this election based on these returns. That is very clear."
Some Trump allies had expressed hope state lawmakers could intervene in selecting Republican electors in states that do not certify. That bid is no longer possible in Michigan.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement after the vote that it was "time to put this election behind us."
"President-elect Biden won the State of Michigan by more than 154,000 votes, and he will be our next president on January 20th," the statements reads.
The Trump legal team dismissed the certification as "simply a procedural step" and insisted it would fight on.
Trump was facing setbacks in other battleground states as well.
In Pennsylvania, a conservative Republican judge shot down the Trump campaign's biggest legal effort with a scathing ruling that asked why he would disenfranchise 7 million voters with no evidence to back the campaign's claims.
However, Trump's lawyers still hope to block the state's certification, quickly appealing to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The court ordered lawyers to file a brief Monday but did not agree to hear oral arguments.
The campaign, in its filings, asked for urgent consideration so it could challenge the state election results before they are certified next month. If not, they will seek to decertify them, the filings said.
Trump's team insisted it did not want to invalidate all of the 6.8 million ballots cast in the state. Instead, the lawyers said they were taking aim at seven Democratic-leaning counties where they take issue with how mail-in ballots were handled.
"Appellants seek to exclude the defective mail ballots which overwhelming favored Biden, which may turn the result of the election," they said in a filing Monday.
Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes. Other litigation has failed to change a single vote.
Pennsylvania county election boards were voting Monday, the state deadline, on whether to certify local election results to the Department of State. The boards in two populous counties divided along party lines, with majority Democrats in both places voting to certify.
After all counties have sent certified results to Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, she must then tabulate, compute and canvass votes for all races. The law requires her to perform that task quickly but does not set a specific deadline.