A judge in Michigan has denied a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump's campaign asking for the state's vote counting to stop because Republican poll watchers have been banned from accessing the ballots.
Judge Cynthia Stephens of the Michigan Court of Claims said she intends to deny Trump's request for the lawsuit with a written order, which will be released on Friday afternoon.
Trump filed the suit on Wednesday evening (4 November) and claimed that the GOP's poll watchers had been banned from observing the absentee voter count-up.
The President has made several unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in the lead-up to the election, and this has only strengthened since.
Judge Stephens said that she took into account the fact that the suit was made just hours before the last ballots were counted up.
The judge also pointed out that the Great Lake State's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was not the correct person for Trump's campaign to sue because it isn't up to her, but the local election officials, to decide who has access to the vote counts.
However, the suit did not list local election officials.
As it stands, the Associated Press has called Michigan in favour of Trump's opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
The latest numbers show that Biden has 50.6 percent of the vote to Trump's 47.9 percent. So far 99 percent of the votes have been counted.
The Trump campaign claimed that Ms Benson - a Democratic official - had prevented Republican pollsters from viewing the counting of absentee ballots, an allegation that she denies.
However, the Attorney General Dana Nessel's office argued today that this doesn't matter anyway, because of how many of the ballots had already been counted by the time the lawsuit was filed.
Judge Stephens said: "What I have at best is a hearsay affidavit, I believe, that addresses a harm that would be significant, but that's what we got.
"We've got an affidavit that is not first-hand knowledge."
Trump has also filed lawsuits in Nevada and Georgia - though the Georgia suit has also been dismissed - and demanded a recount in Wisconsin.
A lawsuit has also been filed in Pennsylvania asking for counting to be 'temporarily' stopped while more Republican poll watchers could be put into the room as ballots are being tabulated.
Biden needs only a handful more Electoral College votes to remove the sitting President from office.
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However, it could be some days - and more legal challenges, no doubt - before the final picture becomes definitively clear.
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