WASHINGTON • The United States Supreme Court on Friday rejected a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by President Donald Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states, dealing him a likely fatal blow in his quest to undo his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden.

The decision allows the Electoral College to press ahead with a meeting tomorrow, where it is expected to formally cast its votes and make Mr Biden's victory official.

Mr Biden, a Democrat, has amassed 306 votes to Mr Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, which allots votes to all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on population.

The four states in question - Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - contributed a combined 62 votes to Mr Biden's total. To win the White House, 270 votes are needed.

In a brief order, the justices said Texas did not have legal standing to bring the case, abruptly ending what Mr Trump had touted last week as his best hope for overturning the election.

While Mr Biden has moved forward with a wave of appointments for his incoming administration ahead of assuming office on Jan 20, Mr Trump and his legal team have filed a flurry of unsuccessful lawsuits in several states claiming voter fraud and challenging the results.

Mr Trump's goal had long been for a case to reach the Supreme Court, where he had placed three new justices in his first term and where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. The lawsuit brought by Texas and supported by 17 other states and more than 100 Republican members of Congress gave him that opportunity.

In the run-up to the Nov 3 election, Mr Trump had pushed for the swift confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, with the publicly stated hope that she could be in a position to help rule on an election challenge.

But Ms Barrett and the two other justices appointed by Mr Trump - Dr Neil Gorsuch and Mr Brett Kavanaugh - signed on to the court's order derailing the Texas suit without comment.

"Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognisable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections," the court's order said.

Two of the court's conservatives, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, said they would have allowed Texas to sue but would not have blocked the four states from finalising their election results.

Together with a case from Pennsylvania, it was the second time last week that the court spurned the attempt to overturn the will of voters.

The Texas lawsuit argued that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful.

Mr Ken Paxton, the Republican Attorney-General of the state and a Trump ally who had filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, said after Friday's ruling: "It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court decided not to take this case and determine the constitutionality of these four states' failure to follow federal and state election law."

To promote his effort to overturn the election results, Mr Trump's campaign is buying ads on unspecified cable television networks that highlight claims of electoral fraud.

One commercial claims that mail-in ballots were "a recipe for fraud" and urges viewers to "contact your legislators today". Another shows footage of ballots being pulled from under a table at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where ballots were counted as a narrator decries "suitcases of ballots added in secret in Georgia".

The commercial also highlights "poll watchers denied access in Pennsylvania", part of the Trump campaign's complaint that Republican observers were not allowed to monitor the counting of mail-in ballots in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG