HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — President Donald Trump's campaign launched a lawsuit to stop the certification of the election results in Pennsylvania, suing Monday as counties continued to sort through provisional ballots and late-arriving mail-in ballots nearly a week after the election.

The Associated Press on Saturday called the presidential contest for former Vice President Joe Biden, after determining that the remaining ballots left to be counted in Pennsylvania would not allow Trump to catch up.

But Trump’s campaign filed litigation in federal court over Pennsylvania’s presidential election, and Trump has refused to concede.

“The election is not over,” Trump's general counsel, Matthew Morgan, said in a news conference in Washington, D.C.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the Trump campaign's latest lawsuit meritless.

The new lawsuit accuses Allegheny County and Philadelphia — where Trump was badly beaten in unofficial election returns — of receiving and processing 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots without review by political parties and candidates.

An Allegheny County spokesperson declined comment, saying officials were reviewing the lawsuit. Philadelphia officials did not immediately comment.

The lawsuit also charges that “Democratic-heavy counties” violated the law by identifying mail-in ballots before Election Day that had defects — such as lacking an inner “secrecy envelope” or lacking a voter's signature on the outside envelope — so that the voter could fix it and ensure that their vote would count.

A similar claim by Republicans was dismissed in a state court Friday. Democratic voters submitted almost three times as many ballots by mail as Republicans.

The lawsuit asks the court to prevent the state and six counties named in it from certifying the results of the election, and to require them to invalidate ballots cast by voters who were given an opportunity to fix mail-in ballots that were going to be disqualified for a technicality.

Courts have thus far rejected Republican demands in Pennsylvania and other battleground states to throw out ballots or stop vote counting. It was unclear whether any of the legal challenges would make a difference to an eventual outcome.

Morgan called the new lawsuit “step one of a process.”

“We are very close to the automatic recount statute in Pennsylvania and this lawsuit itself could change that or swing that small discrepancy," Morgan said.

Shapiro said the election has been overseen by election officials from both parties and was “lawful, fair and secure.”

“I am confident Pennsylvania law will be upheld and the will of the people of the Commonwealth will be respected in this election,” Shapiro said in a statement.

All told, counties in Pennsylvania have tallied more than 6.7 million ballots, or about 74% turnout.

More than 2.6 million mail-in ballots were reported received by counties, and there has been no report by state or county election officials of fraud or any other problem with the accuracy of the count.

Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has accused Republicans of seeking to undermine confidence in the election results,

On Monday, Trump tweeted, “Pennsylvania prevented us from watching much of the Ballot count. Unthinkable and illegal in this country.” However, state election officials say that poll watchers were certified in every county.

In Philadelphia, a Democratic bastion repeatedly attacked by Trump as untrustworthy, Republican lawyers acknowledged in court that they had certified observers watching polls and mail-in ballots being processed.

Republicans did, however, sue Philadelphia last week over how close those watchers could stand to election workers processing ballots. They won a court order allowing observers to get within 6 feet (2 meters) of election workers.

Some of the pending litigation filed by Republicans challenges a state court order to count mail-in ballots that arrived in a three-day period after polls closed. Ballots cannot be counted if there is proof they were mailed after polls closed.

Pennsylvania election officials have not yet provided a statewide tally of the total of late-arriving ballots. Still, based on estimates from a number of counties, the total may not exceed 10,000.

On Monday, Biden’s lead in the state stood at about 45,000 votes, fueled by big wins in Philadelphia, Allegheny County and Philadelphia’s four heavily populated suburban counties. That is larger than the 44,292-vote margin of Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania in 2016.

Some races remain uncalled, including the contest for state treasurer, in which political newcomer Stacy Garrity of Athens, in Bradford County, could unseat the incumbent, Democrat Joe Torsella.

State Republicans easily maintained majority control of both the House of Representatives and Senate for the two-year session that starts in January.

___

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter. Follow Mark Scolforo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/houseofbuddy.