Write-In gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman is pulling out all the stops in his latest attempt to overturn the primary win of incumbent candidate Spencer Cox. Lyman has now filed with the United States Supreme Court to remove Cox from the Nov. 5 ballot.

This is the most recent in a long line of claims by Lyman that he is the rightful Republican candidate for governor, despite losing in June’s primary election by 37,525 votes. Lyman has also previously appealed to the Utah Supreme Court, which in a six-page opinion declared that Lyman had stated no legal claim or factual basis in his suit to remove Cox from office for “malfeasance.”

In his opinion, Chief Justice Mathew Durrant wrote,” His request is based on a view that the Republican Party’s internal rules trump Utah’s election laws, a claim we rejected [previously].”

In Utah, primary elections are run by the state, not the individual party. This makes it so that state election law trumps partisan election rules. This allowed Cox, who lost at the state Republican convention, to appear on the ballot through the signature-gathering method.

This signature-gathering method has brought controversy of its own. This year’s primary has gone through two separate audits of signature-gathering packets by the State Auditor and the State Legislature. Although problems were found with the signature-gathering method, the consensus was that it was “statistically likely” that Cox, as well as Senate candidate John Curtis and Attorney General candidate Derek Brown, had met the threshold to appear on the ballot. The audits also found that even if the signature counts had fallen short, the three candidates would have had a “substantial” amount of time to gather the remaining signatures.

In a news release from the Lyman campaign, it reads,” We have decided to appeal this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court because we believe the Utah Supreme Court’s dismissal was frivolous and misconstrued the previous [U.S. Supreme Court] ruling on New York State Board of Elections v. Lopez Torres. There is enough history of litigation surrounding [Senate Bill] 54 to support an appeal to [the U.S. Supreme Court]. We look forward to the next steps in this process.”

With election day only two weeks away, mail-in ballots have already been sent out to voters both domestic and international. It is also past the deadline for ballots to be printed, a problem that was also highlighted in the recent Amendment D saga.