A lawsuit that would have ordered new steps to check voter identifications and eligibility for thousands of overseas ballots was dismissed in federal court Tuesday.

Filed by six Republican Congressmen from Pennsylvania, the lawsuit sought to segregate the 25,000 votes cast by state voters residing overseas, alleging they couldn’t be verified and were subject to fraud.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner dismissed the case on several grounds, saying the Congressmen had taken too long to file it and that they lacked legal standing.

Republican U.S. Reps. Guy Reschenthaler, Dan Meuser, Glenn “GT” Thompson, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly and Scott Perry, who represent Pennsylvania, filed the case Sept. 30 — more than a month before Election Day. 

“An injunction at this late hour would upend the Commonwealth’s carefully laid election administration procedures to the detriment of untold thousands of voters, to say nothing of the state and county administrators who would be expected to implement these new procedures on top of their current duties,” Conner’s ruling said.

Conner, who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, initially held a hearing on the case Oct. 18.

Almost 900,000 overseas ballots were counted nationwide in 2020, according to the federal Election Assistance Commission. Most overseas votes are from uniformed service members who are stationed in foreign countries, along with their families, as well as U.S. citizens who live overseas. 

In a neck-and-neck race for the White House, every vote will count in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where President Joe Biden won by a narrow 1.17% margin in 2020 and Trump won by 0.72% in 2016.