One election, one state Attorney General: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is bringing the state to bear in an election where Texas Votes are considered securely red, by filing suit against the swing states.
In a thoroughly unexpected move, Paxton filed suit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to Bloomberg, and is petitioning that the states be blocked from participating in the Electoral College.
This latest suit filed by Texas directly with the US Supreme Court, just before midnight last night, against several other states for violating the US Constitution in how they changed election rules, may be the one. This may be the case that breaks this thing wide open.
— First Words (@unscriptedmike) December 8, 2020
During a hearing on the election’s validity in Arizona later in the day Tuesday, attorney Sidney Powell who is working to support the Trump campaign claim of election fraud, urged the judge to rule quickly on the issue so her case could be joined to Paxton’s before it makes it to the Supreme Court.
Not everyone was delighted with the move, however. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued a statement saying that “The motion filed by the Texas attorney general is a publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading,”
“The erosion of confidence in our democratic system isn’t attributable to the good people of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia or Pennsylvania but rather to partisan officials, like Mr. Paxton, who place loyalty to a person over loyalty to their country.”
“It’s a publicity stunt masquerading as a lawsuit. AG Paxton should be sanctioned for it,” tweeted Rick Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Irvine. “It goes against the will of millions of voters. He’s going for a pardon with Trump.”
“It looks like we have a new leader in the ‘craziest lawsuit filed to purportedly challenge the election’ category,” tweeted Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Trump, however, is wildly supportive, tweeting that he thinks this, “We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case,” he wrote. “This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!”
He made his comments after the Supreme Court declined to take up another case on election fraud.
“This was not my case as has been so incorrectly reported,” Trump wrote. “The case that everyone has been waiting for is the State’s case with Texas and numerous others joining. It is very strong, ALL CRITERIA MET.”
The suit itself requests that the Supreme Court order states to allow their state legislatures to appoint the electors, instead of counting the now so contentious votes. The theory being that the locally elected officials could reflect the will of their constituents more succinctly than votes that have been tampered with (or augmented in a strictly illegal way.
The lawsuit says:
“Certain officials in the Defendant States presented the pandemic as the justification for ignoring state laws regarding absentee and mail-in voting. The Defendant States flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted. Whether well intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States. Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution…
“This case presents a question of law: Did the Defendant States violate the Electors Clause by taking non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? These non-legislative changes to the Defendant States’ election laws facilitated the casting and counting of ballots in violation of state law, which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. By these unlawful acts, the Defendant States have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but their actions have also debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.”
