December 9, 2020
On Monday, Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, representing the state of Texas, filed an election lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, alleging that the four states unconstitutionally changed their election laws.
This afternoon President Trump and seventeen states joined the Texas motion asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the election results in the four battleground states.
The lawsuit argues that the four states:
“Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, government officials in the defendant states of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, ‘Defendant State’), usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes,” Paxton’s complaint says. “They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.”
Paxton’s complaint explains that “non-legislative actors” made unconstitutional changes to election laws. Only state legislatures are vested with the power to enact or make changes to the law.
Additionally, Texas officials argue that within the Defendant states, voters were treated differently, to the advantage of Democrats. One example of this inequitable treatment occurred in Pennsylvania. In Democratic counties in Pennsylvania, voters were allowed to amend problematic ballots, while in Republican counties, they were not.
The lawsuit argues that these “unconstitutional changes opened the door to election irregularities in various forms.”
The lawsuit also states that millions of absentee ballots in the Defendant states were sent through the mail or placed in drop boxes with little or no chain of custody. Moreover, the number of illegal absentee and mail-in ballots that should be invalidated greatly exceeds the difference between the vote totals of President Trump and Joe Biden.
The suit not only seeks relief in the 2020 presidential election but is also concerned that without any remedy future elections will also be compromised.
