Texas v. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/22o155.html
Texas sued Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan for two reasons: 1) they did not like the way their elections were run by the states and 2) Trump lost them. They wanted the Supreme Court to throw out the votes in those four states and send it back to the Republican dominated state legislatures to decide. The Supreme Court said yesterday you lose; you have no standing to bring this case – another huge loss for the Trump and his attorneys; it was 9-0 holding no standing. This is the latest and hopefully the last litigation hurdle; the Electoral College votes on Monday.
Essentially what the Texas Attorney General did is to combine all the earlier cases that Trump and his attorneys and allies lost in all four states and to argue to the Supreme Court that if you throw out all the absentee and mail in ballots, then Trump would have won if you counted just Election Day ballots. They dressed this up with a claim that each state’s mail in ballot procedures for their elections would deny Texas’ rights under the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause and the Elections Clause of the US Constitution. Don’t ask how they got there, no one else can figure it out either.
What the states responded were: 1) we did everything just right under our elections rules and our state and federal courts have already ruled against Trump on all of these issues you are complaining to the Supreme Court about; 2) we counted and recounted (Wisconsin and Georgia) and recounted again (Georgia), and Trump still lost, and 3) who the heck are you, Texas, to try to tell us how to run our state’s elections.
The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction of lawsuits between states. Typically this would involve Arizona and California suing each other about rights to use Colorado River water. One could imagine Ohio and Michigan suing each other over who has to pay for what portion of cleaning up pollution in Lake Erie. It is pretty unfathomable to think the Supreme Court would decide Texas’ claim that four other states voted for the wrong presidential candidate. Yet 18 other state Republican Attorney Generals sought to join in as amici of Texas. And 125 Republican Members of Congress including the Minority Leader of the House also sought to join as amici of Texas.
I read the plaintiff and defendant briefs yesterday and a few of the amici. Here’s a few of the legal points from them:
· Texas, you have no standing.
· These cases have already been litigated in our state and federal courts, and Trump lost all of them.
· There are no Due Process, Equal Protection or Elections Clause violations.
· Under the Elections Clause, these are matters of state jurisdiction and indeed state sovereignty, not Texas’ business in the least.
· This is a political question for Congress and state legislatures, not courts to decide. Nine members of the Supreme Court don’t get to over ride the will of the American voters to decide the next President.
· The proposed remedy, throwing out the election results in the four states, enjoining state certification of elections, and enjoining the Electoral College from meeting and deciding the Presidential election, is unfathomable.
· Our states have already certified our election results, and we are in “safe harbor” from these challenges.
· You cannot rewrite the rules of elections ex post facto (after the fact); voters relied on the state’s rules in casting their ballots as mail in or absentee.
· This was not a close election; Donald Trump lost by 7 million votes, lost the Electoral College by 306 to 232, lost even the closest elections in Georgia and Arizona by over 10,000 votes apiece, lost the next closest in Wisconsin by over 20,000 votes. And he lost all the recounts we did.
To understand “standing”, think back on the Texas Governor’s decisions to limit ballot drop off boxes to one per county, even though Harris County (Houston) for example has a population of 4.7 million. Now I, as a California voter or even the California Attorney General, sue Texas and say your state’s votes for Donald Trump should be thrown out because you did not have enough ballot drop off boxes or enough polling stations in minority communities or your lines were too long and discouraged voting. If I, as a California resident or even the California Attorney General, sue Texas, we lack standing. If my cousins, Texas residents, sue Texas; they may have standing to ask for more ballot boxes or polling places if they timely file before the election, but they would still lose if after the election, they seek to have the entire Texas election results thrown out and the state’s votes awarded to Joe Biden.
The Texas Attorney General knows this and so do the Attorney Generals of all the 18 amici states and the 125 members of Congress who joined or sought to join this lawsuit. The Pennsylvania Attorney General said it best: “The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.”
Let’s hope they all got the message.
Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor, a Republican, was very clear the other night when he said Americans are being duped by the President and his suppliant enablers (such as Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas) claiming Trump won. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-voters-are-being-duped-by-trumps-election-challenges How long will it take and what will it take to disabuse the President’s voters from his lies to all of them? I know and understand that they want him to win; that is why they voted for him in the first place, but over 80 million of your fellow Americans disagreed. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Donald Trump is not that popular with the majority of Americans.
Each of these elected officials has taken and is now violating their solemn oaths of office. “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” They are courting extreme danger by enabling the President’s lies about a rigged and stolen election. Gabriel Sterling, a Georgia elections official and a Republican, said it best “someone’s going to get killed”. https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/12/01/940961602/someones-going-to-get-killed-ga-official-blasts-gop-silence-on-election-threats
What’s the next move?
Lucien Wulsin
12/12/20