In blistering retort, 4 battleground states tell Texas to butt out of US presidential election
WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) – In blistering language denouncing Republican efforts to subvert the election, the attorneys general for Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court on Thursday (Dec 10) to reject a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the victories in those states by President-elect Joe Biden, calling the audacious effort an affront to democracy and the rule of law.
The lawsuit, filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas and backed by his GOP colleagues in 17 other states and 106 Republican members of Congress, represents the most coordinated, politicised attempt to overturn the will of the voters in recent American history. President Donald Trump has asked to intervene in the lawsuit as well in hopes that the Supreme Court will hand him a second term he decisively lost.
The suit is the latest in a spectacularly unsuccessful legal effort by Mr Trump and his allies to overturn the results, one so lacking in evidence that judges at all levels have mocked or condemned the cases as without merit.
Legal experts have derided this latest suit as well, which makes the audacious claim, at odds with ordinary principles of federalism, that the Supreme Court should investigate and override the election systems of four states at the behest of a fifth.
The responses by the four states comprehensively critiqued Texas’ unusual request to have the Supreme Court act as a kind of trial court in examining supposed election irregularities with the goal of throwing out millions of votes.
“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,” a brief for Pennsylvania said.
“Let us be clear,” the brief continued. “Texas invites this court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next president of the United States. That Faustian invitation must be firmly rejected.”
The briefs said Texas was in no position to tell other states how to run their elections, adding that its filing was littered with falsehoods.
“Texas proposes an extraordinary intrusion into Wisconsin’s and the other defendant states’ elections, a task that the Constitution leaves to each state,” Wisconsin’s brief said.
“Wisconsin has conducted its election and its voters have chosen a winning candidate for their state. Texas’ bid to nullify that choice is devoid of a legal foundation or a factual basis.”
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