Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, charging that the battleground states implemented unconstitutional changes to their election laws prior to 2020.
Paxton filed the suit with the United States Supreme Court just before midnight on Monday.
“The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election,” a statement on the lawsuit suggests.
“The battleground states flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.”
The suit itself contends that regardless of intent – well-meaning or otherwise – the changes to election laws were “unconstitutional” and “made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States.”
Texas files lawsuit with Supreme Court to enforce rule of law on election.@realDonaldTrump https://t.co/RwmXHGYoZj
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 8, 2020
RELATED: GOP Lawmakers Demand Bill Barr Perform A Forensic Audit on the Election
Texas Files Supreme Court Lawsuit Against Battleground States of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania
Of particular interest in the Texas lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, is that they are requesting that the Supreme Court order those states to allow their legislatures to appoint the electors.
Each of those states holds a Republican majority legislature following the 2020 election.
“This case presents a question of law: Did Defendant States violate the Electors Clause (or..the Fourteenth Amendment) by taking -or allowing- non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors?”https://t.co/lm1RG7eonf
— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) December 8, 2020
“By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections,” Paxton contends.
“Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election,” he continued. “We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.”
The Washington Times reports that the “motion is seeking to have the high court order the legislatures of those four states to choose presidential electors, presumably for President Trump.”
? BREAKING ?
The state of Texas has sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania & Wisconsin over election irregularities!
This means Texas will have original jurisdiction to go directly to the Supreme Court‼️
HUGE ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/2LqpQ4Ym6y
— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) December 8, 2020
RELATED: Exclusive: Team Trump’s Top Lawyer On What Comes Next, Plan To Protect Election Integrity
Trump Attorney Suggested This Course of Action a Month Ago
In an exclusive interview with The Political Insider just one day after the election, Jenna Ellis, a top Trump campaign lawyer, revealed what the President’s legal team might do to protect the integrity of the election.
She mentioned the electoral strategy in analyzing how the Electoral College actually works.
Ellis explained that it is the state legislatures who choose who become the electors, and on December 14, those electors actually cast the votes.
“The constitution says in article 2 that the state legislatures are the ones that select the method of choosing their electors,” Ellis explained.
She specifically mentioned Pennsylvania, where Democrat officials extended ballot-counting deadlines due to increased use of mail-in ballots in the midst of a pandemic.
“What (the) Pennsylvania state legislature has done is, they have not acted in the last nine months,” Ellis revealed. “They have not changed their election law.”
“What’s happened is that governors, that state attorneys general, that secretaries of state, that clerks have tried to manipulate in Democrat-controlled states and local precincts,” she noted. “They have tried to manipulate the election law according to their advantage.”
“That is unconstitutional because only state legislatures, according to our U.S. Constitution, can do that.”
Texas Supreme Court lawsuit: Odds of Biden beating @RealDonaldTrump in four key battleground states: “less than one in quadrillion to the fourth power…”
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 8, 2020
While Trump’s team isn’t coordinating with the Texas AG, it’s clear they’re on the same page regarding the Constitutional process.
“These non-legislative changes to the Defendant States’ election laws facilitated the casting and counting of ballots in violation of state law,” Paxton’s lawsuit contends, “which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution.”
The fact that Texas’ motion heads directly to the Supreme Court could have major ramifications for the President’s battle in contesting the 2020 election.
