SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 12/08/2020
In a last-ditch effort to forestall the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, Texas sought late Monday to file a lawsuit directly in the Supreme Court, attempting to delay the Electoral College vote and prevent four states – Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – from casting their Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden, who won the popular vote in each state. This highly unusual use of the court’s original jurisdiction — which is most often used to resolve interstate disputes involving, for example, water rights — came just six days before each state’s electors are required by law to meet and cast their ballots in the Electoral College.
The filing by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses government officials in the four states of using the COVID-19 pandemic to make changes to their states’ election laws through “executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.†The state officials, Paxton writes, “flooded†their states with absentee ballots and “weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote-signature verification and witness requirements.†As a result, Paxton contends, the 2020 election “suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities in those four states†– for example, treating voters in Democratic areas more favorably than in other areas. When taken together, Paxton asserts, these flaws make it impossible to know who “legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections.â€
There is normally no specific timetable for the court to act in such cases, but Paxton explains that the state will seek expedited consideration of its request. He also urges the justices to resolve the dispute without additional briefing, telling them that the issues presented in the case – involving the outcome of the 2020 presidential election – “are neither fact-bound nor complex.â€
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/12/texas-tries-hail-mary-to-block-election-outcome/
