Government

The Top 10 WTF Things In The Texas Election Suit ... So Far

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On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a preposterous lawsuit asserting Texas’s right to invalidate millions of ballots in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia based on a theory that the four defendant states had failed to conduct clean elections, which somehow dilutes Texas’s electoral votes.

The theory has already been discarded by dozens of federal and state judges, and the Court has never recognized the right of one state to contest another’s election procedures. But that’s hardly the point — the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over interstate suits, so the president and his allies are betting all their chips that SCOTUS will swoop in and award Trump a second term now that Ken Paxton found a secret shortcut to Chief Justice Roberts’ doorstep.

And where Trump goes, BS litigation will follow. The docket is now jam-packed with amicus briefs, each one crazier than the last. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

So, in no particular order, here are the top 10 WTF items so far. The day is still young, though, so there’s still time for Yeezy to top them all!

1. Pennsylvania Legislators Accuse Their Secretary of State of Conspiring with the Pennsylvania Judiciary to Commit “Extrajudicial Assault”

Don’t think that word means what they think it means.

This extrajudicial assault on the mechanism of the Commonwealth’s elections came from all sides: well-funded national groups who, using COVID-19 as a pretext, brought a litany of lawsuits challenging seemingly every facet of Pennsylvania’s elections; then the executive branch shrank from its obligations to defend the Commonwealth’s laws, and then took to offering extrajudicial guidance to the Commonwealth’s county boards of elections. Finally, these efforts were condoned and furthered by the overreaching of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, in clear violation of the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

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2. Cabal and Oligarchy? REALLY?

Some of those state legislators in Alaska, Idaho, and Arizona need to switch to decaf. Maybe use it wash down like half a Xanax, because this pleading is a wee smidge … overheated.

The movants begin by citing “credible allegations of cabal and oligarchy in the four Defendant states,” and then move on to lots of other pages in the thesaurus.

For felicitous historical reasons, complex, multidimensional, systemic problems which undermine the entire Federal Constitution have never before now come under Article IV, §4 examination. Today that issue has arisen for the first time. The questions involve the life and death of the Republic, without even a single scintilla or tiny glimmer of exaggeration.

The entire Federal Constitution!

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Where an oligarchy has taken power in certain states, to vitiate both legal voting and majority rule, this oligarchy has placed itself above all others, and the “cheating” states reign like the House of Lords used to in Mediaeval and Early Modern England.

Ummmmm …. you know what, never mind.

3. If a Vote Is Invalid For Purposes of the Presidential Race, Isn’t It Also Invalid Downballot?

Law & Crime’s Adam Klasfield compiled a helpful list of the seventeen Republican House members who signed on to an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to invalidate their own elections.

4. Lousy-ana

How the hell do you manage to misspell the name of the plaintiff, especially when that plaintiff is one of the fifty states?

Dunno, but Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt managed to do it.

5. Sedition?

Sure Ken Paxton’s unsubtle pardon plea masquerading as a lawsuit is an unforgivable piece of crap. But perhaps Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro exaggerates when he describes it as a “seditious abuse of the legal process.” Words have meaning!

We do forgive him, though since the rest of this opposition motion is such a well-written refutation of Paxton’s case.

6. Someone Should Get Arrested For the Aggravated Murder of MATH

Since White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany is dispatched nightly to Fox to wave around a stack of papers and repeat Ken Paxton’s assertion that Biden had a “one in a quadrillion” chance of winning in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin.

Here, let PA AG Josh Shapiro redeem himself.

Texas first alleges that “[t]he probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States * * * independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion.” Bill of Complaint at ¶ 10. It bases this astounding assertion on Dr. Cicchetti’s assessment, for each of the states, of the extremely low probability that the votes counted before 3 a.m. and those counted afterwards were “randomly drawn from the same population.” App. 4a-6a ¶¶ 15-19. 3 But the votes counted later were indisputably not “randomly drawn” from the same population of votes, as those counted earlier were predominantly in-person votes while those counted later were predominantly mail-in votes. And Texas’s own complaint shows why the later-counted votes led to such a strong shift in favor of President-Elect Biden: “Significantly, in Defendant States, Democrat [sic] voters voted by mail at two to three times the rate of Republicans.” Bill of Complaint at ¶ 39. Both this fact and the expectation that it would result in a shift in PresidentElect Biden’s favor as mail-in votes were counted were widely reported months ahead of the election.

Texas further claims, again based on Dr. Cicchetti’s analysis, that “[t]he same less than one in a quadrillion statistical improbability” can be found “when Mr. Biden’s performance in each of those Defendant States is compared to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s performance in the 2016 general election.” Bill of Complaint at ¶ 11. For this assertion, Dr. Cicchetti simply assumes that the likelihood of a given Pennsylvania voter in 2020 voting for Biden was the same as that of a Pennsylvania voter in 2016 voting for Hillary Clinton—and then concludes, based on that assumption, that the 2020 results were quite improbable. App. 6a ¶¶ 18–20. But it should not be necessary to point out that the 2016 and 2020 elections were, in fact, separate events, and any analysis based on the assumption that voters in a particular state would behave the same way in two successive presidential elections is worthless.

6. Counting Votes After Election Night Is Unlegal?

The Christian Family Association is of the opinion that there was no vote in those states because tabulating the votes took too long and thus “It is undisputed that each defendant State failed ‘to make a choice’ of Presidential electors on the election day ‘prescribed by law.'”

Has Alaska even finished counting yet?

7. Lin Wood

The indefatigable lawyer is representing himself pro se in a combination writ of certiorari/amicus brief in which he refers to himself as “amici” and manages to misspell his own name, so … what is there even to say?

8. You Can’t Just Make Shit Up. This is the Supreme Court!

As we noted yesterday, in Trump’s motion to intervene, his lawyer John Eastman writes, “President Trump prevailed on nearly every historical indicia of success in presidential elections. For example, he won both Florida and Ohio; no candidate in history—Republican or Democrat—has ever lost the election after winning both States.”

This remains incorrect, since John F. Kennedy lost Ohio and Florida and still beat Richard Nixon in 1960. It also remains unamended on the docket.

9. Special Mention: Rudy Giuliani

Okay, this isn’t actually on the docket. But this is the president’s lawyer making reference to the same alleged fraud in Georgia in somewhat inflammatory terms.

Neat.

10. Would You Like Some Fake States With Your Fake Lawsuit?

Of course you would! Please meet New California and New Nevada, which have docketed an amicus brief in this suit.

Part of the reason for the formation of New California State and New Nevada Sate is to stop the lawless actions of Governors Newsome (California) and Sisolak (Nevada). An opinion by this Court affirming a national, uniform rule of law reestablishing the supremacy of The Electors Clause of Article II, § 1 of the United States Constitution will resolve some of the complaints causing the establishment of these new States.

No, that’s not how Gavin Newsom spells his name. And yes, the error is replicated throughout the entire filing.

Dear God, when will this be over?

Take your time, Chief Justice Roberts. We haven’t heard from Freedonia yet.

Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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