Snark aside, the consensus seems to be while it doesn’t have any legal merit, it has a lot of percieved political merit. Trumpists can point to the lawsuits, and the sheer number of supporters and make the ongoing “there’s no smoke without a fire” argument to keep challenging the incoming Biden presidency. If they keep their base worked up over this and never let it die, then it will drive up voter numbers (well, ideally) for the Georgia run off, the mid terms, and future elections. All for the cost of the perceived loss of dignity of a few DAs and the like, who will instead by lionized by the Trumpists.
Sadly, from their POV, I doubt they see any downsides, as it seems unlikely that there will be any attorneys disbarred or otherwise censured beyond the mildest of snark.
The most useful thing to come out of this case is that it has illustrated that the Republican Party as a whole, and many senior members at the various state levels, are essentially antidemocratic. They don’t think that the United States and its laws matter if they lose an election.
These aren’t idiotic bloggers or twitter users. These are the legal representatives of Republican states, senators, representatives, attorneys general, all saying that they don’t think that democracy matters if they lose.
How anyone can support this party and also say they are patriotic and love America is beyond me.
Including 126 members of the US House of Representatives. Including my representative (MO-2).
At least we know where they stand.
To make it clear, there are only 190-something GOP house members. So the vast majority of them support a state being able to challenge another state’s election results.
There was an interesting line of reasoning in the brief Trump’s lawyer du jour filed requesting the intervention.
The brief doesn’t allege fraud, it alleges that the rule changes in the swing states made it impossible to detect fraud, in effect it’s charging that the election was rigged via “undetectable fraud”.
Ha Ha Ha
Another point in general about states suing each other — the bar seems to be pretty high. A couple of states adjacent to states that had legalized recreational marijuana tried to sue those states, because their directive to ignore federal law increased the law enforcement burden in their states. The Supreme Court declined (6-3) to hear that one.
I was trying to get ‘local interviews’ or other such POV to get a better understanding of how it is viewed, as my friends and family (including those living in Texas) all fall under the moderate to liberal heading. The closest I could find is an article from Everything Lubbock which is at least somewhat representative of the more conservative locations of Texas (smack in the middle of the panhandle).
A few quotes -
And, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said, “Louisiana citizens are damaged if elections in other states were conducted outside the confines of the Constitution while we obeyed the rules.”
The Texas lawsuit does not claim widespread fraud. The word widespread never appears, although it does claim protections against fraud were weakened. Instead, it focuses on the claim that votes were accepted and counted in violation of laws set up by the various state legislatures.
The Texas lawsuit claims that the authority to hold an election comes from the U.S. Constitution and therefore any election practice that violates the constitution (such as equal protection) is not permissible.
The Texas lawsuit asks that Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin be prohibited from using the election to choose electors for the electoral college. Texas claimed the only way to fix election violations at this point is for the legislatures of the various states to choose the electoral college electors directly.
Nothing would prevent the four states from choosing Joe Biden over Donald Trump, and the Texas lawsuit clearly acknowledges that.
Making of course assumptions based on the article, my take is that the conservative POV is that since the election is flawed (in any way) that the duly appointed legislatures should make the decision. While on the face of it seems excessive, after all, they can pick Biden too! It keeps ignoring the point that the courts have brought up in that they’re disenfranchising millions of voters in those states, but that isn’t what they’re talking about.
It’s all about how ‘they’ are being harmed by the choices of those others.
And it very carefully ignores that other states would have the right to challenge deep Red states electoral votes on the same basis. If anything, I would guess that they are pushing for the “well, since none of the states can convince us of a clean election lets put in on the house of representatives (where we have a majority of delegations cough cough)” for a fair selection.
Not only that - the actions challenged in the brief of “New California” and “New Nevada” are the actions of the California and Nevada state governments - which aren’t even defendants in the Texas case.
They don’t care whether the suit is rejected with maximum snark or not. I guarantee you they know the chances of this succeeding are essentially nil. That’s missing the point of the lawsuit.
But those legislatures were elected under the same rules as the presidential election, so wouldn’t they be equally illegitimate? If they chose the “wrong” slate of electors, would Texas sue again?
Even pretending for a nanosecond that these are serious legal challenges, even trying for a nanosecond to understand what the legal rationale might be, is playing into their hands.
There is no legal basis for the lawsuit. This is an exercise to assert power - period. This is also a way for people to convince their cult of one conclusion: it’s a waste of time trying to play by rules – rules are for losers and suckers. “This is a war, not an election.”
SupremeCourt -> Texas: Have you tried taking this matter to the courts in the respective states?
Texas: No - we don’t have standing
SupremeCourt: Have these issues been settled in the respective states in any suits brought forth by those who do?
Texas: Yes - but…
SupremeCourt : You don’t have standing there - you don’t have standing here - begone.
I’ll try. (Again, I think it is meritless and without standing). Here goes:
The Constitution says that the electors shall by appointed by the method selected by the legislature of each state. The legislatures have almost absolute authority to do so how they want, subject only to: 1) they may not violate other portions of the Constitution by doing it–say have a racial or religious test, and 2) IF they choose to have a popular vote to select electors, it must comply with the 14th Amendment and the Court’s voting rights/access cases.
Next, we as Texas are only 1 of 50 states, but this is a contest with and against all of the other states to pick a president. We have to play by the rules and we did, so it is only fair that they play by the rules as well and we should have some way of enforcing those rules. Who better than the United States Supreme Court?
These four states didn’t play by the rules because the electors were not appointed in the manner that the legislatures directed. They were appointed by new rules made up by courts and executive branch officials, therefore those rules are invalid. As those rules are invalid, we cannot use the results received.
So, if you would throw out the results from those four states and order them to do it the way they were supposed to, or another right way, that’d be tremendous. Thx!
The point is to make sure that the Biden administration is blocked, stonewalled, delayed, held up, and generally prevented from doing anything at all for the next 4 years. And them blame Biden for the subsequent inaction.
Also to ensure that the base is kept riled up, pocketbooks at the ready. That’s important.
There will be hearings in the senate on “the stolen election” once per month for the forseeable future.
The electors WERE appointed in the manner that the legislatures directed. And the courts in those states have determined that they were. The courts did NOT make up new rules.
Many things were changed due to Covid. Voting extended. Relaxed ballot rules. No postmark needed. Unsolicited ballots. Consent decrees by Georgia election officials with federal courts. All changes, none approved by the legislature. You are saying that the rules were okay because the courts said they were? What more of a usurpation of legislative powers than having courts made rules about balloting?