Yes I think Texas is filing a lawsuit based on nothing.
And the (now 22) other states that have joined them? All based on nothing? I'm actually a little surprised that you're taking such a hardline stance.
NATURE OF THE ACTION
1. Plaintiff State challenges Defendant States’ administration of the 2020 election under the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
2. This case presents a question of law: Did Defendant States violate the Electors Clause (or, in the alternative, the Fourteenth Amendment) by taking—or allowing—non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors?
3. Those unconstitutional changes opened the door to election irregularities in various forms. Plaintiff State alleges that each of the Defendant States flagrantly violated constitutional rules governing the appointment of presidential electors. In doing so, seeds of deep distrust have been sown across the country. In the spirit of Marbury v. Madison, this Court’s attention is profoundly needed to declare what the law is and to restore public trust in this election.
4. As Justice Gorsuch observed recently, “Government is not free to disregard the [Constitution] in times of crisis. … Yet recently, during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles.” Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. ____ (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring). This case is no different.
5. Each of Defendant States acted in a common pattern. State officials, sometimes through pending litigation (e.g., settling “friendly” suits) and sometimes unilaterally by executive fiat, announced new rules for the conduct of the 2020 election that were inconsistent with existing state statutes defining what constitutes a lawful vote.
6. Defendant States also failed to segregate ballots in a manner that would permit accurate analysis to determine which ballots were cast in conformity with the legislatively set rules and which were not. This is especially true of the mail-in ballots in these States. By waiving, lowering, and otherwise failing to follow the state statutory requirements for signature validation and other processes for ballot security, the entire body of such ballots is now constitutionally suspect and may not be legitimately used to determine allocation of the Defendant States’ presidential electors.
7. The rampant lawlessness arising out of Defendant States’ unconstitutional acts is described in a number of currently pending lawsuits in Defendant States or in public view including:
• Dozens of witnesses testifying under oath about: the physical blocking and kicking out of Republican poll challengers; thousands of the same ballots run multiple times through tabulators; mysterious late night dumps of thousands of ballots at tabulation centers; illegally backdating thousands of ballots; signature verification procedures ignored; more than 173,000 ballots in the Wayne County, MI center that cannot be tied to a registered voter;
• Videos of: poll workers erupting in cheers as poll challengers are removed from vote counting centers; poll watchers being blocked from entering vote counting centers—despite even having a court order to enter; suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables after poll watchers were told to leave.
• Facts for which no independently verified reasonable explanation yet exists: On October 1, 2020, in Pennsylvania a laptop and several USB drives, used to program Pennsylvania’s Dominion voting machines, were mysteriously stolen from a warehouse in Philadelphia. The laptop and the USB drives were the only items taken, and potentially could be used to alter vote tallies; In Michigan, which also employed the same Dominion voting system, on November 4, 2020, Michigan election officials have admitted that a purported “glitch” caused 6,000 votes for President Trump to be wrongly switched to Democrat Candidate Biden. A flash drive containing tens of thousands of votes was left unattended in the Milwaukee tabulations center in the early morning hours of Nov. 4, 2020, without anyone aware it was not in a proper chain of custody.
8. Nor was this Court immune from the blatant disregard for the rule of law. Pennsylvania itself played fast and loose with its promise to this Court. In a classic bait and switch, Pennsylvania used guidance from its Secretary of State to argue that this Court should not expedite review because the State would segregate potentially unlawful ballots. A court of law would reasonably rely on such a representation. Remarkably, before the ink was dry on the Court’s 4- 4 decision, Pennsylvania changed that guidance, breaking the State’s promise to this Court. Compare Republican Party of Pa. v. Boockvar, No. 20-542, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 5188, at *5-6 (Oct. 28, 2020) (“we have been informed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General that the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued guidance today directing county boards of elections to segregate [late-arriving] ballots”) (Alito, J., concurring) with Republican Party v. Boockvar, No. 20A84, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 5345, at *1 (Nov. 6, 2020) (“this Court was not informed that the guidance issued on October 28, which had an important bearing on the question whether to order special treatment of the ballots in question, had been modified”) (Alito, J., Circuit Justice).
9. Expert analysis using a commonly accepted statistical test further raises serious questions as to the integrity of this election.
10. The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—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, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000. For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0004). See Decl. of Charles J. Cicchetti, Ph.D. (“Cicchetti Decl.”) at ¶¶ 14-21, 30-31. See App. 4a-7a, 9a
11. The same less than one in a quadrillion statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— independently exists 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 and President Trump’s performance in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Again, the statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in these four States collectively is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0005. Id. 10-13, 17-21, 30-31.
12. Put simply, there is substantial reason to doubt the voting results in the Defendant States.
13. By purporting to waive or otherwise modify the existing state law in a manner that was wholly ultra vires and not adopted by each state’s legislature, Defendant States violated not only the Electors Clause, U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 2, but also the Elections Clause, id. art. I, § 4 (to the extent that the Article I Elections Clause textually applies to the Article II process of selecting presidential electors).
14. Plaintiff States and their voters are entitled to a presidential election in which the votes from each of the states are counted only if the ballots are cast and counted in a manner that complies with the pre-existing laws of each state. See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 795 (1983) (“for the President and the Vice President of the United States are the only elected officials who represent all the voters in the Nation.”). Voters who cast lawful ballots cannot have their votes diminished by states that administered their 2020 presidential elections in a manner where it is impossible to distinguish a lawful ballot from an unlawful ballot.
15. The number of absentee and mail-in ballots that have been handled unconstitutionally in Defendant States greatly exceeds the difference between the vote totals of the two candidates for President of the United States in each Defendant State. 16. In addition to injunctive relief for this election, Plaintiff State seeks declaratory relief for all presidential elections in the future. This problem is clearly capable of repetition yet evading review. The integrity of our constitutional democracy requires that states conduct presidential elections in accordance with the rule of law and federal constitutional guarantees.
