Texas AG's Outlandish Lawsuit to Overthrow the 2020 Election

UPDATE: An excellent piece debunking Paxton's lawsuit is here in the New York Times.

Attorney General Ken Paxton - currently facing indictment on security fraud charges as describe here and here (Paxton was hit with subpoenas yesterday) - has filed an outlandish lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court against the states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia asking that court to void those states elections and allow Republican controlled state legislatures appoint electors to reelect Donald Trump.  The lawsuit is ridiculous for a number of reasons which is no surprise given Paxton's lunatic track record and likely dire need for a presidential pardon (which might not even work if he has not been convicted at the time it is issued).  What is disturbing is that 17 other Republican attorneys general and over 100 House Republicans have joined in the suit demonstrating just how desperate some Republicans will go to prostitute themselves to Trump and his basket of deplorables base.  A key issue is that Texas has no legal standing to challenge the election process in other states, all of which have certified their election results.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the outlandish lawsuit and the Republican effort to overthrow democracy.  Here are excerpts:

This is a lawsuit that seems both like President Trump’s last major attempt to get the courts to overturn his loss — and like it’s destined to flop. That’s the consensus of numerous legal experts on a recently filed lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) alleging rampant fraud in four states that numerous other court cases have so far failed to prove.

Paxton alleges “the 2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities” in four states that swung from President Trump in 2016 to President-elect Joe Biden in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia.

And he asks the Supreme Court to allow state legislatures to pick electors in those states instead. That part of the equation is now familiar, given Trump is also trying to pressure state lawmakers to overturn election results.

Not all Republicans, however, are on board. Sen Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), an occasional Trump critic, singled out Paxton’s own legal troubles back home and said this, in part, in a statement about the lawsuit: “It looks like a fella begging for a pardon filed a PR stunt.” (Paxton is facing indictment on securities fraud charges and says he has not discussed a pardon with the White House).

But more than 100 House Republicans signed on to a brief supporting the effort.

All these Republicans are setting themselves up for a quick failure, legal experts who have spoken to The Fix and other Post reporters say.

It’s a legitimate question what right Texas even has to bring such a lawsuit against other states. (Lawsuits between states are rare.) The Supreme Court could dismiss it out of hand for that reason, if it offers a reason at all.

And then you get into the substance of it, which is more like a Newsmax reel than actual legal arguments, said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and host of the legal podcast “Passing Judgment.”

“It’s all of the Hail Mary pass lawsuits strung together, in the erroneous hope that somehow lining them all up will make them look more impressive,” she said. “It’s procedurally defective. It’s substantially defective. And I think the Supreme Court will have not only no appetite for it, but it will actively nauseate them.”

Here are the most spectacular allegations in the lawsuit . . . .

Paxton argues that it was unconstitutional for state election officials, like secretaries of state, to expand mail voting, because the legislatures get to decide how to run elections. Despite there being no evidence that mail-voting leads to statistically significant fraud, he says that these states changed or modified their rules to allow more voting by mail due to the pandemic opened the door to fraud. . . . There’s just no evidence it actually happens.  Paxton ignores that Wisconsin and Michigan already had programs set up to vote by mail before the pandemic. Wisconsin has allowed people to vote absentee without an excuse since 2000.

Paxton strings together half a dozen examples he says demonstrate “rampant lawlessness” in the vote-counting process: . . . . Much of that evidence has been reviewed and thrown out by various courts. And even if some poll workers were asked to leave, does that mean tens of thousands of votes for Trump were counted for Biden? In Pennsylvania, Trump’s lawyers were forced to admit they did have poll workers in the room watching counted ballots, even as they tried to file a lawsuit arguing the opposite.

Paxton pulls an accusation straight out of Trump’s Twitter feed — not even something Trump’s lawyers dared make in a courtroom — that it was odd that Biden took late-night leads in states after Trump initially was leading. . . . We’ve explained this. Trump’s voters, following his own lead, largely voted in person. In-person votes are quicker for officials to count than mailed ballots. Biden’s voters largely voted by mail. Those take more time to tally. So as election officials worked throughout the night, they started adding the mailed votes to the vote count in their states. Paxton is literally arguing that the Supreme Court overturn an election because states counted their votes.

Paxton alleges that “the statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in these four states collectively is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.” It’s unclear, even in the lawsuit, where and how he got that number. . . . Biden won these four swing states not by massive fraud, but by learning the lessons from Clinton’s 2016 campaign and not being overconfident about polling showing him doing well in these states. He campaigned successfully to take away Trump’s support particularly in suburban areas.

Bottom line: Biden got more votes where he needed to win the electoral college, just like Trump did in 2016.