Lawsuits, lawsuits and more lawsuits is the current state of affair in the United States following a controversial presidential election marred with irregularities and allegations of fraud.
As US president Donald Trump, continues to seek justice in an election he claims to have been the legitimate winner, not all however, has been going well, as courts continue to throw out the Trump campaign's lawsuits one after the other. But Trump is not backing regardless.
A latest development as reported by Breitbart News, says the State of Texas which Trump won, has join in the fight by filing a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, challenging the election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the grounds that they violate the Constitution.
These four key states have been the beehive of controversy following allegations of fraud, irregularities and manipulations, all which are believed to have influenced outcomes of the election in favor of democratic candidate Joe Biden. The Trump's campaign has been fighting tooth and nail to overturn results in these states, but are yet to succeed.
Texas however, being the latest entry in this fight for justice, argues that these states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures. Additionally, Texas argues that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Finally, Texas argues that there were “voting irregularities” in these states as a result of the above.
Texas is asking the Supreme Court to order the states to allow their legislatures to appoint their electors. The lawsuit says:
Certain officials in the Defendant States presented the pandemic as the justification for ignoring state laws regarding absentee and mail-in voting. The Defendant States flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted. Whether well intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States. Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.…This case presents a question of law: Did the Defendant States violate the Electors Clause by taking non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? These non-legislative changes to the Defendant States’ election laws facilitated the casting and counting of ballots in violation of state law, which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. By these unlawful acts, the Defendant States have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but their actions have also debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.
Texas approached the Supreme Court directly because Article III provides that it is the court of first impression on subjects where it has original jurisdiction, such as disputes between two or more states.