In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the Texas GOP announced its support for Texas’s lawsuit against electoral illegalities in battleground states.
Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX), the lawsuit attacks four battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — whose results saw Joe Biden declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
As part of a last-minute bid by President Donald Trump and his political allies to take control over the Electoral College, the suit asks the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent electoral college votes from being counted, authorize a special election for presidential electors, direct any defendant state that has already appointed electors to appoint a new set of electors, and prevent any defendant state that hasn’t yet from certifying its election results.
Despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud, Paxton holds the Electoral College votes of these swing states to be “unlawful and constitutionally tainted”. He claims that pandemic-era changes to election procedures in those states violated federal law and that courts should push back a Dec. 14 deadline by which states must appoint their presidential electors.
Yet Texas similarly underwent changes to normal election procedures without the consent of the state legislature. It seems convenient that the four defendant states account for 62 Democratic electoral votes, enough to change the outcome of the presidential election.
The Texas GOP has thrown its support behind Texas's lawsuit. Chairman Allen West (R-TX) argued that “the unconstitutional and illegal actions in those states relating to the 2020 national election violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment for Texans.”
The majority of similar attempts in other states including Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin have already failed and legal experts have already characterized Texas’ suit as a longshot.
After filing dozens of lawsuits, Trump’s team has yet to achieve a meaningful victory or present viable evidence of widespread voter fraud.
