Stefanik backs lawsuit
Texas suit seeks to overturn Biden’s win by stopping some electors from voting.
Albany Rep. Elise Stefanik is one of two Republican members of Congress from New York formally supporting a lawsuit brought by Texas officials seeking to overturn Presidentelect Joe Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Stefanik, the Schuylerville Republican heading into her fourth term in Congress, was joined in signing onto the amicus brief by Long Island Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin, as well as dozens of other congressional Republicans from around the country.
The lawsuit is being brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against four states where Biden, a Democrat, won relatively narrowly: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. Election officials in those states have already certified Biden as the winner over outgoing Republican President Donald Trump, who has refused to concede defeat even after a string of legal losses brought by his campaign and Republican allies.
The lawsuit, filed before the U.S. Supreme Court, is considered a long shot by legal experts. The suit seeks to prevent presidential electors in those four swing states from casting their votes for Biden on Monday and formally finalizing his victory.
The lawsuit argues that the states unconstitutionally changed their voting procedures to allow for mail-in voting.
Paxton argues that the four states “exploited the COVID -19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws” and unlawfully enacted “lastminute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election.”
Texas has also been joined in the lawsuit by 18 other states that Trump won. But earlier this week, in a case with similar ingredients, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania that argued a 2019 law in that state authorizing universal mail-in voting was illegal.
Stefanik, a staunch Trump supporter through his impeachment, has refused repeated requests for comment on the election. She did an interview on the Trumpfriendly outlet Newsmax last week and said, “We need to play out the legal case. ... The American people deserve to know there is integrity and ballot security and in these key states with very thin margins, only the legal ballots are counted.”