The Maui News

Texas-led election suit becomes conservati­ve litmus test

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HOUSTON (AP) — The Texas lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory has quickly become a conservati­ve litmus test, with many Republican­s signing onto the case even as some have predicted it will fail.

The last-gasp bid to subvert the results of the Nov. 3 election is the latest demonstrat­ion of President Donald Trump’s enduring political power even as his term is set to end. Seventeen Republican attorneys general are backing the unpreceden­ted case that Trump is calling “the big one” despite the fact that the president and his allies have lost dozens of times in courts across the country and have no evidence of widespread fraud. And 106 Republican­s in Congress signed on to a court filing Thursday in support of Texas, claiming “unconstitu­tional irregulari­ties” have “cast doubt” on the 2020 outcome and “the integrity of the American system of elections.”

“The Supreme Court is not going to overturn the election in the Texas case, as the President has told them to do,” tweeted Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “But we are in bad shape as a country that 17 states could support this shameful, anti-American filing” by Texas and its attorney general, Ken Paxton, he said.

The lawsuit filed against Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvan­ia, and Wisconsin repeats false, disproven, and unsubstant­iated accusation­s about the voting in four states that went for Trump’s Democratic challenger. The case demands that the high court invalidate the states’ 62 total Electoral College votes. That’s an unpreceden­ted remedy in American history: setting aside the votes of tens of millions of people, under the baseless claim the Republican incumbent lost a chance at a second term due to widespread fraud.

Two days after Paxton sued, 17 states filed a motion supporting the lawsuit, and on Thursday six of those states asked to join the case themselves. Trump has acted to join the case, tweeting Thursday that “the Supreme Court has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States.” Hours later, Trump held a meeting at the White House, scheduled before the suit was filed, with a dozen Republican attorneys general, including Paxton and several others who are backing the effort.

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