The Morning Call

Pa. blasts Texas’ bid to erase electoral votes, overturn election

- By Marc Levy

Lawyers for Pennsylvan­ia responded in the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to Texas’ effort to overturn the election result in four states for President-elect Joe Biden, calling it a “seditious abuse” of the courts that rests on conspiracy theories and falsehoods.

Texas lacks standing to bring the challenge, and its claims are not only barred by time limits, but are meritless and dangerous, lawyers for Pennsylvan­ia Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, wrote in the 43-page court brief.

Texas is using bogus and false claims in a legally indefensib­le effort to disenfranc­hise huge numbers of voters and anoint its preferred candidate for president, Donald Trump, Pennsylvan­ia’s lawyers said.

“Texas’s effort to get this court to pick the next president has no basis in law or fact,” they wrote. “The court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakab­le signal that such abuse must never be replicated.”

The lawsuit from the Texas attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton, demands that the 62 total Electoral College votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvan­ia and Wisconsin be invalidate­d. That’s enough, if switched, to swing the election to Trump.

Paxton’s suit repeats a litany of false, disproven and unsupporte­d allegation­s about mail-in ballots and voting in the four battlegrou­nd states, including arguments already dismissed by courts.

Republican officials in Ohio and more than a dozen other GOP-led states signed on to support Texas’ brief. Election law experts dismissed Paxton’s filing as the latest and perhaps longest legal shot since Election Day.

Republican­s lawmakers in the Pennsylvan­ia Senate and House also filed friend-of-thecourt briefs, criticizin­g decisions by the state Supreme Court in voting-related cases and guidance by Gov. Tom Wolf ’s top election official, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.

While the Senate’s brief did not urge the court to rule in favor of Texas, the filing by top House Republican­s asked the court to “carefully consider the procedural issues and questions” raised by Texas.

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