Texas takes on Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin

The national interest demands that the Supreme Court hear Texas’s Complaint.

Texas has filed a motion with the Supreme Court for leave to file a Bill of Complaint (Complaint) against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin challenging their administration of the 2020 presidential election.

The Complaint is uncompromisingly forthright in stating Texas’s view on the current state of the elections:  

“Our Country stands at an important crossroads. Either the Constitution matters and must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives. We ask the Court to choose the former.

Lawful elections are at the heart of our constitutional democracy. The public, and indeed the candidates themselves, have a compelling interest in ensuring that the selection of a President—any President—is legitimate. If that trust is lost, the American Experiment will founder. A dark cloud hangs over the 2020 Presidential election.

Here is what we know. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, government officials in the defendant states of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, “Defendant States”), usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes. They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity. Finally, these same government officials flooded the Defendant States with millions of ballots to be sent through the mails, or placed in drop boxes, with little or no chain of custody and, at the same time, weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote—signature verification and witness requirements.

Presently, evidence of material illegality in the 2020 general elections held in Defendant States grows daily. And, to be sure, the two presidential candidates who have garnered the most votes have an interest in assuming the duties of the Office of President without a taint of impropriety threatening the perceived legitimacy of their election. However, 3 U.S.C. § 7 requires that presidential electors be appointed on December 14, 2020. That deadline, however, should not cement a potentially illegitimate election result in the middle of this storm—a storm that is of the Defendant States’ own making by virtue of their own unconstitutional actions.

This Court is the only forum that can delay the deadline for the appointment of presidential electors under 3 U.S.C. §§ 5, 7. To safeguard public legitimacy at this unprecedented moment and restore public trust in the presidential election, this Court should extend the December 14, 2020 deadline for Defendant States’ certification of presidential electors to allow these investigations to be completed. Should one of the two leading candidates receive an absolute majority of the presidential electors’ votes to be cast on December 14, this would finalize the selection of our President. The only date that is mandated under however, is January 20, 2021. U.S. CONST. amend. XX.”

The Complaint poses the following question for the Supreme Court:

“This case presents a question of law: Did Defendant States violate the Electors Clause (or, in the alternative, the Fourteenth Amendment) by taking—or allowing—non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors?”

Texas asserts that the Supreme Court should hear the Complaint for the following reasons:

This Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction over this action because it is a “controvers[y] between two or more States” under Article III, § 2, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution and 28 U.S.C. § 1251(a) (2018).

The passage of many other cases being presently fought through state jurisdictions could reach the Supreme Court but be denied a hearing.

The national interest demands that the Supreme Court hear Texas’s Complaint.