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Civil rights groups sound alarm over planned closure of more than half of early runoff voting sites in key Georgia county

on December 9, 2020
By Common Dreams

Officials in Goergia's third most populous county came under fire from civil rights advocates Monday after announcing they would slash the number of early voting sites for the state's two critical U.S. Senate runoff elections by more than half.

"While these closures are likely to adversely affect many Cobb County voters, we are especially concerned that these closures will be harmful to Cobb County's Black and Latinx voters because many of the locations are in Black and Latinx communities."
-Civil rights groups
Half a dozen groups including the Georgia NAACP, the ACLU of Georgia, and the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter (pdf) to the Cobb County Board of Commissioners and Board of Elections and Registration urging them not to cut back on early voting sites. The officials plan on closing six of the county's 11 advance polling locations, claiming they do not have the resources to keep all of them open.

"While these closures are likely to adversely affect many Cobb County voters, we are especially concerned that these closures will be harmful to Cobb County's Black and Latinx voters because many of the locations are in Black and Latinx communities," the letter states.

According to (pdf) the Center for New Data, of the 10 Georgia polling locations with the highest estimated portion of voters spending longer than 30 minutes on-site, five are slated for closure.

    Victories in Georgia and around the country were driven, in no small part, by ensuring access to the ballot. Voter suppression is not done yet - and we've got to be vigilant as we head to Jan. 5. Don't get distracted by the drama. Watch the shadows and beware. https://t.co/MaPNXlRVQw

    - Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) December 7, 2020

Some 760,000 people live in the county, which lies just northwest of Atlanta. Its population is nearly 29% Black and over 13% Latinx and, although long a Republican stronghold, has become more liberal in recent years.

While Republican nominee Mitt Romney trounced former President Barack Obama by over 12 percentage points in the 2012 presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton edged out President Donald Trump by two points in 2016 and President-elect Joe Biden easily defeated Trump by 14 points in 2020, largely on the strength of the very Black and Latinx voters who rights advocates warn would likely be adversely affected by the closure of polling sites during the coronavirus pandemic.

Covid-19, "which is ravaging the nation, has had extremely harsh effects in Black and Latinx communities and makes in-person voting on Election Day an untenable option for many voters," the groups' letter asserts.

    We're working w/our partners to keep all polling places open for early voting in Cobb County for the upcoming Georgia run-off. Read our letter: https://t.co/OAPjIMT3WO @NAACP_LDF @VotingIsLocal @BlackVotersMtr @ACLUofGA @splc @Georgia_NAACP https://t.co/2AniqjFbFo

    - Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) December 7, 2020

    Republicans ain't gonna do right! I told y'all on ⁦@MSNBC⁩ to expect the closing of polling sites in GA to restrict voting access. As predicted they're planning to close over HALF of the polling sites in Cobb County for early vote. They're shameless! But we are determined. pic.twitter.com/sy7pNfDrt5

    - LaTosha Brown (@MsLaToshaBrown) December 8, 2020

"Moreover, due to widespread concerns with the reliability of the United States Postal Service, many voters are not comfortable requesting or casting absentee ballots by mail," the letter states. "As demonstrated by the record turnout during the advance voting period for the 2020 general election, advance voting is the only acceptable option for safe and secure voting for many voters."

Under Georgia law, if a Senate candidate does not receive at least 50% of the vote in a general election, the two top-finishing candidates must face each other in a runoff. On January 5, there will be two such elections, with Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff facing Sen. David Perdue in one and Rev. Raphael Warnock taking on Sen. Kelly Loeffler in the other.

    Voter suppression is the real fraud.https://t.co/XacKYVK0dG

    - Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) December 8, 2020

On November 3, Perdue won 49.7% to Ossoff's 47.9%, while Warnock led Loeffler by a wider margin of 32.9% to 29.5%, with the GOP vote being split between Loeffler and Doug Collins, who received 20.0% of the vote.

If both Ossoff and Warnock emerge victorious, Democrats will gain control of the Senate, as incoming Vice President Kamala Harris will cast the tie-breaking vote. If either GOP incumbent wins, Republicans will remain in control of the Senate, posing what is likely to be a constant thorn in the side of President Joe Biden and his agenda.

Early voting for the Georgia Senate runoffs begins December 14.

Concern grows as Trump repeatedly calls for election to be "˜overturned' - and Republicans refuse to stop him

on December 9, 2020
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

More than five weeks after Election Day, concern is mounting as President Donald Trump not only shows no signs of conceding, but increasingly is spreading dangerous lies and disinformation - including now repeatedly calling for the election to be overturned. Americans are growing increasingly concerned, not only with the President's attacks on democracy, but with Republicans' refusal to defend it.

President Donald Trump and his supporters have filed more than 50 lawsuits, losing all but one. On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court - on which the president placed three of the six conservative justices - unanimously smacked down the latest attempt to overturn the election, in what amounted to a scathing, one sentence refusal.

Trump is growing more agitated, according to reports, and spends his days focusing on little except the election.

Wednesday morning, amid a flurry of tweets, Trump posted a one-word demand:

    #OVERTURN

    - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2020

That was followed Wednesday afternoon by another call to overturn the election he lost by more than 8 million votes.

    If somebody cheated in the Election, which the Democrats did, why wouldn't the Election be immediately overturned? How can a Country be run like this?

    - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2020

A growing question for some is at what point does being a liar and a sore loser rise to the bar of illegal activity?

To be clear, not only is there no evidence of election fraud or cheating, but Trump's own attorneys have been unable - or unwilling - to offer any in court.

Voting rights experts and Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman:

    It's 36 days after election, safe harbor deadline has passed, 302 electoral votes certified for Biden, won by 7 million votes nationwide, Trump has lost 51 court cases & yet he's still calling for election results to be overturned & 90% of GOP either encouraging or silent

    - Ari Berman (@AriBerman) December 9, 2020

Andrea Mitchell quoting MSNBC's Kelly O'Donnell:

    .@KellyO: "Today for President Trump, it's more defiance. He wants to see the results that have been certified around the country overturned in his favor-The legal set of affairs the President finds himself in is one defeat after another, including the Supreme Court." #AMRstaff

    - Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) December 9, 2020

Edward-Isaac Dovere, staff writer at The Atlantic:

    Pretty clearly, if Donald Trump could have overturned the election results and seized power through court challenges or other routes, he would have-and also pretty clearly, there are not many Republican leaders who would have opposed him as he did.

    - Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) December 9, 2020

Los Angeles Times White House reporter Chris Megerian:

    The president continues to campaign against democracy with the tacit (and occasionally enthusiastic) approval of a major political party https://t.co/abE1XDmpf8

    - Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) December 9, 2020

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent:

    It's awful that Loeffler/Perdue back this deranged Texas lawsuit.

    Republicans aren't just "humoring" Trump. Many of them support *overturning* the election.

    This lawsuit succeeding would be "the end of democracy as we know it," @steve_vladeck tells me:https://t.co/Gjp7eiYeYR pic.twitter.com/Kzix270IDl

    - Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) December 9, 2020

Mother Jones' D.C. bureau chief David Corn:

    By the way, Republicans, this is very wrong. Trump is not pursuing legal options here. He is pressuring elected officials to overturn an election so he can retain power. He is subverting democracy. And you're enabling this. https://t.co/tWdkPcsjCm

    - David Corn (@DavidCornDC) December 8, 2020

CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser:

    Now that Trump is openly calling to "OVERTURN" the election, I'm wondering where this leaves the Republicans who said he was merely pursuing his legitimate legal options after the election that he lost"¦

    - Susan Glasser (@sbg1) December 9, 2020

*************

GOP election lawyer predicts Supreme Court will smack down Trump-backed Texas lawsuit: "˜There's no basis for it'

Raw Story
12/9/2020

On CNN Wednesday, longtime Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsburg tore into the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to void the election results in several swing states.

"Let's talk about that Texas case, because it is unusual to say the least in that you have one state here, Texas, challenging how four other states are running their elections, and let's remind people in this country, states basically run elections," said anchor Jim Sciutto. "What is the legal basis for that, if any, and do you expect the Supreme Court to take this up in any way?"

"I think there's no basis for it," said Ginsburg. "I don't think the Supreme Court for an instant will consider taking up this case. What it shows you, I think, Jim, is how far the Republican Party has sort of corroded in basic beliefs under Donald Trump in this area. Used to be that the party was for states' rights. I can't imagine something that is least faithful to a principle of states' rights than a Texas attorney general trying to tell other states how to run their elections."
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Trump is practically begging for the Supreme Court to slap him down

on December 10, 2020
By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet
- Commentary

If President Donald Trump were completely desperate for unnecessary but completely decisive humiliation before the United States Supreme Court, it's hard to imagine that he'd be acting any differently.

On Wednesday, he threw his weight behind a Texas lawsuit filed before the Supreme Court, asking to intervene in his capacity as a candidate. The Texas case, absurdly, seeks to overturn the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all of which voted for President-elect Biden, votes that have been officially certified. Essentially, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that because he objects to some of the ways in which those states ran their elections, the certified results should be investigated and potentially thrown out, with the state legislatures left to pick appoint their own electors (presumably for Trump).

Trump's intervention in the lawsuit is patently ridiculous. He seems to go a bit further than Texas, suggesting that the election certifications be annulled and the legislatures appoint their own electors or that the states' electors blocked entirely. This would, in fact, still leave Biden with a winning majority of the remaining electors, but we can ignore this detail.

The president's motion before the court is laughable. It claimed, for instance: "President Trump prevailed on nearly every historical indicia of success in presidential elections. For example, he won both Florida and Ohio; no candidate in history-Republican or Democrat-has ever lost the election after winning both States."

This last claim is simply not true. President John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960 without either Florida or Ohio. Moreover, even if it were true, it would be irrelevant. Electoral coalitions shift all the time. Even if Biden's winning collection of states was a historic anomaly, that wouldn't show it was a fraudulent or illegitimate win. And in fact, Biden's victory was completely in line with what expert election analysts had expected before the outcome was known. For example, Sabato's Crystal Ball predicted the outcome almost perfectly ahead of time, missing the result in just one state: North Carolina.

But we can ignore Trump's factually erroneous filing. The fact that he submitted the filing at all shows his utter desperation. Even before the election, he posited that the election would end up before the Supreme Court, a point which he used to argue in favor of rushing to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett. He seems to have convinced himself that with six conservative justices - and five justices seen as reliably conservative, if you discount Chief Justice John Roberts - will be eager to just hand him victory.

The problem is, one can't just take an issue to the Supreme Court. It needs to go through the proper channels. The Texas case tries to exploit one loophole in the regular channels. When one state sues another, the only proper venue in the Supreme Court. Since Texas was able to submit its case right to the Supreme Court, Trump hopes he can tag along for the ride, though there's no reason to believe this gambit will work.

More problematic, though, is the Texas lawsuit itself. It's simply ridiculous, and the Supreme Court is nearly guaranteed to see it that way. It may dismiss it out of hand, or dismiss it after considering the merits. The court's conservatives certainly have their Republican Party sympathies, but they also have genuine beliefs about how the law should work. And this case doesn't seem to conform to any of them.

First, it's not clear why a state should have legal standing to sue another state over its election processes. If this were permitted, it could unleash a flood of lawsuits of states trying to overturn other states' election laws. This is not what the justices want to deal with, and it's obviously untenable.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, even if a state did have a credible legal objection to another state's election law that the Supreme Court was willing to hear, the case comes far too late. Any challenge should have come before the election was actually conducted, not after - this is a reason many of the post-election lawsuits on the Trump side have failed. If this kind of challenge were allowed to proceed, it would just guarantee that every election could be contested after the fact by the loser. This is no way to run a democracy

Third, the lawsuit is not consistent. Texas is just challenging states that it thinks it needs to flip to allow Trump to win. Other states, including Texas itself, made changes to its election law that could be challenged under the lawsuit's theory. This is a clear sign of political cynicism, rather than bona fide legal grievance.

Fourth, the remedy proposed is preposterous. If there were genuine objections to a state's election laws, the court may be open to addressing them. But the solutions would need to come before votes are actually cast. Instead, the case suggests that the state legislatures may just completely overturn the result of the people's vote because they don't like the outcome. This is essentially mass disenfranchisement as a solution to relatively minor process complaints.

In short: It's not going to happen. If it were to happen, the Supreme Court would be throwing democracy out the window.

But Trump is all in. After more than 50 election-related lawsuits filed by him and his allies, all but one of which resulted in complete failure, Trump claimed on Twitter that this lawsuit is the real deal:

He won't get a victory. There's no plausible case to be made. But by putting all his marbles in the basket, he's setting himself up for a giant fall.

************

John Dean drops the hammer on Trump-approved Texas lawsuit to overturn the election

Raw Story
12/10/2020

On CNN Wednesday, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean broke down why the multi-state lawsuit led by Texas to overturn the results of the election in four battleground states is doomed to failure.

"Does this Texas lawsuit have any merit whatsoever?" asked anchor Anderson Cooper.

"I can find none," said Dean. "First of all, it was filed very late. It was filed after people relied on the law and they are now attacking and the Court will recognize that "¦ they'll dismiss on that. There's a real question if Texas has standing. Notwithstanding this is an original jurisdiction case - they don't like these kind of cases."

"It takes four justices to get a hearing of the case to bring it in," added Dean. "Often these types of cases, they have a master, lower court judge to hear the case and process it. I can't see it happening."
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***********

Trump ripped Georgia AG in "˜furious' 15-minute-long call demanding he stay away from Texas lawsuit

Raw Story
12/10/2020

President Donald Trump went off in a 15-minute phone call Tuesday to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, telling him to stay away from opposing the Texas lawsuit against his state.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday evening that the call came shortly before Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue published a joint statement supporting Trump's latest Hail Mary to the Supreme Court.

Trump likely saw Carr's statements from earlier in the day calling Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "constitutionally, legally and factually wrong." Texas is suing Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for voting wrong. Interestingly, however, no other blue states are included in the suit.

"The two men spoke at the urging of Perdue, who along with Loeffler also received calls from Trump about Carr's opposition to the lawsuit, according to three Republican officials, two of whom described Trump as "˜furious' in his call with Loeffler over the attorney general's stance," said the AJC.

Of course, the problem is that the attorney general of Georgia is tasked with defending the state and he'll have no other choice if the Supreme Court decides to take up the case, which is unlikely.

*************

Experts mock Trump for only being able to get a "˜disgraced white supremacist' attorney for "˜crazy' SCOTUS case

Raw Story
12/10/2020

Legal experts are having a field day with the latest Supreme Court lawsuit, filed by 17 red states, trying to overturn the election by literally disenfranchising millions upon millions of U.S. citizens.

The case is without merit, legal experts say, but what may be even more embarrassing and ridiculous is President Donald Trump is trying to join the case. To do so, he must petition the Supreme Court, which he just did.

It appears the only attorney Trump could convince to file his motion is a "disgraced white supremacist" who "who thinks Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio are not U.S. citizens."

That attorney is John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law.

If the name sounds familiar, it should. Eastman is also the chairman of the National Organization For Marriage (NOM), the far right wing anti-LGBTQ faith-based organization that spent millions of dollars of dark money in a failed attempt to ban same-sex couples from marrying.

Here's Slate's legal expert Mark Joseph Stern, predicting Trump has "lost already."

    When you are the president and the only lawyer willing to sign his name to your SCOTUS motion is a disgraced white supremacist "¦ you have lost already. pic.twitter.com/BwG6vnzw9M

    - Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) December 9, 2020

UC Irvine Professor of Law and Political Science Rick Hasen, who is also an election law expert:

    I was wondering who the Trump campaign could get to file a motion to intervene in the bogus Texas lawsuit. Some top tier election/appellate firm? No, John Eastman, the chapman prof who thinks Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio are not U.S. citizenshttps://t.co/JjfgddluvL

    - Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) December 9, 2020

By the way, the claims Eastman is a white supremacist come from a Newsweek op-ed he wrote that was so offensive its editors had to append an apology to it, which read, in part:

This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize. The essay, by John Eastman, was intended to explore a minority legal argument about the definition of who is a "natural-born citizen" in the United States. But to many readers, the essay inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American.

Law & Crime's Senior Investigative Reporter & Editor, Adam Klasfeld weighs in:

    Trump's lawyer on the brief is John C. Eastman, who wrote the infamous editorial about VP-elect Kamala Harris's eligibility denounced widely as birtherism. https://t.co/JaQZ9Ru6mX https://t.co/426eipJXsh

    - Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) December 9, 2020

National security attorney Bradley Moss:

    Literally not how this works. https://t.co/6LjaCvmgjC

    - Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) December 9, 2020

UCLA School of Law professor Sean Hecht points out a falsehood in Eastman's filing - one Trump tweeted out earlier Wednesday:

    There's a misstatement of fact (an immaterial one, but one that apparently Eastman believes is material) on the first page of the brief! pic.twitter.com/wrTti5nygc

    - Sean Hecht (@seanhecht) December 9, 2020

UPDATE:
It appears Eastman didn't even write the motion he filed. He's being accused of filing a motion written by the author of the original brief, which is definitely not something the Supreme Court will appreciate:

    So the John Eastman brief for Trump was ghost-written by the guy who drafted Texas's brief that the Eastman brief supports?
    Oh my.
    The Supreme Court will not appreciate the sock-puppetry, especially in a case with these stakes. https://t.co/U8AQZm0aeq

    - Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) December 9, 2020

************

Trump's Supreme Court filing says he can't prove fraud - which means there must be fraud

Raw Story
12/10/2020

President Donald Trump joined the case brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton suing states that voted for Joe Biden in the November election. According to the filing from Trump, however, they can't actually find any fraud.

"Despite the chaos of election night and the days which followed, the media has consistently proclaimed that no widespread voter fraud has been proven. But this observation misses the point. The constitutional issue is not whether voters committed fraud but whether state officials violated the law by systematically loosening the measures for ballot integrity so that fraud becomes undetectable," the filing said.

Politico reporter Kyle Cheney characterized it as Trump claiming that he knows that there was fraud because he can't prove fraud.

    The president's latest argument: I can't prove fraud, which proves that there was fraud.https://t.co/hi1F721HwX pic.twitter.com/hykCSxO0qr

    - Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 9, 2020

In the Georgia case, Trump's allies made similar claims that officials didn't do enough to protect against fraud that didn't happen. Judge Steven Grimberg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said that the case there lacked standing and that they should have brought it weeks before the election if they had such a big problem with the way officials conducted the election.

17 Republican Attorneys General Back Trump in Far-Fetched Election Lawsuit

The move is an attempt to bolster a baseless legal effort by Texas that seeks to delay certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states that Mr. Trump lost.

By Jeremy W. Peters and Maggie Haberman
NY Times
Dec.10, 2020

Despite dozens of judges and courts rejecting challenges to the election, Republican attorneys general in 17 states on Wednesday backed President Trump in his increasingly desperate and audacious legal campaign to reverse the results.

The show of support, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court, represented the latest attempt by Trump loyalists to use the power of public office to come to his aid as he continues to deny the reality of his loss with baseless claims of voter fraud.

The move is an effort to bolster a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the pro-Trump attorney general in Texas that seeks to delay the certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states the president lost. Mr. Trump has been holding out hope that the Supreme Court will hear the case and ultimately award him a second term. Legal experts are skeptical, however, and have largely dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

Late Tuesday, the president asked Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, if he would be willing to argue the case, according to a person familiar with their conversation. Mr. Cruz agreed, this person said. And the president has filed a motion with the court to intervene, which would make him a party to the case.

The willingness of so many Republican politicians to publicly involve themselves in a legal campaign to invalidate the ballots of millions of Americans shows how singular a figure Mr. Trump remains in the G.O.P. That these political allies are also elected officials whose jobs involve enforcing laws, including voting rights, underscores the extraordinary nature of the brief to the court. Even in defeat - a reality that a significant number of Republicans refuse to accept, polls show - allegiance to Mr. Trump is viewed as the ticket to higher office.

Here's a look at how many electoral votes have been certified - or made official.

Mr. Cruz is only the latest possible Republican presidential candidate in 2024 to express support for Mr. Trump's baseless allegations that the results of the election are tainted and fraudulent - a claim that the president's lawyers have been unable yet to demonstrate in court. Indeed, in the president's own motion in the Texas case his lawyer sidestepped the idea that fraud was rampant, writing that reporting in the media about the lack of proof "misses the point" because the larger issue is whether state officials loosened ballot safeguards "so that fraud becomes undetectable."

Another Republican senator with presidential ambition, Josh Hawley of Missouri, praised the attorney general of his state on Wednesday, Eric Schmitt, after Mr. Schmitt declared on Twitter that "Missouri is in the fight" for Mr. Trump. "Good work," Mr. Hawley wrote in response. Mr. Schmitt's office took the lead state on the brief filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of the other 16 states on Wednesday, which argued that "serious concerns relating to election integrity and public confidence in elections" have surfaced.

Republicans familiar with the dynamics in these states - all of which Mr. Trump won - described calculations of ambition and political survival that many party officials are making as they choose to stand behind Mr. Trump. Some fear that if they don't make it clear they are on the president's side they could open themselves up to a primary challenge or end any hope for attaining higher office in the near future. Some like Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who filed the lawsuit, are considering a run for governor.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to pressure Republican state legislators and elections officials - who have the most influence over declaring the formal winner and allocating electoral votes - to deny victory to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. They have largely resisted him. But in a sign of how Mr. Trump continues to interfere with the process, he is hosting several Republican state attorneys general at the White House on Thursday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Mr. Paxton's suit claims that voting irregularities in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin should be investigated by the state legislatures before those states formally certify Mr. Biden the winner on Monday.

After Mr. Paxton filed, Republican attorneys general from across the country rushed to declare themselves on board, posting their support on social media and issuing statements that echoed the legally questionable claim in the Texas brief that its citizens are harmed if elections in other states are not conducted properly.

The 17 states behind the amicus brief represent a majority of the 25 Republican attorneys general across the country, and include Alabama, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana and South Dakota. Notably, the two Republican attorneys general in the battleground states that Mr. Trump lost - Arizona and Georgia - are not part of the brief.

Legal experts and a handful of Republican elected officials have questioned the seriousness of the suit, pointing out that states like Texas have no standing to bring a case involving how another state awards its electoral votes.

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and former attorney general of the state, seemed baffled by the legal maneuver, calling it "extraordinary" and "unprecedented."

"I've never seen something like this, so I don't know what the Supreme Court's going to do," he said in Washington on Wednesday.

And in Georgia, the office of the Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, quickly pushed back against Mr. Paxton's lawsuit after it was filed. It issued a statement saying that Mr. Paxton was "constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia."

Nicholas Fandos and Alan Feuer contributed reporting

"˜He's going for a pardon': Experts trash indicted Trump-supporting Texas AG's SCOTUS election lawsuit

on December 10, 2020
Raw Story

Embattled Texas attorney general Ken Paxton was widely derided after he filed a longshot lawsuit on Tuesday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block electors in key battleground states from casting "unlawful and constitutionally tainted votes."

There is no evidence of fraud in the presidential election, according to election officials in every state. President-elect Joe Biden won with a record-setting 81 million votes - a margin of victory of more than seven million votes over Donald Trump.

Paxton's complaint charges Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania with what he claims were illegal procedural changes made ahead of the election to limit the spread of the coronavirus, allegations that Pennsylvania already successfully argued could violate due process rights for millions of voters. At one point, Paxton's filing repeats the debunked claim that a mysterious late-night dump of ballots boosted Biden's chances in Pennsylvania, alleging that Trump's opponent had "less than one in a quadrillion" odds of winning all four states. All four states have certified their results, and all but Wisconsin met Tuesday's "safe harbor" deadline, the accepted final date by which states must complete all post-election challenges, such as recounts. State courts will likely toss any new challenges filed after that date.
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Legal experts quickly dismissed the lawsuit and some questioned whether Paxton, currently the target of an FBI bribery investigation, is angling for a pardon from the outgoing president.

Attorneys general from the targeted states also pushed back against the suit. "

With all due respect, the Texas Attorney General is constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia," Katie Byrd, spokeswoman for Republican Georgia attorney general Chris Carr, said in a statement. The other three attorneys general, all Democrats, issued a joint statement calling Paxton's effort an attempt to "mislead the public and tear at the fabric of our Constitution."

But on Wednesday afternoon, 17 Republican-led states, led by Missouri, signed on to an amicus brief in support of Texas. Reuters justice correspondent Brad Heath pointed out that several of those states had implemented the same election procedures that they criticize as unlawful.

"I suspect a lot of these Republican states would've been been a lot more reluctant to sign on to these kinds of legal arguments - which would expose them to tons of litigation over their own laws - if they thought it had any chance of success," Heath said.

Trump allies on Capitol Hill, some under pressure from the Oval Office, also pushed ahead.

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., on Wednesday sent an email asking every House Republican to add their signatures to an amicus brief for Paxton's suit. Trump, Johnson told his colleagues, had called him personally and is "anxiously awaiting the final list" of signatories.

"Are we the party of list-making now?" one lawmaker asked CNN's Jake Tapper.

The 154-page filing, a hard copy of which White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held aloft for the benefit of viewers during a Tuesday night interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, comes as the Supreme Court issued a one-sentence rejection of a GOP challenge to Pennsylvania's use of mail ballots.

While Paxton may have won support from MAGA-world, Republican attorney George Conway, husband of former top Trump official Kellyanne Conway, called the exercise "insane."

"The notion that the Supreme Court is going to have a litigation . . . where states are attacking each others' rules for choosing electors is insane," Conway told CNN, adding that "the biggest election fraud of the 2020 cycle" is "the lie that [Donald Trump] won the election."

Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman wrote in a Bloomberg op-ed: "In Trump's fantasy world, apparently shared by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, the Supreme Court will engage in a constitutional coup d'état and give Trump a second term."

"This idea is based on a view of the court as entirely partisan," he continued. "It's disrespectful of the rule of law. And it's wrong, whether held hopefully on the right or fearfully on the left."

Rick Hasen, top election law expert and professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California Irvine, said the case was a "publicity stunt" for a presidential pardon.

"The Texas case is not serious. Far from it. It's a publicity stunt masquerading as a lawsuit," Hasen tweeted on Tuesday. "AG Paxton should be sanctioned for it. It goes against the will of millions of voters. He's going for a pardon with Trump."

Indeed, Paxton has legal exposure of his own. He is currently the target of a federal probe into allegations that he committed bribery and abused his office on behalf of a wealthy political donor.

Beyond that, Paxton is still under indictment for felony securities fraud, for convincing investors to buy shares of a tech firm without disclosing that he would get commission on the sale. The case has bounced around Texas trial courts for five years, reaching the state's highest criminal court before dropping back down to the county level. Paxton himself has still not faced trial.

The president's pardon power does not extend to state charges.

Trump torched by CNN host for invoking US Civil War in latest lawsuit

Raw Story
12/10/2020

CNN host John Berman on Thursday delivered an unsparing takedown of President Donald Trump's latest efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Specifically, Berman torched Trump for backing the last-ditch lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, which seeks to throw out the election results in four key swing states.

"The president's filing with the Supreme Court states, quote, "˜Our country is deeply divided in ways that it arguably has not been since the election of 1860,'" Berman began. "So leave aside the circular logic of decrying division when he is the one stoking it. But that reference to the election of 1860: You know why the country was divided by that election? Because Abraham Lincoln won fairly and slave states were pissed about that and they seceded and there was a civil war."

Berman then marveled at the fact that Trump's own legal team was seemingly equating President-elect Joe Biden with Abraham Lincoln and the president with slaveowners.

He then expressed indignation that Trump was still trying to overturn the election even as America's public health crisis has continued to deteriorate.

"That's who Donald Trump is relating to this morning, as 3,000 new coronavirus deaths were reported overnight," he said. "He might stand at 6-foot-three-inches, but this is the act of a small president."

Watch: https://youtu.be/SUr3AG0C9nY

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Texas AG's lawsuit slammed as "˜performative leg-humping' to gain Trump's favor by conservative radio host

Raw Story
12/10/2020

Conservative activist and radio host Erick Erickson has written a comprehensive takedown of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in four key swing states.

Writing on his personal Substack page, Erickson dismisses Paxton's suit as "performative leg humping by someone desperate to curry favor with President Trump" at a time when the Texas attorney general is under investigation by federal officials.

He then breaks down all the reasons why Paxton's lawsuit deserves to fail.

"The suit is absurd on its face," he writes. "These states seek to interfere in the internal affairs of other states when those states are not actually electing the President, but allowing their voters to chose members of the Electoral College. Were this to succeed, which it will not, the states will start suing each other at every election as a bit of theater."

Erickson notes that the suit literally cites no prior cases to establish it has standing to sue other states over their election practices and that the lawsuit could not even get Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins to sign off on it.

Furthermore, he argues that the lawsuit would badly erode the kind of states' sovereignty that conservatives have long championed.

"If Texas were to win this, it would dissolve the horizontal federalism of our union and only expand the powers of the federal government," he writes. "It would also lead to a Civil War as a handful of states overturn the rules and laws of other states and dictate those states' internal affairs."

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Ted Cruz mocked for taking Trump's "˜clownish argument' to the Supreme Court on CNN

Raw Story
12/10/2020

CNN White House correspondent John Harwood ridiculed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday for agreeing to represent President Donald Trump in a prospective Supreme Court argument in favor of overturning the 2020 election.

After playing a video from 2016 of Cruz calling Trump a "pathological liar" who is "utterly amoral," Harwood explained that the Texas senator knows that the president's lawsuit is unlikely to succeed, but is still willing to argue for it in front of the Supreme Court to suit his own political ambitions.

"He still has the same ambition that he had in 2016," said Harwood. "And so what he's decided to do, like much of the rest of the party, is accommodate Donald Trump, go along with him to the point that this president - who insulted his wife, said blasphemous, ridiculous things about his father and JFK's assassination - he's saying he's going to take up this argument."
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Harwood also points to Cruz conducting a similar kamikaze mission back in 2013, when he led a government shutdown in an effort to get former President Barack Obama to repeal his own health care law.

"It is a clownish argument, it's a cynical argument, Ted Cruz is a smart guy, he understands that," Harwood said. "But for the purpose of his ambition, he's going to do it. And what it underscores is, anybody who actually believes the clownish claims in that suit, there's something wrong with them."

Watch: https://youtu.be/bB8EqJRkFno

Arizona Supreme Court delivers major blow to GOP chair Kelli Ward

on December 10, 2020
Raw Story

The Arizona Supreme Court voted unanimously to strike down a baseless election fraud lawsuit filed by Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward and other Trump allies.

"The Court concludes, unanimously, that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in denying the request to continue the hearing and permit additional inspection of the ballots," the ruling read. "The November 9, 2020 hand count audit revealed no discrepancies in the tabulation of votes and the statistically negligible error presented in this case falls far short of warranting relief under A.R.S. 16-672."

It continued, "Because the challenge fails to present any evidence of "˜misconduct,' "˜Illegal votes' or that the Biden Electors "˜did not in fact receive the highest number of votes for office,' let alone establish any evidence of fraud or a sufficient error rate that would undermine the certainty of the election results "¦"

The court also unanimously ruled that there were "no discrepancies in vote tabulations," "negligible error," and "no evidence of fraud or a sufficient error rate that would undermine the certainty of the election result." Despite the Trump campaign's claims, the court confirmed there is "certainty in the result," according to the publication.

After the Supreme Court handed down its ruling, Ward released a statement as she insisted the fight to overturn the election "will continue." "While today's decision is not what those who value and recognize the importance of election transparency and integrity were seeking, rest assured, the fight to restore that corroded confidence will continue."

Trump escalates his "˜unprecedented assault' on democracy as time runs out for him to steal the election: report

Raw Story
12/11/2020

President Donald Trump on Thursday continued to falsely claim that he had won the 2020 presidential election - which he lost.

"With his legal options dwindling and time running out before a key electoral college deadline, President Trump on Thursday ramped up pressure on the Supreme Court to help overturn Joe Biden's victory, gaining the support of more than 100 congressional Republicans in the unprecedented assault on the U.S. election system," The Washington Post reported Thursday. "By late afternoon, 106 GOP House members - a majority of the 196-member Republican caucus - had signed on to an amicus brief to support the Texas-led motion, among them Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee."

   The Supreme Court has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States. 78% of the people feel (know!) the Election was RIGGED.

   - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020

"In fact, his campaign's legal team has suffered more than three dozen defeats in federal and state courts, including the high court's ruling Tuesday denying a motion to block Pennsylvania from certifying Biden's win in that state," The Post reported. "The appeal to the Supreme Court came days before the statutory deadline Monday for electoral college representatives in each state to vote on final certification of the results and send them to Congress for ratification early next month. The justices could decide as soon as Friday whether to accept the case, which seeks to take advantage of the allowance that lawsuits between states may be filed directly at the Supreme Court."

   How can you give an election to someone who lost the election by hundreds of thousands of legal votes in each of the swing states. How can a country be run by an illegitimate president?

   - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020

"But officials in the targeted states said any claims in the filings have already been dismissed in lower courts. In all, 20 states, along with the District of Columbia, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, filed a motion calling on the high court to reject the Texas request," the newspaper noted. "Each of the targeted states filed an objection to Texas's intentions and, taken together, offered the court a wide range of reasons not to get involved: that Texas lacks legal standing to file such a complaint; that the court shouldn't get involved in the ultimate political question, a presidential election; that Texas has not shown there were any constitutional violations; that the claims come too late; and that its filing simply recycles allegations that have already been rejected by state and local courts."

   "Donald Trump won by a landslide, and they stole it from him!" @seanhannity

   - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020

"Trump has waged relentless attacks on the U.S. election system, beginning on election night and continuing even as Biden has run up a margin of victory of more than 7 million votes nationwide, along with an electoral college advantage of 306 to 232, matching Trump's 2016 advantage over Hillary Clinton," the newspaper noted.

   "¦.The fact that our Country is being stolen. A coup is taking place in front of our eyes, and the public can't take this anymore." A Trump fan at Georgia Rally on @OANN Bad!

   - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020

"Trump has openly sought to pressure the court to side with his campaign, suggesting before the election that one reason he was moving quickly to name Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy after Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death in September was to be sure there was a strong conservative majority in anticipation of an extended legal battle over the outcome," The Post reported.

   19 states are fighting for us, almost unheard of support!

   - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 11, 2020

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Mike Pence and 106 GOP House members accused of sedition by assisting Trump's "˜lame coup' by Morning Joe

Raw Story
12/11/2020

On Friday morning, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough and co-host Willie Geist accused Vice President Mike Pence and the 106 Republican House members who signed onto Donald Trump's attack on the 2020 presidential election of committing sedition and treason against the people of the United States.

In the words of Geist, what they are doing by signing onto an amicus brief attacking the election in support of the president can only be described as a "lame coup."

Sharing clips of Pence bounding up to a stage to rally Trump supporters, the entire panel expressed disgust with the continuing attacks on the will of the voters.

"It's bad enough that Mike Pence and other Republicans at the highest reaches of government are doing what they're doing over the last 5 1/2 weeks which is looking the other way while the president tries to pull off this lame coup, but knowing is the worst part," Geist began. "Knowing that it's wrong, knowing that it's false, knowing that Joe Biden is the president-elect. They all know, they all say it in private, they're calling Joe Biden to congratulate him. But they're going out and again, they're signing on in the Congress to these letters and these amicus briefs to support lawsuits, they're fraudulent."

Co-host Scarborough then jumped in to say, "They have signed onto a seditious act that is sedition against the United States of America."

"Some might call it treason," he continued. "You certainly have a president who is trying to commit treasonous acts and please don't believe me, your friendly cable news host and dumb country lawyer. If you're on that list, history will record you as doing nothing short of trying to overthrow a legal democratic election. They will accuse you of sedition - the word treason will certainly be bounced around for years to come."

Watch: https://youtu.be/HVh0MVW35Xg

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Texas AG hit by FBI subpoena as he tries to overturn the 2020 presidential election: report

Raw Story
12/11/2020

On Thursday, Tony Plohetski of the Austin American-Statesman confirmed that FBI agents have served Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton with a federal subpoena as part of their criminal investigation into allegations he accepted bribes and abused his office.

    NEW: FBI agents delivered at least one federal subpoena to the Texas Attorney General's office Wednesday for information in an ongoing investigation involving AG Ken Paxton, three sources confirm, indicating the seriousness with which they are taking allegations against Paxton. pic.twitter.com/hn77HfcDwj

    - Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) December 10, 2020

Paxton is the lead attorney general in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - a challenge backed by outgoing President Donald Trump and 106 House Republicans.

The allegations center on official acts Paxton is said to have performed on behalf of a Texas real estate developer who donated $25,000 to his election campaign. Eight sources in Paxton's office have come forward alleging misconduct, most of whom were subsequently fired or resigned in a suspected campaign of retaliation.

Two reasons the Texas election case is faulty: flawed legal theory and statistical fallacy

By Jeremy W. Peters, David Montgomery, Linda Qiu and Adam Liptak
NY TIMES
12/11/2020

Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has asked the Supreme Court to do something it has never done before: disenfranchise millions of voters in four states and reverse the results of the presidential election.

The case is highly problematic from a legal perspective and is riddled with procedural and substantive shortcomings, election law experts said.

And for its argument to succeed - an outcome that is highly unlikely, according to legal scholars - a majority of the nine justices would have to overlook a debunked claim that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s chances of victory were "less than one in a quadrillion."

Mr. Paxton is a compromised figure, under indictment in a securities fraud case and facing separate accusations, by several former employees, of abusing his office to aid a political donor.

Here are some reasons this case is probably not "the big one" like President Trump has called it.
The suit's legal argument is deeply flawed, legal experts said.

Texas appears to have no claim to pursue the case, which would extend Monday's deadline for certification of presidential electors in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It relies on a novel theory that Texas can dictate how other states run their elections because voting irregularities elsewhere harm the rights of Texans.

The Paxton case fails to establish why Texas has a right to interfere with the process through which other states award their votes in the Electoral College, said Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University and director of its election law program. The authority to manage elections falls to the states individually, not in any sort of collective sense that the Paxton suit implies.

"They all do what they do," Mr. Foley said. "For Texas to try to complain about what Georgia, Pennsylvania and these other states have done would be a lot like Massachusetts complaining about how Texas elects its senators."

Typically state attorneys general are protective of their rights and wary of Supreme Court intervention, which Mr. Foley said makes this case unusual. "This is just the opposite," he said. "It would be an unprecedented intrusion into state sovereignty."

The four states named in the suit denounced it on Thursday and urged the court to reject it. The attorney general of Michigan, Dana Nessel, accused Mr. Paxton and other Trump allies of running "a disinformation campaign baselessly attacking the integrity of our election system."

The remedy the lawsuit seeks - the disenfranchisement of millions of voters - would be without precedent in the nation's history.

Even if the suit were proper, it was almost surely filed too late, as the procedures Texas objects to were in place before the election.

A Supreme Court brief opposing Texas' requests by prominent Republicans, including former Senator John Danforth of Missouri and former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, said Texas' filings "make a mockery of federalism and separation of powers."

"It would violate the most fundamental constitutional principles for this court," the brief said, "to serve as the trial court for presidential election disputes."

Mr. Trump and his supporters have often pointed to Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that decided the 2000 election, as a hopeful historical precedent for their side. But unlike Bush v. Gore, there is not an obvious constitutional question at issue.

"It looks like an inherently political suit," Mr. Foley said.

The suit uses statistical arguments that experts called "˜comical.'

Mr. Paxton's filing repeatedly cites an analysis by an economist in California that statisticians have said is nonsensical. Mr. Biden's chances of winning the four battleground states in question, the analysis says, were "less than one in a quadrillion."

The economist, Charles J. Cicchetti, who donated to Mr. Trump's campaign in 2016, arrived at the minuscule probability by purporting to use the results of the 2016 election as a backstop. His flawed reasoning was this: If Mr. Biden had received the same number of votes as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, he wrote, a victory would have been all but impossible.

But Mr. Biden, of course, did not receive the same number of votes as Mrs. Clinton; he received over 15 million more. Nor would any candidate be expected to receive the same number of votes as a previous candidate.

That one-in-a-quadrillion figure has echoed across social media and was promoted by the White House press secretary. But an array of experts have said that the figure and Mr. Cicchetti's analysis are easily refutable.

Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University who runs its election data archive, called this analysis "comical."

The analysis omitted a number of obvious, relevant facts, he said: "the context of the elections are different, that a Covid pandemic is going on, that people reach different conclusions about the administration, that Biden and Clinton are different candidates."

By the same logic and formula, if Mr. Trump had received an equal number of votes in 2020 as he did in 2016, there is also a one in a quadrillion chance that Mr. Trump in 2020 would outperform his totals in 2016, said Stephen C. Preston, a professor of mathematics at Brooklyn College. "But that doesn't prove Trump cheated, it just shows that the numbers are different," he said. "It's like finding a low probability that 2 equals 3."

Mr. Cicchetti also wrote that votes counted earlier in the process and votes counted later favored different candidates, and that there was "a one in many more quadrillions chance" that votes counted in the two time periods were coming from the same groups of voters.

But that is exactly what was expected to happen: Democrats tended to prefer voting by mail, and those ballots were counted later in the four battleground states, while Republicans tended to prefer voting in person on Election Day, and those ballots were counted earlier.

"The order and tempo of vote counting was unlike previous elections," said Amel Ahmed, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

What Mr. Cicchetti wrote was not especially revelatory, experts agreed.

"The model is silly," said Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California at Berkeley. "This is not science or statistics. It's not even a good cartoon of elections."

Texas' attorney general is caught up in scandal.

Though the legal reasoning of Mr. Paxton's case may be novel, the impulse behind it is not. It was just the latest example of a Trump loyalist using the power of public office to come to the aid of a president whose base of support remains deeply attached to him and overwhelmingly says the election was unfair, according to polls.

Mr. Paxton, 57, has been under a cloud of scandal since October, when seven of his senior staff attorneys accused their boss of bribery, misuse of his office and other wrongdoing. Their allegations, which Mr. Paxton has denied, involve a wealthy developer and political donor, Nate Paul, whose home and offices were raided by federal agents in August.

The aides accused Mr. Paxton of "potential criminal offenses," including assisting in Mr. Paul's defense and intervening in the developer's efforts to get a favorable judgment in a legal battle between his properties and a nonprofit.

First elected in 2014, Mr. Paxton has served much of his term under a still-unresolved securities fraud indictment stemming from events that took place before he took office. The indictment accuses Mr. Paxton of selling technology shares to investors in 2011 without disclosing that he received 100,000 shares of stock as compensation, and of failing to register with securities regulators.

Mr. Paxton has nevertheless maintained a high national profile - and the affection of conservatives - with his relentless efforts to dismantle policies of the Obama era and shoulder the Trump administration's causes.

Four States Respond
The attorneys general of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court to reject the Texas lawsuit.

Jeremy W. Peters covers national politics. His other assignments in his decade at The Times have included covering the financial markets, the media, New York politics and two presidential campaigns. He is also an MSNBC contributor. @jwpetersNYT "¢ Facebook

Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu

Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. @adamliptak "¢ Facebook

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In Blistering Retort, 4 Battleground States Tell Texas to Butt Out of Election

The attorneys general of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court to reject a lawsuit from Texas seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's victories.

By Adam Liptak and Jeremy W. Peters
NY TIMES
Dec. 11, 2020

WASHINGTON - In blistering language denouncing Republican efforts to subvert the election, the attorneys general for Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to reject a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the victories in those states by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., calling the audacious effort an affront to democracy and the rule of law.

The lawsuit, filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas and backed by his G.O.P. colleagues in 17 other states and 106 Republican members of Congress, represents the most coordinated, politicized attempt to overturn the will of the voters in recent American history. President Trump has asked to intervene in the lawsuit as well in hopes that the Supreme Court will hand him a second term he decisively lost.

The suit is the latest in a spectacularly unsuccessful legal effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results, with cases so lacking in evidence that judges at all levels have mocked or condemned them as without merit. Legal experts have derided this latest suit as well, which makes the audacious claim, at odds with ordinary principles of federalism, that the Supreme Court should investigate and override the election systems of four states at the behest of a fifth.

The responses by the four states - represented by three Democratic attorneys general and, in Georgia, a Republican one - comprehensively critiqued Texas's unusual request to have the Supreme Court act as a kind of trial court in examining supposed election irregularities with the goal of throwing out millions of votes.

"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," a brief for Pennsylvania said.
 
"Let us be clear," the brief continued. "Texas invites this court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next president of the United States. That Faustian invitation must be firmly rejected."

"This election cycle," he wrote, "Georgia did what the Constitution empowered it to do: it implemented processes for the election, administered the election in the face of logistical challenges brought on by Covid-19, and confirmed and certified the election results - again and again and again. Yet Texas has sued Georgia anyway."

The briefs said Texas was in no position to tell other states how to run their elections, adding that its filing was littered with falsehoods.

"Texas proposes an extraordinary intrusion into Wisconsin's and the other defendant states' elections, a task that the Constitution leaves to each state," Wisconsin's brief said. "Wisconsin has conducted its election and its voters have chosen a winning candidate for their state. Texas's bid to nullify that choice is devoid of a legal foundation or a factual basis."

The Republican attempt to overturn the election in the Supreme Court, coming just days before an Electoral College majority is set to vote for Mr. Biden on Monday, is being driven by conservative allies of Mr. Trump who currently enjoy his political favor and claim he has been treated unfairly.

The lawsuit was filed by Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general. Mr Paxton is under indictment in a securities fraud case and facing separate accusations of abusing his office to aid a political donor by several former employees. He has denied the allegations.

According to the briefs filed by the four states that Mr. Biden won, the threshold problem was that the case did not belong in the Supreme Court at all. While the Constitution gives the court "original jurisdiction" to hear disputes between states, it exercises that jurisdiction sparingly, typically in water rights cases and border disputes. One state's disagreement with how another state chose to conduct its elections should not qualify, the briefs said.

Nor has Texas suffered the sort of injury that would give it standing to sue, the briefs said.

"If Texas's theory of injury were accepted," Wisconsin's brief said, "it would be too easy to reframe virtually any election or voting rights dispute as implicating injuries to a states and thereby invoke this court's original jurisdiction. New York or California could sue Texas or Alabama in this court over their felon-disenfranchisement policies. Garden-variety election disputes would soon come to the court in droves."

The briefs added that Texas had waited too long in any event.

"Disenfranchising millions of voters after Pennsylvania has already certified its election results would grievously undermine the public's trust in the electoral system, contravene democratic principle and reward Texas for its inexcusable delay and procedural gamesmanship," Pennsylvania's brief said.

"While Texas waited to see the results, millions of voters relied on the settled rules," the brief said. "Those voters should not be punished for not choosing Texas's preferred candidate, and Texas should not be rewarded for its unreasonable delay in bringing this action."

The states also urged the justices to reject what they said was the radical remedy sought by Texas: the disenfranchisement of tens of millions of voters.

"In support of such a request," Pennsylvania's brief said, "Texas brings to the court only discredited allegations and conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact. And Texas asks this court to contort its original jurisdiction jurisprudence in an election where millions of people cast ballots under truly extraordinary circumstances, sometimes risking their very health and safety to do so."

Last year, in ruling that the federal courts may not hear challenges to partisan gerrymandering, the Supreme Court said federal judges should not adjudicate political disputes. "Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.

Pennsylvania quoted that decision at the conclusion of its brief. "Accepting Texas's view," the brief said, "would do violence to the Constitution and the framers' vision, and would plunge this court into "˜one of the most intensely partisan aspects of American political life.'"

Wisconsin warned that even a decision to hear the case could undermine faith in democracy.

"Texas asserts that this court's intervention is necessary to ensure faith in the election," the brief said. "But it is hard to imagine what could possibly undermine faith in democracy more than this court permitting one state to enlist the court in its attempt to overturn the election results in other states."

"Merely hearing this case - regardless of the outcome - would generate confusion, lend legitimacy to claims judges across the country have found meritless, and amplify the uncertainty and distrust these false claims have generated," the brief said.

The Supreme Court is likely to let Texas file a response to Thursday's briefs before it acts. Such reply briefs are typically submitted very quickly, sometimes within hours, and the justices may decide whether to entertain the suit as soon as Friday.

In theory, the court has several options, including granting a temporary injunction barring the states' electors from voting for Mr. Biden while the case proceeds or putting the suit itself on a fast track. But by far the most likely outcome is for the court to refuse to hear the case.

In the days since Texas filed its suit, the Supreme Court has received more than a dozen friend-of-the-court briefs and motions seeking to intervene, from coalitions of red and blue states, from Mr. Trump and from politicians and scholars. Most were predictable.

But Dave Yost, Ohio's attorney general, a Republican, filed a contrarian brief on Thursday accusing Texas of inconsistency. The Constitution, he wrote, "means today what it meant a month ago."

In recent cases, red states had argued that state legislatures have the last word in setting election procedures under a clause of the Constitution that says states shall appoint presidential electors "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." In the new case, Texas has asked the Supreme Court to override such legislative determinations.

Mr. Yost called for consistency. "Precisely because Ohio holds this view about the meaning of the Electors Clause, it cannot support Texas's plea for relief," he wrote.

"Texas seeks a "˜remand to the state legislatures to allocate electors in a manner consistent with the Constitution,'" Mr. Yost wrote, quoting from Texas's filings. "Such an order would violate, not honor, the Electors Clause."

Mr. Yost did urge the Supreme Court to settle the meaning of the clause before the 2024 election. The court has been asked to address it in a petition seeking review of a decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that extended the deadline for receipt of absentee ballots in the state.

Adam Liptak reported from Washington and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.

Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. @adamliptak "¢ Facebook

Jeremy W. Peters covers national politics. His other assignments in his decade at The Times have included covering the financial markets, the media, New York politics and two presidential campaigns. He is also an MSNBC contributor. @jwpetersNYT "¢ Facebook

Supreme Court Rejects Texas Suit Seeking to Subvert Election

The suit, filed directly in the Supreme Court, sought to bar Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from casting their electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The Supreme Court received more than a dozen friend-of-the-court briefs and motions seeking to intervene.

By Adam Liptak
NY Times
12/20 2020

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a lawsuit by Texas that had asked the court to throw out the election results in four battleground states that President Trump lost in November, ending any prospect that a brazen attempt to use the courts to reverse his defeat at the polls would succeed.

The court, in a brief unsigned order, said Texas lacked standing to pursue the case, saying it "has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections."

The order, coupled with another one on Tuesday turning away a similar request from Pennsylvania Republicans, signaled that a conservative court with three justices appointed by Mr. Trump refused to be drawn into the extraordinary effort by the president and many prominent members of his party to deny his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his victory.

It was the latest and most significant setback for Mr. Trump in a litigation campaign that was rejected by courts at every turn.

Texas' lawsuit, filed directly in the Supreme Court, challenged election procedures in four states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It asked the court to bar those states from casting their electoral votes for Mr. Biden and to shift the selection of electors to the states' legislatures. That would have required the justices to throw out millions of votes.

Mr. Trump has said he expected to prevail in the Supreme Court, after rushing the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in October in part in the hope that she would vote in Mr. Trump's favor in election disputes.

"I think this will end up in the Supreme Court," Mr. Trump said of the election a few days after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death in September. "And I think it's very important that we have nine justices."

He was right that an election dispute would end up in the Supreme Court. But he was quite wrong to think the court, even after he appointed a third of its members, would do his bidding. And with the Electoral College set to meet on Monday, Mr. Trump's efforts to change the outcome of the election will soon be at an end.

Mr. Trump's campaign did not immediately issue a statement. In an appearance on the conservative network Newsmax soon after the decision was announced, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, said that the campaign's legal effort would continue, insisting that his team had originally planned for "four or five separate cases."

"We're not finished, believe me," he said with a laugh at the end of the interview.

The president, who at a White House Hanukkah party earlier in the week eagerly mentioned the pending court case in his remarks, was scheduled to attend another holiday party around the time the ruling came down. But around 8:30 p.m., guests were informed that Mr. Trump would not be coming down from the residence to speak.

Mr. Trump weighed in later on Twitter. "The Supreme Court really let us down," he said. "No Wisdom, No Courage!"

Friday's order was not quite unanimous. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, issued a brief statement on a technical point. But it was nonetheless a comprehensive rebuke to Mr. Trump and his allies. It was plain that the justices had no patience for Texas' attempt to enlist the court in an effort to tell other states how to run their elections.

The majority ruled that Texas could not file its lawsuit at all. "The state of Texas' motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing," the court's order said.

Justice Alito, taking a slightly different approach, wrote that the court was not free immediately to shut down lawsuits filed by states directly in the court. "In my view," he wrote, "we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction."

But that was as far as those two justices were willing to go. "I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief," Justice Alito wrote, "and I express no view on any other issue."

Some of Mr. Trump's advisers had anticipated the court would give the president and the Republican attorneys general something that could be characterized as supportive, in the form of a dissent or a lengthy commentary. Instead, there was simply the brief statement from the two justices.

Mike Gwin, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said the Supreme Court had "decisively and speedily rejected the latest of Donald Trump and his allies' attacks on the democratic process."

"President-elect Biden's clear and commanding victory will be ratified by the Electoral College on Monday, and he will be sworn in on Jan. 20," Mr. Gwin said.

Despite the court ruling, Mr. Trump's campaign plans to continue describing the election outcome as illegitimate. On Friday night, it announced that it would be running ads on YouTube, which has started accepting political ads again after a moratorium, making that very case.

In the Texas case, the Supreme Court received more than a dozen friend-of-the-court briefs and motions seeking to intervene, from Mr. Trump, from coalitions of liberal and conservative states, from politicians and from scholars.

Among them was a brief filed by more than 100 House Republicans who fell in line to claim that the general election - the same one in which most of them were re-elected - had been "riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities." More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general expressed similar support on Wednesday.

Legal experts almost universally dismissed Texas' suit as an unbecoming stunt. In invoking the Supreme Court's "original jurisdiction," Texas asked the justices to act as a trial court to settle a dispute between states, a procedure theoretically possible under the Constitution but employed sparingly, typically in cases concerning water rights or boundary disputes.

In a series of briefs filed Thursday, the four states that Texas sought to sue condemned the effort. "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," a brief for Pennsylvania said.

On Friday morning, Texas' attorney general, Ken Paxton, responded with his own brief. "Whatever Pennsylvania's definition of sedition," he wrote, "moving this court to cure grave threats to Texas' right of suffrage in the Senate and its citizens' rights of suffrage in presidential elections upholds the Constitution, which is the very opposite of sedition."

Claims that the election was tainted by widespread fraud have been debunked by Mr. Trump's own attorney general, William P. Barr, who said this month that the Justice Department had uncovered no voting fraud "on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election."

Some 20 states led by Democrats, in a brief supporting the four battleground states, urged the Supreme Court "to reject Texas' last-minute attempt to throw out the results of an election decided by the people and securely overseen and certified by its sister states."

Georgia, which Mr. Biden won by less than 12,000 votes out of nearly five million cast, said in its brief that it had handled its election with integrity and care. "This election cycle," the brief said, "Georgia did what the Constitution empowered it to do: it implemented processes for the election, administered the election in the face of logistical challenges brought on by Covid-19, and confirmed and certified the election results - again and again and again. Yet Texas has sued Georgia anyway."

Starting even before Election Day, Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have filed nearly five dozen challenges to the handling, casting and counting of votes in courts in at least eight different states.

They generally lost those cases, often drawing blistering rebukes from the judges who heard them. Along the way Mr. Trump has not come close to overturning the election results in a single state, let alone the minimum of three he would need to seize victory from Mr. Biden.

The first batch of actions preceded the election and sought to end or pare back voting measures that states across the country had put in place to deal with the coronavirus crisis. In Texas, for instance, Republicans pursued a failed effort in federal court to stop drive-through voting in Harris County, home to Houston. A similar move was made in Pennsylvania to stop the state from accepting mail-in ballots received after Election Day.

Mr. Trump and his allies switched tactics after the election, filing a barrage of suits in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Georgia claiming that all manner of fraud had compromised the vote results.

They made accusations that truckloads of illegal ballots were brought in under cover of darkness to a convention center in Detroit; that poll workers in Atlanta were given suitcases full of fake ballots for Mr. Biden; that Iran and China, working with local elections officials, had hacked into and manipulated algorithms in voting machines.

While some of these claims were supported by sworn statements from witnesses, judge after judge in case after case ruled that the evidence was not persuasive, credible or anywhere near enough to give Mr. Trump the extraordinary relief he requested: a judicial order overturning the results of an election.

What is left is a judicial mopping-up exercise. Several suits that the president and his supporters have lost in lower courts are now on appeal, in both the state and federal systems, but the appellate process is quickly running up against a crucial deadline on Monday when the Electoral College meets and Mr. Biden is expected to prevail in the voting, all but sealing the results of the election.

Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York, and Chris Cameron from Washington.

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"˜An Indelible Stain': How the G.O.P. Tried to Topple a Pillar of Democracy

The Supreme Court repudiation of President Trump was also a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders who had put their interests ahead of the country's.

By Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti
NY Times
Dec. 12, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

The Supreme Court repudiation of President Trump's desperate bid for a second term not only shredded his effort to overturn the will of voters: It also was a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders in Congress and the states who were willing to damage American democracy by embracing a partisan power grab over a free and fair election.

The court's decision on Friday night, an inflection point after weeks of legal flailing by Mr. Trump and ahead of the Electoral College vote for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday, leaves the president's party in an extraordinary position. Through their explicit endorsements or complicity of silence, much of the G.O.P. leadership now shares responsibility for the quixotic attempt to ignore the nation's founding principles and engineer a different verdict from the one voters cast on Election Day.

Many regular Republicans supported this effort, too - a sign that Mr. Trump has not just bent the party to his will, but pressed a mainstay of American politics for nearly two centuries into the service of overturning an election outcome and assaulting public faith in the electoral system. The G.O.P. sought to undo the vote by such spurious means that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court quickly rejected the argument.

Even some Republican leaders delivered a withering assessment of the 126 G.O.P. House members and 18 attorneys general who chose to side with Mr. Trump over the democratic process, by backing a lawsuit that asked the Supreme Court to throw out some 20 million votes in four key states that cemented the president's loss.

"The act itself by the 126 members of the United States House of Representatives, is an affront to the country," said Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "It's an offense to the Constitution and it leaves an indelible stain that will be hard for these 126 members to wipe off their political skin for a long time to come."

Speaking on CNN on Friday, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican, said, "What happened with the Supreme Court, that's kind of it, where they've kind of exhausted all the legal challenges; we've got to move on." It was time, he said, for Congress to "actually do something for the American people, surrounding the vaccines, surrounding Covid."

With direct buy-in from senior officials like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and the Republican leader in House, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the president's effort required the party to promote false theory upon unsubstantiated claim upon outright lie about unproved, widespread fraud - in an election that Republican and Democratic election officials agreed was notably smooth given the challenges of the pandemic.

And it meant that Republican leaders now stand for a new notion: that the final decisions of voters can be challenged without a basis in fact if the results are not to the liking of the losing side, running counter to decades of work by the United States to convince developing nations that peaceful transfers of power are key to any freely elected government's credibility.

"From a global perspective this certainly looks like many of the cases we've seen around the world where an incumbent tries to hold onto power,'' said Michael Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy abroad with support from both parties.

Though the decisions by the Supreme Court and other courts meant that in the end, American "institutions have held strong,'' he added, "there's no question that people around the world are now looking to America and it's really important for Americans of all parties to stand up for the rule of law and for democracy."

Republicans who have resisted Mr. Trump's campaign agreed, predicting that the party was risking its own destruction.

"I keep comparing it somewhat to Jonestown," said former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey, referring to the cult that ended in a tragic mass suicide. "They've all drunk the Kool Aid. It just hasn't killed them yet."

Following the court decision, one of the 126 House Republicans who backed the lawsuit, Representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, said that the court's decision meant the end of Mr. Trump's efforts and "closed the books on challenges to the 2020 election results."

Democrats took heart in the court's decision in the case filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas, one of several dozen that judges have soundly rejected on legal or factual bases, even if more suits are certain to come ahead of Mr. Biden's inauguration on January 20.

"Our democracy has withstood Donald Trump for four years," said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees election law. "It can withstand these baseless lawsuits for four more weeks."

But civil rights attorneys saw the potential for long-lasting damage outside of the legal realm where the Republican efforts - and the lie that Mr. Biden's win was the result of widespread fraud - have so definitively failed.

"There is an anti-democratic virus that has spread in mainstream Republicanism, among mainstream Republican elected officials," said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U. "And that loss of faith in the machinery of democracy is a much bigger problem than any individual lawsuit."

Indeed, after the Supreme Court's ruling, the Texas Republican Party effectively called for secession by red states whose attorneys general joined in the Texas suit.

"Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution," the statement read. It followed an observation Rush Limbaugh made earlier in the week, when he said, "I actually think that we're trending toward secession."

The mention of secession came during a week in which election officials across the country, from both political parties, said they had become the subjects of menacing threats of violence, including to family members, for standing by Mr. Biden's victory.

A website of unknown provenance that caught the attention of law enforcement appeared to promote a hit list of mostly Republican officials who had resisted Mr. Trump's demands to overturn an election he lost, listing their personal information and imposing red cross hairs over their pictures.

Mr. Trump made it clear that the Supreme Court decision would not slow a post-campaign campaign, the futility of which has dampened neither its ferocity nor its pertinacity. His spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, said on Fox News that the justices "dodged" and "refused to use their authority to enforce the Constitution."

Hours before the court made its decision public the Trump campaign released two ads repeating allegations that courts had rejected, indicating it would continue to pressure elected Republican officials to somehow reverse Mr. Trump's political fate. "Demand an honest election and an honest count, contact your legislators today," one ad exhorted. (The campaign claimed that the ads would begin airing on cable television on Saturday morning, but at least one ad tracking firm said they had not seen any reservations made as of Friday night.)

There is one inescapable reality that is driving many party leaders to embrace the president's position, as antithetical as it is to democracy. "Donald Trump is still the 800 pound gorilla in the Republican room - he's the biggest gravitational force that's probably ever existed in the party," said Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of the conservative network Newsmax.

Mr. Trump's popular vote tally of 74 million would have been the largest in American history had Mr. Biden not outdone him by seven million votes. And, Mr. Ruddy noted, "Republican voters are up in arms, they feel this election was not fairly accounted for."

Mr. Ruddy's network has something to do with that; it has gained on the behemoth of conservative television, Fox News, by heavily promoting Mr. Trump's voter-fraud allegations. In doing so Newsmax has helped set off a competition with Fox News's more strident hosts, as well as those of the smaller conservative channel One America News, to give Mr. Trump and his voters what they want: A counter to the reality that Mr. Trump soon will be leaving office.

Whatever their primary sources of information, Republicans overwhelmingly view the election as fatally flawed; a Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday found that only 23 percent of registered Republican voters - and slightly less than half of all white men who are registered to vote - said they believed Mr. Biden's victory was legitimate.

Those doubters do not represent a majority of Americans; 60 percent of registered voters overall said they accepted the results. But they form the core of the Republican base, and the party's leaders have proven continually unwilling to go against them - especially with a critical runoff looming in Georgia that will determine partisan control of the Senate.

Even after Mr. Trump's loss, catering to the wishes of Republican voters has meant aping the president's own paranoid style of politics by clinging to supposed examples of fraud even after they have been debunked in court.

For instance, last month Mr. Graham said during an interview on "Fox & Friends" that a signature verification machine in Clark County, Nevada, which encompasses Las Vegas, was used improperly to accept "every signature whether it was fraudulent or not." In the same interview, he shared an allegation that people in the county were spotted filling out fraudulent ballots on "a Biden/Harris truck."

Those allegations were contained in a lawsuit Republicans filed in the state. Last week a judge found that the signature machine in question had, in fact, sent 70 percent of the signatures it scanned back to election workers for human verification. "The record does not support" allegations that the machine "accepted signatures that should have been rejected," wrote the judge, James T. Russell. Similarly, he ruled, a witness account about false ballots filled out on a Biden/Harris vehicle was "not credible."

On Friday, a spokesman for Mr. Graham declined to address those findings and said the senator "continues to have grave concerns about the expanded use of mail in ballots."

In a hearing about the 2020 election in Wisconsin led by statehouse Republicans on Friday, witnesses suggested the state faced election interference from the dead dictators Hugo Chavez and Joseph Stalin, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Kanye West.

Some of the claims were similar to conspiracy theories contained in suits filed by a conservative lawyer, Sidney Powell, whose attempts to overturn the election results have been regularly rejected by judges. One wrote that a case she brought on behalf of Republican plaintiffs seemed to have been "more about the impact of their allegations on people's faith in the democratic process" as well as "trust in our government."

Tom Rath, a former Republican attorney general of New Hampshire, who endorsed Mr. Biden and opposed his party's effort at the Supreme Court, lamented what seemed to be political incentives within his party to shake that trust. "It's very unfortunate,'' he said, "that some people tried to live off that chaos, perpetuate it and make it even more difficult for the average citizen to trust what government's doing."

Mr. Rath, who advised the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, added, "We're in a very bad place as a party.''

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting from Washington and Giovanni Russonello from New York.

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The Republicans Who Embraced Nihilism

The Supreme Court thwarts the latest Trumpist attack on American democracy.

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Dec. 12, 2020
NY Times

What is left to say about a political party that would throw out millions of votes?

The substance of a lawsuit filed by the State of Texas, and backed by more than 17 other states, would be laughable were it not so dangerous. Texas' attorney general, Ken Paxton - who is under indictment for securities fraud - asked the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in four other states. As a legal matter, this is the rough equivalent of objecting on the grounds that the other side is winning. As political rhetoric, however, it is incendiary.

The Supreme Court was right to toss out the lawsuit. But that the Republican Party tried and failed doesn't make the attempt any less odious. There are a lot of Republican leaders who, the history books will record, wanted it to succeed.

What makes this entire episode so sad is that the nation needs a vibrant, honest, patriotic opposition party. A party that argues in good faith to win more votes the next time around. Many Republicans, particularly at the state and local level, stood tall and proud against the worst instincts of the national party.

The health of a democracy rests on public confidence that elections are free and fair. Questioning the integrity of an election is a matter of the utmost seriousness. By doing so without offering any evidence, Mr. Paxton and his collaborators have disgraced themselves. Attorneys general are sworn to uphold the rule of law.

At least 126 Republican members of Congress - more than half of all House Republicans - rushed to sign a court filing endorsing the Texas lawsuit. That misuse of the legal system was not restricted to the fringes of the party. The minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, said Friday that his name was inadvertently omitted from the original list.

It is particularly astonishing that 17 of the House signatories were elected by voters in the states whose election results Texas was seeking to invalidate. They signed a letter directly challenging the legitimacy of their own victories and the integrity of their own states' elections.   

These lawmakers were humiliating themselves to conciliate President Trump, a man who once created a coat of arms for himself emblazoned with the words Numquam Concedere - never concede. Mr. Trump, not a man to often place the national interest above his own personal interests, is pursuing a series of increasingly desperate strategies to overturn the election results and remain in power. Having failed to convince the voters, he is now pressing state legislators, the courts and Congress to defy the will of the people as well.

That the attacks on Mr. Biden's victory are unlikely to succeed is a very cold bowl of comfort.

Republicans are establishing a new standard for elections that anything short of a fight to the death amounts to not trying hard enough. The old norm of graceful concession was not just an act of good manners. A concession has no legal force, but it has considerable value as an affirmation that the democratic process is more important than the result.

Conceding leaves the nation's political and social systems functional for the winner.

This new policy of election denialism, by contrast, is the latest manifestation of the Republican Party's increasingly anti-democratic tendencies. Rather than campaigning on issues that appeal to a majority of the electorate, the party has made a strategy out of voter suppression. Seeking to toss votes after the fact is a logical if perverse extension of that strategy. So is the growing willingness of Republican Party officials to deny the legitimacy of their opponents.

This isn't really about Mr. Trump anymore. He lost, and his ruinous tenure will soon be over. This is now about the corruption of a political party whose leaders are guided by the fear of Mr. Trump rather than the love of this country - and who are falling into dangerous habits.

The events of recent weeks have demonstrated the strength and resilience of the election system. A larger share of American adults voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any previous cycle. The votes were counted, sometimes more than once. The results were certified. In the states that have attracted the particular ire of Mr. Trump and his allies, most officials, including most Republican officials, defended the integrity of the results.

But the incendiaries are playing a dangerous game. They are battering public trust and raising doubts about the legitimacy of future elections. Most of it is political theater: Mr. Biden's decisive victory is difficult to overturn. But a great many voters trust their political leaders, they don't expect to be lied to, they aren't in on the grift.

It is also a short walk from rhetorical attacks on the legitimacy of the election to denying the legitimacy of Mr. Biden's administration. Republicans are certainly within their rights to disagree with Mr. Biden and to challenge the decisions made by his administration, but those who refuse to accept his victory are undermining the rule of law. Those who stand silent are complicit.

The implications of this assault on truth and trust extend well beyond elections. We are in the midst of a public health emergency. Lives depend on the government's ability to shape public behavior, including by persuading people to get vaccinated. By denying the authority of those who govern, Republicans are placing lives in danger.

They can now demonstrate a modicum of their professed patriotism by mustering the courage to say these simple words: "Congratulations, President-elect Biden."

If they can't bring themselves to do that, where does a party that rejects democracy go from here?

US elections 2020: Trump loses another case challenging election results in latest legal rebuke

Supporters continue to insist election was "˜stolen' even as electoral college prepares to confirm Joe Biden's victory

Joanna Walters and Victoria Bekiempis in New York and agencies
Guardian
Sat 12 Dec 2020 22.50 GMT

Donald Trump lost a federal court challenge on Saturday in Wisconsin while judges said yet another case being fought there "smacks of racism".

The slap-downs came less than 24 hours after the abrupt dismissal by the US supreme court of the most audacious Republican attempt yet to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the election almost six weeks ago.

But despite the latest stinging legal defeats and rebukes, Trump took to the skies in the Marine One presidential helicopter on Saturday on his way to an engagement in New York and flew above a protest of several hundred diehard supporters in Washington DC, who persist in bolstering his false claims that the election was "stolen" from him by fraud and conspiracy.

This as the US electoral college will vote on Monday to confirm Biden's resounding victory, alongside his Democratic vice president-elect, Kamala Harris.

And a trickle of Republicans joined leading Democrats in speaking up about the increasing futility but also the insidiousness of the lame duck president's aggressive clinging to power.

After the supreme court decision, Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, said of the Trump campaign challenges to the election result: "It is now truly over. Trump and his acolytes need to stop all efforts to deny millions of votes."

More than 120 Republican members of the House of Representatives wrote an amicus brief to the supreme court last week in support of the lawsuit brought by Texas, which had been joined by Trump and aimed to overturn Biden's victory in four key swing states, which the court on Friday night abruptly refused to consider.

Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, called the effort "an affront to the country".

"It's an offense to the constitution and it leaves an indelible stain that will be hard for these 126 members to wipe off their political skin," he told the New York Times.

In Wisconsin on Saturday, the US district judge Brett Ludwig dismissed one of Trump's latest lawsuits there that asked the court to order the state's Republican-controlled legislature to name him as the winner, whereas in fact Biden won Wisconsin on his way to winning the White House.

Even as Ludwig said Trump's arguments "fail as a matter of law and fact" an attorney for the president, Jim Troupis, was busy arguing in another case, before a skeptical Wisconsin state supreme court, a lawsuit that, if successful, would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin's most diverse counties, Dane and Milwaukee, where Biden won.

Trump is not challenging any votes in Wisconsin counties that he won.

"This lawsuit, Mr Troupis, smacks of racism," the justice Jill Karofsky said to Trump's attorney early in his arguments.

"I do not know how you can come before this court and possibly ask for a remedy that is unheard of in US history "¦ It is not normal," she added.

One of Karofsky's fellow judges in that case, where a decision is now awaited, pointed out that Trump also did not make such challenges when he won Wisconsin on his way to the White House in 2016.
Trump supporters protest the outcome of the election in front of the US supreme court on 12 December 2020 in Washington DC.

Trump and his allies have already suffered many dozens of defeats in Wisconsin and across the country in lawsuits that rely on unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud and election abuse.

Friday's rejection of the Texas case by the US supreme court, which asked the bench to overturn Biden's wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, came despite Trump having nominated three of the nine justices, which has tilted the court dramatically to the right.

The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, who was among the 23 attorneys general who asked the highest court to reject Texas's lawsuit, said in a statement: "The supreme court has denied Texas' efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election, and Americans across the country can rest assured that the will of the people will be heard."

James continued: "The court's decision to throw out these ridiculous claims ensures the integrity of our elections are protected and that elections cannot simply be overturned because we disagree with the results."

James will be involved in the official confirmation of Trump's loss in the 3 November election.

"On Monday, I and other members of the electoral college across the nation will fulfil our constitutional duty and take the final step to ensure that Joe Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States and that Kamala Harris becomes the 49th vice-president of the United States," she said.

Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, indicated that this should be the end of the road for Trump's campaign to fight the result.

"What happened with the supreme court, that's kind of it, where they've kind of exhausted all the legal challenges. We've got to move on," he told CNN.

    There is a very strong and previously unseen anti-Democratic impulse in the United States that can way too easily be activated
    Michael Waldman

He called for the Trump administration and the US Congress, instead, to address the coronavirus crisis, which has never been brought under control and has killed more than 3,300 people in the last 24 hours, and get the new vaccine delivered to the people.

The president's dubious coat of arms at his Scottish golf courses, as the Atlantic magazine has pointed out, may sport the motto "Numquam concedere" - Latin for "never concede" - but the mantra increasingly conveys less a sense of indomitability than dangerous desperation.

Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University school of law and the author of The Fight to Vote, said: "The courts have been very, very clear in rejecting Trump's efforts to undo the 2020 election "¦ It's actually a rather striking unanimity of rulings."

The litigation's implications were worrisome for American democracy, however.

"Clearly, there is a very strong and previously unseen anti-Democratic impulse in the United States that can way too easily be activated, and this is going to be a big fight for years," he said.

He added: "It's just appalling what Trump and the Republicans have done."

After the fact: the five ways Trump has tried to attack democracy post-election

Republicans in 2020 have established what may be a new template for subverting the vote that could haunt elections for years

Tom McCarthy
Guardian
13 Dec 2020 13.50 GMT

The decisive rejection by the US supreme court of an attempt by one state, Texas, to throw out election results in four other states might prevent the recurrence of such an effort in future presidential elections.

But the Texas lawsuit was not the only unprecedented attack to be leveled on US democracy during the November presidential election, and other such efforts could escalate in, or echo through, future elections for an unknown time to come.

Historians could mark 2020 as the moment when Republicans applied the same zeal they have used to attack democracy in advance of elections, through voter suppression and gerrymandering, to attacking democracy on the back end, by trying to deny and overturn the results.

Here is a list of five post-election attacks on democracy by Donald Trump and Republicans that were new in 2020 but might haunt elections for years to come.

Especially reckless and sustained election fraud charges

False accusations of election fraud are a fixture of US elections, but Trump has professionalized the enterprise, making more audacious and systemic claims of election fraud than ever before and coaxing more elected officials to go along with the lies than seemed possible before the Trump era.

Republicans normalized Trump's false charges by treating them as "legal challenges". But by declining to acknowledge the election result, Republicans lent weight to the notion that something unusual was afoot apart from Trump's effort to subvert the popular will, and they held open a months-long window for Trump's lies to circulate, during which faith in US democracy was damaged.

Political pressure on local elections officials

Will the certification of election results in key counties ever again be taken for granted? And will the partisan poison that reached down to the local level in 2020 corrupt the conduct of future elections at that level?

This was the year for local officials from both parties to receive death threats as they worked to finish the vote counting and then certify the result. Many Republican officials, as in Philadelphia, Michigan and Georgia, reacted to the pressure with expressions of outrage and brave statements of principle. But other local Republican officials, as in Detroit, responded to the merest charm offensive from Trump by trying to retract their certification of the county results.

'It's surreal': the US officials facing violent threats as Trump claims voter fraud..Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/09/trump-voter-fraud-threats-violence-militia

In healthier times for the US democracy, no one paid much attention to the certification process because it was taken as an article of unexamined faith that the vote was the vote and the only role officials had was to stamp it. Now there is a plain chance that officials might take direction from the White House, the Republican National Committee or someone else instead of voters.

External legal challenges to the certification of state election results

Lawsuits have developed around elections before, but never in US history has an election been followed by a legal battle of the scope mounted by the Trump campaign. Trump, the loser, sued in every state, with multiple lawsuits, where flipping the result could help him win.

The fact that Trump lost basically all the lawsuits might not discourage future presidential campaigns from building a national post-election legal strategy into their victory plan: if you can't win at the ballot box, try the courts.

Internal political challenges to the certification of state election results

Goaded by Trump, legislators in Pennsylvania asked the supreme court to prevent certification by the state of its result. Republican Senate candidates in Georgia demanded that the Republican secretary of state withdraw from the certification there. The Republican party in Arizona demonstrated extremely shrill behavior, demanding that the election not be certified and even challenging Twitter followers to express their willingness to die to prevent certification.

On the whole, efforts by these state elected officials to respond to Trump's sudden demand that they overthrow what everyone had previously recognized as a democratic process were half-hearted and ineffectual. But if state elected officials get serious about disrupting the certification process, they might come more prepared in future elections.The president's role

Should a president of the United States, after an election, be calling up county election officials in charge of certifying the results? Should a president invite lawmakers weighing an intervention in their state's certification process for lunch? Should a president call out the mob on Twitter against a local election official or a state secretary of state who has resisted his schemes?

Whatever damage US democracy has sustained in 2020, much of it traces back to the source, to a president who did not see anything wrong in 2019 with coercing a foreign leader to try to take out a political opponent, who made the fealty of state governors a condition of pandemic aid, and who now has twisted the arms of elected officials across the United States in an effort to subvert the will of American voters.

The role that Trump has played in attacking the integrity of the American system is the most outrageous and unprecedented of all the unholy perversions of democracy that 2020 has seen. Whether that role will be replicated or reprised in future White Houses, and in future elections, could make all the difference.

Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Overturn in Congress, Testing Pence

Some House Republicans plan to try to use Congress's tallying of electoral results on Jan. 6 to tip the election to President Trump. The attempt will put Republicans in a pinch.

By Nicholas Fandos and Michael S. Schmidt
NY Times
Dec. 13, 2020,

President Trump lost key swing states by clear margins. His barrage of lawsuits claiming widespread voting fraud has been almost universally dismissed, most recently by the Supreme Court. And on Monday, the Electoral College will formally cast a majority of its votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress are plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden's victory.

Constitutional scholars and even members of the president's own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election.

The fight promises to shape how Mr. Trump's base views the election for years to come, and to pose yet another awkward test of allegiance for Republicans who have privately hoped that the Electoral College vote this week will be the final word on the election result.

For the vice president, whom the Constitution assigns the task of tallying the results and declaring a winner, the episode could be particularly torturous, forcing him to balance his loyalty to Mr. Trump with his constitutional duties and considerations about his own political future.

The effort is being led by Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, a backbench conservative. Along with a group of allies in the House, he is eyeing challenges to the election results in five different states - Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin - where they claim varying degrees of fraud or illegal voting took place, despite certification by the voting authorities and no evidence of widespread impropriety.

"We have a superior role under the Constitution than the Supreme Court does, than any federal court judge does, than any state court judge does," Mr. Brooks said in an interview. "What we say, goes. That's the final verdict."

Under rules laid out in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, their challenges must be submitted in writing with a senator's signature also affixed. No Republican senator has yet stepped forward to say he or she will back such an effort, though a handful of reliable allies of Mr. Trump, including Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have signaled they would be open to doing so.

The president has praised Mr. Brooks on Twitter, but has thus far taken no evident interest in the strategy. Aides say he has been more focused on battling to overturn the results in court.

Even if a senator did agree, constitutional scholars say the process is intended to be an arduous one. Once an objection is heard from a member of each house of Congress, senators and representatives will retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state's votes. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state's electoral votes - something that has not happened since the 19th century.

Several Senate Republicans - including Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah - have forcefully rejected the idea of overturning the results, and their votes would be enough for Mr. Biden to prevail with the support of Democrats.

"The Jan. 6 meting is going to confirm that regardless of how many objections get filed and who signs on, they are not going to effect the outcome of the process," said Edward B. Foley, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University who has written extensively on the electoral process. "We can say that with clear confidence."

But he noted that the session could still carry consequences for the next few years. If even one Republican senator backed the effort, it could ensure that the partisan cloud hanging over the election would darken Mr. Biden's presidency for years to come. If none did, it could send a definitive message to the country that despite Mr. Trump's bluster, the party trusted the results of the electoral process and was finally ready to recognize Mr. Biden as the rightful winner.

Mr. Brooks is far from the first lawmaker to try to use the tallying process to challenge the results of a bitter election loss. House Democrats made attempts in 2001, 2005 and even 2017, but they were essentially acts of protest after their party's nominee had already accepted defeat.

What is different now is Mr. Trump's historic defiance of democratic norms and his party's willing acquiescence. If Mr. Trump were to bless the effort to challenge the congressional tally, he could force Republicans into a difficult decision about whether to support an assault on the election results that is essentially doomed or risk his ire. Many Republicans are already fearful of being punished by voters for failing to keep up his fight.

The dilemma is particularly acute for Mr. Pence, who is eyeing his own presidential run in 2024. As president of the Senate, he has the constitutionally-designated task of opening and tallying envelopes sent from all 50 states and announcing their electoral results.

But given Mr. Trump's penchant for testing every law and norm in Washington, he could insist that Mr. Pence refuse to play that role. And either way, it will call for a final performance of the delicate dance Mr. Pence has performed for past four years, trying to maintain Mr. Trump's confidence while adhering to the law.

"The role the V.P. plays in the transition is something that people have never focused on and never think about, but with Donald Trump, you now have to consider all the possibilities," said Gregory B. Craig, a White House counsel under President Barack Obama.

In 1961, Richard M. Nixon, who had just lost the election, oversaw the vote tabulation and had to decide whether to recognize competing electors from the new state of Hawaii. Mr. Nixon ultimately made a decision that hurt his vote total but had no effect on the final result that John F. Kennedy had won. Forty years later, after the 2000 election, Al Gore had to reject objections from his fellow Democrats and certify the victory of George W. Bush, who had won the state of Florida after the Supreme Court ordered a recount ended in that state.

Since the election, Mr. Pence has sent mixed messages about how far he would be willing to go to help Mr. Trump. In the early days of the transition, Mr. Pence fended off requests from the president's loyalists to back specious claims about election fraud. But more recently, he publicly praised the failed lawsuit brought by the attorney general of Texas to have votes from battleground states thrown out.

Democrats said they were confident that Mr. Biden would emerge unscathed, but his transition team has begun coordinating with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, to prepare for the possibility that one or more senator would sign onto the challenges.

Mr. Brooks has been trying to drum up support. He met last week with about a half-dozen senators, including Mike Lee of Utah, and separately with the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

"My No. 1 goal is to fix a badly flawed American election system that too easily permits voter fraud and election theft," Mr. Brooks said. "A possible bonus from achieving that goal is that Donald Trump would win the Electoral College officially, as I believe he in fact did if you only count lawful votes by eligible American citizens and exclude all illegal votes."

It remains unclear how broad a coalition he could build. More than 60 percent of House Republicans, including the top two party leaders, joined a legal brief supporting the unsuccessful Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results. But it is one thing to sign a legal brief and another to officially contest the outcome on the House floor.

Some Republicans including Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Matt Gaetz have also signaled they could support an objection. Mr. Brooks said he had been speaking with others who were interested. But prominent allies of the president who have thrown themselves headfirst into earlier fights, like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio or even the House minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, have so far been publicly noncommittal.

"All eyes are on Jan. 6," Mr. Gaetz said on Fox News Friday night after the Supreme Court rejected Texas' suit. "I suspect there will be a little bit of debate and discourse in the Congress as we go through the process of certifying the electors. We still think there is evidence that needs to be considered."

Mr. Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said he would "wait and see how all the legal cases turn out" before deciding what to do.

Mr. Johnson plans to hold a hearing this week "examining the irregularities in the 2020 election," featuring Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who is a favorite of the right, and at least two lawyers who have argued election challenges for Mr. Trump. Whether he proceeds to challenge results on Jan. 6, he told reporters last week, "depends on what we find out."

Electoral college vote may be knockout blow to Trump's ploy to subvert election

Formality to cement outcome of election takes on real political significance as Trump continues efforts to undermine results

Ed Pilkington
Guardian
12/14/2020

Donald Trump on Monday could suffer a withering blow to his increasingly hopeless effort to overturn the results of the US presidential election when 538 members of the electoral college will cast their ballots and formally send Joe Biden to the White House.

Under the arcane formula which America has followed since the first election in 1789, Monday's electoral college vote will mark the official moment when Biden becomes the 46th president-in-waiting. Electors, including political celebrities such as both Bill and Hillary Clinton, will gather in state capitols across the country to cement the outcome of this momentous race.

Normally, the process is figurative and barely noted. This year, given Trump's volatile display of tilting at windmills in an attempt to negate the will of the American people, it will carry real political significance.

Trump continued those quixotic efforts over the weekend, sparking political unrest in several cities including the nation's capital. On Sunday morning he tweeted in all caps that this was the "most corrupt election in US history!".

In an interview with Fox & Friends that aired on Sunday, he insisted that his anti-democratic mission was not over. "We keep going and we're going to continue to go forward," he said, before repeating a slew of lies about the election having been rigged.

Trump's barefaced untruths about having won key states including Pennsylvania and Georgia went entirely unchallenged by the Fox News interviewer, Brian Kilmeade.

Any faltering hopes Trump might still harbor of hanging on to power were shattered on Friday when the US supreme court bluntly dismissed a lawsuit led by Texas to block Biden's victory in four other states. In a different case, a Wisconsin supreme court judge decried Trump's lawsuit aiming to nullify the votes of 200,000 Americans, saying it "smacked of racism".

Despite the categoric rebuff that Trump has suffered in dozens of cases, including before the nation's highest court, his unprecedented ploy to tear up democratic norms continues to inflict untold damage on the country with potential long-term consequences. The Texas-led push to overturn the election result was backed by 126 Republicans in the House of Representatives - almost two-thirds of the party's conference - as well as Republican state attorneys general from 18 states.

Among the wider electorate, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 77% of Republicans believe - mistakenly - that there was widespread voter fraud in the 3 November election.

Another manifestation of the harm that is being done was the violence that erupted on Saturday night across several cities. In Washington DC, four people were stabbed and required hospital treatment, and 23 were arrested, when far-right groups clashed with counter-protesters following a so-called "Stop the Steal" march enthusiastically endorsed by Trump.

Far-right militia groups mingled among the Trump supporters and engaged in the violence, including the white nationalist Proud Boys who call themselves "western chauvinists". Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI, addressed a crowd, exclaiming: "We decide the election. We're waging a battle across America."

Violence also broke out in Olympia, the state capital of Washington state. One person was shot in clashes between heavily armed factions, with Trump supporters and Proud Boys facing off against counter-protesters, and three people were arrested.

Video footage appeared to show that the shot was fired by a member of the Proud Boy and that the victim was a counter-protester, although details remained sketchy.

In Georgia, a separate militia group, Georgia Security Force III%, were in attendance at a far-right rally at the statehouse on Saturday. The armed group has helped to organise recent caravans that have intimidated local election officials at their homes claiming falsely that Biden's victory in Georgia was fraudulent.

Biden's transition team has watched with growing alarm the spate of violent incidents that has cropped up around Trump's spurious claims of a rigged election. Cedric Richmond, a Democratic representative from Louisiana who Biden has tapped as the incoming director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said they were anxious about what lay ahead in the holiday season.

"We are concerned about violence," he told Face the Nation on CBS News. "Where there's violence it is not protest, that is breaking the law, so we are worried about it."

Asked about the majority of House Republicans who backed Trump's frivolous lawsuit to block election results being certified, Richmond implied their resistance was more theatrical than real. "They recognize Joe Biden's victory. This is just a small proportion of the Republican conference that is appeasing the president on his way out because they are scared of his Twitter" feed.

The outlier nature of Trump's stubborn refusal to concede was underlined on Sunday by Al Gore in an interview with CNN's State of the Union. Exactly 20 years ago to the day, he conceded the bitterly-fought 2000 presidential race to George W Bush, saying: "This is America, we put country before party - we will stand together behind our new president."

Gore told CNN that he hoped Monday's electoral college vote would be the beginning of healing. He called the lawsuit dismissed by the supreme court "ridiculous and unintelligible", and castigated those Republicans who continued to stick with Trump in his "lost cause".

"With the electoral college votes tomorrow in all 50 states, I hope that will be the point at which some of those who have hung on will give up the ghost," Gore said. "There are things more important than bowing to the fear of a demagogue."

***************

Republicans plotting attempt to deny presidency to Biden on floor of the House if Trump gives the word: report

on December 14, 2020
Raw Story
By Tom Boggioni

According to a report from the New York Times, hardcore supporters of Donald Trump who serve in the House are willing to attempt to deny the transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden if Donald Trump gives them a thumbs-up to proceed.

With the president insisting on Saturday during a Fox News interview that "It's not over," and Biden would be an "illegitimate president," a few Republicans are making plans to use the rules of the House to contest the election results.

"As the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress are plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden's victory," the Times reports. "Constitutional scholars and even members of the president's own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election."
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According to the report, the effort is being led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) who has amplified the president's accusations of voter fraud despite a complete lack of evidence.

"We have a superior role under the Constitution than the Supreme Court does, than any federal court judge does, than any state court judge does," the conservative GOP lawmaker explained. "What we say, goes. That's the final verdict."

As the report points out, "Under rules laid out in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, their challenges must be submitted in writing with a senator's signature also affixed," with the likelihood that either Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) or Rand Paul (R-KY) might step up.

"Once an objection is heard from a member of each house of Congress, senators and representatives will retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state's votes," the report notes. "Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state's electoral votes - something that has not happened since the 19th century."

That, in turn, could put Vice President Mike Pence - with an eye on his own political future - on the spot.

"The dilemma is particularly acute for Mr. Pence, who is eyeing his own presidential run in 2024. As president of the Senate, he has the constitutionally-designated task of opening and tallying envelopes sent from all 50 states and announcing their electoral results," the Times reports. "But given Mr. Trump's penchant for testing every law and norm in Washington, he could insist that Mr. Pence refuse to play that role. And either way, it will call for a final performance of the delicate dance Mr. Pence has performed for past four years, trying to maintain Mr. Trump's confidence while adhering to the law."

Adding to that, an attempt to throw out the election results and defy the will of the voters could cast a cloud over the Republican Party whether it works or not.

As for Republican Brooks, "It remains unclear how broad a coalition he could build. More than 60 percent of House Republicans, including the top two party leaders, joined a legal brief supporting the unsuccessful Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results. But it is one thing to sign a legal brief and another to officially contest the outcome on the House floor."

African-Americans to play key role in Georgia run-offs, determining control of US Senate

on December 14, 2020
By Agence France-Presse

Early voting begins Monday in run-offs for both US Senate seats in Georgia, with the outcome determining whether Republicans or Democrats control the upper house of Congress. African-American voters who played a key role in President-elect Joe Biden's upset victory in the usually Republican state will need to turn out again if Democrats hope to win both races and take control of the Senate.

In the November election, Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since former president Bill Clinton won the state in 1992.

But since no candidate in Georgia's two US Senate races won more than half of the votes, state law requires run-offs to decide who will join the 50 Republican and 48 Democratic senators already elected to serve in the 117th US Congress. If Democrats win both Georgia races to create an even split of the 100-seat Senate, it would be Democratic Vice President-elect Kamala Harris who casts the deciding vote.

Republican incumbent David Perdue will be fending off a challenge from Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former investigative journalist and small-business owner who lost a 2017 bid to unseat a Republican congresswoman. Perdue, who was elected in 2014, refused to participate in a December 7 debate against his rival, leaving Ossoff to take questions while standing beside an empty podium.

Republican Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed by the governor to her Senate seat in early 2020, has repeatedly used a stock GOP talking point to accuse her Democratic challenger, Reverend Raphael Warnock, of being a "radical socialist". Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta's storied Ebenezer Baptist Church, has hit back at Loeffler for dumping millions of dollars in shares after taking part in a closed-door Senate briefing on the Covid-19 epidemic in January.

Biden, who defeated President Donald Trump by 12,670 votes in Georgia, flipped the state by gaining support "among affluent, college-educated and older voters" in the Atlanta suburbs, according to a New York Times analysis. The president-elect also performed as well or better than 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in some precincts of metro Atlanta with African-American majorities.

Voting-rights activist Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia state representative who ran for governor in 2018, explained in an interview with National Public Radio how the two organizations she founded - the New Georgia Project and Fair Fight - helped increase the number of registered voters in the state. Abrams said that rights groups had registered 800,000 new voters, of whom 49 percent were people of color.

"And we have been working assiduously to get them turned out," Abrams said.

During the 2018 gubernatorial race that Abrams lost to Brian Kemp, groups including the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) sued Kemp for challenging more than 50,000 voter registration forms. Almost 70 percent of the forms came from Black applicants, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Approximately 1 million African-Americans had already voted in Georgia by the end of the Friday before Election Day, up from 712,000 at the same time in 2016, according to Democratic analytics firm TargetSmart.

Speaking shortly after media called the state for Biden on November 13, the head of the Georgia Democrats was resolute.

"This proves what we've been saying all along "¦ that we have the voters here to flip the state blue," said Nikema Williams, chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, in comments to the LA Times. "It is a matter of making sure that we have the resources and candidates willing to work to get out the vote."

FRANCE 24 spoke with Dr. Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, about how Georgia's Black voters could affect the outcome of the upcoming Senate run-offs. Gillespie directs Emory's James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference and authored the 2017 book, "The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-Racial America".

How important do you see the efforts of voting rights organizations, such as Black Votes Matter, the New Georgia Project and Fair Fight, in terms of registering new voters in Georgia and mobilizing them to get to the polls?

It's important to point out that these organizations have actually been on the ground for a long period of time "¦. There's a well-established political science literature that establishes that if you remind people to turn out to vote -particularly if you give them a personal reminder - the more likely it is that a person's going to turn out.

You really do have to talk to voters to convey the significance of the vote and to provide important information, particularly for voters who are new. Groups like the New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter or the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda do engage in voter mobilization and outreach and education to help make sure that they're targeting constituencies to maximize their turnout.

This fits into the larger story of how Georgia has changed in the last decade; it's how we got to the point that Joe Biden could actually win the state. Almost a decade ago, people like Stacey Abrams recognized that Georgia demographics were changing, and that there were more voters who were likely to be Democrats who were moving to the state, but that they weren't actually being registered to vote. So what Stacey Abrams did is start registering groups that were likely Democratic voters, even though her effort started off as a nonpartisan effort, and then make sure to help them become regular voters by mobilization, by outreach, by education, by reminding them.

In so doing, they've managed to change the face of the electorate. Georgia's electorate is now less White than it used to be, and because people of color are more likely to vote Democratic - Asian-Americans and Hispanics break Democratic at almost a 2-to-1 margin and African-Americans break Democratic at about a 9-to-1 margin - these numbers have helped Democrats narrow the gap between themselves and Republicans in important statewide contests.

On November 3, you've got high turnout across the board. You see this large African-American population and then you're going to add Asian-American and Hispanic voters, who make up 6 percent of the electorate [in Georgia] - but that's actually twice what they were in 2012. So what you saw was what the multiracial coalition looks like, but you don't get to 2020 without there having been some party-building that people like Stacey Abrams had done.

What obstacles do you see African-American voters and other voters of color facing in these run-off races?

We could expect some attrition in the Democratic pool and in the Republican pool. The types of people who maybe were compelled to show up for Donald Trump, some of them are low-propensity voters, who wouldn't be your typical Republican run-off voter. Amongst Democrats, voters of color tend to be younger, and tend not to have the socioeconomic resources that [facilitate] regular voting behavior and so there are disadvantages there. Both groups are going to have their challenges getting their coalitions to turn out to vote.

There is, for all intents and purposes, unlimited money being spent in the state, so there are enough resources to remind voters of what's going on. Democrats are going to have lots of incentive to try to get people to turn out: One, they want to prove that November 3 wasn't a fluke, and then two, control of the Senate is up for grabs.

That being said, Democrats have to campaign in communities of color. One of the reasons that turnout historically has been lower in communities of color is that people don't contact people of color at the same rate as they contact White people to give them reminders to vote. It doesn't matter who you are, your cultural background, what color your skin is - reminders work. Communities of color need more targeted outreach than they historically have gotten.

We have seen in the general election some responsiveness to making sure there were ample polling locations, in part because [during] the primary election cycle in June there were some places that historically have sort of a trend of having long lines. And then there were consolidations of [voting] districts because of Covid-19 and fewer poll workers.

I think the big question will be: Are all of the polling locations that were open for early voting in the general election cycle open during the run-off? In at least one county that I know of, they aren't. Will that create confusion? Will that discourage people from voting?

The other thing we also want to look at is whether or not there are changes in polling locations on run-off day compared to general election day, whether or not those are well-advertised, and whether or not people actually feel that they have the opportunity to very quickly figure out that they're in the wrong polling location.

What data about Black voters during the general election was most encouraging to you as a scholar of African-American politics, and what data most concerned you?

I don't frame it in terms of what is encouraging or discouraging. While voter turnout increases [were] everywhere overall and certainly in terms of absolute numbers, I would have liked for African-American turnout as a percentage of the overall electorate to match the overall share of registered voters.

The other thing that has gotten a lot of attention nationally is the exit polls that President Trump increased his vote share among Black women and Black men - but in particular among Black men. That certainly warrants future study as something that I'm interested in as a research question. The gains that we saw for Trump among Black men were still relatively small, and the overwhelming majority of Black men still voted Democratic in this particular election, [but] those are still things we want to explain.