Pennsylvania Election Officially Contested
supremecourt.gov
supremecourt.gov
It seems to me that at least 2 points raised in the lawsuit, while they might be technically valid, were also used by various local governments in Texas (non-legislative bodies amending election laws, favoring the party of the local government's party).
The 3rd point could easily be argued the other way around, given the global lack of evidence for election mishandling on all states.
The real problem here is that attorneys don't get punished for bringing frivolous lawsuits, even though they have a significant cost to society. I think that's a massive issue with the US judiciary system. In this case, qualified immunity would probably protect the AG of Texas from being personally liable, which is another issue with the current system IMO.
There is a reason Republican Congressmen are congratulating Biden in private and then Tweeting about stolen elections.
/s
God help the Democrats if Biden dies during his first term. It will be a blood bath after how close this election was despite everything that had gone wrong this year for Trump.
If I were the Dems I'd have Giuliani on retainer and ready to go.
To quote Don Draper from Mad Men (s02e05): "[The dispute/non-concession] never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened."
I would be pretty shocked if Trump ran.
But I'd be more shocked if he didn't spend the next 4 years mouthing off & sewing discontent & pissing about as though he were running. Making a big stink, and pulling in millions of millions of dollars.
I'm not sure how much money Trump made from the last election in merchandising but it wouldn't have been a small number.
We haven't quite entered the era where politics is used to sell action figures, but we're not far off.
I've been selling random stuff to Super PACs since 2012. That is my side gig. Every four years since the Citizen's United ruling until you guys amend the constitution, I've been selling as much stuff as possible to Super PACs as if its the last time I'll ever encounter a passion driven organization which has no fiduciary duties, shareholders or knowledge of how to accomplish its own real purpose. I mean that occasionally happens in somebody's poorly constructed self-funded LLC but they don't have money, and definitely not reliably flush the more you yell about it.
This year I'm seeing tons of professionals doing the same thing - selling random stuff to Super PACs - under flimsier pretexts, specifically to Republicans. "Hm sure I can file this lawsuit for you, you know there's a fee for expediting the process"
Patriotic Sounding PAC, FEC Filing: Administrative costs to LLC formed yesterday $800,000
Sure, plenty of the people believe these ideologies but they've never mattered. If everyone gravitates to extremes of their parties they never get consensus on stuff they're actually passionate about. None of the professionals involved believe in ... really anything, and they're just like me. They probably have at least four LLCs to contract to conflicting and opposing causes.
I'm a little surprised at the ruses being pulled, like I really looked up the FEC filings lately, all I got to say is that Georgia is a hoot! If you sleep you'll miss it.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/04/politics/ken-paxton-texas...
> 5. One of the factors the Justices look to is whether the issues in the case can be resolved in other cases in the lower courts, even if not between the same parties. Thus, the Court usually denies leave unless it's a uniquely state-state dispute (again, like borders/water).
> 6. Among lots of other things, that's almost certainly fatal to this crazy new Texas suit. As we've seen, these claims are already being brought in private suits in each of those states. Texas offers no explanation for why the issues can't be (and aren't being) addressed there.
> 7. And it's not for nothing that the Justices don't like "original" cases, partly because they don't come with a well-developed record and set of opinions from lower courts.
> Indeed, the "original" docket has shrunk to an average of <1 argued case per Term in recent years.
> 8. The other reason they don't like these cases is because they're worried about opening the floodgates. If Texas can sue these states over how they conduct their elections, what's to stop Vermont from suing Texas over how it regulates the oil industry, or other permutations.
* https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1336329907400425488
Another case against PA was dismissed today:
* https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/08/supreme-court-rejec...
The "et al" being Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan.
[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/reference/educational-resources/g...
Considering a petition is not even close to a guarantee of certiorari. There are several thousand petitions filed a year, and SCOTUS will hear about 70-ish cases a year.
The basis of the case is that PA, GA, WI, and MI erred in enacting unconstitutional election measures, and therefore their election results should be annulled. And this must fail for several reasons.
First, Texas doesn't have standing to sue. Texas isn't injured by Pennsylvania's laws. Texas argues its standing on the basis of--wait for it--it makes its electoral votes meaningless. However, the electoral college has a fixed number of votes, so Texas can't even make a "vote dilution" basis for its votes, which is how the usual basis for standing. Therefore, the manner of which any other state chooses its votes literally has no effect on Texas's vote, although this would theoretically change if Texas adopted the National Popular Vote Compact.
Second, jurisdiction. These are challenges of other states' laws, other states' practices, and sometimes against other states' constitutions (the claim against PA in particular for the latter). The natural forum for this would obviously be the relevant state courts, although states can't sue each other in state courts usually--which brings back to standing, as Texas not having the ability to sue for these claims strongly suggests that Texas doesn't have standing in the first place.
Third, these claims have already been litigated, and already lost, and sometimes those losses have been repeatedly reaffirmed. That horse is well and truly dead, so stop beating it.
Fourth, election procedure claims that arise after the election are strongly disfavored. You usually have to justify why you couldn't bring the claim before the election, and waiting a full month after the election to bring the case does not look good (of course, see point #3 for why Texas brought the case).
Fifth, for SCOTUS original jurisdiction claims specifically, SCOTUS really doesn't like original jurisdiction. So states really need to show why they couldn't bring the claim up in other forums. Such as objecting to electors in the House, which is how the Constitution explains it is supposed to be done. (Of course, there is a law that says that votes certified by a specific date will not be questioned by the House).
Finally, relief. It's established in SCOTUS precedent that, even in election procedure claims arising after the election, the votes that are validly cast under the procedure are still to be counted. Asking the state legislatures to select their electoral slates as relief is not only literally unprecedented, but it is the exact opposite of what precedent specifies for relief.
This is the stupidest of the election cases I've seen so far, and I thought the legislator arguing that he couldn't reasonably be expected to know the law was pretty bad.
> These are challenges of other states' laws
> the votes that are validly cast under the procedure are still to be counted.
The argument, as I interpret it, is that these votes were not validly cast, because they were not cast under the procedure established by the respective legislatures. That is, that the laws of the respective states were not followed; from the complaint:
> Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures.
Now, I don't know if that's true, since I don't know the laws of the various states involved, and in my skimming of the complaint, I didn't see where the complaint actually listed how the elections of the various states differed from their established law.
That said… on the whole I agree with you, particularly on standing.
In the NC (I think) case where it was argued that the lifting of the ballot signature requirement was improper, which was eventually upheld by the court, the court still held that the state must count all votes that didn't have the ballot signature so long as they had been cast before the court's ruling.
I don't know who Ron Coleman is, but doing a brief internet search, I would say that you should trust my judgement more only in the regards that I actually give explanations behind my beliefs that can be compared with other explanations to judge if I'm accurately representing the state of affairs, and to decide for yourself which explanation is more persuasive.
I think they meant “flounder” but it’s only words. I’m always amazed when I read official documents that will likely live long beyond my lifetime which contain silly typos or obviously flawed reasoning.
To do so in 2020 is to legitimize Trump's assault on the country, and I just don't see the courts doing that.
It's better to just dismiss every case regardless of the merits. Republican voters aren't going to do anything about the election result once Biden has been inaugurated in January.
That sounds like someone thats pretty scared and knows they are guilty. Sad.
"the probability of Joe Biden winning the popular vote in the four states independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion."
This seems to indicate fraud.
Hopefully you are not in charge of IT security?
And why were they counted after election day? In some of the swing states, including Pennsylvania, it was because Republican legislatures outlawed counting them as they came in.
* First of all, a quadrillion is a h(u^15)ge number! So right off the top, the notion that Biden's chances of winning these four states were that low, is w(a^15)y out of alignment with the roughly 50-50 split between Dems and Reps. Given no additional information, Biden's chances of winning four 50-50 states are 1 in 16, not 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.
* Second, this idea that Trump had a lead "earlier in the night" is meaningless, because the vote counting was not evenly distributed. Votes were group by county, by method of voting, etc. Each grouping has a bias. Some counties are heavily Rep or Dem. Mail-in ballots obviously favored Dems because Trump spent the last few months telling his followers not to use them.
* Third, why is this "3am" cutoff meaningful? The legitimacy of the ballots does not depend on the order in which they were counted, so wallclock-time is irrelevant. Otherwise, if the ballots had been counted in reverse order I could sit here and claim that Trump cheated because Biden's lead shrank sharply after 3am.
BA Colorado College, PHD Rutgers, post-grad work at Wisconsin in applied economics and econometrics. His career is in economics and environmental studies. Well-educated, but not in statistics.
He spent 3 years in the 1980s at the Kennedy School doing energy and environmental policy. This is all in his statement filed by Texas.
He states that there is no reason more people would vote for Biden in 2020 vs voting for Clinton in 2016, so it must be rigged.
He states that the votes tabulated late at night can't have been from the same sample of voters as the votes tabulated earlier in the evening, so it must be rigged.
His argument is that an election is identical to a giant bag with millions of balls, some of which are red and some are blue. Each vote is nothing more than pulling one of the balls out of the bag and looking at the color. The proportion of red balls to blue balls was determined in the 2016 election, and the 2020 election should have the same proportion but more balls.
It's completely wrong.
Why does it say "Texas vs", is texas suing?
Edit: Yes, it is Texas, the state. They're also suing 3 other states in the same complaint. And they've made a spelling/grammar mistake and misused i.e. And they seem very light on detail. Is this serious?
They also allege other states did the exact same things they did (preferential treatment of areas voting the way the state government leans) which is hypocritical. I thought texas was classier than that.
Sorry, I find this whole process baffling to be honest...
I heard that Ted Cruz say he would argue this. If he does, I feel sorry for whoever is across from him.
Among other reasons, the Supreme Court in a different case just denied standing to Pennsylvania Republicans to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's interpretation of Pennsylvania election law. This case is TEXAS Republicans asking for standing to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's interpretation of Pennsylvania election law. You might see the problem there...
The present lawsuit addresses this argument as follows:
> Prior to the election, there was no reason to know who would win the vote in any given State.
Points for honesty, but I don't think it helps them to say this part out loud.
That is exactly the kind of "theoretical" harm that is routinely slapped down by courts as unactionable. In general, harm must be direct and specific, not indirect or generalized. Biden could move to push for legislation to combat climate change that harms the oil industry, but until that legislation is enacted, no harm has been suffered, and no suit could be brought to remedy that harm until that point, since it is only theoretical and speculative until then.
> So does this not answer why the suit was filed after the fact?
No. There are a couple of mechanisms that will let you challenge election procedures before an election. I'm shaky on the actual legal justification behind it, but my recollection is that it is based on the idea that a voter experiences harm when the election procedure denies them the right to vote, even if an election has not actually been conducted that would deny them the vote.
I should point out that there was an awful lot of election procedure litigation prior to the election, with heavy media coverage, which was mostly not shot down due to lack of standing or lack of controversy, so it is not reasonable to be surprised that this pathway exists.