Attorney General Ford Joins Coalition Opposing Texas AG’s Baseless Effort to Invalidate 2020 Election Results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin

Decemeber 10, 2020

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AGs Argue Before Supreme Court That Texas Suit Lacks Legal Support and Offers Zero Evidence of Systemic Voter Fraud

Carson City, NV – Today, Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general urging the Supreme Court to reject Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request that the Court overturn election results in four states critical to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. In an amicusbrief, the coalition argues that Texas’s unprecedented suit depends on a misreading of the Constitution’s Electors Clause—one that clashes with a century of precedent, denies states’ power to make their own decisions about election administration and oversight, and threatens to upend the basic notions of states’ rights. Furthermore, the suit depends on unsupported claims of voter fraud, offering no evidence whatsoever of systemic fraud in the November election. In filing this brief, AG Ford and other attorneys general are asking the Court to throw out Texas’s suit against the four states.

"This last-minute attempt to throw out the results of a national election is unfounded in facts, unprecedented in our country's history, and undermines fundamental principles of our democracy," said AG Ford. "States run elections, and voters decide the outcome. As courts have concluded in countless cases across the nation, the states ran free, fair, and secure elections, and these baseless allegations of fraud have no evidentiary basis. American voters chose their next president. Never before has a state attempted to infringe on the right of another state and silence their voters simply because that state's attorney general did not like the outcome of another state's election.”

“Let's be clear – this is an illegitimate case,” AG Ford continued. “It is a political ploy masquerading as a lawsuit, and a meritless one at that. Anyone associated with this craven attempt to score political points at the expense of our democracy should be ashamed of themselves. I am deeply disappointed and greatly regret the affect that this spectacle will have on what historically has been a civil and productive relationship between attorneys general who, despite different philosophies, often work together for the common good of our states' residents."

According to President Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.” President-elect Biden carried the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by decisive margins. Both Wisconsin and Georgia underwent recounts to confirm the results. Wisconsin’s recount revealed President-elect Biden had won by a slightly larger margin of victory than in the initial count. All three recounts in Georgia have reaffirmed President-elect Biden’s edge. Election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia have now certified their results. While President Trump’s campaign has made wild allegations of electoral tampering, neither the campaign nor its supporters have produced any evidence of substantial voter fraud, or other forms of wrongdoing. The president and his allies have filed 55 election-related suits since November 3 and judges have rejected their claims in all but one minor case.

Despite this, the Texas AG, supported by 17 Republican attorneys general, filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the Supreme Court. The lawsuit alleges that the States unlawfully enacted changes to their election laws under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic. It asks the Supreme Court to make an unprecedented intervention and invalidate the will of the voters in those four states. Tellingly, it says nothing of other states—includingTexas and several other states that supported Texas’s lawsuit—that made similar changes to their election process to guarantee access to the ballot while keeping residents safe during this public health emergency.

The 23-attorneys general coalition filed an amicus brief today in vigorous opposition to Texas’s undemocratic effort to overturn the results of the election. Specifically, the states urge the Supreme Court to deny Texas’s lawsuit because:

Texas’s interpretation of the Electors Clause is contrary to a century’s worth of precedent: The Electors Clause of the Constitution grants the states the power to set their own rules for presidential elections held within their own states. While the text of the Constitution says this authority is given to “state legislatures,” since the early 20th century, the Supreme Court has allowed the legislatures to delegate this authority to elections administrators or other state government entities.

States have a constitutional right to determine the process for administering their own elections: Federalism is a core component of the Constitution, governing a division of power between the states and the federal government. The Constitution makes clear, and the Court has affirmed, that the Framers granted the States the right to administer and oversee presidential elections on their own. Yet Texas’s lawsuit—calling on the Supreme Court to intervene in the elections held by the four defendant states—would infringe on that right, and thus, their sovereignty. Further, it would set its own destructive precedent limiting the States’ ability to make critical changes to the structure and oversight of elections.

There is no evidence that the states’ common-sense measures to protect the vote and the health of residents produced significant voter fraud: Since 2000, more than 250 million people in all 50 states have voted using mail-in ballots, and in 2018 alone, more than 31 million Americans—or about 25.8 percent of voters—cast their ballots by mail. Moreover, five states—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington—already have all-mail voting systems where every registered voter receives a ballot in the mail. Despite the prevalence of voting by mail, officials at the state and federal level have consistently found no evidence of widespread fraud.That remained true for the 2020 election. Despite President Trump’s claims that the results were tainted by voting fraud, his campaign lawyers and other allies have consistently failed to substantiate these assertions with any evidence. Indeed, Republican and Democratic officials overseeing the elections in all four defendant states have repeatedly confirmed that these processes were safe and secure.

A copy of the amicus brief is available here.

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