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.
In addition to Nevada, the amicus brief includes: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey,
New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia,
U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington.
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