Ben Cline signs on to brief backing Texas suit to overturn presidential election

Sixth District Congressman Ben Cline is among 106 House Republicans who signed on to an amicus brief sent to the United States Supreme Court supporting the effort of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to nullify election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The suit, in effect, seeks to overturn the presidential election, which Democrat Joe Biden won by a 306-232 vote margin in the Electoral College and a more than 7 million vote tally in the popular vote, receiving a record 81.2 million votes.

The basis of the suit: Texas alleges that Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin unlawfully enacted changes to their election laws under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic. The suit asks the Supreme Court to make an unprecedented intervention and invalidate the will of the voters in those four states.

Of note: the suit says nothing of other states—including Texas and several other states that are backing the Texas suit—that made similar changes to their election process to guarantee access to the ballot while keeping residents safe during this public health emergency.

The amicus brief signed by Cline and dozens of other House Republicans presents the concern of the members, “shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections.”

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, on the other side of the ledger, has joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general urging the Supreme Court to reject the last-minute effort – last-minute in the sense that the Electoral College meets on Monday to certify the election.

In their own amicus brief, Herring and his colleagues argue that the Texas suit depends on a misreading of the Constitution’s Electors Clause that denies states’ power to make their own decisions about election administration and oversight, and more to the point, depends on baseless claims of voter fraud, offering no evidence whatsoever of systemic fraud in the November election.

“This anti-democratic, un-American lawsuit has no basis or support in the law, the Constitution, or reality. It attempts to undermine centuries of election precedent, disenfranchise millions of Americans, and circumvent the will of the people in an attempt to overturn an election that did not come out in Donald Trump’s favor,” Herring said.

“There is absolutely no evidence of any kind of widespread voter fraud in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin, yet these baseless and fabricated conspiracy theories are now being dragged from the dark corners of the internet into courtrooms in order to undermine the free and fair elections that form the very foundation of our democracy. President Trump has already lost more than 50 times in court in his futile attempts to overturn the election results, and my colleagues and I plan to add to that total by helping to defeat this lawsuit.”

Story by Chris Graham