Georgia Fires Back: Texas SCOTUS Challenge ‘Constitutionally, Legally and Factually Wrong’

The State of Georgia fired back Tuesday morning at the State of Texas over its lawsuit at the Supreme Court alleging that four states, including Georgia, violated the Constitution in the way they changed their voting rules during the 2020 election.

On Monday, Texas sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, arguing that they had violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution by changing voting procedures through state courts or executive decisions rather than state legislatures.

The Texas lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, says:

Certain officials in the Defendant States presented the pandemic as the justification for ignoring state laws regarding absentee and mail-in voting. The Defendant States flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted. Whether well intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States. Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.

…

This case presents a question of law: Did the Defendant States violate the Electors Clause by taking non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? These non-legislative changes to the Defendant States’ election laws facilitated the casting and counting of ballots in violation of state law, which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. By these unlawful acts, the Defendant States have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but their actions have also debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.

Texas is seeking to have the Supreme Court order these states to send the selection of electors back to their respective state legislatures.

In response, a spokesperson for the Office of the Attorney General in Georgia told Breitbart News: “With all due respect, the Texas Attorney General is constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia.”

President Donald Trump has accused Georgia’s elected Republican officials of failing to prevent voter fraud, but has urged Republicans voters to support Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the January runoff election regardless.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.