Ted Cruz: ‘If the Supreme Court Is Divided Four-Four, There Is no Answer’ to Election Lawsuits

Sen. Ted Cuz (R-TX), author of One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History, highlighted the need for a ninth Supreme Court justice to avoid a four-four deadlock over expected election-related lawsuits after November 4, sharing his remarks on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

Cruz reflected on his role as part of the legal team representing former President George W. Bush in the lead-up to the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore ruling in 2000.

“This is a situation that could easily replicate itself next month in 2020,” assessed Cruz. “On election night, George W. Bush won. They counted the votes and he won, but in Florida, the margin was very close, so Al Gore sent in an army of lawyers to file a series of lawsuits seeking to challenge the election, and the objective when you’re doing that, is they were trying to throw out as many George W. Bush votes as they could and trying to find as many new Al Gore votes as they could.”

Cruz continued, “I got in a plane and flew to Tallahassee. I was on the ground for the entire recount. I’ve got to tell you, it was utter and complete chaos.  We had in the war room a white board with a chart of seven different lawsuits, all of which were simultaneously going on, any one of which could could cost the presidency the United States. It was nuts. The case went twice to the U.S. Supreme Court. The first time it went to the Supreme Court we won unanimously, nine-zero, the Supreme Court vacated the decision of the Florida Supreme Court, which was a partisan Democratic court and sent the case back.”

Cruz described the fallout of the Democrats’ post-election lawfare as “chaos for 36 days.” He added, “Nobody in the in the U.S. or across the world knew who the next president was going to be, and we have a real risk in November of seeing that tenfold. Instead of just one state, we could see litigation challenging the election in three, four, [or] five states. We could see it filed by [Democratic presidential candidate] Joe Biden. We could see it filed by [President] Donald Trump. We could see it filed by both sides.”

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Cruz said Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s possible confirmation to the Supreme Court would provide the ninth justice needed to avoid a four-four division over post-election legal battles.

“It’s one of the reasons why it is so important that the Senate confirm Judge Barrett, because if the Supreme Court only has eight justices, eight justices can divide four to four,” Cruz noted. “An equally divided court has no authority to decide anything. So if we have this chaos of litigation, if the Supreme Court is equally divided, there is no resolution and we’re in a constitutional crisis.”

Cruz warned, “If the Supreme Court is divided four-four, there is no answer. You just sty in the chaos, and and that’s why I think it is so important to have fully functioning court.”

Cruz concluded, “There were four justices in Bush versus Gore that were happy to say keep on recounting, keep counting until you find find more Al Gore votes, and that’s dangerous.”

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