Didn't trump already sue and then have to withdraw the case? If so, what is this?
Why does it say "Texas vs", is texas suing?
Edit: Yes, it is Texas, the state. They're also suing 3 other states in the same complaint. And they've made a spelling/grammar mistake and misused i.e. And they seem very light on detail. Is this serious?
They also allege other states did the exact same things they did (preferential treatment of areas voting the way the state government leans) which is hypocritical. I thought texas was classier than that.
Sorry, I find this whole process baffling to be honest...
I would not get my hopes up if I were you. This is not even a lawsuit. This is a motion asking for permission to file a lawsuit, and it's highly unlikely to get approved.
Among other reasons, the Supreme Court in a different case just denied standing to Pennsylvania Republicans to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's interpretation of Pennsylvania election law. This case is TEXAS Republicans asking for standing to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's interpretation of Pennsylvania election law. You might see the problem there...
PA Supreme Court held that the plaintiff failed to bring the complaint up in a timely manner (i.e., before the election). SCOTUS didn't explain why it decided not to hear the case, but I assume because they found nothing wrong with PA Supreme Court's decision.
I don't think it is honest, though. I believe the real reason why it's only being filed now is that all the other challenges have failed, and they didn't think they'd need to resort to a judicial Hail Mary until everything else had failed.
Broadly speaking, you need to demonstrate actual harm to bring a suit. Theoretical harm isn't sufficient, and the US Constitution explicitly prohibits bringing non-live cases before SCOTUS (Case or Controversies clause).
So does this not answer why the suit was filed after the fact? With just the new laws in place, nobody can suffer damage until they actually suffer damage no? Doesn’t Trumps loss mean damage for TX given the oil industry?
> Doesn’t Trumps loss mean damage for TX given the oil industry?
That is exactly the kind of "theoretical" harm that is routinely slapped down by courts as unactionable. In general, harm must be direct and specific, not indirect or generalized. Biden could move to push for legislation to combat climate change that harms the oil industry, but until that legislation is enacted, no harm has been suffered, and no suit could be brought to remedy that harm until that point, since it is only theoretical and speculative until then.
> So does this not answer why the suit was filed after the fact?
No. There are a couple of mechanisms that will let you challenge election procedures before an election. I'm shaky on the actual legal justification behind it, but my recollection is that it is based on the idea that a voter experiences harm when the election procedure denies them the right to vote, even if an election has not actually been conducted that would deny them the vote.
I should point out that there was an awful lot of election procedure litigation prior to the election, with heavy media coverage, which was mostly not shot down due to lack of standing or lack of controversy, so it is not reasonable to be surprised that this pathway exists.
So then suing for threats shouldn’t be a thing? But yet it’s quite easy to find various articles, including suits against Trump, for threatening damage.
It's all done for appearances and fundraising. Most of the machinations you're seeing lately by Republicans are; there's no sincere attempt to change the election, or belief that it can be changed.
It's all part of the 2024 election campaign. I will be shocked if Trump doesn't run again.
God help the Democrats if Biden dies during his first term. It will be a blood bath after how close this election was despite everything that had gone wrong this year for Trump.
If Trump runs in 2024 and wins by 8M votes I wonder how Republicans will take it when his opponent disputes the results using the exact same tactics he's using now?
If I were the Dems I'd have Giuliani on retainer and ready to go.
Being a republican doesn't make you part of some gestalt consciousness. I imagine the reactions will be the same as those of democrats I've seen so far: everything from bemused indifference to posting about a coup every day on social media.
> If Trump runs in 2024 and wins by 8M votes I wonder how Republicans will take it when his opponent disputes the results using the exact same tactics he's using now?
To quote Don Draper from Mad Men (s02e05): "[The dispute/non-concession] never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened."
But I'd be more shocked if he didn't spend the next 4 years mouthing off & sewing discontent & pissing about as though he were running. Making a big stink, and pulling in millions of millions of dollars.
I've been telling people this too because I practically invented this.
I've been selling random stuff to Super PACs since 2012. That is my side gig. Every four years since the Citizen's United ruling until you guys amend the constitution, I've been selling as much stuff as possible to Super PACs as if its the last time I'll ever encounter a passion driven organization which has no fiduciary duties, shareholders or knowledge of how to accomplish its own real purpose. I mean that occasionally happens in somebody's poorly constructed self-funded LLC but they don't have money, and definitely not reliably flush the more you yell about it.
This year I'm seeing tons of professionals doing the same thing - selling random stuff to Super PACs - under flimsier pretexts, specifically to Republicans. "Hm sure I can file this lawsuit for you, you know there's a fee for expediting the process"
Patriotic Sounding PAC, FEC Filing: Administrative costs to LLC formed yesterday $800,000
Sure, plenty of the people believe these ideologies but they've never mattered. If everyone gravitates to extremes of their parties they never get consensus on stuff they're actually passionate about. None of the professionals involved believe in ... really anything, and they're just like me. They probably have at least four LLCs to contract to conflicting and opposing causes.
I'm a little surprised at the ruses being pulled, like I really looked up the FEC filings lately, all I got to say is that Georgia is a hoot! If you sleep you'll miss it.
Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas who filed this particular lawsuit, has also been recently accused of federal crimes[0], so ingratiating himself with somebody who can (and does) hand out federal pardons seems like a win-win proposition, especially if all the costs for the lawsuit are footed by Texas taxpayers.
I'm not convinced any court, anywhere, will hear any case regarding the 2020 election—even if it would have been willing to do so in past elections, or in the future, and even if a judge personally believe's the case has merit. Certainly that's been the case so far.
To do so in 2020 is to legitimize Trump's assault on the country, and I just don't see the courts doing that.
It's better to just dismiss every case regardless of the merits. Republican voters aren't going to do anything about the election result once Biden has been inaugurated in January.
Interesting that the Harvard statistician they used as an expert witness says:
"the probability of Joe Biden winning the popular vote in the four states independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion."
"[L]ess than one in a quadrillion" given certain assumptions which likely don't include the high volume of mail-in votes due to this election taking place during a pandemic. This election is not like others and if you use models based on past elections to draw naive conclusions, you're going to get garbage results.
... according to allegations by people who are also convinced that this is all following a master plan conceived by Hugo Chavez (presumably before he died in 2013).
Not only does it not indicate fraud, but it was the expected outcome, because Trump convinced Republicans that covid wasn't real and mail-in voting was bad. So Republicans mainly showed up at the polls while lots of Democrats mailed in their ballots, many of which were counted after election day.
And why were they counted after election day? In some of the swing states, including Pennsylvania, it was because Republican legislatures outlawed counting them as they came in.
Everyone on HN is smart, so let's dissect the statement.
* First of all, a quadrillion is a h(u^15)ge number! So right off the top, the notion that Biden's chances of winning these four states were that low, is w(a^15)y out of alignment with the roughly 50-50 split between Dems and Reps. Given no additional information, Biden's chances of winning four 50-50 states are 1 in 16, not 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.
* Second, this idea that Trump had a lead "earlier in the night" is meaningless, because the vote counting was not evenly distributed. Votes were group by county, by method of voting, etc. Each grouping has a bias. Some counties are heavily Rep or Dem. Mail-in ballots obviously favored Dems because Trump spent the last few months telling his followers not to use them.
* Third, why is this "3am" cutoff meaningful? The legitimacy of the ballots does not depend on the order in which they were counted, so wallclock-time is irrelevant. Otherwise, if the ballots had been counted in reverse order I could sit here and claim that Trump cheated because Biden's lead shrank sharply after 3am.
Not that this point is made in good faith or deserves a serious response, but the different patterns expected in early vs. late ballots was well known and reported in advance of the election, based on well established patterns from past elections.
Not a Harvard statistician. See the appendix on the posted documents for his actual statement (about 20% into the 170 page PDF that has random page numbering).
BA Colorado College, PHD Rutgers, post-grad work at Wisconsin in applied economics and econometrics. His career is in economics and environmental studies. Well-educated, but not in statistics.
He spent 3 years in the 1980s at the Kennedy School doing energy and environmental policy. This is all in his statement filed by Texas.
He states that there is no reason more people would vote for Biden in 2020 vs voting for Clinton in 2016, so it must be rigged.
He states that the votes tabulated late at night can't have been from the same sample of voters as the votes tabulated earlier in the evening, so it must be rigged.
His argument is that an election is identical to a giant bag with millions of balls, some of which are red and some are blue. Each vote is nothing more than pulling one of the balls out of the bag and looking at the color. The proportion of red balls to blue balls was determined in the 2016 election, and the 2020 election should have the same proportion but more balls.
What stops any heavily democratic state file a similar lawsuit against Texas and a few other "swing states" that voted republican ? (I'm putting swing states in quotes because I think the meaning of the words changes depending on who you ask.)
It seems to me that at least 2 points raised in the lawsuit, while they might be technically valid, were also used by various local governments in Texas (non-legislative bodies amending election laws, favoring the party of the local government's party).
The 3rd point could easily be argued the other way around, given the global lack of evidence for election mishandling on all states.
The real problem here is that attorneys don't get punished for bringing frivolous lawsuits, even though they have a significant cost to society. I think that's a massive issue with the US judiciary system. In this case, qualified immunity would probably protect the AG of Texas from being personally liable, which is another issue with the current system IMO.
Nothing. Anyone can file a suit for any reason. The Supreme Court is unlikely to hear this case, or any other one related to supposed election fraud, considering there hasn't been any supporting material submitted to justify it.
There is a reason Republican Congressmen are congratulating Biden in private and then Tweeting about stolen elections.
The Court does not grant cert for this. Disputes between states are one of the few instances where SCOTUS has original jurisdiction and thus, it is the trial court.
Docketed means that SCOTUS will consider the petition. It is extremely unusual that SCOTUS does not docket a case; you basically have to be a vexatious litigant to reach that stage.
Considering a petition is not even close to a guarantee of certiorari. There are several thousand petitions filed a year, and SCOTUS will hear about 70-ish cases a year.
Pretty clever move by the GOP lawyers, making it an interstate issue (which, by definition, only SCOTUS can handle). Obviously SCOTUS can see through this, but it's a neat little legal strategy, regardless. I guess my only question would be if Texas really has standing here.
I am not a lawyer but I think the most likely result of this suit is for SCOTUS to deny it on the grounds of standing. You could see the court use something similar to Alabama v Arizona or possibly Mass. v Missouri. If they deny on standing, they can remove themselves from the spotlight while not having to decide on the merits which are extremely radioactive given that the future of the court is intertwined (albeit indirectly) in the outcome of any merits finding.
An interstate issue. "Intra-" means "within", "inter-" means between. (The "Internet" is between networks; the "interstate" highways are between states; your LAN is the "intranet" though I think that term has become somewhat archaic.)
I think they meant “flounder” but it’s only words. I’m always amazed when I read official documents that will likely live long beyond my lifetime which contain silly typos or obviously flawed reasoning.
The title is heavily editorialized. From the guidelines: "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
An observation about SCOTUS (not) taking state-versus-state cases:
> 5. One of the factors the Justices look to is whether the issues in the case can be resolved in other cases in the lower courts, even if not between the same parties. Thus, the Court usually denies leave unless it's a uniquely state-state dispute (again, like borders/water).
> 6. Among lots of other things, that's almost certainly fatal to this crazy new Texas suit. As we've seen, these claims are already being brought in private suits in each of those states. Texas offers no explanation for why the issues can't be (and aren't being) addressed there.
> 7. And it's not for nothing that the Justices don't like "original" cases, partly because they don't come with a well-developed record and set of opinions from lower courts.
> Indeed, the "original" docket has shrunk to an average of <1 argued case per Term in recent years.
> 8. The other reason they don't like these cases is because they're worried about opening the floodgates. If Texas can sue these states over how they conduct their elections, what's to stop Vermont from suing Texas over how it regulates the oil industry, or other permutations.
Anyone who thinks that Texas has a shot of winning is either high or knows nothing of law.
The basis of the case is that PA, GA, WI, and MI erred in enacting unconstitutional election measures, and therefore their election results should be annulled. And this must fail for several reasons.
First, Texas doesn't have standing to sue. Texas isn't injured by Pennsylvania's laws. Texas argues its standing on the basis of--wait for it--it makes its electoral votes meaningless. However, the electoral college has a fixed number of votes, so Texas can't even make a "vote dilution" basis for its votes, which is how the usual basis for standing. Therefore, the manner of which any other state chooses its votes literally has no effect on Texas's vote, although this would theoretically change if Texas adopted the National Popular Vote Compact.
Second, jurisdiction. These are challenges of other states' laws, other states' practices, and sometimes against other states' constitutions (the claim against PA in particular for the latter). The natural forum for this would obviously be the relevant state courts, although states can't sue each other in state courts usually--which brings back to standing, as Texas not having the ability to sue for these claims strongly suggests that Texas doesn't have standing in the first place.
Third, these claims have already been litigated, and already lost, and sometimes those losses have been repeatedly reaffirmed. That horse is well and truly dead, so stop beating it.
Fourth, election procedure claims that arise after the election are strongly disfavored. You usually have to justify why you couldn't bring the claim before the election, and waiting a full month after the election to bring the case does not look good (of course, see point #3 for why Texas brought the case).
Fifth, for SCOTUS original jurisdiction claims specifically, SCOTUS really doesn't like original jurisdiction. So states really need to show why they couldn't bring the claim up in other forums. Such as objecting to electors in the House, which is how the Constitution explains it is supposed to be done. (Of course, there is a law that says that votes certified by a specific date will not be questioned by the House).
Finally, relief. It's established in SCOTUS precedent that, even in election procedure claims arising after the election, the votes that are validly cast under the procedure are still to be counted. Asking the state legislatures to select their electoral slates as relief is not only literally unprecedented, but it is the exact opposite of what precedent specifies for relief.
This is the stupidest of the election cases I've seen so far, and I thought the legislator arguing that he couldn't reasonably be expected to know the law was pretty bad.
> the votes that are validly cast under the procedure are still to be counted.
The argument, as I interpret it, is that these votes were not validly cast, because they were not cast under the procedure established by the respective legislatures. That is, that the laws of the respective states were not followed; from the complaint:
> Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures.
Now, I don't know if that's true, since I don't know the laws of the various states involved, and in my skimming of the complaint, I didn't see where the complaint actually listed how the elections of the various states differed from their established law.
That said… on the whole I agree with you, particularly on standing.
It's about whether or not they were cast in a good-faith understanding of the law, as promulgated by official electoral authorities. So if the electoral commission says that by doing such-and-such, you can cast a vote--even if it erred in doing so--anyone who cast a vote in such a manner should still have its vote counted.
In the NC (I think) case where it was argued that the lifting of the ballot signature requirement was improper, which was eventually upheld by the court, the court still held that the state must count all votes that didn't have the ballot signature so long as they had been cast before the court's ruling.
I am an individual who has been following SCOTUS cases for some time; most of my information is roughly tertiary source quality, in that I'm gathering it from people who are reading and summarizing the legal arguments (I highly recommend scotusblog in this respect). That said, I do actually read the briefs and opinions myself in interesting cases--such as Google v Oracle, or the election related Kelly v PA and now TX v PA.
I don't know who Ron Coleman is, but doing a brief internet search, I would say that you should trust my judgement more only in the regards that I actually give explanations behind my beliefs that can be compared with other explanations to judge if I'm accurately representing the state of affairs, and to decide for yourself which explanation is more persuasive.
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[ 485 ms ] story [ 3967 ms ] threadWhy does it say "Texas vs", is texas suing?
Edit: Yes, it is Texas, the state. They're also suing 3 other states in the same complaint. And they've made a spelling/grammar mistake and misused i.e. And they seem very light on detail. Is this serious?
They also allege other states did the exact same things they did (preferential treatment of areas voting the way the state government leans) which is hypocritical. I thought texas was classier than that.
Sorry, I find this whole process baffling to be honest...
The "et al" being Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan.
I heard that Ted Cruz say he would argue this. If he does, I feel sorry for whoever is across from him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0squnOeXqLU
Among other reasons, the Supreme Court in a different case just denied standing to Pennsylvania Republicans to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's interpretation of Pennsylvania election law. This case is TEXAS Republicans asking for standing to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's interpretation of Pennsylvania election law. You might see the problem there...
The present lawsuit addresses this argument as follows:
> Prior to the election, there was no reason to know who would win the vote in any given State.
Points for honesty, but I don't think it helps them to say this part out loud.
That is exactly the kind of "theoretical" harm that is routinely slapped down by courts as unactionable. In general, harm must be direct and specific, not indirect or generalized. Biden could move to push for legislation to combat climate change that harms the oil industry, but until that legislation is enacted, no harm has been suffered, and no suit could be brought to remedy that harm until that point, since it is only theoretical and speculative until then.
> So does this not answer why the suit was filed after the fact?
No. There are a couple of mechanisms that will let you challenge election procedures before an election. I'm shaky on the actual legal justification behind it, but my recollection is that it is based on the idea that a voter experiences harm when the election procedure denies them the right to vote, even if an election has not actually been conducted that would deny them the vote.
I should point out that there was an awful lot of election procedure litigation prior to the election, with heavy media coverage, which was mostly not shot down due to lack of standing or lack of controversy, so it is not reasonable to be surprised that this pathway exists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/us/supreme-court-republic...
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120820zr_bq7...
God help the Democrats if Biden dies during his first term. It will be a blood bath after how close this election was despite everything that had gone wrong this year for Trump.
If I were the Dems I'd have Giuliani on retainer and ready to go.
To quote Don Draper from Mad Men (s02e05): "[The dispute/non-concession] never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened."
I would be pretty shocked if Trump ran.
But I'd be more shocked if he didn't spend the next 4 years mouthing off & sewing discontent & pissing about as though he were running. Making a big stink, and pulling in millions of millions of dollars.
I'm not sure how much money Trump made from the last election in merchandising but it wouldn't have been a small number.
We haven't quite entered the era where politics is used to sell action figures, but we're not far off.
I've been selling random stuff to Super PACs since 2012. That is my side gig. Every four years since the Citizen's United ruling until you guys amend the constitution, I've been selling as much stuff as possible to Super PACs as if its the last time I'll ever encounter a passion driven organization which has no fiduciary duties, shareholders or knowledge of how to accomplish its own real purpose. I mean that occasionally happens in somebody's poorly constructed self-funded LLC but they don't have money, and definitely not reliably flush the more you yell about it.
This year I'm seeing tons of professionals doing the same thing - selling random stuff to Super PACs - under flimsier pretexts, specifically to Republicans. "Hm sure I can file this lawsuit for you, you know there's a fee for expediting the process"
Patriotic Sounding PAC, FEC Filing: Administrative costs to LLC formed yesterday $800,000
Sure, plenty of the people believe these ideologies but they've never mattered. If everyone gravitates to extremes of their parties they never get consensus on stuff they're actually passionate about. None of the professionals involved believe in ... really anything, and they're just like me. They probably have at least four LLCs to contract to conflicting and opposing causes.
I'm a little surprised at the ruses being pulled, like I really looked up the FEC filings lately, all I got to say is that Georgia is a hoot! If you sleep you'll miss it.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/04/politics/ken-paxton-texas...
To do so in 2020 is to legitimize Trump's assault on the country, and I just don't see the courts doing that.
It's better to just dismiss every case regardless of the merits. Republican voters aren't going to do anything about the election result once Biden has been inaugurated in January.
That sounds like someone thats pretty scared and knows they are guilty. Sad.
"the probability of Joe Biden winning the popular vote in the four states independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion."
This seems to indicate fraud.
Hopefully you are not in charge of IT security?
And why were they counted after election day? In some of the swing states, including Pennsylvania, it was because Republican legislatures outlawed counting them as they came in.
* First of all, a quadrillion is a h(u^15)ge number! So right off the top, the notion that Biden's chances of winning these four states were that low, is w(a^15)y out of alignment with the roughly 50-50 split between Dems and Reps. Given no additional information, Biden's chances of winning four 50-50 states are 1 in 16, not 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.
* Second, this idea that Trump had a lead "earlier in the night" is meaningless, because the vote counting was not evenly distributed. Votes were group by county, by method of voting, etc. Each grouping has a bias. Some counties are heavily Rep or Dem. Mail-in ballots obviously favored Dems because Trump spent the last few months telling his followers not to use them.
* Third, why is this "3am" cutoff meaningful? The legitimacy of the ballots does not depend on the order in which they were counted, so wallclock-time is irrelevant. Otherwise, if the ballots had been counted in reverse order I could sit here and claim that Trump cheated because Biden's lead shrank sharply after 3am.
BA Colorado College, PHD Rutgers, post-grad work at Wisconsin in applied economics and econometrics. His career is in economics and environmental studies. Well-educated, but not in statistics.
He spent 3 years in the 1980s at the Kennedy School doing energy and environmental policy. This is all in his statement filed by Texas.
He states that there is no reason more people would vote for Biden in 2020 vs voting for Clinton in 2016, so it must be rigged.
He states that the votes tabulated late at night can't have been from the same sample of voters as the votes tabulated earlier in the evening, so it must be rigged.
His argument is that an election is identical to a giant bag with millions of balls, some of which are red and some are blue. Each vote is nothing more than pulling one of the balls out of the bag and looking at the color. The proportion of red balls to blue balls was determined in the 2016 election, and the 2020 election should have the same proportion but more balls.
It's completely wrong.
It seems to me that at least 2 points raised in the lawsuit, while they might be technically valid, were also used by various local governments in Texas (non-legislative bodies amending election laws, favoring the party of the local government's party).
The 3rd point could easily be argued the other way around, given the global lack of evidence for election mishandling on all states.
The real problem here is that attorneys don't get punished for bringing frivolous lawsuits, even though they have a significant cost to society. I think that's a massive issue with the US judiciary system. In this case, qualified immunity would probably protect the AG of Texas from being personally liable, which is another issue with the current system IMO.
There is a reason Republican Congressmen are congratulating Biden in private and then Tweeting about stolen elections.
/s
[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/reference/educational-resources/g...
Considering a petition is not even close to a guarantee of certiorari. There are several thousand petitions filed a year, and SCOTUS will hear about 70-ish cases a year.
I think they meant “flounder” but it’s only words. I’m always amazed when I read official documents that will likely live long beyond my lifetime which contain silly typos or obviously flawed reasoning.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/founder
> 5. One of the factors the Justices look to is whether the issues in the case can be resolved in other cases in the lower courts, even if not between the same parties. Thus, the Court usually denies leave unless it's a uniquely state-state dispute (again, like borders/water).
> 6. Among lots of other things, that's almost certainly fatal to this crazy new Texas suit. As we've seen, these claims are already being brought in private suits in each of those states. Texas offers no explanation for why the issues can't be (and aren't being) addressed there.
> 7. And it's not for nothing that the Justices don't like "original" cases, partly because they don't come with a well-developed record and set of opinions from lower courts.
> Indeed, the "original" docket has shrunk to an average of <1 argued case per Term in recent years.
> 8. The other reason they don't like these cases is because they're worried about opening the floodgates. If Texas can sue these states over how they conduct their elections, what's to stop Vermont from suing Texas over how it regulates the oil industry, or other permutations.
* https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1336329907400425488
Another case against PA was dismissed today:
* https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/08/supreme-court-rejec...
The basis of the case is that PA, GA, WI, and MI erred in enacting unconstitutional election measures, and therefore their election results should be annulled. And this must fail for several reasons.
First, Texas doesn't have standing to sue. Texas isn't injured by Pennsylvania's laws. Texas argues its standing on the basis of--wait for it--it makes its electoral votes meaningless. However, the electoral college has a fixed number of votes, so Texas can't even make a "vote dilution" basis for its votes, which is how the usual basis for standing. Therefore, the manner of which any other state chooses its votes literally has no effect on Texas's vote, although this would theoretically change if Texas adopted the National Popular Vote Compact.
Second, jurisdiction. These are challenges of other states' laws, other states' practices, and sometimes against other states' constitutions (the claim against PA in particular for the latter). The natural forum for this would obviously be the relevant state courts, although states can't sue each other in state courts usually--which brings back to standing, as Texas not having the ability to sue for these claims strongly suggests that Texas doesn't have standing in the first place.
Third, these claims have already been litigated, and already lost, and sometimes those losses have been repeatedly reaffirmed. That horse is well and truly dead, so stop beating it.
Fourth, election procedure claims that arise after the election are strongly disfavored. You usually have to justify why you couldn't bring the claim before the election, and waiting a full month after the election to bring the case does not look good (of course, see point #3 for why Texas brought the case).
Fifth, for SCOTUS original jurisdiction claims specifically, SCOTUS really doesn't like original jurisdiction. So states really need to show why they couldn't bring the claim up in other forums. Such as objecting to electors in the House, which is how the Constitution explains it is supposed to be done. (Of course, there is a law that says that votes certified by a specific date will not be questioned by the House).
Finally, relief. It's established in SCOTUS precedent that, even in election procedure claims arising after the election, the votes that are validly cast under the procedure are still to be counted. Asking the state legislatures to select their electoral slates as relief is not only literally unprecedented, but it is the exact opposite of what precedent specifies for relief.
This is the stupidest of the election cases I've seen so far, and I thought the legislator arguing that he couldn't reasonably be expected to know the law was pretty bad.
> These are challenges of other states' laws
> the votes that are validly cast under the procedure are still to be counted.
The argument, as I interpret it, is that these votes were not validly cast, because they were not cast under the procedure established by the respective legislatures. That is, that the laws of the respective states were not followed; from the complaint:
> Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures.
Now, I don't know if that's true, since I don't know the laws of the various states involved, and in my skimming of the complaint, I didn't see where the complaint actually listed how the elections of the various states differed from their established law.
That said… on the whole I agree with you, particularly on standing.
In the NC (I think) case where it was argued that the lifting of the ballot signature requirement was improper, which was eventually upheld by the court, the court still held that the state must count all votes that didn't have the ballot signature so long as they had been cast before the court's ruling.
I don't know who Ron Coleman is, but doing a brief internet search, I would say that you should trust my judgement more only in the regards that I actually give explanations behind my beliefs that can be compared with other explanations to judge if I'm accurately representing the state of affairs, and to decide for yourself which explanation is more persuasive.