Texas Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Help Trump Upend Election in Long-Shot Lawsuit

Photo: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The state of Texas on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the voting results in four other states in a long-shot legal gambit intended to help President Donald Trump upend his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden.

Officials from the four states - Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - called the lawsuit a reckless attack on democracy while legal experts gave it little chance to succeed. It was filed directly with the Supreme Court rather than with a lower court, as is permitted for certain litigation between states.

The lawsuit, announced by the Republican attorney general of Texas Ken Paxton, targeted election battleground states that Trump lost to Biden after winning them in 2016. The Republican president has falsely claimed he won re-election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud.

The lawsuit represents the latest in a series brought by the Republican president's campaign and supporters intended to reverse his loss to Democrat Biden in the Nov. 3 election. Those efforts so far have failed.

In another case, the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by Pennsylvania Republicans to block the state from formalizing Biden's victory there.

The Texas suit argued that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful. Texas makes the remarkable request of the Supreme Court to immediately block the four states from using the voting results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College, essentially erasing the will of the voters.

Biden has amassed 306 electoral votes - exceeding the necessary 270 - compared to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the election's outcome, while also winning the national popular vote by more than 7 million votes. The four states contribute a combined 62 electoral votes to Biden's total.

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