Ten republican attorney generals have filed an amicus brief before the US Supreme Court challenging lower court order to allow mail-in-ballots after the three days of the election date in Pennsylvania. Democrat Joe Biden has been elected as President and Kamala Harris as the Vice President in the US elections 2020.
The amicus brief is filed by the Attorney Generals from Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississipi, South Carolina, South Dacota, and Texas.
The petitioners alleged that the orders issued by Pennsylvania Supreme Court are unconstitutional. The attorney generals also stated that the state overstepped its constitutional authority in accepting late ballots and violated the election clauses of the constitution which will ultimately lead to the increased chances of fraud in elections.
In the amicus brief, they have also alleged that SC’s decision exacerbates the risk of absentee ballot fraud. Republican Party of Pennsylvania has filed a case before US Supreme Court. Both Trump campaign and the Republican Party have raised the issue that this ruling will give an undue advantage to the opposition democratic party.
Former US President Donald Trump lost the elections 2020 in Pennsylvania, a key state that has crucial 20 electoral college votes.
In an interim order passed by the US Supreme Court, it has asked the state of Pennsylvania to set aside all the mail-in-ballots received after 8 pm of the election day on November 3.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt is leading the multi-state brief and stated, ” Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our republic, and it’s one of the reasons why the United States is the envy of the world. We have to ensure that every legal vote cast is counted and that every illegal vote cast is not counted.”
He further stated, “To do so would disenfranchise millions of Americans and why we filed this brief today seeking the Supreme Court to take the Pennsylvania case and then reverse the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave has also filed a separate amicus brief calling Supreme Court’s decision unconstitutional.
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter is also going to file an amicus brief today, arguing that under the Constitution, state legislatures must choose the point to stop receiving absentee ballots and start counting votes, not state courts such as Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Attorney General Hunter also stated that the Pennsylvania SC repealed the state legislature’s deadline by writing in a new postmark deadline with an arbitrary three day after election day cutoff. He also called the decision a major factor that could have a national ripple effect in future elections.
The brief also states that the decision has created chaos, making it impossible for the state legislatures to know in advance whether the election rules they have enacted will or will not be reimagined by the court.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has also filed several lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, and Michigan over the alleged irregularities in the vote-counting process.
In the lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania, Trump Campaign has alleged the creation and implementation of a two-tiered voting system. The two-track voting system left voters with different standards regarding how to exercise their right to vote.
The petitioner stated, “In-person voters had to sign voter registrations, have those signatures checked against voter rolls, vote in polling place monitored by statutorily authorized poll observers, and have their votes counted in a transparent and variable open and observed manner.”
The Trump campaign in its lawsuit has alleged that state’s mail-in voting, through which nearly 2.65 million votes were cast, lacked all the hallmarks of transparency and verifiability that was present for in-person voters, including not adequately verifying the voters’ identity, permitting ballots received up to three days after the election to be counted without any evidence of timely mailings, such as postmark and denying sufficient monitoring over the reviewing and counting of mail-in ballots.
