The state of Texas filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Georgia and three other battleground states in last month’s presidential election.
The suit, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, charges the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with “significant and unconstitutional irregularities” in conducting the Nov. 3 election.
It asks the justices to delay next week’s scheduled Electoral College vote expected to finalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump and instead allow the legislatures of each of the four states to appoint the electors. All four states’ legislatures are controlled by Republicans.
“These flaws cumulatively preclude knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections,” the suit states.
The Texas lawsuit, spearheaded by the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, is the latest of dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump allies since the election, many aimed at the unprecedented flood of absentee ballots cast by voters wary of exposure to COVID-19.
Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs dismissed the lawsuit as “false and irresponsible.”
“Texas alleges that there are 80,000 forged signatures on absentee ballots in Georgia, but they don’t bring forward a single person who this happened to,” he said. “That’s because it didn’t happen.”
The lawsuit was filed on the “safe harbor” deadline for states to certify their slates of electors before the Electoral College meets in all 50 states next Monday.
It also comes on the heels of a series of legislative hearings in Georgia and the other battleground states Biden carried by narrow margins last month.
A Georgia Senate subcommittee heard hours of testimony last week from witnesses assembled by Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani alleging incidents of voter fraud in Georgia.
Another day of hearings is scheduled to take place Thursday before the state House of Representatives’ Governmental Affairs Committee.
Four Republican state senators have asked Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session of the General Assembly to consider overturning the results of the election in Georgia by appointing a slate of GOP electors to vote at the Electoral College meeting Dec. 14.
Kemp called such talk “simply unlawful and unconstitutional” Tuesday during a news conference called to discuss Georgia’s plans for distributing the new COVID-19 vaccine.
“For us to call a special session because of evidence that was presented in a Senate hearing does not address the way that evidence should be used to alter an election in Georgia,” the governor said.
“If that evidence is so overwhelming, there are options … to take those into a court of law, to present those to a judge and have the judge rule on those matters. This is not an issue that’s set up in the General Assembly for lawmakers or myself per the constitution and laws in the state to deal with.”
