Cowardly US Supreme Court demonstrates again why it should not exist — election 2020 — Texas versus four states

© 2020 Peter Free

 

13 December 2020

 

 

Predictably

 

The US Supreme Court rejected the Texas lawsuit against four states on the basis that Texas lacked the legal standing to file it.

 

No surprise there. The Court always takes the easy way out, when it does not want to let Reality muddy its aristocratic feet.

 

 

Background

 

Here is the original (election 2020) Texas motion that the Court just threw out:

 

 

Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint, State of Texas v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, State of Georgia, State of Michigan, and State of Wisconsin — in the Supreme Court of the United States, number 22O155 (filed 07 December 2020, docketed 08 December 2020)

 

 

Texas essentially asserted that the four defendant states manipulated their election laws, so as to invite (and subsequently not check) fraudulent votes for candidate Joe Biden, as against President Trump.

 

These manipulations supposedly made Biden the overall winner in the nation's Electoral College.

 

According to the Texas motion and complaint, Texans' own legitimately counted votes for Trump were therefore diluted by this falsely achieved Biden win.

 

 

You can see the lawsuit's many associated motions, filed by everyone — including their metaphorical siblings, best friends and passersby —  here.

 

 

Here is what the Court said in response — to the tumult that Texas ignited

 

What follows is the entirety of the Court's terminating order:

 

 

The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution.  Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.   All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

 

Statement of Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins:

 

In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction.  See Arizona v. California, 589 U. S. ___ (Feb. 24, 2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting).  I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.

 

 

A societally useless judicial institution?

 

Of course, Texas has standing. At least so, via the selected facts that it chose to present.  Standing would exist — under the presented case — under any rationally thought-out legal system.

 

This remains true, no matter how legally and administratively inconvenient according such standing would be to the nation's judicial future.

 

 

Consider, in illustration, the following thought experiment

 

In the face of an anticipated very narrowly decided election, bureaucrats in four American swing states decide that they want President X out.

 

They decide that people, who favor Candidate Y, prefer to vote via mail. Just before the election, they change their procedures to allow masses of mail-in votes that previously were prohibited.

 

During the election, they prevent comparisons between fake ballots and actually registered (and living) voter lists. And, for good measure, they also prohibit signature checks of mailed-in ballots.

 

Sure enough, the mass of not-checked ballots slant the election in Y's direction. The result in the four swing states gives candidate Y the national Electoral College win.

 

Plot successful.

 

Meanwhile, X-voting Texas has followed its own laws and (for our thought experiment's sake) it has accurately counted its own legitimately voted and checked ballots.

 

Under these hypothetical circumstances, are you still going to tell me that Texas' X-favoring majority has not been injuriously diluted by the falsely achieved Y win?

 

 

The Court's mistakenly and unhelpfully summarized legal position

 

The Supreme Court's "no standing" conclusion implicitly suggests that potentially miscreant states get to set their own — even when fraudulent — ways of managing election matters.

 

And furthermore, even when those methods are both un-Constitutional and obviously fraud-inviting — only someone from inside the fraud-producing state can challenge it. This remaining so, even when the national election hinges on that one (or more) state's falsified votes.

 

The Court's inferred position, regarding legal standing — without further explanation on its part — is irrationally taken.

 

 

Why did the Court dodge the Texas bullet?

 

Obviously, if the Court allowed the Texas case to proceed, it would set a precedent that allows states to continually critique their peers.

 

A never-ending of election-related — and who knows what other — litigation would follow. Probably forever.

 

Fact-finding alone, in the 2020 election case, would be so far beyond the Supreme Court's ability, as to constitute a probably unachievable summit.

 

Can't have that.

 

 

Yet, on the other hand

 

As I have pointed out, the Court's "no standing" dodge in the Texas case is too abbreviated in its presentation — as well as being so obviously illogically taken — to be helpful.

 

Millions of Americans already have a jaded view of American Government. The Court's tersely stated, regally toned order merely accentuates this trend.

 

 

The moral? — As I have said before, the Supreme Court should not exist

 

Historically, the US Supreme Court has been an interminably anti-democratic — generally humanity-damaging — institution that near-exclusively serves the reigning Plutocratic Establishment.

 

The cutting irony (in all this) is that the Founders themselves evidently did not believe that such a government body would be useful. The Court itself created its Constitution-interpreting jurisdiction — on alleged utility grounds — and subsequently did almost everything that it could to thoroughly discredit that Marbury v. Madison assertion of honorable purpose.