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Carter: Texas AG lawsuit was 'dangerous precedent'

Killeen Daily Herald

One of the Killeen area’s representatives in Congress supported a recent Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the result of the Nov. 3 presidential election; the other did not.

On Dec. 7, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the United States Supreme Court.

“The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election,” according to a Dec. 8 news release. “The battleground states flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.”

The lawsuit asked the court to invalidate the elections in the four states named in the suit — which had all voted for former Vice President Joe Biden — and awarding the states’ 62 electoral votes to President Donald Trump, effectively taking the presidency away from Biden and awarding it to Trump in the process.

Rep. Roger Williams, R-Austin, is among 106 House Republicans who supported the brief, according to The Washington Post. However, Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock did not support the lawsuit.

By Dec. 10, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah had formally joined the lawsuit.

On Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court said in an order for in pending case, according to its website.

Paxton’s office released the following statement in response to the court’s decision.

“It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court decided not to take this case and determine the constitutionality of these four states’ failure to follow federal and state election law,” the satement said. “I will continue to tirelessly defend the integrity and security of our elections and hold accountable those who shirk established election law for their own convenience.”

Carter did not sign on to the amicus brief for the lawsuit out of respect for the electoral process of each state.

“The Trump campaign has every right to challenge the election in court as they’ve done with the roughly 50 law suits they’ve filed,” Carter said in a prepared statement. “With regard to the Texas lawsuit specifically, I believe that one state attempting to police another state’s voting procedures, or any other law, sets a dangerous precedent that could open the doors for other issues. I don’t want the roles reversed to have California or New York telling Texas what to do on our election laws or anything else for that matter.”

Several attempts to obtain comment on the lawsuit from Williams’ office, both in Austin and in Washington, D.C., were unsuccessful as of press time.

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