The lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General was nothing short of an attempted coup to overturn an election described by Christopher Krebs, the Republican in charge of protecting election integrity as the safest and most secure election in our history. No evidence of fraud was ever offered. Instead, the entire argument to support the fraud allegation was based on a statistical analysis that was so flawed that it was laughable.
As with any algorithm, you can manipulate the end result to say whatever you want it to say by adjusting the underlying assumptions. In this case, one particularly absurd assumption was that one block of voters is unlikely to vote substantially differently from another block of voters across the counties of an individual state. Therefore, the argument goes, since Trump had large, early leads in the four states that were the subject of the suit, the late swing in Biden’s favor as all of the votes were counted demonstrates fraud. This alleged support of the allegation of fraud results from a completely transparent and obviously intentional misrepresentation that ignores the variation in each state’s demographics from county to county and from urban area to rural area. It is a definitive example of “garbage in, garbage out.” Only a fool or a liar could possibly assert that they did not recognize that it was “garbage in.”
The facts show that the mail-in vote greatly favored Biden all across the country because Democrats decided that, in view of the pandemic, it would be more prudent and certainly safer to vote by mail rather than vote in person. On the other hand, Trump’s rhetoric about massive fraud in mail-in ballots (as always without any supporting evidence), and his desire to have mail-in ballots not counted, encouraged his supporters to vote in person. Everyone understood in advance the likelihood that votes cast in person would favor Trump while mail-in ballots would favor Biden. At Trump’s urging, Republican state legislatures blocked early counting of the mail-in ballots until after first tabulating votes cast in person. In addition, mail-in ballots from urban areas were counted last. In this manner, Republicans intentionally orchestrated a large swing in the count as a way to support this contrived statistical argument of massive voter fraud. But the real fraud was in the underlying Republican argument itself.
Understanding the basis for the Republican argument of fraud, and understanding how the timing of the vote count was manipulated demonstrates that they never had any real evidence to support an allegation of mass voter fraud, so instead, they tried to manufacture that evidence. These facts suggest a conspiracy to overturn the election. Not surprisingly, Trump was the leading participant in the conspiracy. It is, however, somewhat surprising that 17 other Republican state Attorneys General and 126 Republican members of Congress signed the Amicus Brief submitted to the US Supreme Court that asserted such a completely meritless argument. That makes all of the signators of the Amicus Brief co-conspirators in a flagrant attempt to overthrow a duly elected US president before he could even take office. They have disregarded their oaths of office, and they have abandoned the constitution, apparently preferring autocracy over democracy. They are an absolute disgrace and should all be removed from office.
The current reality is that Republicans have achieved a position of minority rule and they will use any means to retain power. Over the years they have routinely tried to skew election results through voter suppression, voter intimidation, voter disenfranchisement, and gerrymandering. These efforts have been consistently directed at people of color. But much to the dismay of Republicans, people of color turned out in large numbers to vote in the 2020 election. Not surprisingly, they rejected the white supremacist occupying the White House.
The Texas AG’s suit sought to have ballots, and particularly mail-in ballots, cast in cities with predominantly large African American populations, thrown out. Thus, Republican attempts at voter suppression and their subsequent lawsuit may be summarized in three succinct steps: (1) we tried to stop black people from voting; (2) too many black people succeeded in casting their votes despite our efforts; and (3) because so many black people voted, their votes should not be counted.
The Texas Attorney General’s suit clearly was an attempted coup that Trump first cheered and then joined. That the Texas AG lacked standing to file such a suit should have been obvious to anyone who ever went law school, and the lawyers who filed the suit should be harshly sanctioned. Everyone who signed the Amicus Brief became a co-conspirator. Additionally, their support for such a fundamentally flawed statistical argument that was so blatantly racist at its core declares to the world that the Republican Party not only supports white supremacy, but that they view white supremacists as perhaps the most important contingent of their coalition. Beyond that, the suit was so wholly without merit that its only chance of success to overturn the election was to have at least five of the justices of the US Supreme Court become willing participants in the coup. Thankfully, that did not happen.