After two years of humiliation, the coping hasn't stopped yet.
DNC doesn't run elections, how dumb are you?
Possible Election Fraud in Progress
- Thread starter BeautifulStranger
- Start date
After two years of humiliation, the coping hasn't stopped yet.
DNC doesn't run elections, how dumb are you?
There is an entire thread dedicated to Texas State Attorney, Ken Paxton, the Idiot AG of Texas.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/ken-paxton-the-idiot-ag-of-texas.370000/page-3
You are aware that that Ken Paxton is facing removal from office via impeachment from his own party in the Texas legislature and criminal indictment over abuse of power and a lengthy set of other crimes.
If only carbon monoxide toxicity in the brain explained this eh?
Always reminded of the anti-Republican IRA song Zombie by the Cranberries which essentially states that traditional thinkers who are prone to the 'everybody I know says' fallacy are zombies and keep wrecking lives using made up and/or balance stretched beyond reason justification. You reset them with facts and insight but then back on their own social tier "everybody says.. " and they are Memento-esque back to "it must be a bit true because I hears it lots."
Y'all have to remember the Bush family has an interest in obtaining the Texas Attorney General position. George P. Bush lost the election to Paxton. The Bush family has apparently been siding with the Democrats, at least when it comes o support causes directly or indirectly, against Trump. Remember the bad blood between Trump and Jeb Bush? The Bush family has a lot of political influence in Texas and seemingly not beyond using dirty tactics, apparently like those seen in the race for Texas Attorney General.
Now for the complaint:
December 08, 2020 | Press Release | Election Integrity , Constitution , COVID-19
AG Paxton Sues Battleground States for Unconstitutional Changes to 2020 Election Laws
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today 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. 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.
“Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct and binds our citizenry and the States in this Union together. Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election. The states violated statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution. By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election. We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.”
Elections for federal office must comport with federal constitutional standards. For presidential elections, each state must appoint its electors to the electoral college in a manner that complies with the Constitution. The Electors Clause requirement that only state legislatures may set the rules governing the appointment of electors and elections and cannot be delegated to local officials. The majority of the rushed decisions, made by local officials, were not approved by the state legislatures, thereby circumventing the Constitution.
Read a copy of the filings here.
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/SCOTUSFiling.pdf
Selected pages of complaint:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bill of Complaint
1 Nature of the Action
3 Jurisdiction and Venue
8 Parties
10 Legal Background
10 Facts
12 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
14 State of Georgia
20 State of Michigan
23 State of Wisconsin
29 Count I: Electors Clause
36 Count II: Equal Protection
37 Count III: Due Process
38 Prayer for Relief
39
Attempting to and copy the complaint pdf is leading to formatting issues. Pressing on...
“[T]hat form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.” —John Adams BILL OF COMPLAINT Our Country stands at an important crossroads. Either the Constitution matters and must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives. We ask the Court to choose the former. Lawful elections are at the heart of our constitutional democracy. The public, and indeed the candidates themselves, have a compelling interest in ensuring that the selection of a President—any President—is legitimate. If that trust is lost, the American Experiment will founder. A dark cloud hangs over the 2020 Presidential election. Here is what we know. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, government officials in the defendant states of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, “Defendant States”), usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes. They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity. Finally, these same government officials flooded the Defendant States with millions of ballots to be sent through the mails, or placed in drop boxes, with little 2 or no chain of custody1 and, at the same time, weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote—signature verification and witness requirements. Presently, evidence of material illegality in the 2020 general elections held in Defendant States grows daily. And, to be sure, the two presidential candidates who have garnered the most votes have an interest in assuming the duties of the Office of President without a taint of impropriety threatening the perceived legitimacy of their election. However, 3 U.S.C. § 7 requires that presidential electors be appointed on December 14, 2020. That deadline, however, should not cement a potentially illegitimate election result in the middle of this storm—a storm that is of the Defendant States’ own making by virtue of their own unconstitutional actions. This Court is the only forum that can delay the deadline for the appointment of presidential electors under 3 U.S.C. §§ 5, 7. To safeguard public legitimacy at this unprecedented moment and restore public trust in the presidential election, this Court should extend the December 14, 2020 deadline for Defendant States’ certification of presidential electors to allow these investigations to be completed. Should one of the two leading candidates receive an absolute majority of the presidential electors’ votes to be cast on December 14, this would finalize the selection of our President. The only date that is mandated under 1 See https://georgiastarnews.com/2020/12...d-ifresponsive-records-to-your-request-exist/ 3 the Constitution, however, is January 20, 2021. U.S. CONST. amend. XX. Against that background, the State of Texas (“Plaintiff State”) brings this action against Defendant States based on the following allegations: NATURE OF THE ACTION 1. Plaintiff State challenges Defendant States’ administration of the 2020 election under the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 2. This case presents a question of law: Did Defendant States violate the Electors Clause (or, in the alternative, the Fourteenth Amendment) by taking—or allowing—non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? 3. Those unconstitutional changes opened the door to election irregularities in various forms. Plaintiff State alleges that each of the Defendant States flagrantly violated constitutional rules governing the appointment of presidential electors. In doing so, seeds of deep distrust have been sown across the country. In the spirit of Marbury v. Madison, this Court’s attention is profoundly needed to declare what the law is and to restore public trust in this election. 4. As Justice Gorsuch observed recently, “Government is not free to disregard the [Constitution] in times of crisis. … Yet recently, during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles.” Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. ____ (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring). This case is no different. 4 5. Each of Defendant States acted in a common pattern. State officials, sometimes through pending litigation (e.g., settling “friendly” suits) and sometimes unilaterally by executive fiat, announced new rules for the conduct of the 2020 election that were inconsistent with existing state statutes defining what constitutes a lawful vote. 6. Defendant States also failed to segregate ballots in a manner that would permit accurate analysis to determine which ballots were cast in conformity with the legislatively set rules and which were not. This is especially true of the mail-in ballots in these States. By waiving, lowering, and otherwise failing to follow the state statutory requirements for signature validation and other processes for ballot security, the entire body of such ballots is now constitutionally suspect and may not be legitimately used to determine allocation of the Defendant States’ presidential electors. 7. The rampant lawlessness arising out of Defendant States’ unconstitutional acts is described in a number of currently pending lawsuits in Defendant States or in public view including: • Dozens of witnesses testifying under oath about: the physical blocking and kicking out of Republican poll challengers; thousands of the same ballots run multiple times through tabulators; mysterious late night dumps of thousands of ballots at tabulation centers; illegally backdating thousands of ballots; signature verification procedures ignored; more 5 than 173,000 ballots in the Wayne County, MI center that cannot be tied to a registered voter;2 • Videos of: poll workers erupting in cheers as poll challengers are removed from vote counting centers; poll watchers being blocked from entering vote counting centers—despite even having a court order to enter; suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables after poll watchers were told to leave. • Facts for which no independently verified reasonable explanation yet exists: On October 1, 2020, in Pennsylvania a laptop and several USB drives, used to program Pennsylvania’s Dominion voting machines, were mysteriously stolen from a warehouse in Philadelphia. The laptop and the USB drives were the only items taken, and potentially could be used to alter vote tallies; In Michigan, which also employed the same Dominion voting system, on November 4, 2020, Michigan election officials have admitted that a purported “glitch” caused 6,000 votes for President Trump to be wrongly switched to Democrat Candidate Biden. A flash drive containing tens of thousands of votes was left unattended in the Milwaukee tabulations center in the early morning hours of Nov. 4, 2020, without anyone aware it was not in a proper chain of custody. 2 All exhibits cited in this Complaint are in the Appendix to the Plaintiff State’s forthcoming motion to expedite (“App. 1a151a”). See Complaint (Doc. No. 1), Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Benson, 1:20-cv-1083 (W.D. Mich. Nov. 11, 2020) at ¶¶ 26-55 & Doc. Nos. 1-2, 1-4. 6 8. Nor was this Court immune from the blatant disregard for the rule of law. Pennsylvania itself played fast and loose with its promise to this Court. In a classic bait and switch, Pennsylvania used guidance from its Secretary of State to argue that this Court should not expedite review because the State would segregate potentially unlawful ballots. A court of law would reasonably rely on such a representation. Remarkably, before the ink was dry on the Court’s 4- 4 decision, Pennsylvania changed that guidance, breaking the State’s promise to this Court. Compare Republican Party of Pa. v. Boockvar, No. 20-542, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 5188, at *5-6 (Oct. 28, 2020) (“we have been informed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General that the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued guidance today directing county boards of elections to segregate [late-arriving] ballots”) (Alito, J., concurring) with Republican Party v. Boockvar, No. 20A84, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 5345, at *1 (Nov. 6, 2020) (“this Court was not informed that the guidance issued on October 28, which had an important bearing on the question whether to order special treatment of the ballots in question, had been modified”) (Alito, J., Circuit Justice). 9. Expert analysis using a commonly accepted statistical test further raises serious questions as to the integrity of this election. 10. The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000. For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of 7 that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0004). See Decl. of Charles J. Cicchetti, Ph.D. (“Cicchetti Decl.”) at ¶¶ 14-21, 30-31. See App. 4a-7a, 9a. 11. The same less than one in a quadrillion statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— independently exists when Mr. Biden’s performance in each of those Defendant States is compared to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s performance in the 2016 general election and President Trump’s performance in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Again, the statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in these four States collectively is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0005. Id. 10-13, 17-21, 30-31. 12. Put simply, there is substantial reason to doubt the voting results in the Defendant States. 13. By purporting to waive or otherwise modify the existing state law in a manner that was wholly ultra vires and not adopted by each state’s legislature, Defendant States violated not only the Electors Clause, U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 2, but also the Elections Clause, id. art. I, § 4 (to the extent that the Article I Elections Clause textually applies to the Article II process of selecting presidential electors). 14. Plaintiff States and their voters are entitled to a presidential election in which the votes from each of the states are counted only if the ballots are cast and counted in a manner that complies with the pre-existing laws of each state. See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 795 (1983) (“for the 8 President and the Vice President of the United States are the only elected officials who represent all the voters in the Nation.”). Voters who cast lawful ballots cannot have their votes diminished by states that administered their 2020 presidential elections in a manner where it is impossible to distinguish a lawful ballot from an unlawful ballot. 15. The number of absentee and mail-in ballots that have been handled unconstitutionally in Defendant States greatly exceeds the difference between the vote totals of the two candidates for President of the United States in each Defendant State. 16. In addition to injunctive relief for this election, Plaintiff State seeks declaratory relief for all presidential elections in the future. This problem is clearly capable of repetition yet evading review. The integrity of our constitutional democracy requires that states conduct presidential elections in accordance with the rule of law and federal constitutional guarantees. JURISDICTION AND VENUE 17. This Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction over this action because it is a “controvers[y] between two or more States” under Article III, § 2, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution and 28 U.S.C. § 1251(a) (2018). 18. In a presidential election, “the impact of the votes cast in each State is affected by the votes cast for the various candidates in other States.” Anderson, 460 U.S. at 795. The constitutional failures of Defendant States injure Plaintiff States because “‘the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as 9 effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.’” Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 105 (2000) (quoting Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 555 (1964)) (Bush II). In other words, Plaintiff State is acting to protect the interests of its respective citizens in the fair and constitutional conduct of elections used to appoint presidential electors. 19. This Court’s Article III decisions indicate that only a state can bring certain claims. Lance v. Coffman, 549 U.S. 437, 442 (2007) (distinguishing citizen plaintiffs from citizen relators who sued in the name of a state); cf. Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 520 (2007) (courts owe states “special solicitude in standing analysis”). Moreover, redressability likely would undermine a suit against a single state officer or State because no one State’s electoral votes will make a difference in the election outcome. This action against multiple State defendants is the only adequate remedy for Plaintiff States, and this Court is the only court that can accommodate such a suit. 20. Individual state courts do not—and under the circumstance of contested elections in multiple states, cannot—offer an adequate remedy to resolve election disputes within the timeframe set by the Constitution to resolve such disputes and to appoint a President via the electoral college. No court—other than this Court—can redress constitutional injuries spanning multiple States with the sufficient number of states joined as defendants or respondents to make a difference in the Electoral College. 21. This Court is the sole forum in which to exercise the jurisdictional basis for this action.
Complaint continued in next post.
Now for the complaint:
December 08, 2020 | Press Release | Election Integrity , Constitution , COVID-19
AG Paxton Sues Battleground States for Unconstitutional Changes to 2020 Election Laws
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today 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. 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.
“Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct and binds our citizenry and the States in this Union together. Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election. The states violated statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution. By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election. We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.”
Elections for federal office must comport with federal constitutional standards. For presidential elections, each state must appoint its electors to the electoral college in a manner that complies with the Constitution. The Electors Clause requirement that only state legislatures may set the rules governing the appointment of electors and elections and cannot be delegated to local officials. The majority of the rushed decisions, made by local officials, were not approved by the state legislatures, thereby circumventing the Constitution.
Read a copy of the filings here.
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/SCOTUSFiling.pdf
Selected pages of complaint:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bill of Complaint
1 Nature of the Action
3 Jurisdiction and Venue
8 Parties
10 Legal Background
10 Facts
12 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
14 State of Georgia
20 State of Michigan
23 State of Wisconsin
29 Count I: Electors Clause
36 Count II: Equal Protection
37 Count III: Due Process
38 Prayer for Relief
39
Attempting to and copy the complaint pdf is leading to formatting issues. Pressing on...
“[T]hat form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.” —John Adams BILL OF COMPLAINT Our Country stands at an important crossroads. Either the Constitution matters and must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives. We ask the Court to choose the former. Lawful elections are at the heart of our constitutional democracy. The public, and indeed the candidates themselves, have a compelling interest in ensuring that the selection of a President—any President—is legitimate. If that trust is lost, the American Experiment will founder. A dark cloud hangs over the 2020 Presidential election. Here is what we know. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, government officials in the defendant states of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, “Defendant States”), usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes. They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity. Finally, these same government officials flooded the Defendant States with millions of ballots to be sent through the mails, or placed in drop boxes, with little 2 or no chain of custody1 and, at the same time, weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote—signature verification and witness requirements. Presently, evidence of material illegality in the 2020 general elections held in Defendant States grows daily. And, to be sure, the two presidential candidates who have garnered the most votes have an interest in assuming the duties of the Office of President without a taint of impropriety threatening the perceived legitimacy of their election. However, 3 U.S.C. § 7 requires that presidential electors be appointed on December 14, 2020. That deadline, however, should not cement a potentially illegitimate election result in the middle of this storm—a storm that is of the Defendant States’ own making by virtue of their own unconstitutional actions. This Court is the only forum that can delay the deadline for the appointment of presidential electors under 3 U.S.C. §§ 5, 7. To safeguard public legitimacy at this unprecedented moment and restore public trust in the presidential election, this Court should extend the December 14, 2020 deadline for Defendant States’ certification of presidential electors to allow these investigations to be completed. Should one of the two leading candidates receive an absolute majority of the presidential electors’ votes to be cast on December 14, this would finalize the selection of our President. The only date that is mandated under 1 See https://georgiastarnews.com/2020/12...d-ifresponsive-records-to-your-request-exist/ 3 the Constitution, however, is January 20, 2021. U.S. CONST. amend. XX. Against that background, the State of Texas (“Plaintiff State”) brings this action against Defendant States based on the following allegations: NATURE OF THE ACTION 1. Plaintiff State challenges Defendant States’ administration of the 2020 election under the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 2. This case presents a question of law: Did Defendant States violate the Electors Clause (or, in the alternative, the Fourteenth Amendment) by taking—or allowing—non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? 3. Those unconstitutional changes opened the door to election irregularities in various forms. Plaintiff State alleges that each of the Defendant States flagrantly violated constitutional rules governing the appointment of presidential electors. In doing so, seeds of deep distrust have been sown across the country. In the spirit of Marbury v. Madison, this Court’s attention is profoundly needed to declare what the law is and to restore public trust in this election. 4. As Justice Gorsuch observed recently, “Government is not free to disregard the [Constitution] in times of crisis. … Yet recently, during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles.” Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. ____ (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring). This case is no different. 4 5. Each of Defendant States acted in a common pattern. State officials, sometimes through pending litigation (e.g., settling “friendly” suits) and sometimes unilaterally by executive fiat, announced new rules for the conduct of the 2020 election that were inconsistent with existing state statutes defining what constitutes a lawful vote. 6. Defendant States also failed to segregate ballots in a manner that would permit accurate analysis to determine which ballots were cast in conformity with the legislatively set rules and which were not. This is especially true of the mail-in ballots in these States. By waiving, lowering, and otherwise failing to follow the state statutory requirements for signature validation and other processes for ballot security, the entire body of such ballots is now constitutionally suspect and may not be legitimately used to determine allocation of the Defendant States’ presidential electors. 7. The rampant lawlessness arising out of Defendant States’ unconstitutional acts is described in a number of currently pending lawsuits in Defendant States or in public view including: • Dozens of witnesses testifying under oath about: the physical blocking and kicking out of Republican poll challengers; thousands of the same ballots run multiple times through tabulators; mysterious late night dumps of thousands of ballots at tabulation centers; illegally backdating thousands of ballots; signature verification procedures ignored; more 5 than 173,000 ballots in the Wayne County, MI center that cannot be tied to a registered voter;2 • Videos of: poll workers erupting in cheers as poll challengers are removed from vote counting centers; poll watchers being blocked from entering vote counting centers—despite even having a court order to enter; suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables after poll watchers were told to leave. • Facts for which no independently verified reasonable explanation yet exists: On October 1, 2020, in Pennsylvania a laptop and several USB drives, used to program Pennsylvania’s Dominion voting machines, were mysteriously stolen from a warehouse in Philadelphia. The laptop and the USB drives were the only items taken, and potentially could be used to alter vote tallies; In Michigan, which also employed the same Dominion voting system, on November 4, 2020, Michigan election officials have admitted that a purported “glitch” caused 6,000 votes for President Trump to be wrongly switched to Democrat Candidate Biden. A flash drive containing tens of thousands of votes was left unattended in the Milwaukee tabulations center in the early morning hours of Nov. 4, 2020, without anyone aware it was not in a proper chain of custody. 2 All exhibits cited in this Complaint are in the Appendix to the Plaintiff State’s forthcoming motion to expedite (“App. 1a151a”). See Complaint (Doc. No. 1), Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Benson, 1:20-cv-1083 (W.D. Mich. Nov. 11, 2020) at ¶¶ 26-55 & Doc. Nos. 1-2, 1-4. 6 8. Nor was this Court immune from the blatant disregard for the rule of law. Pennsylvania itself played fast and loose with its promise to this Court. In a classic bait and switch, Pennsylvania used guidance from its Secretary of State to argue that this Court should not expedite review because the State would segregate potentially unlawful ballots. A court of law would reasonably rely on such a representation. Remarkably, before the ink was dry on the Court’s 4- 4 decision, Pennsylvania changed that guidance, breaking the State’s promise to this Court. Compare Republican Party of Pa. v. Boockvar, No. 20-542, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 5188, at *5-6 (Oct. 28, 2020) (“we have been informed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General that the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued guidance today directing county boards of elections to segregate [late-arriving] ballots”) (Alito, J., concurring) with Republican Party v. Boockvar, No. 20A84, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 5345, at *1 (Nov. 6, 2020) (“this Court was not informed that the guidance issued on October 28, which had an important bearing on the question whether to order special treatment of the ballots in question, had been modified”) (Alito, J., Circuit Justice). 9. Expert analysis using a commonly accepted statistical test further raises serious questions as to the integrity of this election. 10. The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000. For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of 7 that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0004). See Decl. of Charles J. Cicchetti, Ph.D. (“Cicchetti Decl.”) at ¶¶ 14-21, 30-31. See App. 4a-7a, 9a. 11. The same less than one in a quadrillion statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— independently exists when Mr. Biden’s performance in each of those Defendant States is compared to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s performance in the 2016 general election and President Trump’s performance in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Again, the statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in these four States collectively is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0005. Id. 10-13, 17-21, 30-31. 12. Put simply, there is substantial reason to doubt the voting results in the Defendant States. 13. By purporting to waive or otherwise modify the existing state law in a manner that was wholly ultra vires and not adopted by each state’s legislature, Defendant States violated not only the Electors Clause, U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 2, but also the Elections Clause, id. art. I, § 4 (to the extent that the Article I Elections Clause textually applies to the Article II process of selecting presidential electors). 14. Plaintiff States and their voters are entitled to a presidential election in which the votes from each of the states are counted only if the ballots are cast and counted in a manner that complies with the pre-existing laws of each state. See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 795 (1983) (“for the 8 President and the Vice President of the United States are the only elected officials who represent all the voters in the Nation.”). Voters who cast lawful ballots cannot have their votes diminished by states that administered their 2020 presidential elections in a manner where it is impossible to distinguish a lawful ballot from an unlawful ballot. 15. The number of absentee and mail-in ballots that have been handled unconstitutionally in Defendant States greatly exceeds the difference between the vote totals of the two candidates for President of the United States in each Defendant State. 16. In addition to injunctive relief for this election, Plaintiff State seeks declaratory relief for all presidential elections in the future. This problem is clearly capable of repetition yet evading review. The integrity of our constitutional democracy requires that states conduct presidential elections in accordance with the rule of law and federal constitutional guarantees. JURISDICTION AND VENUE 17. This Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction over this action because it is a “controvers[y] between two or more States” under Article III, § 2, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution and 28 U.S.C. § 1251(a) (2018). 18. In a presidential election, “the impact of the votes cast in each State is affected by the votes cast for the various candidates in other States.” Anderson, 460 U.S. at 795. The constitutional failures of Defendant States injure Plaintiff States because “‘the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as 9 effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.’” Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 105 (2000) (quoting Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 555 (1964)) (Bush II). In other words, Plaintiff State is acting to protect the interests of its respective citizens in the fair and constitutional conduct of elections used to appoint presidential electors. 19. This Court’s Article III decisions indicate that only a state can bring certain claims. Lance v. Coffman, 549 U.S. 437, 442 (2007) (distinguishing citizen plaintiffs from citizen relators who sued in the name of a state); cf. Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 520 (2007) (courts owe states “special solicitude in standing analysis”). Moreover, redressability likely would undermine a suit against a single state officer or State because no one State’s electoral votes will make a difference in the election outcome. This action against multiple State defendants is the only adequate remedy for Plaintiff States, and this Court is the only court that can accommodate such a suit. 20. Individual state courts do not—and under the circumstance of contested elections in multiple states, cannot—offer an adequate remedy to resolve election disputes within the timeframe set by the Constitution to resolve such disputes and to appoint a President via the electoral college. No court—other than this Court—can redress constitutional injuries spanning multiple States with the sufficient number of states joined as defendants or respondents to make a difference in the Electoral College. 21. This Court is the sole forum in which to exercise the jurisdictional basis for this action.
Complaint continued in next post.
10 PARTIES 22. Plaintiff is the State of Texas, which is a sovereign State of the United States. 23. Defendants are the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the States of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which are sovereign States of the United States. LEGAL BACKGROUND 24. Under the Supremacy Clause, the “Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme law of the land.” U.S. CONST. Art. VI, cl. 2. 25. “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the electoral college.” Bush II, 531 U.S. at 104 (citing U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1). 26. State legislatures have plenary power to set the process for appointing presidential electors: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” U.S. CONST. art. II, §1, cl. 2; see also Bush II, 531 U.S. at 104 (“[T]he state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary.” (emphasis added)). 27. At the time of the Founding, most States did not appoint electors through popular statewide elections. In the first presidential election, six of the ten States that appointed electors did so by direct legislative appointment. McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 29-30 (1892). 11 28. In the second presidential election, nine of the fifteen States that appointed electors did so by direct legislative appointment. Id. at 30. 29. In the third presidential election, nine of sixteen States that appointed electors did so by direct legislative appointment. Id. at 31. This practice persisted in lesser degrees through the Election of 1860. Id. at 32. 30. Though “[h]istory has now favored the voter,” Bush II, 531 U.S. at 104, “there is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power [of appointing presidential electors] at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated.” McPherson, 146 U.S. at 35 (emphasis added); cf. 3 U.S.C. § 2 (“Whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law, the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct.”). 31. Given the State legislatures’ constitutional primacy in selecting presidential electors, the ability to set rules governing the casting of ballots and counting of votes cannot be usurped by other branches of state government. 32. The Framers of the Constitution decided to select the President through the Electoral College “to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder” and to place “every practicable obstacle [to] cabal, intrigue, and corruption,” including “foreign powers” that might try to insinuate themselves into our elections. THE FEDERALIST NO. 68, at 410-11 (C. Rossiter, ed. 1961) (Madison, J.). 33. Defendant States’ applicable laws are set out under the facts for each Defendant State.
12 FACTS 34.
The use of absentee and mail-in ballots skyrocketed in 2020, not only as a public-health response to the COVID-19 pandemic but also at the urging of mail-in voting’s proponents, and most especially executive branch officials in Defendant States. According to the Pew Research Center, in the 2020 general election, a record number of votes— about 65 million—were cast via mail compared to 33.5 million mail-in ballots cast in the 2016 general election—an increase of more than 94 percent. 35. In the wake of the contested 2000 election, the bipartisan Jimmy Carter-James Baker commission identified absentee ballots as “the largest source of potential voter fraud.” BUILDING CONFIDENCE IN U.S. ELECTIONS: REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON FEDERAL ELECTION REFORM, at 46 (Sept. 2005). 36. Concern over the use of mail-in ballots is not novel to the modern era, Dustin Waters, Mail-in Ballots Were Part of a Plot to Deny Lincoln Reelection in 1864, WASH. POST (Aug. 22, 2020),3 but it remains a current concern. Crawford v. Marion Cty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 194-96 & n.11 (2008); see also Texas Office of the Attorney General, AG Paxton Announces Joint Prosecution of Gregg County Organized Election Fraud in Mail-In Balloting Scheme (Sept. 24, 2020); Harriet Alexander & Ariel Zilber, Minneapolis police opens investigation into reports that Ilhan Omar's supporters illegally harvested Democrat ballots in Minnesota, DAILY MAIL, Sept. 28, 2020. 3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...voting-civil-war-election-conspiracy-lincoln/ 13 37. Absentee and mail-in voting are the primary opportunities for unlawful ballots to be cast. As a result of expanded absentee and mail-in voting in Defendant States, combined with Defendant States’ unconstitutional modification of statutory protections designed to ensure ballot integrity, Defendant States created a massive opportunity for fraud. In addition, the Defendant States have made it difficult or impossible to separate the constitutionally tainted mail-in ballots from all mail-in ballots. 38. Rather than augment safeguards against illegal voting in anticipation of the millions of additional mail-in ballots flooding their States, Defendant States all materially weakened, or did away with, security measures, such as witness or signature verification procedures, required by their respective legislatures. Their legislatures established those commonsense safeguards to prevent—or at least reduce—fraudulent mail-in ballots. 39. Significantly, in Defendant States, Democrat voters voted by mail at two to three times the rate of Republicans. Former Vice President Biden thus greatly benefited from this unconstitutional usurpation of legislative authority, and the weakening of legislative mandated ballot security measures. 40. The outcome of the Electoral College vote is directly affected by the constitutional violations committed by Defendant States. Plaintiff State complied with the Constitution in the process of appointing presidential electors for President Trump. Defendant States violated the Constitution in the process of appointing presidential electors by unlawfully abrogating state election laws designed to 14 protect the integrity of the ballots and the electoral process, and those violations proximately caused the appointment of presidential electors for former Vice President Biden. Plaintiff State will therefore be injured if Defendant States’ unlawfully certify these presidential electors. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 41. Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 3,363,951 for President Trump and 3,445,548 for former Vice President Biden, a margin of 81,597 votes. 42. The number of votes affected by the various constitutional violations exceeds the margin of votes separating the candidates. 43. Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated several Pennsylvania statutes requiring signature verification for absentee or mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania’s legislature has not ratified these changes, and the legislation did not include a severability clause. 44. On August 7, 2020, the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and others filed a complaint against Secretary Boockvar and other local election officials, seeking “a declaratory judgment that Pennsylvania existing signature verification procedures for mail-in voting” were unlawful for a number of reasons. League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, No. 2:20-cv-03850-PBT, (E.D. Pa. Aug. 7, 2020). 45. The Pennsylvania Department of State quickly settled with the plaintiffs, issuing revised guidance on September 11, 2020, stating in relevant part: “The Pennsylvania Election Code does not 15 authorize the county board of elections to set aside returned absentee or mail-in ballots based solely on signature analysis by the county board of elections.” 46. This guidance is contrary to Pennsylvania law. First, Pennsylvania Election Code mandates that, for non-disabled and non-military voters, all applications for an absentee or mail-in ballot “shall be signed by the applicant.” 25 PA. STAT. §§ 3146.2(d) & 3150.12(c). Second, Pennsylvania’s voter signature verification requirements are expressly set forth at 25 PA. STAT. 350(a.3)(1)-(2) and § 3146.8(g)(3)-(7). 47. The Pennsylvania Department of State’s guidance unconstitutionally did away with Pennsylvania’s statutory signature verification requirements. Approximately 70 percent of the requests for absentee ballots were from Democrats and 25 percent from Republicans. Thus, this unconstitutional abrogation of state election law greatly inured to former Vice President Biden’s benefit. 48. In addition, in 2019, Pennsylvania’s legislature enacted bipartisan election reforms, 2019 Pa. Legis. Serv. Act 2019-77, that set inter alia a deadline of 8:00 p.m. on election day for a county board of elections to receive a mail-in ballot. 25 PA. STAT. §§ 3146.6(c), 3150.16(c). Acting under a generally worded clause that “Elections shall be free and equal,” PA. CONST. art. I, § 5, cl. 1, a 4-3 majority of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court in Pa. Democratic Party v. Boockvar, 238 A.3d 345 (Pa. 2020), extended that deadline to three days after Election Day and adopted a presumption that even non-postmarked ballots were presumptively timely. 16 49. Pennsylvania’s election law also requires that poll-watchers be granted access to the opening, counting, and recording of absentee ballots: “Watchers shall be permitted to be present when the envelopes containing official absentee ballots and mail-in ballots are opened and when such ballots are counted and recorded.” 25 PA. STAT. § 3146.8(b). Local election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties decided not to follow 25 PA. STAT. § 3146.8(b) for the opening, counting, and recording of absentee and mail-in ballots. 50. Prior to the election, Secretary Boockvar sent an email to local election officials urging them to provide opportunities for various persons—including political parties—to contact voters to “cure” defective mail-in ballots. This process clearly violated several provisions of the state election code. • Section 3146.8(a) requires: “The county boards of election, upon receipt of official absentee ballots in sealed official absentee ballot envelopes as provided under this article and mail-in ballots as in sealed official mail-in ballot envelopes as provided under Article XIII-D,1 shall safely keep the ballots in sealed or locked containers until they are to be canvassed by the county board of elections.” • Section 3146.8(g)(1)(ii) provides that mail-in ballots shall be canvassed (if they are received by eight o’clock p.m. on election day) in the manner prescribed by this subsection. • Section 3146.8(g)(1.1) provides that the first look at the ballots shall be “no earlier than seven o’clock a.m. on election day.” And the hour for this “pre-canvas” must be publicly announced at least 17 48 hours in advance. Then the votes are counted on election day. 51. By removing the ballots for examination prior to seven o’clock a.m. on election day, Secretary Boockvar created a system whereby local officials could review ballots without the proper announcements, observation, and security. This entire scheme, which was only followed in Democrat majority counties, was blatantly illegal in that it permitted the illegal removal of ballots from their locked containers prematurely. 52. Statewide election officials and local election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, aware of the historical Democrat advantage in those counties, violated Pennsylvania’s election code and adopted the differential standards favoring voters in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties with the intent to favor former Vice President Biden. See Verified Complaint (Doc. No. 1), Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar, 4:20-cv-02078-MWB (M.D. Pa. Nov. 18, 2020) at ¶¶ 3-6, 9, 11, 100-143. 53. Absentee and mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were thus evaluated under an illegal standard regarding signature verification. It is now impossible to determine which ballots were properly cast and which ballots were not. 54. The changed process allowing the curing of absentee and mail-in ballots in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties is a separate basis resulting in an unknown number of ballots being treated in an unconstitutional manner inconsistent with Pennsylvania statute. Id. 55. In addition, a great number of ballots were received after the statutory deadline and yet 18 were counted by virtue of the fact that Pennsylvania did not segregate all ballots received after 8:00 pm on November 3, 2020. Boockvar’s claim that only about 10,000 ballots were received after this deadline has no way of being proven since Pennsylvania broke its promise to the Court to segregate ballots and comingled perhaps tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of illegal late ballots. 56. On December 4, 2020, fifteen members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives led by Rep. Francis X. Ryan issued a report to Congressman Scott Perry (the “Ryan Report,” App. 139a-144a) stating that “[t]he general election of 2020 in Pennsylvania was fraught with inconsistencies, documented irregularities and improprieties associated with mail-in balloting, pre-canvassing, and canvassing that the reliability of the mail-in votes in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is impossible to rely upon.” 57. The Ryan Report’s findings are startling, including: • Ballots with NO MAILED date. That total is 9,005. • Ballots Returned on or BEFORE the Mailed Date. That total is 58,221. • Ballots Returned one day after Mailed Date. That total is 51,200. Id. 143a. 58. These nonsensical numbers alone total 118,426 ballots and exceed Mr. Biden’s margin of 81,660 votes over President Trump. But these discrepancies pale in comparison to the discrepancies in Pennsylvania’s reported data concerning the 19 number of mail-in ballots distributed to the populace—now with no longer subject to legislated mandated signature verification requirements. 59. The Ryan Report also states as follows: n a data file received on November 4, 2020, the Commonwealth’s PA Open Data sites reported over 3.1 million mail in ballots sent out. The CSV file from the state on November 4 depicts 3.1 million mail in ballots sent out but on November 2, the information was provided that only 2.7 million ballots had been sent out. This discrepancy of approximately 400,000 ballots from November 2 to November 4 has not been explained. Id. at 143a-44a. (Emphasis added). 60. These stunning figures illustrate the out-of-control nature of Pennsylvania’s mail-in balloting scheme. Democrats submitted mail-in ballots at more than two times the rate of Republicans. This number of constitutionally tainted ballots far exceeds the approximately 81,660 votes separating the candidates. 61. This blatant disregard of statutory law renders all mail-in ballots constitutionally tainted and cannot form the basis for appointing or certifying Pennsylvania’s presidential electors to the Electoral College. 62. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s report to Congress Election Administration and Voting Survey: 2016 Comprehensive Report, in 2016 Pennsylvania received 266,208 mail-in ballots; 2,534 of them were rejected (.95%). Id. at p. 24. However, in 2020, Pennsylvania received more than 10 times the number of mail-in ballots compared to 2016. As explained supra, this 20 much larger volume of mail-in ballots was treated in an unconstitutionally modified manner that included: (1) doing away with the Pennsylvania’s signature verification requirements; (2) extending that deadline to three days after Election Day and adopting a presumption that even non-postmarked ballots were presumptively timely; and (3) blocking poll watchers in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties in violation of State law. 63. These non-legislative modifications to Pennsylvania’s election rules appear to have generated an outcome-determinative number of unlawful ballots that were cast in Pennsylvania. Regardless of the number of such ballots, the nonlegislative changes to the election rules violated the Electors Clause. State of Georgia 64. Georgia has 16 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 2,458,121 for President Trump and 2,472,098 for former Vice President Biden, a margin of approximately 12,670 votes. 65. The number of votes affected by the various constitutional violations exceeds the margin of votes dividing the candidates. 66. Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated Georgia’s statute governing the signature verification process for absentee ballots. 67. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(a)(2) prohibits the opening of absentee ballots until after the polls open on Election Day: In April 2020, however, the State Election Board adopted Secretary of State Rule 183-1- 14-0.9-.15, Processing Ballots Prior to Election Day. 21 That rule purports to authorize county election officials to begin processing absentee ballots up to three weeks before Election Day. 68. Georgia law authorizes and requires a single registrar or clerk—after reviewing the outer envelope—to reject an absentee ballot if the voter failed to sign the required oath or to provide the required information, the signature appears invalid, or the required information does not conform with the information on file, or if the voter is otherwise found ineligible to vote. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(a)(1)(B)-(C). 69. Georgia law provides absentee voters the chance to “cure a failure to sign the oath, an invalid signature, or missing information” on a ballot’s outer envelope by the deadline for verifying provisional ballots (i.e., three days after the election). O.C.G.A. §§ 21-2-386(a)(1)(C), 21-2-419(c)(2). To facilitate cures, Georgia law requires the relevant election official to notify the voter in writing: “The board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk shall promptly notify the elector of such rejection, a copy of which notification shall be retained in the files of the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk for at least two years.” O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(a)(1)(B). 70. On March 6, 2020, in Democratic Party of Georgia v. Raffensperger, No. 1:19-cv-5028-WMR (N.D. Ga.), Georgia’s Secretary of State entered a Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release with the Democratic Party of Georgia (the “Settlement”) to materially change the statutory requirements for reviewing signatures on absentee ballot envelopes to confirm the voter’s identity by making it far more difficult to challenge defective signatures beyond the 22 express mandatory procedures set forth at GA. CODE § 21-2-386(a)(1)(B). 71. Among other things, before a ballot could be rejected, the Settlement required a registrar who found a defective signature to now seek a review by two other registrars, and only if a majority of the registrars agreed that the signature was defective could the ballot be rejected but not before all three registrars’ names were written on the ballot envelope along with the reason for the rejection. These cumbersome procedures are in direct conflict with Georgia’s statutory requirements, as is the Settlement’s requirement that notice be provided by telephone (i.e., not in writing) if a telephone number is available. Finally, the Settlement purports to require State election officials to consider issuing guidance and training materials drafted by an expert retained by the Democratic Party of Georgia. 72. Georgia’s legislature has not ratified these material changes to statutory law mandated by the Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release, including altered signature verification requirements and early opening of ballots. The relevant legislation that was violated by Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release did not include a severability clause. 73. This unconstitutional change in Georgia law materially benefitted former Vice President Biden. According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, former Vice President Biden had almost double the number of absentee votes (65.32%) as President Trump (34.68%). See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 25, App. 7a8a. 23 74. The effect of this unconstitutional change in Georgia election law, which made it more likely that ballots without matching signatures would be counted, had a material impact on the outcome of the election. 75. Specifically, there were 1,305,659 absentee mail-in ballots submitted in Georgia in 2020. There were 4,786 absentee ballots rejected in 2020. This is a rejection rate of .37%. In contrast, in 2016, the 2016 rejection rate was 6.42% with 13,677 absentee mail-in ballots being rejected out of 213,033 submitted, which more than seventeen times greater than in 2020. See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 24, App. 7a. 76. If the rejection rate of mailed-in absentee ballots remained the same in 2020 as it was in 2016, there would be 83,517 less tabulated ballots in 2020. The statewide split of absentee ballots was 34.68% for Trump and 65.2% for Biden. Rejecting at the higher 2016 rate with the 2020 split between Trump and Biden would decrease Trump votes by 28,965 and Biden votes by 54,552, which would be a net gain for Trump of 25,587 votes. This would be more than needed to overcome the Biden advantage of 12,670 votes, and Trump would win by 12,917 votes. Id. Regardless of the number of ballots affected, however, the non-legislative changes to the election rules violated the Electors Clause. State of Michigan 77. Michigan has 16 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 2,650,695 for President Trump and 2,796,702 for former Vice President Biden, a margin of 146,007 votes. In Wayne County, Mr. Biden’s margin (322,925 votes) significantly exceeds his statewide lead. 24 78. The number of votes affected by the various constitutional violations exceeds the margin of votes dividing the candidates. 79. Michigan’s Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated Michigan election statutes related to absentee ballot applications and signature verification. Michigan’s legislature has not ratified these changes, and its election laws do not include a severability clause. 80. As amended in 2018, the Michigan Constitution provides all registered voters the right to request and vote by an absentee ballot without giving a reason. MICH. CONST. art. 2, § 4. 81. On May 19, 2020, however, Secretary Benson announced that her office would send unsolicited absentee-voter ballot applications by mail to all 7.7 million registered Michigan voters prior to the primary and general elections. Although her office repeatedly encouraged voters to vote absentee because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it did not ensure that Michigan’s election systems and procedures were adequate to ensure the accuracy and legality of the historic flood of mail-in votes. In fact, it did the opposite and did away with protections designed to deter voter fraud. 82. Secretary Benson’s flooding of Michigan with millions of absentee ballot applications prior to the 2020 general election violated M.C.L. § 168.759(3). That statute limits the procedures for requesting an absentee ballot to three specified ways: An application for an absent voter ballot under this section may be made in any of the following ways: (a) By a written request signed by the voter. 25 (b) On an absent voter ballot application form provided for that purpose by the clerk of the city or township. (c) On a federal postcard application. M.C.L. § 168.759(3) (emphasis added). 83. The Michigan Legislature thus declined to include the Secretary of State as a means for distributing absentee ballot applications. Id. § 168.759(3)(b). Under the statute’s plain language, the Legislature explicitly gave only local clerks the power to distribute absentee voter ballot applications. Id. 84. Because the Legislature declined to explicitly include the Secretary of State as a vehicle for distributing absentee ballots applications, Secretary Benson lacked authority to distribute even a single absentee voter ballot application—much less the millions of absentee ballot applications Secretary Benson chose to flood across Michigan. 85. Secretary Benson also violated Michigan law when she launched a program in June 2020 allowing absentee ballots to be requested online, without signature verification as expressly required under Michigan law. The Michigan Legislature did not approve or authorize Secretary Benson’s unilateral actions. 86. MCL § 168.759(4) states in relevant part: “An applicant for an absent voter ballot shall sign the application. Subject to section 761(2), a clerk or assistant clerk shall not deliver an absent voter ballot to an applicant who does not sign the application.” 87. Further, MCL § 168.761(2) states in relevant part: “The qualified voter file must be used to determine the genuineness of a signature on an application for an absent voter ballot”, and if “the 26 signatures do not agree sufficiently or [if] the signature is missing” the ballot must be rejected. 88. In 2016 only 587,618 Michigan voters requested absentee ballots. In stark contrast, in 2020, 3.2 million votes were cast by absentee ballot, about 57% of total votes cast – and more than five times the number of ballots even requested in 2016. 89. Secretary Benson’s unconstitutional modifications of Michigan’s election rules resulted in the distribution of millions of absentee ballot applications without verifying voter signatures as required by MCL §§ 168.759(4) and 168.761(2). This means that millions of absentee ballots were disseminated in violation of Michigan’s statutory signature-verification requirements. Democrats in Michigan voted by mail at a ratio of approximately two to one compared to Republican voters. Thus, former Vice President Biden materially benefited from these unconstitutional changes to Michigan’s election law. 90. Michigan also requires that poll watchers and inspectors have access to vote counting and canvassing. M.C.L. §§ 168.674-.675. 91. Local election officials in Wayne County made a conscious and express policy decision not to follow M.C.L. §§ 168.674-.675 for the opening, counting, and recording of absentee ballots. 92. Michigan also has strict signature verification requirements for absentee ballots, including that the Elections Department place a written statement or stamp on each ballot envelope where the voter signature is placed, indicating that the voter signature was in fact checked and verified 27 with the signature on file with the State. See MCL § 168.765a(6). 93. However, Wayne County made the policy decision to ignore Michigan’s statutory signatureverification requirements for absentee ballots. Former Vice President Biden received approximately 587,074, or 68%, of the votes cast there compared to President Trump’s receiving approximate 264,149, or 30.59%, of the total vote. Thus, Mr. Biden materially benefited from these unconstitutional changes to Michigan’s election law. 94. Numerous poll challengers and an Election Department employee whistleblower have testified that the signature verification requirement was ignored in Wayne County in a case currently pending in the Michigan Supreme Court.4 For example, Jesse Jacob, a decades-long City of Detroit employee assigned to work in the Elections Department for the 2020 election testified that: Absentee ballots that were received in the mail would have the voter’s signature on the envelope. While I was at the TCF Center, I was instructed not to look at any of the signatures on the absentee ballots, and I was instructed not to compare the signature on the absentee ballot with the signature on file.5 4 Johnson v. Benson, Petition for Extraordinary Writs & Declaratory Relief filed Nov. 26, 2020 (Mich. Sup. Ct.) at ¶¶ 71, 138-39, App. 25a-51a. 5 Id., Affidavit of Jessy Jacob, Appendix 14 at ¶15, attached at App. 34a-36a. 28 95. The TCF was the only facility within Wayne County authorized to count ballots for the City of Detroit. 96. These non-legislative modifications to Michigan’s election statutes resulted in a number of constitutionally tainted votes that far exceeds the margin of voters separating the candidates in Michigan. 97. Additional public information confirms the material adverse impact on the integrity of the vote in Wayne County caused by these unconstitutional changes to Michigan’s election law. For example, the Wayne County Statement of Votes Report lists 174,384 absentee ballots out of 566,694 absentee ballots tabulated (about 30.8%) as counted without a registration number for precincts in the City of Detroit. See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 27, App. 8a. The number of votes not tied to a registered voter by itself exceeds Vice President Biden’s margin of margin of 146,007 votes by more than 28,377 votes. 98. The extra ballots cast most likely resulted from the phenomenon of Wayne County election workers running the same ballots through a tabulator multiple times, with Republican poll watchers obstructed or denied access, and election officials ignoring poll watchers’ challenges, as documented by numerous declarations. App. 25a-51a. 99. In addition, a member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers (“Canvassers Board”), William Hartman, determined that 71% of Detroit’s Absent Voter Counting Boards (“AVCBs”) were unbalanced—i.e., the number of people who checked in did not match the number of ballots cast—without explanation. Id. at ¶ 29. 29 100. On November 17, 2020, the Canvassers Board deadlocked 2-2 over whether to certify the results of the presidential election based on numerous reports of fraud and unanswered material discrepancies in the county-wide election results. A few hours later, the Republican Board members reversed their decision and voted to certify the results after severe harassment, including threats of violence. 101. The following day, the two Republican members of the Board rescinded their votes to certify the vote and signed affidavits alleging they were bullied and misled into approving election results and do not believe the votes should be certified until serious irregularities in Detroit votes are resolved. See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 29, App. 8a. 102. Regardless of the number of votes that were affected by the unconstitutional modification of Michigan’s election rules, the non-legislative changes to the election rules violated the Electors Clause. State of Wisconsin 103. Wisconsin has 10 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 1,610,151 for President Trump and 1,630,716 for former Vice President Biden (i.e., a margin of 20,565 votes). In two counties, Milwaukee and Dane, Mr. Biden’s margin (364,298 votes) significantly exceeds his statewide lead. 104. In the 2016 general election some 146,932 mail-in ballots were returned in Wisconsin out of more than 3 million votes cast.6 In stark contrast, 1,275,019 mail-in ballots, nearly a 900 6 Source: U.S. Elections Project, available at: http://www.electproject.org/early_2016.
The use of absentee and mail-in ballots skyrocketed in 2020, not only as a public-health response to the COVID-19 pandemic but also at the urging of mail-in voting’s proponents, and most especially executive branch officials in Defendant States. According to the Pew Research Center, in the 2020 general election, a record number of votes— about 65 million—were cast via mail compared to 33.5 million mail-in ballots cast in the 2016 general election—an increase of more than 94 percent. 35. In the wake of the contested 2000 election, the bipartisan Jimmy Carter-James Baker commission identified absentee ballots as “the largest source of potential voter fraud.” BUILDING CONFIDENCE IN U.S. ELECTIONS: REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON FEDERAL ELECTION REFORM, at 46 (Sept. 2005). 36. Concern over the use of mail-in ballots is not novel to the modern era, Dustin Waters, Mail-in Ballots Were Part of a Plot to Deny Lincoln Reelection in 1864, WASH. POST (Aug. 22, 2020),3 but it remains a current concern. Crawford v. Marion Cty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 194-96 & n.11 (2008); see also Texas Office of the Attorney General, AG Paxton Announces Joint Prosecution of Gregg County Organized Election Fraud in Mail-In Balloting Scheme (Sept. 24, 2020); Harriet Alexander & Ariel Zilber, Minneapolis police opens investigation into reports that Ilhan Omar's supporters illegally harvested Democrat ballots in Minnesota, DAILY MAIL, Sept. 28, 2020. 3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...voting-civil-war-election-conspiracy-lincoln/ 13 37. Absentee and mail-in voting are the primary opportunities for unlawful ballots to be cast. As a result of expanded absentee and mail-in voting in Defendant States, combined with Defendant States’ unconstitutional modification of statutory protections designed to ensure ballot integrity, Defendant States created a massive opportunity for fraud. In addition, the Defendant States have made it difficult or impossible to separate the constitutionally tainted mail-in ballots from all mail-in ballots. 38. Rather than augment safeguards against illegal voting in anticipation of the millions of additional mail-in ballots flooding their States, Defendant States all materially weakened, or did away with, security measures, such as witness or signature verification procedures, required by their respective legislatures. Their legislatures established those commonsense safeguards to prevent—or at least reduce—fraudulent mail-in ballots. 39. Significantly, in Defendant States, Democrat voters voted by mail at two to three times the rate of Republicans. Former Vice President Biden thus greatly benefited from this unconstitutional usurpation of legislative authority, and the weakening of legislative mandated ballot security measures. 40. The outcome of the Electoral College vote is directly affected by the constitutional violations committed by Defendant States. Plaintiff State complied with the Constitution in the process of appointing presidential electors for President Trump. Defendant States violated the Constitution in the process of appointing presidential electors by unlawfully abrogating state election laws designed to 14 protect the integrity of the ballots and the electoral process, and those violations proximately caused the appointment of presidential electors for former Vice President Biden. Plaintiff State will therefore be injured if Defendant States’ unlawfully certify these presidential electors. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 41. Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 3,363,951 for President Trump and 3,445,548 for former Vice President Biden, a margin of 81,597 votes. 42. The number of votes affected by the various constitutional violations exceeds the margin of votes separating the candidates. 43. Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated several Pennsylvania statutes requiring signature verification for absentee or mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania’s legislature has not ratified these changes, and the legislation did not include a severability clause. 44. On August 7, 2020, the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and others filed a complaint against Secretary Boockvar and other local election officials, seeking “a declaratory judgment that Pennsylvania existing signature verification procedures for mail-in voting” were unlawful for a number of reasons. League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, No. 2:20-cv-03850-PBT, (E.D. Pa. Aug. 7, 2020). 45. The Pennsylvania Department of State quickly settled with the plaintiffs, issuing revised guidance on September 11, 2020, stating in relevant part: “The Pennsylvania Election Code does not 15 authorize the county board of elections to set aside returned absentee or mail-in ballots based solely on signature analysis by the county board of elections.” 46. This guidance is contrary to Pennsylvania law. First, Pennsylvania Election Code mandates that, for non-disabled and non-military voters, all applications for an absentee or mail-in ballot “shall be signed by the applicant.” 25 PA. STAT. §§ 3146.2(d) & 3150.12(c). Second, Pennsylvania’s voter signature verification requirements are expressly set forth at 25 PA. STAT. 350(a.3)(1)-(2) and § 3146.8(g)(3)-(7). 47. The Pennsylvania Department of State’s guidance unconstitutionally did away with Pennsylvania’s statutory signature verification requirements. Approximately 70 percent of the requests for absentee ballots were from Democrats and 25 percent from Republicans. Thus, this unconstitutional abrogation of state election law greatly inured to former Vice President Biden’s benefit. 48. In addition, in 2019, Pennsylvania’s legislature enacted bipartisan election reforms, 2019 Pa. Legis. Serv. Act 2019-77, that set inter alia a deadline of 8:00 p.m. on election day for a county board of elections to receive a mail-in ballot. 25 PA. STAT. §§ 3146.6(c), 3150.16(c). Acting under a generally worded clause that “Elections shall be free and equal,” PA. CONST. art. I, § 5, cl. 1, a 4-3 majority of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court in Pa. Democratic Party v. Boockvar, 238 A.3d 345 (Pa. 2020), extended that deadline to three days after Election Day and adopted a presumption that even non-postmarked ballots were presumptively timely. 16 49. Pennsylvania’s election law also requires that poll-watchers be granted access to the opening, counting, and recording of absentee ballots: “Watchers shall be permitted to be present when the envelopes containing official absentee ballots and mail-in ballots are opened and when such ballots are counted and recorded.” 25 PA. STAT. § 3146.8(b). Local election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties decided not to follow 25 PA. STAT. § 3146.8(b) for the opening, counting, and recording of absentee and mail-in ballots. 50. Prior to the election, Secretary Boockvar sent an email to local election officials urging them to provide opportunities for various persons—including political parties—to contact voters to “cure” defective mail-in ballots. This process clearly violated several provisions of the state election code. • Section 3146.8(a) requires: “The county boards of election, upon receipt of official absentee ballots in sealed official absentee ballot envelopes as provided under this article and mail-in ballots as in sealed official mail-in ballot envelopes as provided under Article XIII-D,1 shall safely keep the ballots in sealed or locked containers until they are to be canvassed by the county board of elections.” • Section 3146.8(g)(1)(ii) provides that mail-in ballots shall be canvassed (if they are received by eight o’clock p.m. on election day) in the manner prescribed by this subsection. • Section 3146.8(g)(1.1) provides that the first look at the ballots shall be “no earlier than seven o’clock a.m. on election day.” And the hour for this “pre-canvas” must be publicly announced at least 17 48 hours in advance. Then the votes are counted on election day. 51. By removing the ballots for examination prior to seven o’clock a.m. on election day, Secretary Boockvar created a system whereby local officials could review ballots without the proper announcements, observation, and security. This entire scheme, which was only followed in Democrat majority counties, was blatantly illegal in that it permitted the illegal removal of ballots from their locked containers prematurely. 52. Statewide election officials and local election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, aware of the historical Democrat advantage in those counties, violated Pennsylvania’s election code and adopted the differential standards favoring voters in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties with the intent to favor former Vice President Biden. See Verified Complaint (Doc. No. 1), Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar, 4:20-cv-02078-MWB (M.D. Pa. Nov. 18, 2020) at ¶¶ 3-6, 9, 11, 100-143. 53. Absentee and mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were thus evaluated under an illegal standard regarding signature verification. It is now impossible to determine which ballots were properly cast and which ballots were not. 54. The changed process allowing the curing of absentee and mail-in ballots in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties is a separate basis resulting in an unknown number of ballots being treated in an unconstitutional manner inconsistent with Pennsylvania statute. Id. 55. In addition, a great number of ballots were received after the statutory deadline and yet 18 were counted by virtue of the fact that Pennsylvania did not segregate all ballots received after 8:00 pm on November 3, 2020. Boockvar’s claim that only about 10,000 ballots were received after this deadline has no way of being proven since Pennsylvania broke its promise to the Court to segregate ballots and comingled perhaps tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of illegal late ballots. 56. On December 4, 2020, fifteen members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives led by Rep. Francis X. Ryan issued a report to Congressman Scott Perry (the “Ryan Report,” App. 139a-144a) stating that “[t]he general election of 2020 in Pennsylvania was fraught with inconsistencies, documented irregularities and improprieties associated with mail-in balloting, pre-canvassing, and canvassing that the reliability of the mail-in votes in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is impossible to rely upon.” 57. The Ryan Report’s findings are startling, including: • Ballots with NO MAILED date. That total is 9,005. • Ballots Returned on or BEFORE the Mailed Date. That total is 58,221. • Ballots Returned one day after Mailed Date. That total is 51,200. Id. 143a. 58. These nonsensical numbers alone total 118,426 ballots and exceed Mr. Biden’s margin of 81,660 votes over President Trump. But these discrepancies pale in comparison to the discrepancies in Pennsylvania’s reported data concerning the 19 number of mail-in ballots distributed to the populace—now with no longer subject to legislated mandated signature verification requirements. 59. The Ryan Report also states as follows: n a data file received on November 4, 2020, the Commonwealth’s PA Open Data sites reported over 3.1 million mail in ballots sent out. The CSV file from the state on November 4 depicts 3.1 million mail in ballots sent out but on November 2, the information was provided that only 2.7 million ballots had been sent out. This discrepancy of approximately 400,000 ballots from November 2 to November 4 has not been explained. Id. at 143a-44a. (Emphasis added). 60. These stunning figures illustrate the out-of-control nature of Pennsylvania’s mail-in balloting scheme. Democrats submitted mail-in ballots at more than two times the rate of Republicans. This number of constitutionally tainted ballots far exceeds the approximately 81,660 votes separating the candidates. 61. This blatant disregard of statutory law renders all mail-in ballots constitutionally tainted and cannot form the basis for appointing or certifying Pennsylvania’s presidential electors to the Electoral College. 62. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s report to Congress Election Administration and Voting Survey: 2016 Comprehensive Report, in 2016 Pennsylvania received 266,208 mail-in ballots; 2,534 of them were rejected (.95%). Id. at p. 24. However, in 2020, Pennsylvania received more than 10 times the number of mail-in ballots compared to 2016. As explained supra, this 20 much larger volume of mail-in ballots was treated in an unconstitutionally modified manner that included: (1) doing away with the Pennsylvania’s signature verification requirements; (2) extending that deadline to three days after Election Day and adopting a presumption that even non-postmarked ballots were presumptively timely; and (3) blocking poll watchers in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties in violation of State law. 63. These non-legislative modifications to Pennsylvania’s election rules appear to have generated an outcome-determinative number of unlawful ballots that were cast in Pennsylvania. Regardless of the number of such ballots, the nonlegislative changes to the election rules violated the Electors Clause. State of Georgia 64. Georgia has 16 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 2,458,121 for President Trump and 2,472,098 for former Vice President Biden, a margin of approximately 12,670 votes. 65. The number of votes affected by the various constitutional violations exceeds the margin of votes dividing the candidates. 66. Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated Georgia’s statute governing the signature verification process for absentee ballots. 67. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(a)(2) prohibits the opening of absentee ballots until after the polls open on Election Day: In April 2020, however, the State Election Board adopted Secretary of State Rule 183-1- 14-0.9-.15, Processing Ballots Prior to Election Day. 21 That rule purports to authorize county election officials to begin processing absentee ballots up to three weeks before Election Day. 68. Georgia law authorizes and requires a single registrar or clerk—after reviewing the outer envelope—to reject an absentee ballot if the voter failed to sign the required oath or to provide the required information, the signature appears invalid, or the required information does not conform with the information on file, or if the voter is otherwise found ineligible to vote. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(a)(1)(B)-(C). 69. Georgia law provides absentee voters the chance to “cure a failure to sign the oath, an invalid signature, or missing information” on a ballot’s outer envelope by the deadline for verifying provisional ballots (i.e., three days after the election). O.C.G.A. §§ 21-2-386(a)(1)(C), 21-2-419(c)(2). To facilitate cures, Georgia law requires the relevant election official to notify the voter in writing: “The board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk shall promptly notify the elector of such rejection, a copy of which notification shall be retained in the files of the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk for at least two years.” O.C.G.A. § 21-2-386(a)(1)(B). 70. On March 6, 2020, in Democratic Party of Georgia v. Raffensperger, No. 1:19-cv-5028-WMR (N.D. Ga.), Georgia’s Secretary of State entered a Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release with the Democratic Party of Georgia (the “Settlement”) to materially change the statutory requirements for reviewing signatures on absentee ballot envelopes to confirm the voter’s identity by making it far more difficult to challenge defective signatures beyond the 22 express mandatory procedures set forth at GA. CODE § 21-2-386(a)(1)(B). 71. Among other things, before a ballot could be rejected, the Settlement required a registrar who found a defective signature to now seek a review by two other registrars, and only if a majority of the registrars agreed that the signature was defective could the ballot be rejected but not before all three registrars’ names were written on the ballot envelope along with the reason for the rejection. These cumbersome procedures are in direct conflict with Georgia’s statutory requirements, as is the Settlement’s requirement that notice be provided by telephone (i.e., not in writing) if a telephone number is available. Finally, the Settlement purports to require State election officials to consider issuing guidance and training materials drafted by an expert retained by the Democratic Party of Georgia. 72. Georgia’s legislature has not ratified these material changes to statutory law mandated by the Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release, including altered signature verification requirements and early opening of ballots. The relevant legislation that was violated by Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release did not include a severability clause. 73. This unconstitutional change in Georgia law materially benefitted former Vice President Biden. According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, former Vice President Biden had almost double the number of absentee votes (65.32%) as President Trump (34.68%). See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 25, App. 7a8a. 23 74. The effect of this unconstitutional change in Georgia election law, which made it more likely that ballots without matching signatures would be counted, had a material impact on the outcome of the election. 75. Specifically, there were 1,305,659 absentee mail-in ballots submitted in Georgia in 2020. There were 4,786 absentee ballots rejected in 2020. This is a rejection rate of .37%. In contrast, in 2016, the 2016 rejection rate was 6.42% with 13,677 absentee mail-in ballots being rejected out of 213,033 submitted, which more than seventeen times greater than in 2020. See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 24, App. 7a. 76. If the rejection rate of mailed-in absentee ballots remained the same in 2020 as it was in 2016, there would be 83,517 less tabulated ballots in 2020. The statewide split of absentee ballots was 34.68% for Trump and 65.2% for Biden. Rejecting at the higher 2016 rate with the 2020 split between Trump and Biden would decrease Trump votes by 28,965 and Biden votes by 54,552, which would be a net gain for Trump of 25,587 votes. This would be more than needed to overcome the Biden advantage of 12,670 votes, and Trump would win by 12,917 votes. Id. Regardless of the number of ballots affected, however, the non-legislative changes to the election rules violated the Electors Clause. State of Michigan 77. Michigan has 16 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 2,650,695 for President Trump and 2,796,702 for former Vice President Biden, a margin of 146,007 votes. In Wayne County, Mr. Biden’s margin (322,925 votes) significantly exceeds his statewide lead. 24 78. The number of votes affected by the various constitutional violations exceeds the margin of votes dividing the candidates. 79. Michigan’s Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated Michigan election statutes related to absentee ballot applications and signature verification. Michigan’s legislature has not ratified these changes, and its election laws do not include a severability clause. 80. As amended in 2018, the Michigan Constitution provides all registered voters the right to request and vote by an absentee ballot without giving a reason. MICH. CONST. art. 2, § 4. 81. On May 19, 2020, however, Secretary Benson announced that her office would send unsolicited absentee-voter ballot applications by mail to all 7.7 million registered Michigan voters prior to the primary and general elections. Although her office repeatedly encouraged voters to vote absentee because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it did not ensure that Michigan’s election systems and procedures were adequate to ensure the accuracy and legality of the historic flood of mail-in votes. In fact, it did the opposite and did away with protections designed to deter voter fraud. 82. Secretary Benson’s flooding of Michigan with millions of absentee ballot applications prior to the 2020 general election violated M.C.L. § 168.759(3). That statute limits the procedures for requesting an absentee ballot to three specified ways: An application for an absent voter ballot under this section may be made in any of the following ways: (a) By a written request signed by the voter. 25 (b) On an absent voter ballot application form provided for that purpose by the clerk of the city or township. (c) On a federal postcard application. M.C.L. § 168.759(3) (emphasis added). 83. The Michigan Legislature thus declined to include the Secretary of State as a means for distributing absentee ballot applications. Id. § 168.759(3)(b). Under the statute’s plain language, the Legislature explicitly gave only local clerks the power to distribute absentee voter ballot applications. Id. 84. Because the Legislature declined to explicitly include the Secretary of State as a vehicle for distributing absentee ballots applications, Secretary Benson lacked authority to distribute even a single absentee voter ballot application—much less the millions of absentee ballot applications Secretary Benson chose to flood across Michigan. 85. Secretary Benson also violated Michigan law when she launched a program in June 2020 allowing absentee ballots to be requested online, without signature verification as expressly required under Michigan law. The Michigan Legislature did not approve or authorize Secretary Benson’s unilateral actions. 86. MCL § 168.759(4) states in relevant part: “An applicant for an absent voter ballot shall sign the application. Subject to section 761(2), a clerk or assistant clerk shall not deliver an absent voter ballot to an applicant who does not sign the application.” 87. Further, MCL § 168.761(2) states in relevant part: “The qualified voter file must be used to determine the genuineness of a signature on an application for an absent voter ballot”, and if “the 26 signatures do not agree sufficiently or [if] the signature is missing” the ballot must be rejected. 88. In 2016 only 587,618 Michigan voters requested absentee ballots. In stark contrast, in 2020, 3.2 million votes were cast by absentee ballot, about 57% of total votes cast – and more than five times the number of ballots even requested in 2016. 89. Secretary Benson’s unconstitutional modifications of Michigan’s election rules resulted in the distribution of millions of absentee ballot applications without verifying voter signatures as required by MCL §§ 168.759(4) and 168.761(2). This means that millions of absentee ballots were disseminated in violation of Michigan’s statutory signature-verification requirements. Democrats in Michigan voted by mail at a ratio of approximately two to one compared to Republican voters. Thus, former Vice President Biden materially benefited from these unconstitutional changes to Michigan’s election law. 90. Michigan also requires that poll watchers and inspectors have access to vote counting and canvassing. M.C.L. §§ 168.674-.675. 91. Local election officials in Wayne County made a conscious and express policy decision not to follow M.C.L. §§ 168.674-.675 for the opening, counting, and recording of absentee ballots. 92. Michigan also has strict signature verification requirements for absentee ballots, including that the Elections Department place a written statement or stamp on each ballot envelope where the voter signature is placed, indicating that the voter signature was in fact checked and verified 27 with the signature on file with the State. See MCL § 168.765a(6). 93. However, Wayne County made the policy decision to ignore Michigan’s statutory signatureverification requirements for absentee ballots. Former Vice President Biden received approximately 587,074, or 68%, of the votes cast there compared to President Trump’s receiving approximate 264,149, or 30.59%, of the total vote. Thus, Mr. Biden materially benefited from these unconstitutional changes to Michigan’s election law. 94. Numerous poll challengers and an Election Department employee whistleblower have testified that the signature verification requirement was ignored in Wayne County in a case currently pending in the Michigan Supreme Court.4 For example, Jesse Jacob, a decades-long City of Detroit employee assigned to work in the Elections Department for the 2020 election testified that: Absentee ballots that were received in the mail would have the voter’s signature on the envelope. While I was at the TCF Center, I was instructed not to look at any of the signatures on the absentee ballots, and I was instructed not to compare the signature on the absentee ballot with the signature on file.5 4 Johnson v. Benson, Petition for Extraordinary Writs & Declaratory Relief filed Nov. 26, 2020 (Mich. Sup. Ct.) at ¶¶ 71, 138-39, App. 25a-51a. 5 Id., Affidavit of Jessy Jacob, Appendix 14 at ¶15, attached at App. 34a-36a. 28 95. The TCF was the only facility within Wayne County authorized to count ballots for the City of Detroit. 96. These non-legislative modifications to Michigan’s election statutes resulted in a number of constitutionally tainted votes that far exceeds the margin of voters separating the candidates in Michigan. 97. Additional public information confirms the material adverse impact on the integrity of the vote in Wayne County caused by these unconstitutional changes to Michigan’s election law. For example, the Wayne County Statement of Votes Report lists 174,384 absentee ballots out of 566,694 absentee ballots tabulated (about 30.8%) as counted without a registration number for precincts in the City of Detroit. See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 27, App. 8a. The number of votes not tied to a registered voter by itself exceeds Vice President Biden’s margin of margin of 146,007 votes by more than 28,377 votes. 98. The extra ballots cast most likely resulted from the phenomenon of Wayne County election workers running the same ballots through a tabulator multiple times, with Republican poll watchers obstructed or denied access, and election officials ignoring poll watchers’ challenges, as documented by numerous declarations. App. 25a-51a. 99. In addition, a member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers (“Canvassers Board”), William Hartman, determined that 71% of Detroit’s Absent Voter Counting Boards (“AVCBs”) were unbalanced—i.e., the number of people who checked in did not match the number of ballots cast—without explanation. Id. at ¶ 29. 29 100. On November 17, 2020, the Canvassers Board deadlocked 2-2 over whether to certify the results of the presidential election based on numerous reports of fraud and unanswered material discrepancies in the county-wide election results. A few hours later, the Republican Board members reversed their decision and voted to certify the results after severe harassment, including threats of violence. 101. The following day, the two Republican members of the Board rescinded their votes to certify the vote and signed affidavits alleging they were bullied and misled into approving election results and do not believe the votes should be certified until serious irregularities in Detroit votes are resolved. See Cicchetti Decl. at ¶ 29, App. 8a. 102. Regardless of the number of votes that were affected by the unconstitutional modification of Michigan’s election rules, the non-legislative changes to the election rules violated the Electors Clause. State of Wisconsin 103. Wisconsin has 10 electoral votes, with a statewide vote tally currently estimated at 1,610,151 for President Trump and 1,630,716 for former Vice President Biden (i.e., a margin of 20,565 votes). In two counties, Milwaukee and Dane, Mr. Biden’s margin (364,298 votes) significantly exceeds his statewide lead. 104. In the 2016 general election some 146,932 mail-in ballots were returned in Wisconsin out of more than 3 million votes cast.6 In stark contrast, 1,275,019 mail-in ballots, nearly a 900 6 Source: U.S. Elections Project, available at: http://www.electproject.org/early_2016.
Yes, we know you are stupid and don't know you are.
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30 percent increase over 2016, were returned in the November 3, 2020 election.7 105. Wisconsin statutes guard against fraud in absentee ballots: “[V]oting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place. The legislature finds that the privilege of voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse[.]” WISC. STAT. § 6.84(1). 106. In direct contravention of Wisconsin law, leading up to the 2020 general election, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (“WEC”) and other local officials unconstitutionally modified Wisconsin election laws—each time taking steps that weakened, or did away with, established security procedures put in place by the Wisconsin legislature to ensure absentee ballot integrity. 107. For example, the WEC undertook a campaign to position hundreds of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots—including the use of unmanned drop boxes. 8 108. The mayors of Wisconsin’s five largest cities—Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine, which all have Democrat majorities— joined in this effort, and together, developed a plan use purportedly “secure drop-boxes to facilitate return 7 Source: U.S. Elections Project, available at: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/WI.html. 8 Wisconsin Elections Commission Memoranda, To: All Wisconsin Election Officials, Aug. 19, 2020, available at: https://elections.wi.gov/sites/elections.wi.gov/files/2020- 08/Drop%20Box%20Final.pdf. at p. 3 of 4. 31 of absentee ballots.” Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan 2020, at 4 (June 15, 2020).9 109. It is alleged in an action recently filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin that over five hundred unmanned, illegal, absentee ballot drop boxes were used in the Presidential election in Wisconsin.10 110. However, the use of any drop box, manned or unmanned, is directly prohibited by Wisconsin statute. The Wisconsin legislature specifically described in the Election Code “Alternate absentee ballot site” and detailed the procedure by which the governing body of a municipality may designate a site or sites for the delivery of absentee ballots “other than the office of the municipal clerk or board of election commissioners as the location from which electors of the municipality may request and vote absentee ballots and to which voted absentee ballots shall be returned by electors for any election.” Wis. Stat. 6.855(1). 111. Any alternate absentee ballot site “shall be staffed by the municipal clerk or the executive director of the board of election commissioners, or employees of the clerk or the board of election commissioners.” Wis. Stat. 6.855(3). Likewise, Wis. 9 Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan 2020 Submitted to the Center for Tech & Civic Life, June 15, 2020, by the Mayors of Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay available at: https://www.techandciviclife.org/wp...7/Approved-Wisconsin-Safe-Voting-Plan2020.pdf. 10 See Complaint (Doc. No. 1), Donald J. Trump, Candidate for President of the United States of America v. The Wisconsin Election Commission, Case 2:20-cv-01785-BHL (E.D. Wisc. Dec. 2, 2020) (Wisconsin Trump Campaign Complaint”) at ¶¶ 188-89. 32 Stat. 7.15(2m) provides, “n a municipality in which the governing body has elected to an establish an alternate absentee ballot sit under s. 6.855, the municipal clerk shall operate such site as though it were his or her office for absentee ballot purposes and shall ensure that such site is adequately staffed.” 112. Thus, the unmanned absentee ballot drop-off sites are prohibited by the Wisconsin Legislature as they do not comply with Wisconsin law expressly defining “[a]lternate absentee ballot site”. Wis. Stat. 6.855(1), (3). 113. In addition, the use of drop boxes for the collection of absentee ballots, positioned predominantly in Wisconsin’s largest cities, is directly contrary to Wisconsin law providing that absentee ballots may only be “mailed by the elector, or delivered in person to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots.” Wis. Stat. § 6.87(4)(b)1 (emphasis added). 114. The fact that other methods of delivering absentee ballots, such as through unmanned drop boxes, are not permitted is underscored by Wis. Stat. § 6.87(6) which mandates that, “[a]ny ballot not mailed or delivered as provided in this subsection may not be counted.” Likewise, Wis. Stat. § 6.84(2) underscores this point, providing that Wis. Stat. § 6.87(6) “shall be construed as mandatory.” The provision continues—“Ballots cast in contravention of the procedures specified in those provisions may not be counted. Ballots counted in contravention of the procedures specified in those provisions may not be included in the certified result of any election.” Wis. Stat. § 6.84(2) (emphasis added). 115. These were not the only Wisconsin election laws that the WEC violated in the 2020 33 general election. The WEC and local election officials also took it upon themselves to encourage voters to unlawfully declare themselves “indefinitely confined”—which under Wisconsin law allows the voter to avoid security measures like signature verification and photo ID requirements. 116. Specifically, registering to vote by absentee ballot requires photo identification, except for those who register as “indefinitely confined” or “hospitalized.” WISC. STAT. § 6.86(2)(a), (3)(a). Registering for indefinite confinement requires certifying confinement “because of age, physical illness or infirmity or [because the voter] is disabled for an indefinite period.” Id. § 6.86(2)(a). Should indefinite confinement cease, the voter must notify the county clerk, id., who must remove the voter from indefinite-confinement status. Id. § 6.86(2)(b). 117. Wisconsin election procedures for voting absentee based on indefinite confinement enable the voter to avoid the photo ID requirement and signature requirement. Id. § 6.86(1)(ag)/(3)(a)(2). 118. On March 25, 2020, in clear violation of Wisconsin law, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonnell and Milwaukee County Clerk George Christensen both issued guidance indicating that all voters should mark themselves as “indefinitely confined” because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 119. Believing this to be an attempt to circumvent Wisconsin’s strict voter ID laws, the Republican Party of Wisconsin petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court to intervene. On March 31, 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that the clerks’ “advice was legally incorrect” and potentially dangerous because “voters 34 may be misled to exercise their right to vote in ways that are inconsistent with WISC. STAT. § 6.86(2).” 120. On May 13, 2020, the Administrator of WEC issued a directive to the Wisconsin clerks prohibiting removal of voters from the registry for indefinite-confinement status if the voter is no longer “indefinitely confined.” 121. The WEC’s directive violated Wisconsin law. Specifically, WISC. STAT. § 6.86(2)(a) specifically provides that “any [indefinitely confined] elector [who] is no longer indefinitely confined … shall so notify the municipal clerk.” WISC. STAT. § 6.86(2)(b) further provides that the municipal clerk “shall remove the name of any other elector from the list upon request of the elector or upon receipt of reliable information that an elector no longer qualifies for the service.” 122. According to statistics kept by the WEC, nearly 216,000 voters said they were indefinitely confined in the 2020 election, nearly a fourfold increase from nearly 57,000 voters in 2016. In Dane and Milwaukee counties, more than 68,000 voters said they were indefinitely confined in 2020, a fourfold increase from the roughly 17,000 indefinitely confined voters in those counties in 2016. 123. Under Wisconsin law, voting by absentee ballot also requires voters to complete a certification, including their address, and have the envelope witnessed by an adult who also must sign and indicate their address on the envelope. See WISC. STAT. § 6.87. The sole remedy to cure an “improperly completed certificate or [ballot] with no certificate” is for “the clerk [to] return the ballot to the elector[.]” Id. § 6.87(9). “If a certificate is missing the address of a 35 witness, the ballot may not be counted.” Id. § 6.87(6d) (emphasis added). 124. However, in a training video issued April 1, 2020, the Administrator of the City of Milwaukee Elections Commission unilaterally declared that a “witness address may be written in red and that is because we were able to locate the witnesses’ address for the voter” to add an address missing from the certifications on absentee ballots. The Administrator’s instruction violated WISC. STAT. § 6.87(6d). The WEC issued similar guidance on October 19, 2020, in violation of this statute as well. 125. In the Wisconsin Trump Campaign Complaint, it is alleged, supported by the sworn affidavits of poll watchers, that canvas workers carried out this unlawful policy, and acting pursuant to this guidance, in Milwaukee used red-ink pens to alter the certificates on the absentee envelope and then cast and count the absentee ballot. These acts violated WISC. STAT. § 6.87(6d) (“If a certificate is missing the address of a witness, the ballot may not be counted”). See also WISC. STAT. § 6.87(9) (“If a municipal clerk receives an absentee ballot with an improperly completed certificate or with no certificate, the clerk may return the ballot to the elector . . . whenever time permits the elector to correct the defect and return the ballot within the period authorized.”). 126. Wisconsin’s legislature has not ratified these changes, and its election laws do not include a severability clause. 127. In addition, Ethan J. Pease, a box truck delivery driver subcontracted to the U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”) to deliver truckloads of mail-in ballots to the sorting center in Madison, WI, testified 36 that USPS employees were backdating ballots received after November 3, 2020. Decl. of Ethan J. Pease at ¶¶ 3-13. Further, Pease testified how a senior USPS employee told him on November 4, 2020 that “[a]n order came down from the Wisconsin/Illinois Chapter of the Postal Service that 100,000 ballots were missing” and how the USPS dispatched employees to “find[] . . . the ballots.” Id. ¶¶ 8-10. One hundred thousand ballots supposedly “found” after election day would far exceed former Vice President Biden margin of 20,565 votes over President Trump. COUNT I: ELECTORS CLAUSE 128. Plaintiff State repeats and re-alleges the allegations above, as if fully set forth herein. 129. The Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, of the Constitution makes clear that only the legislatures of the States are permitted to determine the rules for appointing presidential electors. The pertinent rules here are the state election statutes, specifically those relevant to the presidential election. 130. Non-legislative actors lack authority to amend or nullify election statutes. Bush II, 531 U.S. at 104 (quoted supra). 131. Under Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 833 n.4 (1985), conscious and express executive policies—even if unwritten—to nullify statutes or to abdicate statutory responsibilities are reviewable to the same extent as if the policies had been written or adopted. Thus, conscious and express actions by State or local election officials to nullify or ignore requirements of election statutes violate the Electors 37 Clause to the same extent as formal modifications by judicial officers or State executive officers. 132. The actions set out in Paragraphs 41-128 constitute non-legislative changes to State election law by executive-branch State election officials, or by judicial officials, in Defendant States Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, in violation of the Electors Clause. 133. Electors appointed to Electoral College in violation of the Electors Clause cannot cast constitutionally valid votes for the office of President. COUNT II: EQUAL PROTECTION 134. Plaintiff State repeats and re-alleges the allegations above, as if fully set forth herein. 135. The Equal Protection Clause prohibits the use of differential standards in the treatment and tabulation of ballots within a State. Bush II, 531 U.S. at 107. 136. The one-person, one-vote principle requires counting valid votes and not counting invalid votes. Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 554-55; Bush II, 531 U.S. at 103 (“the votes eligible for inclusion in the certification are the votes meeting the properly established legal requirements”). 137. The actions set out in Paragraphs 66-73 (Georgia), 80-93 (Michigan), 44-55 (Pennsylvania), and 106-24 (Wisconsin) created differential voting standards in Defendant States Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. 138. The actions set out in Paragraphs 66-73 (Georgia), 80-93 (Michigan), 44-55 (Pennsylvania), and 106-24 (Wisconsin) violated the one-person, one- 38 vote principle in Defendant States Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. 139. By the shared enterprise of the entire nation electing the President and Vice President, equal protection violations in one State can and do adversely affect and diminish the weight of votes cast in States that lawfully abide by the election structure set forth in the Constitution. Plaintiff State is therefore harmed by this unconstitutional conduct in violation of the Equal Protection or Due Process Clauses.
Don't know why there is a line through some of this text, including my own.
There are no lines on the online PDF I am copying.
30 percent increase over 2016, were returned in the November 3, 2020 election.7 105. Wisconsin statutes guard against fraud in absentee ballots: “[V]oting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place. The legislature finds that the privilege of voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse[.]” WISC. STAT. § 6.84(1). 106. In direct contravention of Wisconsin law, leading up to the 2020 general election, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (“WEC”) and other local officials unconstitutionally modified Wisconsin election laws—each time taking steps that weakened, or did away with, established security procedures put in place by the Wisconsin legislature to ensure absentee ballot integrity. 107. For example, the WEC undertook a campaign to position hundreds of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots—including the use of unmanned drop boxes. 8 108. The mayors of Wisconsin’s five largest cities—Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine, which all have Democrat majorities— joined in this effort, and together, developed a plan use purportedly “secure drop-boxes to facilitate return 7 Source: U.S. Elections Project, available at: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/WI.html. 8 Wisconsin Elections Commission Memoranda, To: All Wisconsin Election Officials, Aug. 19, 2020, available at: https://elections.wi.gov/sites/elections.wi.gov/files/2020- 08/Drop%20Box%20Final.pdf. at p. 3 of 4. 31 of absentee ballots.” Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan 2020, at 4 (June 15, 2020).9 109. It is alleged in an action recently filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin that over five hundred unmanned, illegal, absentee ballot drop boxes were used in the Presidential election in Wisconsin.10 110. However, the use of any drop box, manned or unmanned, is directly prohibited by Wisconsin statute. The Wisconsin legislature specifically described in the Election Code “Alternate absentee ballot site
There are no lines on the online PDF I am copying.
Preaching to the choir. You have conquered S.I. supremacy, nobody will argue. Mercor is pretty close however.
