Seventeen states have now joined Texas in efforts to sue Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin over election fraud and irregularities. They are Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. This may not be the last time you see these states in alliance like this.

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FNC: “On Thursday, Missouri and five other states threw their support even further behind the Texas lawsuit aiming to prevent Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin’s electors from casting their electoral votes by asking the Supreme Court to let them join the Texas suit. ‘The intervening states do not doubt that plaintiff state of Texas will vigorously and effectively litigate this case, but the attorney general of each individual state is best situated to represent the interests of that state and its people,’ the six states said in their request.  Missouri on Wednesday led a group of 17 states in filing a brief that supported the Texas lawsuit, which alleges that the four key swing states that voted for Joe Biden violated the Constitution by having their judicial and executive branches make changes to their presidential elections rather than their legislatures…But the Thursday filing led by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, which also includes Arkansas, Utah, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, would make those states parties before the court in the case rather than just outside voices weighing in. President Trump’s campaign did the same on Wednesday.”

The Missouri brief states, “All the unconstitutional changes to election procedures identified in the Bill of Complaint have two common features: (1) They abrogated statutory safeguards against fraud that responsible observers have long recommended for voting by mail, and (2) they did so in a way that predictably conferred partisan advantage on one candidate in the presidential election…When non-legislative actors in other states encroach on the authority of the ‘Legislature thereof’ in that state to administer a presidential election, they threaten the liberty, not just of their own citizens, but of every citizen of the United States who casts a lawful ballot in that election – including the citizens of amici states.”

Not all agree. “This is political posturing through litigation. Not one of those attorneys general believes they are entitled to win,” said law professor Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a former clerk for the late and very conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. He continued: “As lawyers, that should stop them from signing onto such an action. But they are acting as politicians, not lawyers here – to the detriment of the rule of law.” Many libertarians concur.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said, “This set of lawsuits has met with rejection, so far as I know, from every single federal judge to have ruled on them. The Supreme Court will reject this one too, and the only real question is whether it will do so through orders declining even to hear the case (which is what I predict) or by taking up the case and promptly dismissing on the merits.”