'Embarrassing for Texas': Wisconsin AG slams Texas for suing over Wisconsin election
TEXAS/WISCONSIN (CBS 58) -- The Texas Attorney General wants to take Wisconsin and three other battleground states to the Supreme Court.
Texas wants the justices to declare the presidential election invalid and order the legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania to decide who won.
Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct & binds our citizenry & the States in this Union together.
— Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) December 8, 2020
Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania & Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election.https://t.co/xRB13FMIdU
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who would have to defend the state if the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case, said Texas has a better chance of overturning the Packers famous 1967 victory in the "Ice Bowl" than they do of overturning the state's election.
“This suit really is embarrassing for Texas," Kaul said. "It’s a waste of tax dollars, and I feel sorry for Texas residents that their tax dollars are being spent on this.”
Kaul said this lawsuit is similar to the multiple lawsuits the Trump campaign has filed over the Wisconsin election, but contains more conspiracy theories.
“You don’t expect to see these kinds of baseless allegations from other state’s AGs, but unfortunately that’s what we have here,” Kaul said.
La Crosse County GOP Chair Bill Feehan wants to join the effort. He's filed a suit in federal court against Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission, alleging fraud.
In a hearing Tuesday morning, Dec. 8, Feehan's attorney asked the court to issue a ruling Wednesday, Dec. 9.
Marquette elections law professor Atiba Ellis said one state suing another is one of few cases that can go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, but they are unlikely to take it because these issues have already been ruled on in lower courts.
“The courts may well say, no, we’ve already heard this," Eliis said. "There have been other rulings on this. We don’t need to run the game again.”
As the Trump campaign has done, the Texas lawsuit alleges the election was run so poorly, the state's Republican-controlled legislature should decide the fate of Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes. The lawsuit specifically took issue with voters referring to themselves as "indefinitely confined," which has not been used to describe people quarantining for a pandemic in past elections. It also took issue with ballot drop boxes, and local election officials adding information to ballots like minor address changes, which has been done in several past elections.
Ellis said election officials across Wisconsin let everyone know how they would be conducting the election in advance, so if people took issue with it, they should have tried to change the process before votes were cast.
“To wait until a result they don’t like and then argue that it’s illegal after the fact is unfair to Wisconsin’s voters,” Ellis said.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and his campaign's lawyers will return to courtrooms again on Thursday and Friday in other attempts to overturn Joe Biden's win in Wisconsin.