Texas AG asks SCOTUS to block Wisconsin's election results
MILWAUKEE - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block Wisconsin's election results -- wanting Wisconsin's Republican-controlled state legislature to pick its own electors for the Electoral College.
Paxton questioned the ballot drop boxes used in Wisconsin cities, such as Milwaukee, where people were able to drop off their absentee ballots.
Paxton said the ballot drop boxes break Wisconsin law, and that alternate absentee ballot sites -- like drop boxes -- should be staffed. He cites a number of statutes, including that absentee ballots need to be "mailed by the elector, or delivered in person to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (Photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images)
"What we're fighting for is this idea that the law actually matters," Paxton told FOX6. "If the legislature put something in place, whatever state that it is, it's up to us to follow those laws."
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul defends his state and drop boxes.
"They are absolutely lawful and they were used all throughout the state, and they were used effectively as a way to increase access to voting, but they were also very secure," Kaul said. "To the extent that people had challenges that they wanted to bring to those drop boxes, they were required to bring them when those decisions were made to put the drop boxes in place."
Absentee ballot drop box
A letter before the election from a lawyer representing Wisconsin's legislative Republican leaders said voters could use the drop boxes, and Milwaukee said they were always secure and under the watchful eye of 24/7 video surveillance.
Paxton also raised issues with Wisconsin clerks "curing" ballots -- that is, fixing missing witnesses' addresses on absentee ballot envelopes. It is a process the Wisconsin Elections Commission, including Republican commissioners, have suggested since 2016.
The suit cites the Wisconsin statute that declares, "If a certificate is missing the address of a witness, the ballot may not be counted."
Kaul raises issues with the timing of this suit.
"You don’t wait until after an election has happened, everybody has cast their ballot relying on the system that’s in place, and all of sudden once the votes are counted, try to change the rules because you don’t like the election outcome," Kaul explained to FOX6. "It had to be filed well before the election, to challenge the rules, but they waited more than month since Election Day has happened to finally file this suit, just days before the Electoral College is going to be meeting."
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"The truth is that there's nothing in the Constitution that says I'm too late," Paxton rebutted.
The Lone Star State's attorney general is also fighting election results in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- all states that certified Joe Biden as the winner.
The SCOTUSblog website called the lawsuit a "hail mary."
Paxton told FOX6 sometimes those passes are caught.
Kaul said it has a zero percent chance of succeeding, as much he says, as trying to change the results of the "Ice Bowl" that the Packers won in 1967 against the Dallas Cowboys.
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