Missouri, Kansas sign onto lawsuit seeking to overturn presidential election
Missouri and Kansas have joined a Texas-led lawsuit seeking to overturn the presidential election results in four swing states that went for President-elect Joe Biden.
The lawsuit, which recycles baseless claims of illegal voting, asks the U.S. Supreme Court to hear arguments for overturning results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in an effort to swing the election to President Donald Trump, who refuses to concede.
The lawsuit stands virtually no chance of success. Earlier this week, the court refused to hear a similar case focused on Pennsylvania.
But the Texas action has won vocal support from Trump and numerous GOP officials in the Kansas City region.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced plans to join the case Tuesday evening. He organized an amicus brief of 17 red states in support of Texas’ lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday.
“The stakes of protecting our Constitution, defending our liberty and ensuring that all votes are counted fairly couldn’t be higher. With this brief, we are joining the fight,” Schmitt said Wednesday.
Schmitt’s Tuesday announcement came on “safe harbor day,” the date established by federal law as the deadline for all state-level election challenges to be completed.
Among the Republican attorneys general signing on to the brief was Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a potential contender for the state’s governorship in two years.
“Kansas ran its elections honestly and by the rules that are supposed to apply evenly to all of us. Texas asserts it can prove four states violated the U.S. Constitution in an election that affects all Americans, so Texas should be heard,” Schmidt said in a statement.
The decision to join the Texas case comes after both Schmidt and Schmitt signed onto another lawsuit focused on Pennsylvania’s mail ballots.
Both Kansas and Pennsylvania accepted mail ballots for three days following the Nov. 3 election. But Kansas’ deadline for late-arriving ballots was set by the Legislature, while Pennsylvania’s was set by a state court.
However, Biden would still easily win Pennsylvania by a bigger margin than Trump won it in 2016 even if the late-arriving ballots were disqualified.
The lawsuit has been roundly criticized by election law experts as a political effort rather than a serious legal challenge.
“It is signaling fidelity and allegiance to Trump to a Republican electorate that will be looking at whether or not to vote for these AGs to some office soon,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
That seems to be the case in Kansas. Schmidt is weighing a run for Kansas governor in 2022, according to two sources close to the attorney general. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly will be the only Democratic incumbent up for re-election that year in a state Biden lost. Trump’s support could heavily influence the GOP primary.
Former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, who is also contemplating a run, skirmished with Schmidt Wednesday afternoon when he called on him to join the Texas lawsuit.
“By an overwhelming margin, Kansas voters supported President Trump. A threat to election security anywhere is a threat to election security everywhere. To protect our voice, Kansas needs to be in this fight,” Colyer said on Twitter a few hours before Kansas’ involvement in the case was officially announced.
But based on the release from Schmidt’s office, his team was already working with the Missouri attorney general’s office on the filing as early as Tuesday.
Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat who will leave office in January, criticized Schmidt’s decision to join the suit
“There’s never a good time to do a bad thing,” Hensley said in a text message. “As he’s done so many times before, Derek Schmidt is wasting taxpayer dollars on a lawsuit that won’t see the light of day.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 4:57 PM.
