The rapid pace of court challenges to Georgia’s presidential election pushed ahead with more lawsuits filed Tuesday, even as judges continue to reject every one of them.
A Fulton County judge dismissed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking an audit of the state’s voter registration rolls and absentee ballot envelopes from the November election. It’s the fourth time in recent days courts have rejected pleas to overturn the election.
But as that suit failed, more arose.
The Texas attorney general sued Georgia to overturn election results here and in three other states where Democrat Joe Biden received the most votes. In addition, a former member of President Donald Trump’s legal team appealed a Monday ruling that dismissed her case in federal court.
Meanwhile, the president himself brought a separate lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court. Among other things, the lawsuit alleges tens of thousands of ineligible voters cast ballots in the November election.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said there is no evidence of voting fraud on a scale that would affect the outcome of the election, though his office is investigating more than 250 cases of suspected improprieties. U.S. Attorney General William Barr has said federal investigators also have found no evidence of widespread fraud.
So far, the lawsuits haven’t come close to overturning the presidential election.
A third count of election results completed Monday showed Biden defeated Trump by a margin of 11,779 votes out of some 5 million ballots cast.
The lawsuits have made claims about a wide variety of improprieties — from unqualified voters casting ballots to improper signature checks on absentee ballots to election software that switched votes from Trump to Biden.
In the latest lawsuit to get a hearing, Monroe County resident Paul Boland asserted that thousands of ballots were cast by people who don’t live in Georgia. He also claimed counties didn’t properly match signatures on absentee ballots, suggesting that local election officials allowed illegal votes to be cast.
Boland sought audits of the state’s voter registration rolls and absentee ballot envelopes. Barring that, he asked the court to order a new election.
In court Tuesday, attorneys for Biden electors and the state argued that there are plenty of legitimate reasons for Georgia residents to temporarily move out of state — to attend college, join the military, spend the winter elsewhere or care for a sick relative, for example. And they disputed that signature matching was done improperly.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Emily Richardson dismissed the case on numerous grounds. Among other things, she ruled Boland didn’t have standing to file a lawsuit, that Raffensperger and the State Election Board were not proper defendants in such litigation, and that the case was moot because the election has already been certified.
It was the latest defeat for such a lawsuit in recent days.
On Monday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and a Fulton County judge dismissed a case that claimed tens of thousands of ballots were either not counted or illegally cast. Powell appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday.
On Saturday, a federal appeals court dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by Atlanta attorney L. Lin Wood Jr.
But the litigation isn’t over.
In the the state of Texas lawsuit, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses Georgia election officials of illegally changing rules for voter signature verification and early opening of absentee ballot envelopes.
The case is a long shot, and it drew dismissive comments from the Georgia attorney general’s office.
“With all due respect, the Texas attorney general is constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia,” said Katie Byrd, a spokeswoman for Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.
U.S. Supreme Court denies Trump allies’ bid to overturn Pennsylvania election results
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a last-minute attempt by President Donald Trump’s allies to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania.
The court’s brief order provided no reasoning, nor did it note any dissenting votes. It was the first request to delay or overturn the results of the presidential election to reach the court.
Source: Washington Post
