The mere thought of four U.S. states’ electoral votes being invalidated should make any American’s blood boil.
Yet that’s exactly what a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought to do, the latest in a series of increasingly desperate legal efforts to keep President Donald Trump in office despite his election loss.
Flailing of this nature would be laughable if it weren’t an attempt to subvert American elections and assault democracy itself — and Nebraskans should be embarrassed that Attorney General Doug Peterson was one of 17 Republican attorneys general to sign an amicus brief supporting such a ridiculous claim.
And he’s not alone, with Gov. Pete Ricketts and Secretary of State Bob Evnen voicing support. Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith signed a separate amicus in the U.S. House, too.
The U.S. Supreme Court unsurprisingly dismissed the lawsuit Friday night. Good riddance.
Though the suit may have appeared to be about the election Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost, it’s about something far larger: We, the people, have the right to vote on the individuals who will represent us in elected office, a once-radical experiment now integral to American government.
This is not a matter of the courts deciding, as some attorneys general said Wednesday. The American people made their choice, and they selected Biden. Any action that attempts to reverse that outcome is simply and outrageously undemocratic.
Yet many elected Republican officials in Nebraska are on record backing this effort, which attempted to disenfranchise more than 10% of all Americans, some 39 million people in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — three of the 10 most populous states and 62 of the 538 electoral votes — for purely partisan political purposes.
Some things transcend the sorry state of our two-party system, including faith in the electoral system and the belief that every vote counts.
This effort struck at the very heart of both ideals.
Presidential elections are often mistakenly viewed as a single vote. Instead, they’re decentralized to where each state conducts its own election under federal guidelines.
It’s not the job of Texas, Nebraska or any other state to dictate to other states how to run an election. If the tables were turned and Nebraska’s electoral votes were being questioned, these same officials would certainly bristle — and justifiably so — against the same tyrannical government overreach they’re now trying to force onto other states.
Years after this long-shot lawsuit died with a whimper, history books will tell of a president who thought his desire for a second term superseded the United States’ proud tradition of democracy. Those who put party over country to enable this will be remembered for their efforts to cast aside votes in certain states to undo a free and fair election.
