Congressman Tom Rice, AG Alan Wilson do damage in signing on to quixotic lawsuit
Like migrating lemmings running into the sea, the five Republicans in South Carolina’s congressional delegation signed on to a legally and constitutionally ridiculous lawsuit seeking to disenfranchise presidential voters in four states.
As expected, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case, initiated by the attorney general of Texas. Alan Wilson was among 17 Republican attorneys general who joined the suit and the five congressmen were among more than 100 in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the effort to disenfranchise voters.
The particular suit is gone, but serious questions remain. Why did Tom Rice (Myrtle Beach), Joe Wilson (Lexington), Jeff Duncan (Laurens), William Timmons (Greenville) and Ralph Norman (Rock Hill) join the amicus brief? Why did Wilson thrust South Carolina voters into an assault on voting, and the people who operate various voting systems – in four states Donald Trump lost?
BASELESS CLAIMS
The suit claimed ”further lawlessness [in large cities with large minority populations]” would result and “drive honest voters from the polls: why should anyone vote if a few urban centers will manufacture an unlawful and insuperable vote margin?”
Texas AG Ken Paxton made the same baseless claims of Trump that the election was rigged. Tens of millions of people apparently believe, to some degree, that the only way Trump could lose was if Democratic voters cheated.
Many ‑ certainly not all ‑ Republicans have accepted baseless claims despite elected, conservative Republicans doing their jobs and assuring voters that the election was fair, the counts accurate, the recounts properly done.
Georgia is but one example of states where conservative Republicans, who supported Trump, confirm the fair and square election of Joe Biden. Georgia’s attorney general, Republican Christopher Carr, opposed the Texas suit, calling it an “attack on Georgia’s sovereignty.” Democratic AGs in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan also opposed the filing.
A PETULANT PRESIDENT
Even after the Electoral College officially declared Biden the next president, far too many elected Republicans continued to hang onto Trump’s bandwagon. “The Electoral College has spoken,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. He praised Trump’s accomplishments and congratulated Biden and Kamala Harris.
McConnell also urged Senate Republicans to stay away from attempts to challenge the results of the Electoral College. Established in the Constitution, the Electoral College seems outdated, but it is not the problem in 2020.
The problem is a president who cannot acknowledge losing by a substantial margin of both the popular and Electoral College votes, and some Republican members of Congress who support Trump’s unprecedented assault on truth and trust, on decency, on the rule of law.
An encouraging development is that more Republican senators are acknowledging the Biden-Harris victory. Some Republicans and Democrats have been working together on a coronavirus relief package.
PLAYING TO THE BASE
Rice and the other S.C. congressmen perhaps joined the amicus brief because it was so quixotic – sure to be rejected, so they can play to their perceived base. Rice won re-election by a huge margin (62%), although his Democratic opponent Melissa Watson received more than 138,000 votes in the 7th S.C. Congressional District.
Signing on to the brief is tantamount to saying overturn election results in states Republican did not win. Princeton University Professor Julian Zelizer points out “The campaign to overturn the outcome is a dangerous thing.”
Court after court, 86 judges and justices including Trump appointees, rejected various claims but not backed by evidence. Mistakes by voters, or election workers were not, and should not be, accepted as fraud. Even U.S. Attorney General William Barr found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Rice and other legislators, national and state, should work to strengthen access to the vote and to restore trust in fair elections.