Ted Cruz Announces He's Agreed To Argue Key Election Case in Supreme Court
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will make a special appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court if the court agrees to hear a major Pennsylvania case concerning the 2020 election.
The case — a lawsuit arguing the Pennsylvania law that allowed mass mail-in ballots in the state was unconstitutional — “raises very serious issues,” Cruz said Monday night during an appearance on the Fox News show “Hannity.”
“It raises pure issues of law, and I believe the Supreme Court should choose to take the case. I think they should hear the appeal,” the senator said.
Cruz said he was asked to argue the case and agreed because he said the nation needs a resolution to the many lawsuits that have marked the month since the polls closed in the Nov. 3 general election.
“Particularly at a time when this country is so divided, when people are so angry, I think we need a sense of resolution, and we need the Supreme Court to step in and ensure that we’re following the Constitution and following the law,” he said.
“Right now, it is not healthy for our democracy, what we’re seeing, and in Pennsylvania, the problem was made worse because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is a partisan Democratic court that has issued multiple decisions that were just on their face contrary to the law,” the senator said. “That’s not how elections are supposed to work.”
Republican Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, GOP congressional candidate Sean Parnell and other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit arguing that Act 77, the state law that allowed mass mail-in ballots, was in violation of the state’s Constitution.
The lawsuit has the potential to swing the state to President Donald Trump, who appeared to carry the state based on in-person voting before Democrat Joe Biden took the lead on the strength of mail-in votes.
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Numerous affidavits testifying to various types of election fraud have been filed in courts in several swing states, including Pennsylvania. These affidavits constitute evidence of fraud, but they have yet to be proven in court. The legal action remains ongoing.
The Republicans’ lawsuit in Pennsylvania won one round in the state courts before it lost on appeal at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. After that defeat, the plaintiffs asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
Some state legislators have said the law as implemented was not the law they passed.
“We supported passage of Act 77 because we believed every Pennsylvanian should have more opportunities to participate in our democratic process,” Republican state Sen. Judy Ward and Republican state Rep. Paul Schemel said in a joint statement Monday.
“The legislation was carefully drafted to protect the integrity of our elections and included specific provisions relating to deadlines and signature verification,” they said, arguing that the state’s Supreme Court “overrule[d] the will of the legislature and governor by changing deadlines and eliminating provisions requiring signature verification, thereby applying much looser standards to mail-in ballots than are applied to ballots cast in person.”
Cruz said that as the clock ticks down on the time for any action pertaining to the election, the Supreme Court feels the “urgency” of the concerns that have been expressed.
“We will have a response and we could have a decision as early as tomorrow from the Supreme Court whether or not they will take the case,” he said.
The senator noted that the Supreme Court takes only about 1 percent of the cases referred to it and said some justices might not want to take the case “to protect their backsides, but I think it’s the wrong thing to do here.”
“When you look at a country where 39 percent of Americans right now believe this last election was rigged, that’s a real problem for confidence in the integrity of our electoral system. So, I’m hopeful the Supreme Court will step forward to its responsibility and resolve this case and resolve other cases as needed,” Cruz said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
