In many states, Democrats can’t win unless they cheat, and that’s why they want easily-abused universal mail-in voting to become to the norm. To that end, Democrats sued Texas (yet again) over mail-in voting limitations, and once again their lawsuit against election security laws was denied by the Supreme Court.
An attempt to revive the Texas Democratic Party’s 2020 challenge to the state’s mail-in ballot restrictions was denied this week by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari from Joseph Cascino, Marie Sansing, and Brenda Li Garcia — residents of Texas who do not qualify for mail-in voting under current law. They filed their petition back in December.
In Texas anyone may vote early in person, but only those aged 65 or older, disabled, or out of their county of residence during the election may vote by mail.
The trio of petitioners argued that their right to vote is impinged by those limitations and that the 26th Amendment bars any such division of classification between voters.
The case was originally made in 2020 by the Texas Democratic Party, which secured a temporary victory in the trial court. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and the Supreme Court denied an appeal of that reversal.
Represented by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), Secretary of State Jane Nelson countered, “Some States endorse no-excuse absentee voting; others require in-person voting with narrow exceptions.”
“This diversity of approaches reflects a healthy federalism and accords with the uncontroversial notion that ‘government must play an active role in structuring elections.’”
The court did not issue any opinion or reasoning with the dismissal.
“Many states irresponsibly and unconstitutionally changed their voting policies prior to the 2020 election,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said of the dismissal. “Fortunately, we did things differently in Texas: we fought hard to uphold Texas law and defend the integrity of elections in this State.”
Texas did change its voting policy during the 2020 election — Gov. Greg Abbott used disaster powers to unilaterally extend early voting by a week — and while no ruling declared it unconstitutional, the extension was done without input from the Legislature, which was the very contention of Paxton’s 2020 election suit against other states who similarly changed voting laws through executive order.
Two state senators, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, then-Texas GOP Chair Allen West, and a bevy of then-current or former state representatives sued over the action. The Texas Supreme Court denied their motion for an emergency stay as Paxton was named as one of the attorneys for Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs.
Another argument that was denied back in 2020 was that the threat of contracting COVID-19 constituted a disability under the state Election Code; it was also ultimately rejected.
The practical onus for the original lawsuit was Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins’ unsolicited mailing of absentee ballot applications to all voters. That action was halted by the Texas Supreme Court in October 2020.
In Harris County, I’m sure that Lina Hidalgo is very disappointed that vote tabulation sites won’t be able to pull out boxes of miraculously overlooked mail-in ballots to alter tallies at 3 AM on November 5th…