I write with extreme disappointment in Bobby Levy’s decision to sign a letter to Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, a letter which urges her to join in the state of Texas’ lawsuit against four battleground states.

Texas’ lawsuit asks the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent state electors from casting votes for Joe Biden in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, and instead completely revise the election process and give the states’ legislatures the power to cast the electors’ votes for president.

If successful, the lawsuit would have required the Supreme Court to ignore millions of votes in four states.

I believe that the filing of the lawsuit, and Levy’s participation in it, is a very grave threat to our democracy. Here’s why.

This lawsuit was frivolous which means, in nonlegal language, it was a waste of the Supreme Court’s time. In order to win a lawsuit in the Supreme Court and indeed at any level, the person bringing the lawsuit must state a legal claim based on our state or federal laws and prove it with facts supporting the claim.

Regarding the facts, Texas’ brief made claims of fraud which had no verifiable facts to support them. (We assume Levy read the brief before she signed onto it.). For example, the brief listed an example of fraud involving a signature verification machine in Las Vegas. However, a judge found last week that 70% of the signatures, which the machine scanned, were returned to election workers for human verification.

This lawsuit makes other unproved allegations of corruption and electoral fraud, such as unsubstantiated assertions of illegal voting, votes being switched by computer software and rampant fraud. These claims of fraud, circulated widely on social media, have been vigorously litigated in other lawsuits, resulting in more than 50 losses by Trump in state and federal courts at both the trial and appellate levels.

In one case that reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, a judge which Trump had nominated rejected his lawsuit, stating “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof,” Judge Stephanos Bibas said.

Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, said U.S. attorneys and agents investigating specific complaints “have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”

Regarding the legal basis of this Texas lawsuit, the essence of Texas’ claim is the Supreme Court should allow Texas to interfere with four states’ systems of elections. The rights of states to make their own laws and to govern within their borders without interference from the federal government is a principle, which most Republicans hold sacred. In fact, the Trump administration has consistently refused to implement a national mask mandate or other national COVID measures, leaving each state to determine the correct course of action for itself.

But now the administration is switching gears and asking the Supreme Court to interfere in the elections of four states. This appears, at best, inconsistent and hypocritical.

At any rate, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled Texas has no standing to complain about the election laws and procedures of the four defendant states. And if a plaintiff has no standing, it cannot proceed with its case. So the case was dismissed. This is a result which was expected by most legal scholars, most lawyers and just about everyone else except the Trump base.

Although the end result of the Texas case was summary dismissal, there has been damaging fallout in its wake.

Texas and the all of the Republicans joining in their lawsuit sent a message to this country and to all of the world that in the United States, if you do not like the results of an election, you can challenge the will of the majority.

Texas and all of the Republicans joining in their lawsuit have convinced millions and millions of voters, without a shred of provable evidence, that our voting systems are fraudulent and rigged.

Texas and all of the Republicans joining in their lawsuit have perpetuated the myth that Trump has won this election, that the Democrats have stolen the election from them, resulting in threats of violence against election officials and elected officials who are doing their jobs to ensure that the election is fair, that every vote counts and that the will of the American people is respected.

I ask you, is this the kind of chaos you would like to see after every election?

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