To The Reader’s Forum:

On Friday, December 11th, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a motion by the attorney general of Texas — backed by 17 other Republican state attorneys general, 126 Republican congressional members, and Donald Trump — for permission to file a lawsuit to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Court’s order denying the motion reads as follows:

“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”

In other words, the Court dismissed the case because Texas had no recognizable legal right to bring it. Accordingly, Texas could not legitimately claim it had been legally wronged and suffered an injury-in-fact as a result. In legalese, Texas lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.

The Framers of our Constitution left the details of voting to the states. Article I, Section 4, of the Constitution says:

“The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations.”

The Tenth Amendment to our Constitution further tells us that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The term “respectfully” means separately or individually.

In other words, our Constitution makes it clear that each individual state has the exclusive authority to regulate elections held within its state, absent a federal law or constitutional provision to the contrary.

States have no constitutional or legal right to intervene as overseers in other states’ election processes. Each individual state’s election boards count ballots, determine their accuracy, and certify the results, not the courts.

As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court emphatically stated on Dec. 8, in refusing a request by Pennsylvania Republicans to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory in the state, “Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”

Maurice F. Baggiano, J.D.,

Jamestown