Trump brief to Supreme Court misleads on absentee voting

As President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to join an unprecedented election lawsuit by a group of GOP states, the arguments presented on behalf of the President again pressed a series of false claims about the election process, in a continued attack on absentee by mail voting.

“Our County is deeply divided in ways that arguably has not been seen since the election of 1860,” the brief begins, invoking the time just before the Civil War.

In a 39 page submission to the Justices, the President’s Supreme Court submission presented no specific evidence, and even included a glaring fact error in the second paragraph, claiming Mr. Trump was the first to lose the White House after winning both Ohio and Florida.

That happened in 1960 to Richard Nixon.

The President’s brief also made a series of baseless claims about the absentee voting process.

“In all cases, absentee ballots were mailed to people without even a perfunctory attempt to verify the recipient’s identity or eligibility to vote,” the President’s brief said, in a completely false statement, ignoring a series of requirements by states, often including two separate signature checks.

For example, to get a mail ballot in Pennsylvania, the GOP legislature in 2019 set up a system where voters had to apply for the ballot and provide the following information: Name, address, Date of Birth, Driver’s License number, last four of their Social Security number, and then a signature.

The President’s brief also criticized the state of Georgia for allowing elections officials to process mail ballots before Election Day - something which is routinely done in states like Ohio, and Florida, where the President won, and where voting by mail is routine.

The effort by Texas - joined by 17 other GOP states - to sue other states directly over the elections, struck some Republicans as odd.

36 days after the elections, President Trump spent much of Wednesday lobbing verbal shots on Twitter.

“How can a Country be run like this?” Mr. Trump tweeted.

Twitter quickly red-flagged that, and a number of other tweets by the President about the elections.

“This claim about election fraud is disputed,” the Twitter warning read, as the President and his GOP allies continue to lose various cases in court.

The lawyer who wrote the brief for the President had gained notoriety earlier this year by claiming that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was not eligible to be Vice President.