17 States Join Texas In Election Lawsuit Against Pennsylvania

PENNSYLVANIA — Texas has been joined by 17 other states and President Donald Trump in its election lawsuit against Pennsylvania and other battleground states, as Republicans and the president continue efforts to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the final days before the Electoral College meets to vote.

The suit claims that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan compromised the election through last-minute changes to election law. Since then, 17 other states, including Missouri, have joined.

"Election integrity is central to our republic," Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said on Twitter. "And I will defend it at every turn."

RELATED: Texas Sues PA, Other Battleground States Over Election Results

The filing focuses on the security of mail-in voting, and it alleges that Pennsylvania and other states opened the election up to fraud by no longer requiring signature verification on mail-in ballots. Texas filed the original lawsuit against the battleground states on Tuesday.

"The Supreme Court has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States," Trump said on Twitter Thursday morning.

Officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election and that there is no evidence to indicate that mail-in voting is not secure. The claims made in this multi-state suit were raised repeatedly in cases dismissed in both federal and state court in Pennsylvania.

"I know we’ve grown numb over time to Trump’s corrosive conduct," Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. "But we shouldn’t ignore the fact that the sitting president is petitioning our nation’s highest court to throw out millions of legal votes of our fellow Americans in order to change the results of the election."

Due to what the GOP plaintiffs in the case describe as fraud in the four battleground states, they urge in the lawsuit that the U.S. Supreme Court throw out the election results in those states and instead allow the respective state legislatures to appoint the winner.

Republicans in the Pennsylvania state legislature also filed an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit on Thursday.

The four battleground states have until 3 p.m. Thursday to respond to the filing, the court said. It's not yet clear when the court will rule on the case.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a separate filing from U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly and former House candidate Sean Parnell that challenged the legality of Pennsylvania's Act 77, a bipartisan measure passed before the pandemic which allowed for "no excuse" mail-in voting.

States that joined Texas in the lawsuit include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.

The Electoral College meets for its vote Monday.

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