Justice Thomas filed a written dissent Feb. 22 against the Supreme Court’s decision to decline to hear the 2020 election cases.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, Feb. 22, by a 6-3 decision, declined to hear multiple lawsuits over the 2020 election controversy. In response, Justice Clarence Thomas filed a written dissenting opinion. He said the election system is flawed and the Supreme Court’s decision is not enough to restore voter confidence, while potentially having disastrous consequences for future U.S. elections.
In addition to Thomas, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also dissented from the dismissal of the case in question, with the other justices voting in favor.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas said, “An election system that lacks clear regulations can leave voters unclear about whose regulations to follow; worse, when there are multiple election regulations, a contender may declare himself the winner based on a different election system.”
Thus, he said, the Supreme Court’s decision to decline to hear the case was “inexplicable. Justice Thomas also said the Supreme Court should rule on whether state executive officers who are not legislative officials have the authority to make general election rules.
He wrote, “If state officials have the power they claim to have to change election laws, we need to clarify that; if they do not, we also need to stop that behavior before it has disastrous consequences.”
Thomas added, “Many of the cases on the 2020 election seem to have only cited improper changes to election rules, not fraud; but that observation is not reassuring enough. Simply arguing that this election lacked strong, corroborating evidence of election fraud is not enough to restore voter confidence in the election, and voters still need to be assured that fraud in the election was not missed.”
He also singled out Pennsylvania as an example of the unconstitutional problems in several states in the 2020 election.
“The U.S. Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how their states will conduct federal general elections, yet around the Time of the 2020 election, non-legislative officials in several states created their own regulations, with the result that the Supreme Court received an extraordinary number of petitions and emergency petitions challenging those decisions, of which the Pennsylvania case is a clear example.
“Changing general election rules during a general election is inherently bad, even more so when the people changing those rules are administrative officials who do not have the authority to do so.
“The Pennsylvania General Assembly’s rules clearly require that the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots be 8 p.m. on Election Day; but after Pennsylvania administrative officials expressed dissatisfaction with this, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered that the deadline be extended by three days and also ordered the state’s election officials to count ballots based on the new deadline, even if there was no evidence, such as a postmark, that those ballots were mailed on Election Day. This decision to change the rules appears to have affected only a small fraction of the ballots, so much so that it was not enough to affect the outcome of any federal election, but it may not be so simple in the future. In fact, a separate decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court may have changed the outcome of the general election.”
Thomas, an African-American justice nominated by President Bush Sr. had tweeted on Jan. 6, 2020, “Love the people who are driving the Make America Great Again movement!” And his wife had tweeted, “God bless everyone who stood up and everyone who prayed!”
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