On October 27, the Potter County, Texas Republican Party filed a federal lawsuit to require the state of Texas to count all November 2026 ballots by hand before certifying the results. Potter County Republican Party v Benge, n.d., 2:26cv-215. Here is the Complaint, which ways, among other things, that some vote-counting machines use parts manufactured in China.
Potter County has a population of 117,000 and includes the city of Amarillo. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee.
Of course they should count them by hand, or better yet count hands, but don’t count on a sane ruling from a kangaroo hack, despite being nominated by Trump.
While marginally better than Demon Rat nominees, his picks leave a lot to be desired:
1. They have to survive confirmation by wading through mostly hostile media, demon rats in congress, and lackluster white elephants in congress
2. To have the “credibility” to survive this process they must with rare exceptions rise through the ranks of a corrupt judicial cabal built on “precedent” – an unconstitutional game of telephone, that is repeatedly stacking misinterpretations on top of each other.
If you don’t accept that fundamentally flawed system as legitimate and demonstrate your fealty to it sufficiently, you don’t rise through those ranks high enough to be “credible”. That means you can’t have actual credibility if you want to be “ceedible” enough to be nominated and confirmed.
Which brings us to yet another reason Trump’s judicial picks have been lackluster – at the top compare his three nominees as justices with Alito and Thomas, and the same happens lower down.
Trump and those around him (at least those not actively undermining him and why he got the support he did) aren’t political insiders. They don’t know the people they might consider for nomination. They have to rely on some alleged experts opinions.
They made the mistake of trusting the allegedly conservative Federalist Society and not doing enough double checking or finding other, actually conservative advisors on the selections. That proved to be a very costly error.
To be fair to Trump, his nominees faced more scrutiny and backlash than the picks of other presidents, including Republicans, simply for being his nominees. It’s quite plausible that had he nominated Thomas or Alito or anyone like them they would have never been confirmed.
But to have not had that happen he would have had to be in general too much of a country club controlled opposition fake conservative rhino, so he would have never mobilized the support he needed in order to win at all.
If the judge does surprise and issue a sane ruling for a hand count, expect it to get enjoined and or overruled and eventually cancelled – quite likely at the hands of other Trump nominees higher up.
Excellent lawsuit.