The Electoral College on Monday did what a strong majority of Americans did weeks ago. The electors chose Democrat Joe Biden as this nation’s next president.
That formal act is supposed to be the end of the argument. It won’t be.
The vote came as the sitting president, Repu-blican Donald Trump, said he will continue to challenge the 2020 election’s outcome.
Never mind the Electoral College vote.
Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to hear that ridiculous lawsuit brought by the state of Texas seeking to overturn the elections in four battleground states (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin).
That failed Texas lawsuit, just one of dozens brought by Trump or his backers in state and federal courts, was what Trump had called “the big one” that would put him back in the presidency next year.
It won’t.
Texas and its supporters wanted the court to set aside 62 Electoral College votes from those four borderline states that were cast for Biden, thus giving Trump more electoral votes.
Seven of nine Supreme Court justices, including the three justices Trump himself put on the nation’s high court, threw the case out without hearing arguments.
The other two justices would have heard arguments but indicated they would not have agreed to set aside those state’s electoral votes.
Texas did not demonstrate “a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the court said in a brief order.
More simply put, the state famous for its “don’t mess with Texas” attitude was way out of bounds when it tried to mess with other states’ elections.
Out of bounds, too, were all those attorneys general and U.S. representatives who decided to back Texas’ play on Trump’s behalf.
Count Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and two of this state’s four U.S. representatives among them.
Rutledge was one of 17 Republican state attorneys general to join the lawsuit. U.S. Reps. Rick Crawford of Jonesboro and Bruce Westerman of Hot Springs, from Arkansas’ 1st and 4th Districts, respectively, joined more than 120 other House Republicans in submitting amicus briefs in the case.
To their credit, the other two Arkansas congressmen — the 2nd District’s French Hill of Little Rock and 3rd District’s Steve Womack of Rogers — stayed out of the Texas lawsuit. Both are Republicans.
Hill cited states’ rights and called participation a “dangerous precedent” to allow one state to ask federal courts to overturn the results of another state.
Womack similarly cited states’ rights and separation of powers as his reasons for not signing onto the lawsuit. Intervention of one state in the elections of another, he maintained, is unconstitutional.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the state’s Republican governor, played no role in promoting the Texas lawsuit, he said.
He, in fact, was among the early Republicans to congratulate President-elect Biden after the election.
Noting that he was not consulted by Rutledge before she joined the Texas lawsuit on Arkansas’ behalf, the governor said he had not been asked to sign onto any brief and would not have.
Hutchinson, Hill and Womack were all on the right side of the argument.
The other three Republicans — Rutledge, Crawford and Westerman — each opted to stand up for Trump rather than respect the outcome of the 2020 election, an act that the four defendant states in the Texas lawsuit called seditious.
The only point in their defense is that a majority of Arkansas voters supported Trump’s re-election.
Indeed, all six of Arkansas’ winner-take-all electoral votes were appropriately cast on Monday for Trump, who soundly won the popular vote here.
But voting for Trump’s re-election doesn’t mean all those Arkansas voters also support Trump’s vain and undemocratic quest to overturn the outcome of other states’ elections or alter the Electoral College vote.
Arkansas wouldn’t want Texas or any other state coming after the way Arkansas conducts its elections. Why should any of our officials support trying to disenfranchise other states’ voters?
President Trump has yet to provide any evidence of widespread fraud or abuse in any state’s elections. He’s been chasing a dangerous fantasy through the courts, all the while disrupting our democracy and making the transfer of power to the Biden administration more difficult.
Common sense — and that clear Electoral College vote — argue that the election is really over.
While some Arkansans may buy in to Trump’s continuing fantasies, not all will. Not Democrats. Not most Independents. Not even all Republicans.
