Mark Joseph Stern argues in Slate that one of Amy Coney Barrett’s first acts on the Supreme Court may be to disenfranchise voters whose late-arriving ballots will not count even if they are postmarked before Election Day. Voters in Wisconsin are already facing that reality in light of a 5-3 ruling the Roberts Court issued on Monday.
I don’t know what Barrett will do, but she won’t likely be a voice for representative democracy, and even if she’d joined the court in time for the Wisconsin case, she couldn’t have changed the outcome. For now, the Supreme Court has lurched so far to the right that the country will not recognize it, and soon the country will not recognize itself.
Fortunately, Joe Biden looks to have a healthy lead in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. He may be able to weather an open coup attempt by the U.S. Supreme Court. The country better hope so, because if Biden loses the election despite winning the popular vote by a wide margin, and it looks like the Court is responsible, that’s going to cause an open revolt.
It’s bad enough to have foreign actors like Russia fucking with the integrity of our elections, but our own high court is too much. And these shenanigans could have an impact even if they don’t hand Trump a second term. The Senate race in North Carolina could hinge on late-arriving ballots, for example, and that race could easily determine which party controls the Senate in the next Congress.
If you haven’t voted yet, I advise you to drop your ballot off in a designated dropbox or election office prior to Election Day. Either that, or take your chances with COVID-19 at your local precinct. It’s too late to rely on the mail.
It’s probably asking too much of 2020 for this election to go smoothly, but I hope most of the drama revolves around getting Trump packed and gone rather than fighting in the streets over another stolen election.
Roger Waters. Roger Stone singing with Nick Mason and David Gilmour would be a crime against humanity, although it would be about right for 2020.
Fixed, and so true.
North Carolina and Florida will be called on election night. If we win there we put this to bed. I wonder if the blue governed states can simply refuse to accept any ruling that they need to stop counting ballots. Ask Roberts to enforce it. What will happen then?
As I’m sure you’re aware, Justice Boofer in the WI case just blurted out the “conservative” plan: in any state that needs additional time to count the tsunami of mailed-in ballots, Trumpolini lawyers will file a case on election night and seek emergency stays through the night until they get up to Roberts’ Repubs, who will issue an injunction against addtional counting because, as Justice Boofer says, a “flip” from the leader on election night would be a sign of “fraud”. Trump immediately tweeted to the cult and the coaches of Team Conservative that only those votes counted on election night can be valid.
So that’s the plan, it’s out in the open now. Dems had best start talking about nothing else, and demand that the worthless media begin to do something about publicizing the Repub plan to steal the 2020 election.
Of course, all this would have been easier had Dems begun a rhetoric of democratic illegitimacy from the start of 2017, and certainly had they been calling Roberts’ Repubs an illegitimate majority since Gorsuch. But no. Have they even now begun to state that with yesterday’s confirmation of (literal) midnight justice Amy B, the Court’s “conservative” majority (and hence any rulings solely by that majority) are now illegitimate? What in God’s name are they waiting for?! The clock is one minute to midnight! Keeping the powder dry?!!
When Roberts’ Repubs issue an order that the count must stop on election night in PA, NC, WI, MI, GA and FL (which they absolutely will), Dem governors and secretaries of state need to be able to say the Court has no jurisdiction to stop their state’s vote counting process, that the order comes from a democratically illegitimate “conservative” majority, and that the state will not be complying with the order. That sets the stage for the the Repub legislatures of those states to send a Trump set of electors to DC, and the governors to send a set chosen by the voters, and Biden will be sworn in. If the new Congress is controlled by Dems in both chambers come Jan, then it will accept the proper electors and also refuse to acknowledge the illegitimate Court order. If Repubs retain the senate, then they will accept the Trump electors and we will have a constitutional stalemate, ala 1876, but with no comparable means of resolution. In that case, Trump will not vacate the WH and Biden will have to set up a shadow government. Whose orders the pentagon will then obey will be an open question.
There are very dark times ahead, and it looks increasingly likely that the stage is set for political violence. The nation is collapsing. It has no real basis to continue as a united entity in any event, thanks to the “conservative” movement.
What a revolting development! Who woulda thunk it that republican scum bags on the High Court are friendly to the Orange Cheeto. Oh my!!
Pennsylvania, still.
This is why I’ve said it hundreds of times over the past few months.
Vote early IN PERSON.
Relying on mail-in ballots to get to the Board of Elections, AND be counted, is too much to rely on with Donald Trump as President.
It is now critical to bring those vote by mail ballots to the vote hq. to be certain they are counted.