Battleground Democrat Win
In 4-4 tie the Supreme Court Allows Extension for Mail-In Ballots in Pennsylvania
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to disturb a ruling by Pennsylvania’s highest court that extended the battleground state’s deadline for accepting mail-in ballots, a win for Democrats that gives voters more time to navigate postal delays and avoid in-person voting.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberal members to leave intact a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision extending by three days the time for receipt of absentee ballots and allowing those with illegible postmarks to be counted if received by the deadline.
The court’s four more conservative justices would have granted requests by the state Republican Party and two leading GOP state senators to block the state court’s ruling.
“Huge win for Pennsylvania. Trump’s losing streak continues, this time in SCOTUS,” tweeted state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. “Now let’s have an election.”
The Battle
Republicans wanted votes to be received by election day, a silly requirement given postal delays, potentially on purpose.
The state extended the deadline by three days and last month, by a 4-3 vote, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered the three-day extension.
Correct Ruling
The state supreme court invoked its power under the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Free and Fair Election Clause to ensure that voters aren’t disenfranchised due to a public-health emergency it likened to a natural disaster.
That seems pretty clear, but the only realistic way Trump can win at the election is by vote theft and voter disenfranchisement.
Is there any doubt how Judge Amy Coney Barrett would have ruled?
Mish
The United States Constitution provides no right to vote. While seven of the 27 current amendments to the Constitution are concerned with expanding the franchise, US citizens do not have an affirmative right to cast a vote or have their vote counted — as demonstrated in 2000’s Bush v. Gore, which cheerfully noted that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States”.
Legislative attempts have been made to expand voting rights, most notably the 1965 Voting Rights Act, whose central enforcement mechanism was declared obsolete in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, with predictable consequences.
More recently the 2002 Help America Vote Act established national standards for voting machines and provisional balloting, but has at times been used towards other means.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) has introduced a bill in each of the last several Congresses proposing the following Right to Vote Amendment:
SECTION 1. Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.
SECTION 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.
The bill, like its predecessors, currently languishes in committee.
The conservative courts….which we have now BOTH at the state and federal level…..have become completely politicized…..and for some years now that has favored the Republicans.
No, I have no doubt Barrett would have voted to strike down this PA ruling. None whatsoever.
Republicans are playing a numbers game. They look at every activity in terms of the liklihood it results in more Republican or Democratic votes. There’s no legal principle involved. To pretend otherwise is crap. This kind of activity blows away an pretense of non-partisanship
I’m shocked at how much conservative judges are against voting. I can’t see it otherwise. Between limiting drop off boxes, mail in votes and shortened periods it makes one wonder what possible principle is being upheld
The principle is called voter suppression.
i’m well aware.
This just shows how politicized the Supreme Court has become. Why, during a pandemic would you not allow ballots that have been postmarked before the election to not be counted. This shows that the justices are no better than politicians and the only way to fix that is to even out the political hacks on the court. The Supreme court vote in such a politicized fashion is a clear justification for packing the court.
tRump’s and Republican strategy of vote suppression has been disgusting.
I just dropped my mail-in ballot today. Not that my vote counts that much in a big blue state. But this early voting is my way to fight back tRump’s dirty trick.
Given you’re not in a swing state, your vote might count for much, but at least it’s likely to be counted. In a swing state, in-person early voting stands a halfway decent chance of being counted. although only halfway depending on your precinct. As for main-in voting, partisan operatives literally salivate over the possibilities.
Not sure how ACB would have voted.
But I’m sure that when Dems push changes like this, the changes eventually come back to haunt them. Sometimes in the current cycle, sometimes in the next. At some point they’ll wish they hadn’t done this…
Damn them for wanting to allow people to vote.
You’re missing my point.
I’m agnostic towards this change — it doesn’t bother me if they use a postmark cutoff and wait a few days to count those ballots.
But every rule can be exploited, and the GOP is typically better at uncovering and executing on ways to exploit the rules.
Here in California it seems that vote harvesting is a democrat scheme.
It would be great if at some time in my lifetime a Democrat actually nominated and confirmed a “swing vote”. Same thing was said about Roberts – Barrett could easily be another swing vote. Any Democrat nominee is literally never a swing vote.
Why would you nominate somebody who’s wrong half the time? Ridiculous.
When the number of seats is raised to 13 or 19 in 2021 you’ll get your wish.