Anyone else read about Republicans putting up their own drop off boxes for ballots in three counties in California? They were ordered to stop by a court, but said they will add more drop off boxes instead
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Widely discussed yesterday in this thread.
The part about the GOP ignoring a court order is news, though. Judges really don’t like that sort of nonsense…it will be interesting to see what happens next.
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Small problem with your theory, Hoss: a packed conservative SCOTUS may make getting that many terms a tad more difficult. We certainly won’t see any legislation about voting rights go unchallenged.
The Repugnicants will have only one tool in their toolbox so they will use it every chance they get.
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As long as they only have Republican ballots in them and they’re all disqualified it seems like a self-defeating move on their part.
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Apparently to make it easier for Republicans to vote. Many were outside gun shops.
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Thanks. I was mostly preoccupied yesterday with fall projects around my house. Guess I missed it.
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And, yet another example of the fruits of actual GOP court-packing:
Texas Ballot Box Restrictions Reinstated by Appeals Court
Laurel Brubaker Calkins
October 13, 2020, 12:41 AM EDT Updated on October 13, 2020, 1:21 AM EDT
Texas restrictions allowing only a single drop-box for mail-in ballots in each county were reinstated by a federal appeals court that said the governor’s concerns about ballot security outweigh voting-rights activists’ worries that millions of voters won’t be able to safely access the drop-box.
The federal appeals court in New Orleans late Monday sided with Republican Governor Greg Abbott who on Oct. 1 ordered the shuttering of multiple drop boxes where thousands of ballots in some of Texas’s largest counties were already collected.
Though a Republican bulwark in recent decades, Texas is a toss-up this year, and its populous urban areas lean Democratic. Harris County, the third-largest county in the nation by population and home to Houston, had for weeks advertised a dozen ballot drop-box sites to serve 2.4 million registered voters spread over almost 2,000 square miles.
The three-judge appellate panel – all appointed by President Donald Trump – accepted Abbott’s claim that multiple drop boxes create opportunities for voter fraud, although the state presented no evidence such fraud exists. The judges said no proof of actual voter fraud was necessary to justify the state’s protective measures.
The judges literally ruled based on evidence-free speculation, which is textbook unethical.
Guess who gets invited to Mary Lago next weekend?
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I don’t think there’s time for an en banc hearing to occur.
ETA: 12 boxes for a population of 2.4 million is 200,000 people/box. That still seems a little skinny to me.
Can’t it be fast-tracked if the full court agrees? Then again, I bet it’s a heavily GOP-leaning court so it might not make a difference, as would an appeal to SCOTUS. We’re seeing just a tiny preview of what awaits us if Barrett is confirmed. She may well throw the election to Trump even if Roberts votes otherwise and it’s unbelievably clear that Biden won. In which case, I don’t see how we avoid a literal civil war, with violence and bodies. Not calling for it, but predicting it. The “pro-life” party does nothing but destroy it, because it’s a fucking death cult and racketeering operation and literally nothing more.
As for the boxes, the numbers you gave are pretty much all the plaintiffs needed to present to make their case. With the USPS having delivery issues and clearly politicized and there being evidence of election mail tampering, and the pandemic scaring people from voting in person, there’s a clear need for lots more drop boxes, especially in large and/or populous counties.
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1 Corruptions 1:562, King Don version.
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The incentive for not just Trump but many Repubs to steal the election is massive. If Biden wins and Dems retake the senate, both of which are very likely now, here’s just a preview of what may well happen:
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Trump gets indicted, tried, convicted and imprisoned, if not at the federal then at the state or local level, his decades of massive fraud and tax cheating exposed, his wealth erased, his family ruined–with some possibly going to prison too.
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Many of his GOP enablers in congress and elsewhere may well suffer a similar fate, if they abused their power in office or otherwise engaged in fraud, with yet others being voted out of office or otherwise discredited.
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The era of GOP/conservative dominance is likely over, with Dems expanding the court to take back the majority, and the 2020 census, redistricting and anti-gerrymandering laws taking away much of the GOP’s structural advantages.
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Everything that conservative ideologues fear may well happen, from abortion access being uniformly available in all 50 states and covered by newly massively expanded universal public health insurance, to gay marriage being codified in law, to “amnesty” for millions of undocumented aliens, to taxes going up on the rich, to a green new deal, to massive new regulations, to Xtianity no longer being a favored religion, and so on.
They are TERRIFIED of all this, for personal, tribal and ideological reasons, and I believe have reached the point where they’re literally willing to do ANYTHING to prevent this. To me the real question isn’t whether they’ll try, but whether they’ll succeed. Biden and Dems WILL win the election, in an objective sense. But will their wins be allowed to take effect?
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FIFY
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The terminology about court-packing has been around since FDR’s presidency.
So far, they’re not denying it or defending it either. One of the resident TPM trolls is rather enjoying it too. I didn’t take the bait.
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It has to compete with the daily Trump Train Wreck.
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In my humble opinion, the flaw in this logic is that you think their side cares. The pols don’t care, and their constituents see this as a feature, not a bug. It’s all about owning the libs. Same with the virus, same with the USPS. If they’re judges can give them this election, they don’t need to care about the independent and unaffiliated voters either (my theory is that’s why we’re seeing so much out in the open ratfucking this fall such as the illegal ballot drop boxes in CA, they believe they’ve got this).
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Oh and by the way, which one’s Pink?
It’s not about their side, but ours, and giving folks yet more motivation to vote and not just whine, as well as undecideds and swing voters, by giving them yet more reasons to vote D, making it that much harder to steal, either procedurally or judicially.
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Good point. It’s just been heavily leaned on by Repubs in the past month or so.
You’re going to go far.
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