Discussion for article #225798
In other words, we need to adhere to the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. It seems the exact opposite was recently argued by a certain group of people involving another law. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
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"And obviously the runoff and the first primary aren't on the same date so the statute doesn't apply and to try to squish these crossover votes, in fact, is depriving people of their constitutional right to vote."
He means “squash” (or better, “quash”) rather than “squish”, but isn’t depriving people of their constitutional right to vote the entire purpose behind True the Vote?
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Well, these are Republicans, after all…
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Minor point but thank you for rising to the defense of the beleaguered but very useful word “quash.” It upsets me to hear that an investigation or whatever was “squashed.” Quash means to end, suppress, smother in crib, that sort of thing. Squash is what happens when you accidentally step on a grape. The language is richer when people are careful to maintain these distinctions and not let good words go extinct because people are sloppy thank you very much end of rant.
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I don’t even see how it is constitutional to have a state predetermine the vote of the electorate. As long as they only vote once per election day people have a right to change their minds or even nullify. If the state can impeded the voter then the voter can nullify the election.
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In line with another ongoing discussion of linguistic pragmatics, it is also what happens when you intentionally step on a grape.
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So True the vote is an “anti-voter fraud group.” I suspect that’s truer than the writer meant–that it is an anti-voter group engaging in fraud. But I bet the writer meant an anti voter-fraud group, or maybe an anti-voter-fraud group.
Punctuation is still important.
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“Quash” is one of my favorite words, although I’ve only seen it used to describe getting a subpoena overturned.
Using “squash” for “quash” is just another example of linguistic laziness–like “run a gauntlet” for “run a gantlet.” (A gauntlet is a heavy glove worn by horsemen; a gantlet was two lines of warriors holding clubs, who would try to beat down prisoners forced to run between them.)
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Let’s stop talking about McDaniel’s “Election Challenge” until he actually produces one, okay?
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THANK YOU for including the statute!!! I can’t count how many times an article like this, even in TPM, ends without providing the statute. For example, how many TPM articles have appeared since the primary without the statute? I am not picking on TPM, every outlet does it.
An argument does exist that “on the same day” means you can only vote in one party per primary cycle. It seems pretty weak. It could have easily have read “in one election process” (per Mr. Pildes). More to the point, primaries needing an additional day, i.e., runoff, were readily foreseeable by the drafter of the legislation. Anybody willing to read through the legislative history?
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Then there’s always the old standard “hard road to hoe,” instead of “hard ROW to hoe.” Of course, since most people these days don’t hoe anything, that one is kind of understandable.
There’s another one I’ve noticed more recently: “taken back” (“I was taken back when she said that”) instead of “taken aback.”
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My bias is confirmed daily, with each new story about these losers. It’s a political micro economy of fundraising for the sake of raising funds. The lawyers, lobbyists, hacks, flacks, insulting consultants, shock jocks, bloggers and dumb Fox keep getting paid either way, until the nonresident billionaires are either bled dry or no longer entertained.
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I might add–for the sake of warding off any further confusion about this important matter–that the term “squash” also applies to substances other than grapes. Thank you.
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OH…and right after he wins his election challenge, McDaniels will go back to his mission as a gawwd’ fearin’ Murrikan’ patriot to plan, with his neo-Confederate southern brethren, how they can continue the fight to defeat the United States of Northern Aggression. (*Amazing that these Rightie loons who still hump the Stars & Bars will go to any length to get on the gravy train to D.C. to join the Northern Aggressors, huh?)
After that, his future plans are to spend some time trying to put his elbow in his ear.
McDaniels = Mississippi derping!
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Chris McDaniel: How Mississipian GOPers spell Al Gore
McDaniel must know that the challenge is rubbish. He isn’t doing it to win the primary, he is doing it so that he has a pretext to run as a spoiler. The race baiting aspect of his challenge sets him up nicely with his pointy-hatted robe wearing supporters.
The idea that a court would overturn the primary result was always far-fetched. But the idea that they are going to overturn the election when the plain meaning of the act says the votes are legal is ridiculous. It would have been obvious at the time the law was drafted that stopping a person from voting twice on the same day is much easier to enforce than stopping them voting in two elections on different days.
The State AG opinion probably isn’t worth any more than used toilet paper either. Since its a political position, the ruling was almost certainly made for a partisan reason in a previous election. The courts do not defer to opinions of elected politicians on election law.
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He can’t run as a spoiler—Mississippi has a sore-loser law.
Hence his fight against the process that left him so butt-hurt.
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That one may be a lost cause. I used “gantlet” once in an article and this idiot writer from another publication told me I’d made a typo. I said I hadn’t and she said I had and I got all thunderbolty like Zeus and said I hadn’t and she said she guessed I had issues.
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Good see Mississippi still values the time of its citizens as being worth at least a dollar a day ($200 or six months.) I think whenever the U.S. becomes involved in Nation Building, it is at risk of overreaching its capability. Is Mississippi even a good candidate for nation building?