Discussion: First At TPM: Grimes Sues McConnell Over 'Despicable' Voter Mailers

Discussion for article #229596

That didn’t take long!

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GOOD!!!

(more descriptive?)

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But honestly, the damage is already done. Mitch is a low-life asshole.

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GOP whining over “frivolous lawsuits” in 3, 2, 1….

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This kind of undermining of democracy will continue until people start going to jail for long periods of time.

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“Oh. Exercise the right to vote?
We thought you said “exorcise” so we did what we thought would work best.”

  • McConnell camp
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He’s worried, despite the polls

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Grimes’ campaign better be screaming bloody murder about this nonstop until the last polls close there on Tuesday. The legal action won’t make any difference at this point.

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One thing filing the suit guarantees. Every local media outlet will run the story.

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That’s about all it does, and about all she can do. And then play it up as much as possible to election day.

The mailer in question is probably just this side of legal, with a wink and a nod at their obvious intentions. And its late enough in the game that McConnell really won’t face much heat for this…either her wins and doesn’t care for 6 years, assuming he runs again, or he loses and doesn’t care at all.

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Then again, it may be on the other side of legal.

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“…ELECTION VIOLATION NOTICE…”

According to conservatives, if we give men like this power in government, we have nothing to fear from government.

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According to conservatives white makes right.

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Grimes SUES McConnell over excessive neck waddle also, it’s just frickin’ gross.

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Straight out of the book of campaigning as written by Richard Nixon, edited by Jesse Helms and revised and updated by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.

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The lack of respect for not just the voters of Kentucky but the voting process doesn’t get more evident this. The only reason for doing something as blatantly illegal and unscrupulous as this is because you know you can’t win using the rules that are in place, rules that McConnell has had decades to change if he thought they were not fair.

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Yep. The lawsuit isn’t to obtain a legal remedy, it is to signal that the flyers are So-Awful-The-Court-Needs-To-Put-A-Stop-To-Them and to make sure that anyone receiving the flyers also hears that they are an attempt to trick voters and aren’t an official notice of any kind.

The court will probably decline to get involved, and won’t even rule on whether or not the flyers are legal, because there is no time for any remedy to have effect. And then Grimes comes back with an ad about how McConnell deliberately timed the mailing so that even the courts would be helpless to stop his “illegal” attempt sto scare voters away from the polls.

If there was enough time for courts to judge the flyers, I’m pretty sure they would find no violation. The nature of the deception is similar to about half the unsolicited mail I receive, and courts and the law give far more leeway to political speech than to commercial speech. I suspect that the term “election violation” has no legal definition in Kentucky, and the text of the mailer consistently places the voter in the role of victim, not perpetrator.

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Or until a majority of the voters wake up and get smart. Which Republicans bet will NEVER EVER happen.

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This is Republican SOP, claim something clearly false, the say “Oops, sorry”, knowing full well that the damage has been inflicted regardless of the admission. In this case, “oops, sorry”, knowing full well that the mailing was illegal, but happy that its impact will be a plus for the party and its candidate.

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