A majority of the judges agreed in October that the current nine-member elections and ethics board was unconstitutional because the process of making appointments prevented Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper from controlling an executive agency.
Simply more evidence of Republican trickery and what Mr. Pierce likes to call “ratfkcing.” Read Paul Krugman’s column today for more on the GOP’s war on the Constitution. As he concludes, we are one election away from becoming Hungary.
So the republicans, who are the subjects of supoenas, are trying to run out the clock by insisting that the election be certified before they respond. How interesting.
They need to delay because we had a few inches of snow!
Harris said he would support a new election if it’s proved that fraud changed the outcome.
Hey, dude, it was fraud on the part of your campaign team. You think that entitles you to a do-over?
Note the “proved” part. To do that at the very least you would need to contact every single person who requested an absentee ballot, haul them into court and get sworn testimony. Then you would have to violate the privacy of the ballot box by asking each and every one of them which way they voted.
Not exactly, my understanding is you’d mostly just have to ask them if they voted, which is not private info. Then you just cross-reference with the list of recorded returned absentee ballots. Once you get to over a 1000 missing returned ballots you have your probable cause proof.
A couple of things: first, because at least some of the collected ballots were reportedly not sealed, all illegally-collected ballots have the potential to contribute to the election fraud. It’s not just a matter of delivering the ones you like and discarding the ones you don’t.
Second, (as far as I can parse their bullcrap) the republicans are asking for proof that the fraud did change the outcome of the election, not merely that it could have. You’re right, if all they want is the possibility, then just finding enough illegally-collected ballots (including reports of such collection) to change the election would do it (that would be 456 ballots, I think). But my impression is that they want proof that the outcome would have been changed – which is pretty much impossible to get unless people disclose how they voted. (Which is why the republicans want that standard.)
There are varying standards of legal proof, I’m choosing the one necessary for a grand jury to return an indictment.
Yes, there were also altered ballots, but I think the ratio was about 3-1 destroyed ballots to altered, so I’m suggesting going after the non-privacy-invading destroyed ballots for a probable cause standard of proof. However I’m not aware of any law or guidelines for standard of proof applying to the NC board of elections, so this is probably most guided by the US House saying we ain’t gonna sit that cheater, so the NC GOP has to go for the do-over.