sounds like the first cousin to voter caging. bottom line is treason weasels like to keep voter turnout low.
I think this is a strong case for the Dems because, frankly, the plaintiff is a white male military veteran. Not only does that subtly change the conversation outside of court, it changes the arguments in court. The plaintiff is arguing that a voter has a right to not vote as a method of free expression, like a vote of no confidence. Therefore, the State of Ohio is not only infringing voter rights (which have relatively limited protection under the Constitution in conservative courts as we painfully learned in Bush v. Gore) it also tags first amendment rights, which have strong protection.
And to say the state sends a notice, but only removes the voter if āthey fail to respond and fail to voteā in the elections that follow the notice. Is a load of crap. I purchased a home right before the last national elections. I went to the elections commissions office to make sure my registration was changed. I was told that it was unnecessary as I remained in the same district, etc. Well what happened, I received the new registration info via the mail, although to both my new and old address as well as to the home of my new neighbors. Was I registered at three addresses? Then when I arrived at the polling place was told that I would need to vote on a provisional ballot and had 72 hours to prove to the commission where I lived. How do you do that when the commission are the ones that screwed up to begin with, I asked. I then proceeded to show them my mailed registration card at my new address, well ok. But wait, a āpoll watcherā having had overheard part of the conversation objected. Now what? Required a provisional ballot and a special trip to the election commission so that I could talk to the very same people I had on my earlier trip and SURPRISE the same people from the polling place.
Shouldāt be too difficult to figure this one out. The SC splits 5/4 and lets them do it. Thereās no logic in it. Iāll bet that Veteran didnāt drive in Ohio either while he was deployed but I doubt they revoked his DL. Republicans need stuff like this. As the party loses appeal to younger generations they have to do what they can to hang on while in a minority. Gerrymandering, voter caging, purging, picture IDs and disparate distribution of polling stations. They have to do this or theyāre done. SCOTUSās ruling will be an in your face partisan act but they have to do it. So they will.
There is no such thing as a strong case for Democrats at the SC. Gorsuch is in town.
I didnāt get the impression from the article that the person heavily quoted in the article is the āplaintiffā. The defendant is clearly Secāy of State Husted, but the plaintiff appears to be the A. Phillip Randolph Institute.
Ohio, backed by 17 other mostly Republican states, said it is complying with federal law. The state, where Republicans have controlled the secretary of stateās office for all but four years since 1991,
Since when do states have anything to say about anything? Top of the ticket all that matters!
The problem, the state said, is that some people move without notifying the post office.
So? They do? How many, twelve? And something tells me people who donāt want their mail forwarded most likely donāt vote.
And then thereās the office space problem of having to keep all those rolodexes! JC, where do you want me to put them all!!
And so what if they do move without informing the Post office. Is there some sort of federal requirement to do so? FUCK NO.
They just donāt want democrats voting. Period.
This is the right to vote versus stateās rights. Seeing that SCOTUS felt fine in dismantling the Voting Rights Act and giving back power to Southern states to recreate unreasonable road blocks to voting, I cannot see how they view this any differently. Until Congress passes some kind of universal voting rights that the states cannot override, states will be able to continue to ātinkerā with who can vote and how they get to do it.
Easy thereā¦take a breath, have a bloody mary, itās early in the year yet. You say 5-4 slam dunk but Iām not so sure about Kennedy. Maybeā¦who knowsā¦heās fickleā¦but Iāll defer to someone who knows him better to asses that situation.
Heās not technically THE plaintiff, but he seems to be represented by the Institute which would appear to include a group of voters that have standing to sue because they have been impacted by the voter purge. The article quoted him extensively as I assume that his example (a veteran and now mayor of a town in OH who was affected by the purge) is being referenced in the briefs to position the first amendment violation claim. Itās this 1A claim that I think is the most interesting constitutional argument here as I think it can get Roberts and Kennedy.
I love your thoughts on Roberts here. Interesting. Heās a conservative bastard, but a smart bastard and he fascinates me. Sometimes. Other times he just pisses me off and Iād like to stare decisis his ass all over the floor. But, I do like it when conundrums come before him hoping he squirms at least a little.
āFirst Amendment rights are reserved for Christian conservatives that want to discriminate against LGBT people. They donāt apply to Democrats that want to exercise their rights by not voting.ā - Neil Gorsuch
AND a self described āred State Democratā, seems he is in the minority in both occupation-service and residency.
ā¦and said he mailed in absentee ballots in some years and not others. His local elections board said it has no record that Helle voted while he was away.
Thereās another thing that needs investigating. What happened to those ballots? Clearly he had a ballot in hand to fill out if he says he sent one in. If he was in the army (or other government service) at the time, a concerted effort is made to allow people overseas on behalf of our government to vote. Itās kind of a big deal. At what point did his ballot get ālostā? Iād guess right there at home. Another conspiracy?
I live in Ohio. When this story first came out, an investigation shows the purging is not practiced the same by all counties. Some did it rigorously, others not so much, some not at all. Some counties kept good records, some couldnāt find them or acknowledged they may have been thrown away. As one lawyer said āThe counties more likely to have problems? Smaller, rural ones, with more Republican votersā - now isnāt that a surprise. The Republican Secretary of State of course claims all counties follow the same uniform process - not. Itās clear form the people pushing for this they are doing it for political reasons as they are always Republican and cite voter fraud being the problem in the big cities/urban counties (which are never confirmed by investigations) but never question it occurring in rural counties.
Isnāt that why people like Helle go to war? To preserve our right to vote or not to vote?
Leaving to one side the fact that the Supreme Court has a majority consisting of GOP hacks, Ohio has a particularly weak case here.
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As a numerical matter, not voting is clearly consistent with continued residence at a given address, because half the electorate doesnāt habitually exercise its right to vote.
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There is no evidence of any, or any significant, instances of the two relevant kinds of voter fraud, i.e., (1) somebody voting twice, using both their current and former address; or (2) somebody voting twice, using their own identity and the identity of the person formerly resident at the address in question. Therefore there is no evidence that the legitimate objective of safeguarding and updating the voter rolls is promoted by deregistering people who havenāt voted in a while.
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There is clear evidence that the legitimate objective of promoting and safeguarding the right of citizens to exercise the right to vote is not served by deregistration, which has resulted in thousands of voters either being denied the right to vote or having significant obstacles put in their way.
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The perception that non-voting is indicative of potential voter fraud thatās so significant that it outweighs the wrongful disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters is therefore the product of irrationality or bad faith. Any action founded on this misperception is illegitimate.
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It follows that the āwarning letterā from the electoral authorities is writ in water, since it cannot be held against voters that they do not to take action in response to official demands that are illegitimate. (By contrast, if Bob X. Jones gets a letter saying that a Bob X. Jones has been recorded at voting at another address and must confirm that he is still resident at the address to safeguard his registration, then Bob might be expected to respond, since the official inquiry will be a legitimate one.)
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The foregoing logic is only underscored by the constitutional importance of the right to vote and the expression prohibition of its abridgment on the grounds of race, failure to pay taxes, etc.
Not a hard case to figure out, if legal analysis prevails.
And the whole āthey didnāt respond to the noticeā thing is almost precisely identical to caging. Imagine some other constitutional right where a county/city could send you a notice saying that you had to fill out a special form and mail it back at your own expense (and then make sure it had been received and processed) or else you were giving up that right.
Hmm. āIf we do not receive a notarized copy of this form in the next 7 days we will assume that you have waived your second amendment rightsāā¦