Remember when Trump said that if we “get rid of ballots” there won’t be a transition of power? Looks like a few Republicans took that to heart. They’re not stopping with absentee ballots. They’re going after any ballots in Democratic-leaning areas.
A group of Republicans filed a petition earlier this week to halt “drive-through” voting in Harris County. The Texas Supreme Court has already held that drive-through voting is legal under Texas law. Moreover, county officials have invited voters to vote using this method. Tossing out those ballots the day before the election would create chaos: 120,000+ voters would have to return on Tuesday to recast their ballots.
For a deep dive into how bogus this lawsuit is, see this thread:
The petitioners are not the GOP party or any organized group. They are a few voters and people running for local office. The remedy they seek is extreme. Instead of merely ordering the method of voting to stop, they also want the votes cast in this manner to be set aside and not counted until a court can rule on the merits of the case. They want the votes not counted even though they were cast by voters in accordance with the rules in place at the time. Even if the court ends up not liking the rules, throwing out ballots is not the correct remedy.
The petition seems to me to be a way to manufacture chaos. All those people would (presumably) have to return to the polls to cancel their votes and vote again, thereby creating lines. Those who couldn’t make it to the polls that day would be denied (through no fault of theirs) the opportunity to vote early.
The Heger campaign and the Democratic Party have sought to intervene in the case, which means that they would be able to argue against the petitions. (My civil procedure professor in law school called “intervening” “crashing the party.” He compared a lawsuit to a party and talked about who gets to attend).
The real cause of the Twitter meltdown was that this judge is highly “partisan” so people are persuaded that he will rule for the plaintiffs. I’ll add that I strongly disapprove of the way this tweet is worded:
This is the tweet that caused the meltdown.
We don’t ordinarily refer to judges as “Democrats” or “Republicans.” Yes, there are extremists on the bench, and yes, we know who they are. Remember when Chief Justice Roberts pushed back against Trump for talking about “Obama” judges?
It’s possible that the district court will make a bad ruling. Judges often make bad decisions. If he does, however, the case will go up on appeal and end up at the Supreme Court. Even Kavanaugh said (in the Wisconsin case) that rules cannot be changed this close to an election. Certainly, rules shouldn’t be changed after voters have voted.
Either the litigation drags on, or a stupid lawsuit gets tossed out quickly.
The federal district court has set a hearing for Monday.
The takeaway from this petition for me is that the “strategy” for Republicans right now seems to be to try to throw out ballots, which tells you everything you need to know about where the Republicans are a few days before the 2020 election. It appears that they are very scared about how people are voting.
I agree. It’s the Strongman Con. They want to create chaos and instability, which is exactly what invalidating 120,000 ballots the day before the election and changing the rules the day before the election would do.
On the lighter side:
I certainly know that feeling.
