Below is my column in the Hill on today’s argument in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson and United States v. Texas on the request for an emergency injunction in Texas to block the state’s controversial abortion law. The merits of the law are not at issue in the questions presented today but the decision to push for an injunction comes with some risks for the Biden Administration. [Update: Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested in oral argument that he might be open to changing existing precedent to allow for injunctions of court clerks to block the Texas law].
Here is the column:
“Is there a way to win?” Those words from actress Jane Greer, the ultimate femme fatale in the 1947 film-noir classic, “Out of the Past,” could well have been written above the caption of the Biden administration’s brief this week before the Supreme Court, seeking to enjoin the Texas abortion law. The administration is returning to ask for an injunction from a court that just voted against such an injunction as legally unfounded.
Asking the same justices the same question would not seem a way to win. Indeed, as actor Robert Mitchum dryly responded to Greer in the film, this may not be the way to win, but at least “there’s a way to lose more slowly.”
For pro-choice advocates, the pending case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, out of Mississippi, is a more ominous threat to abortion rights with a newly constituted conservative majority on the court — including Justice Amy Coney Barrett who, as an academic before joining the court, was highly critical of Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs case is due to be argued in December.
However, the Court has been thrown early into the arena by the Biden administration’s emergency demand to seek an injunction of the Texas law, which imposes an even more stringent limit on abortion than the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs.
As previously discussed, the attempted intervention of the Justice Department in the Texas case was not just legally unnecessary but unwise. I share the view that this law is unconstitutional, and I have long favored more liberal standing rules, but the Biden administration is risking a great deal to enjoin a law that was already declared unconstitutional in Texas. Indeed, the rushed hearing this week could lock in a majority on language impacting the much more important appeal in Dobbs.
The government’s lawsuit raises questions of both whether it can sue and whether a court can remedy constitutional violations at this time. The Texas brief attacks the very claim of an injury with the words “The federal government cannot get an abortion.” By intervening as an actual party, instead of in its traditional role as an amicus or “friend of the court,” the Biden administration unwisely introduced an additional legal controversy into the case. It is claiming the right to challenge any state law that is considered unconstitutional, and to enjoin any state judge or court from considering such cases. The Supreme Court has long been hostile to federal courts enjoining state courts.
To win, the Biden administration must get at least one of five justices to effectively reverse a position taken just weeks ago when they rejected the same injunction in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson. The problem is that, unlike other state limitations on abortion, the Texas law is directed at allowing private citizens to enforce a prohibition after six weeks of pregnancy. That prohibition is clearly unconstitutional under current Supreme Court precedent covering the “pre-viability” period of pregnancies. However, since it creates authority for private citizens to sue, there is no agency or government officers who enforce the rule. So, in the earlier case, pro-choice litigants randomly selected a judge and a clerk to enjoin from allowing such lawsuits.
The practical and procedural problems are obvious. First, you would have to enjoin every judge and clerk to stop this law from being used. Second, this is a not-so-subtle evasion of a long-standing rule that the court enjoins people, not laws. That is why five justices declined to issue an injunction despite acknowledging that “The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue.” However, the justices ruled that “their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden.”
Even Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted for an injunction with his three liberal colleagues, admitted that it is unclear “whether, under existing precedent, this Court can issue an injunction against state judges asked to decide a lawsuit under Texas’s law.”
Nevertheless, the Biden administration again demanded the same injunction after losing before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Moreover, unlike the first attempt, a federal court has already declared the law to be unconstitutional. There is no court that has declared the law enforceable. In addition, the Fifth Circuit has fast tracked arguments on the merits and will hear the case in December.
While perhaps politically popular, the Biden administration’s move could create even more restrictive precedent on its ability to seek such relief. Worse yet, the procedural rule could have blowback on that big case pending on the docket: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The majority could note that there is an unlikelihood to prevail on the merits because the law contains an affirmative defense that it cannot be used to impose “an undue burden on a woman or group of women.” That is the current test under the controlling case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). (Opponents however argue this reference is part of a section on “limitations” on the use of the defense).
The Biden administration seems to overcome the obvious with the hyperbolic in making the same demand, in hopes of a different outcome: “If Texas is right, no decision of this court is safe.” The problem is that the Texas law was already declared unconstitutional and any person actually subject to its application could quickly secure an injunction. That is usually how such cases come before the court — a party with a cognizable injury seeks judicial relief. It can then move quickly through the system with an injunction in place.
With others challenging this law with direct injuries, there is even less reason for the Biden administration to gamble on this filing. Likewise, there is a second case brought by Whole Woman’s Health that is consolidated in the appeal. That is the same group that was just before the court in September and lost on the same demand.
Playing roulette with reproductive rights may pay off for the administration. Or it might not. But forcing this issue at this stage, and just weeks after the prior rejection in Jackson, does not seem to be “a way to win.” Again, this does not take away from the legitimate concerns of pro-choice advocates: Dobbs may indeed curtail or even set aside Roe v. Wade. Yet, even if there is no way to win entirely, there could be a way to lose more slowly.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
So basically the Fed gov -executive- wants to stop a state law from being applied…..in order to protect supreme court precedent. Even though soon there will be the proper parties and the “rules” will work out normally. And the merits judged. Is that the gist?
If so, that’s a problem for all state’s legislation not just supreme court precedent. But I recall VP Harris when she was running wanted a “czar” unit in her possible administration to do just that……pass on all state abortion laws before they take affect….to ensure they are constitutional.
The problem with this is the parade of horribles plus it usurpes the Supreme Court who may sometime from time to time abandoned their own precedents. Oh like they should in Jacobson….where with such medical advances and ability to super compute maybe we shouldnt have a 1905 “precedent” that causes too many people harm and emotional distress….with less and less rational everyday.
Yet if any admin could intervene to protect precedent the court will never get a chance to get the merits right…. All time arguing if such n such should be a case the feds can roll.
Elena Kagan and Sotomayor must recuse themselves from SB 8 hearing. They have compromised their standing on SCOTUS!
“Justice Elena Kagan sarcastically called the state legislators who wrote the law “some geniuses” who intended to chill abortion and bypass the legal concept that “states are not to nullify federal constitutional rights” such as Roe v. Wade.”
Fox News
Yeah, Anonymous, women shouldn’t have any say on this matter. Only Federalists should decide.
A strawman. It is already illegal to abort a baby for social progress, medical progress, and climate mitigation (i.e. selective-child) past a threshold of viability. Women have an equal right to terminate a human life in the case of self-defense.
The Pro-Choice religion denies women and men’s dignity and agency, and reduces human life to a negotiable asset. The Twilight Amendment (i.e. “penumbras and emanations”) enabled aborting demos-cracy in darkness and other transhumane and mischievous policies.
That said, a woman and man have four choices, and still six weeks.
States Neighboring Texas see Influx Of Abortion Seekers As More Restrictions Are Cosidered
There’s something about the South, or is it the so-called ‘Bible Belt’? Whatever the region is called, self-righteous Republican legislators seem to have nothing better to do than think of more hoops for women to jump through.
White male Republicans are especially prone to brainstorming malicious restrictions. Women in poverty are burdened more than anyone. Financial issues are the leading factor motivating abortions. So Republicans scheme to make abortion as expensive as possible.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/texas-abortion-oklahoma-arkansas-kansas
There isn’t an open-ended license to wantonly terminate human life even in states where the population subscribes to the Pro-Choice religion. The Progressive Church, Synagogue, Corporation, Chamber, etc. are arguing a strawman.
That said, a woman and man have four choices, and still six weeks.
N.N. let’s not pretend 6 weeks is sufficient.
It is more than sufficient. There is no mystery in sex and conception.
That said, a woman and man have four choices: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion. Six weeks is a… another compromise.
Maybe if Progressive women weren’t so proud of, and shouting their abortions from the rooftops, they could open their eyes and see that it makes people disgusted that mothers are proud of murdering their own babies. Some multiple times. Maybe we should start FORCING them to take something like NORPLANT to stop the insanity. You know…if it will save one life!!!?? Why not. Forcing people to put something in their bodies that they don’t want is popular now!!
Progressives are all about them and not children nor families.
Anonymous, let’s go with that. If certain women aren’t ‘into’ children and families, why would you force them to have children? Seems like they’d be lousy mothers.
A strawman. There is no mystery in sex and conception. Women and men have four choices: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion. Planned parent/hood, selective-child (i.e. one-child, delegated), the wicked solution, is neither an exclusive nor a good choice.
Then they should get sterilized or have Norplant implanted in them to protect the children they want to murder. Or they can close their legs if they aren’t responsible enough to NOT get pregnant.
“Republican legislators seem to have nothing better to do than think of more hoops for women to jump through.”
I hate the idea of putting anyone through a lot of trouble, but there is something to be said about not killing babies that the left doesn’t want to think about. It is so out of hand that if a child is born reasonably normal after an abortion, some Democrats/leftists are willing to let that baby die on the table. The way they think is rather disgusting and inhumane, but most of the population can reach a reasonable agreement about the timing permissible for an abortion.
However, it seems Democrat legislators have no problem subjecting American citizens to murder and the women to rape from illegal immigrants, especially those known to have the propensity to kill, rape and rob.
When one discusses difficulties for women and excludes the challenges they face when raped by an illegal alien, one begins to wonder about their hypocrisy or sanity. One also has to wonder about their concerns for human lives and well-being when the actions of Democrat legislators increase the amount of Fentanyl and other drugs that cross the border and kill our American youth.
Let’s not only worry about Americans but also of those illegals that have died along the way and have been mistreated by the cartels.
These are the things I think about when puppets start screaming about their concern for women while forgetting about all the horrible things they have planned for them.
S. Meyer,
“I hate the idea of putting anyone through a lot of trouble, but there is something to be said about not killing babies that the left doesn’t want to think about. It is so out of hand that if a child is born reasonably normal after an abortion, some Democrats/leftists are willing to let that baby die on the table.”
Of course that is horrible, if it were true. It’s these kinds of outlandish narratives that are nowhere near true that make it easier to intrude on other people’s personal decisions.
“However, it seems Democrat legislators have no problem subjecting American citizens to murder and the women to rape from illegal immigrants, especially those known to have the propensity to kill, rape and rob.
When one discusses difficulties for women and excludes the challenges they face when raped by an illegal alien, one begins to wonder about their hypocrisy or sanity. One also has to wonder about their concerns for human lives and well-being when the actions of Democrat legislators increase the amount of Fentanyl and other drugs that cross the border and kill our American youth”
Geez, S. Meyer, That’s one messed up segue into nonsense. There are more rapes perpetrated in state universities or by families than illegal immigrants. That includes incest done by U.S. citizens. That also includes the sexual abuse that occurs in churches youth ministries. Illegal immigrants are far less likely to be doing what you claim. It’s far more common within our own.
You really should see Gosnell, and watch some videos of abortions. It is gory, it is gruesome and it is progress to people like you, whilst it is evil murder to people like me.
“. . . watch some videos of abortions. It is gory, it is gruesome . . .”
A picture is not an argument:
peikoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-17-11.347_A_rev1.mp3
And maybe, since illegal aliens are raping women..we should send them back to where they came from instead of allowing them entry and giving them free healthcare and hundreds of thousands of dollars that progressives want to reward them with.
Svelaz, or however you call yourself today,
“Of course that is horrible, if it were true. It’s these kinds of outlandish narratives that are nowhere near true that make it easier to intrude on other people’s personal decisions. ”
What you say is only true because, like your understanding of different ideologies, your understanding of morality almost doesn’t exist.
“That’s one messed up segue into nonsense. ”
If you are concerned with women’s rights, then you are concerned with all their rights and don’t exclude your personal support for policies that increase the rape of women. You cannot pick and choose the way you do, for that only proves you don’t care about women because the only person you care about is yourself. Your ideas are surrounded by immorality.
States have the power to legislate statues with reference to homicide.
24 hours after initial fertilization and conception, the zygote is a nascent human being, but a human being nonetheless.
Abortion is homicide.
One might conjecture that women are the worst misogynists – women appear to hate pregnancy and childbirth, preferring the role of a man.
Feminazis certainly do.
Who the —- would kill a defenseless baby?
Who the —- would legalize it?
Yes, the Pro-Choice religion denies women and men’s dignity and agency, and reduces human life to a negotiable asset. These are precedents that civilized society strive to overcome.
Both feminists and masculinists are served by a rite of elective abortion.
The abortionists are using a strawman apology. A novel apology that essentially uses privacy to mask homicide other than in self-defense. Elective abortion (i.e. wicked solution) is already illegal past the arbitrary age of viability.
The Pro-Choice religion denies women and men’s dignity and agency, and reduces human life to a negotiable asset. The same challenges we faced standing up to slavery and diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment).
That said, there is no mystery in sex and conception. A woman and man have four choices and still six weeks.
N.N. explain why the Anti-Abortion forces are often Anti-Birth Control. Are they just Anti-Sex, or does it only seem that way?
No idea who you are talking about since even the Catholic church has changed on that. We WISH Progressives would learn how to use Birth Control. There wouldn’t be thousands of babies being murdered weekly if they did!!!
Wen Bars, what is Texss doing to promote birth control? By closing PP sites, they’re cutting off the biggest distributer of birth control pills.
You can get birth control in many of the clinics in Texas that don’t promote Abortion. Planned parenthood makes more money selling baby parts and organs then they do anything else. They don’t do mammograms or any other procedures…they send you elsewhere for that. https://lozierinstitute.org/health-clinics-nationwide-compared-to-planned-parenthood-centers/
N.N. explain why the
Losing in the intellectual arena, a change of topic is attempted
Iowan, perhaps you can explain. If birth control is the most effective means of preventing abortion, then closing Planned Parenthood sites makes no sense. One of PP’s main functions is distributing birth control.
The pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness “forces” (i.e. conservative Americans) are pro-sex and pro-choice: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion. The basis for liberty in a society is personal, not shared/shifted responsibility. It is certainly not the elective abortion (i.e. homicide) of a innocent human life if you can get away with it (“privacy”).
The Biden Administration with its new leftist majority has made it clear that precedent has little to no meaning and it has made that point several times already.
Lets go Brandon.
“Let’s Go, Brandon!”
Awaken a “Sleeping Giant!”
Let’s put it in a nutshell. It doesn’t matter to the Democrats that their previous obstruction has been found to be without merit. What does matter is their continual preening to their voter base. They have the money taken from your paychecks and by God they’re going to use it to get out the vote. They understand all to well the old axiom, “there’s a sucker born every minute”.
Texas Abortion Law Follows Jim Crow Traditions Of Convoluted Laws Meant To Circumvent Rights
S.B. 8, this history suggests, is just the latest example of a practice with a long and ignominious history: Using the instrument of law to deprive others of rights while evading and thwarting constitutional review — and in particular harnessing the avarice and malice of private parties to stamp out others’ constitutional right. In many cases, such efforts have been successful — sometimes for years, sometimes for decades. The Supreme Court’s response to such challenges has typically been muddled and delayed (in some cases because some or all of the justices are sympathetic to the suppressors of rights).
Edited From:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/01/texas-abortion-law-history-rights-suppressed/
The Pro-Choice or “ethical” religion follows the convention of slavery, diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), and political congruence (“=”) meant to deny women and men’s dignity and agency, and reduce human life to a negotiable asset.
Demos-cracy is aborted in darkness. h/t WaPo
Truth is, abortions are defacto illegal in Texas today as they are in much of the country. Here are the facts:
•In 2017, there were 1,587 facilities providing abortion in the United States, representing a 5% decrease from the 1,671 facilities in 2014. Sixteen percent of facilities in 2017 were abortion clinics (i.e., clinics where more than half of all patient visits were for abortion), 35% were nonspecialized clinics, 33% were hospitals and 16% were private physicians’ offices. Sixty percent of all abortions were provided at abortion clinics, 35% at nonspecialized clinics, 3% at hospitals and 1% at physicians’ offices.[1]
•There were 35 facilities providing abortion in Texas in 2017, and 21 of those were clinics. These numbers represent a 25% decline in clinics from 2014, when there were 44 abortion-providing facilities overall, of which 28 were clinics.[1]
•In 2017, 89% of U.S. counties had no clinics providing abortions. Some 38% of reproductive-age women lived in those counties and would have had to travel elsewhere to obtain an abortion.[1] Of patients who had an abortion in 2014, one-third had to travel more than 25 miles one way to reach a facility.[2]
•In 2017, some 96% of Texas counties had no clinics that provided abortions, and 43% of Texas women lived in those counties.[1]
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/state-facts-about-abortion-texas
Guns Rights Advocates Leery Of Texas Abortion Law
The Supreme Court faces arguments that a novel enforcement scheme Texas created for its abortion law could be used by states to neutralize other constitutional rights related to guns, protests, campaign finance and more.
The warning comes from not only the Justice Department and the abortion providers that have challenged the Texas law but also constitutional scholars, states, former prosecutors and law enforcement officials and a California-based nonprofit group that pushes for gun rights.
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/10/28/supreme-court-told-texas-abortion-law-model-could-spread-to-guns-free-speech/
The core “constitutional” problem is NOT with the TX abortion law – it is with the court made law on standing.
There are legitimate reasons to require standing in civil disputes.
The only standing issue that should ever exist in a facial challenge to the constitutionality of any law, is to assure that the party challenging the law is going to make the strongest case.
Frankly standing should be granted far more broadly to all challenges to government.
As an example – anyone should be able to challenge any election in which they were eligible to vote.
Just as anyone should be able to challenge any law that restricts constitutional rights.
With specific respect to judicial history of the TX abortion law – DOJ should LOSE the current challenge.
The Federal government should NOT have standing regarding the constitutionality of State laws.
However planned parenthood, doctors, or TX citizens should have been able to challenge the constitutionality of the TX law.
There is nothing wrong with the specific enforcement mechanism that TX chose.
The core problem is that bad caselaw on standing created a situation where that enforcement mechanism makes it hard to challenge a laws constitutionality.
John B. Say,
“ Just as anyone should be able to challenge any law that restricts constitutional rights.”
“ The Federal government should NOT have standing regarding the constitutionality of State laws.”
First you are against standing, but then you’re not?
Saying “anyone” should be able to challenge any law that restricts constitutional rights would include the federal government given that they are also the ones in charge of ensuring they are enforced.
“ However planned parenthood, doctors, or TX citizens should have been able to challenge the constitutionality of the TX law.”
Yes they should have, but they are being denied that by giving the enforcement powers to anyone, even those out of state who are not harmed or affected by the law. No standing required.
Standing is important regardless of it being a “court made up rule”. It requires that those directly affected by a law’s implementation or intents to challenge it. Getting rid of standing will muddle the courts and create needless multiple needless cases involving superfluous or irrelevant arguments.
“ There is nothing wrong with the specific enforcement mechanism that TX chose.”
Yes there is. Because it’s sole intent is to bypass court review. It’s meant to deny due process. In the case of Texas the law is set up so that in order do exercise the right to due process you must first break the law.
This also brings up the problem of state courts even being able to award the “bounty”. Courts cannot enforce the law as it is written if the court cannot be sued because it is not allowed to enforce it.
Clinics could still violate the law and courts wouldn’t be able to rule on whether the clinics were breaking it.
Perhaps the point 8s to lose, and then use the unreasonable outrage as a lever for court packing.
“The practical and procedural problems are obvious. First, you would have to enjoin every judge and clerk to stop this law from being used. Second, this is a not-so-subtle evasion of a long-standing rule that the court enjoins people, not laws. That is why five justices declined to issue an injunction despite acknowledging that “The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue.” However, the justices ruled that “their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden.”
*************************
They’re grasping at straws and they know it. It’s just constituent maintenance. Reminds me of a case I heard many years ago where a fine older lawyer stood up to defend a particularly egregious checkkiter at sentencing. The perp had five priors and a host of related theft convictions yet our barrister stood boldly and defended him as if he were Mother Theresa. His rough upbringing, his bout with drug addiction and his love of animals were all fair game in the crescendoing oration. It literally went on for 30 minutes as both his client and everyone else in the small country courtroom packed with other foot-tapping lawyers and anxious litigants sat bored and uncomfortable amid the word torrent. When is was all finally over and the perp got the maximum sentence allowable, I stopped the gentleman to ask why all the fight for such a hopeless legal cause. He paused, thought a minute and said, “well, I didn’t do it for just for him but for all those other potential criminal clients and their families sitting in the aisles. I never let a good audience go to waste.”
Sorry, but the right is ducking the fact that there is a serious problem here.
Nor is that problem limited to the possibility that blue states use the same tactics to regulate guns.
When you note that courts enjoin people not laws – that is NOT true.
They enjoin people from enforcing LAWS.
Further Standing is essentially court made legal doctrine where courts bar themselves from engaging in judicial review.
That is reasonable so long as decisions on standing do not completely bar courts from judicial review.
There is a world of difference between this specific plantiff or these named defendants are not the appropriate ones for this case, and the courts concocting constraints on standing that either completely preclude judicial review or where they sufficiently handicap it that significant real harm occurs before judicial review is possible.
In the TX case or similarly constructed laws – judicial review of the constitutionality of the TX law is precluded until someone is actually successfully prosecuted for violating the law.
That is wrong. We should not have to wait for actual harm to occur, or to have to suffer the chilling effects of an unconstitutional law before we can challenge the facial constitutionality of that law. Worse still we should never allow lawmakers to construct a law whose purpose is to thwart a constitutional right without any intention of enforcing that law.
Nothing I have addressed above takes a position on the constitutionality of the abortion restrictions in the TX law,
Republicans have already seen a different permutation of this problem with the 2020 election.
Contra the left – the courts did not address the actual merits of challenges to the election.
That is a huge failure – and democrats and the country are paying for it. 56% of americans beleive the election was stolen.
We should not swear in election winners when there is significant doubt that the election results are accurate, and honest, and the law was followed.
Nor should laws were there is substantial doubt about their constitutionality remain in force – until someone is prosecuted for violating that law.
Election challenges should have been heard on their merits long long ago.
The results should have been properly audited with whatever result that produced.
In some instances draconian results – such as pitching all mail in ballots should have occurred – such as where a state violated its own constitution.
On of the reason for the courts to impose draconian results is specifically to punish themselves for their own pre-election failure to enforce the law.
The courts took the easy way out before the election – ducking numerous challenges and hoping that after the election the results would be clear enough they did not have to address them at all.
That was cowardice and worse it placed them between a rock and a hard place – disenfranchise thousands of voters who trusted that the states means of conducted the election was lawful, or dilute the votes of those who voted legally.
We have the same situation with the Texas Abortion law – and with similarly structured laws that are likely to follow.
The issue is NOT can a state limit enforcement of a law to private actors.
The issue is whethere the TX restrctions on abortion are constitutional.
No matter what the outcome – the people should not have to wait years before that question is answered.
John B. Say,
“ That is wrong. We should not have to wait for actual harm to occur, or to have to suffer the chilling effects of an unconstitutional law before we can challenge the facial constitutionality of that law. Worse still we should never allow lawmakers to construct a law whose purpose is to thwart a constitutional right without any intention of enforcing that law.”
I completely agree here. However, on the issue of the election. It’s not the same. Many of the claims by the Trump campaign have turned out to be either without merit, lack of evidence, and lack of standing.
The much touted Arizona audit proved Trump was lying and proved Biden did win fairly there.
“Many of the claims by the Trump campaign have turned out to be either without merit, lack of evidence, and lack of standing.”
The bulk of Trump claims have merit and deal with lawlessness. As time passes more and more of it is reaching our ears. You refuse to accept any of this and continue to post the same things over and over even when you have been proven to be inaccurate.
Take note that when you are faced with the truth or a discussion of the facts you run away only to later make the same statements. I will bring up one recent discussion you ran away from. If you disagree with what I say then say so. If you don’t, then stop making untrue statements.
—
Svelaz, I see your embarrassment didn’t keep you away long. We can now finish our discussion of fascism and the other ideologies mostly derived from socialism. I await your comment since you have now had plenty of time to go to an encyclopedia and absorb the written word.—–
Yes, defining fascism is difficult, but it has defining characteristics that differ drastically from the classical liberal/ libertarian. It is the characteristics that determine the different brands of fascism. No ideology is entirely pure, but Marx at times referred to socialism and communism interchangeably. The meanings behind socialism have radically changed.
Democratic socialism incorporates some of socialism and is a new construct. Democratic states such as Sweden often pointed to HAVING private property. Capitalism depends on private property. Libertarianism and classical liberalism also rely on private property. There are varying degrees and types of control over businesses in the fascistic states, fascism, nazism, socialism and communism. Though some would say, the state ceases to exist in a pure communist state.
When you look at the various ideologies, you need to note the similarities and differences of their significant characteristics.
There is private property and less central control in classical liberalism, libertarianism and capitalism (economic).
Nazism, socialism, fascism have central control. These forms of government look towards larger government and powers over what is printed along with freedom of speech.
Separate nationalism from the ideologies because all of the ideologies can be nationalistic and militaristic or not. Part of the split between Stalin and Trotsky had to do with their perception of nationalism and militarism along with expansionism.
In the end, fascism is hard to define because it can be defined in many different ways, but Italian fascism, nazism, and socialism come from the same seed.
S. Meyer,
“The bulk of Trump claims have merit and deal with lawlessness. As time passes more and more of it is reaching our ears. You refuse to accept any of this and continue to post the same things over and over even when you have been proven to be inaccurate.”
Nope. The bulk of Trump’s claims have been either without merit or without evidence. Notice how conservatives suddenly went silent after the results of the Arizona audit were released. Even after the Cyber Ninjas audit found that Biden did indeed win in Arizona Trump proceeded to lie about it by literally claiming the audit showed he won. The evidence that trump’s false claims are indeed false keep mounting. His own lawyers Rudy and Sid are facing disbarment over making these false claims. Trump simply lost.
“Take note that when you are faced with the truth or a discussion of the facts you run away only to later make the same statements. I will bring up one recent discussion you ran away from. If you disagree with what I say then say so. If you don’t, then stop making untrue statements.”
S. Meyer, I don’t run away. What you see as “running away” is nothing more than being busy with other things besides spending all day on this blog. Unlike you I have a life outside of this blog. I HAVE disagreed with what you say and I HAVE said so. What you call “untrue statements” is often times refutations of your nonsense arguments. No mystery there.
“Svelaz, I see your embarrassment didn’t keep you away long. We can now finish our discussion of fascism and the other ideologies mostly derived from socialism. I await your comment since you have now had plenty of time to go to an encyclopedia and absorb the written word.—–”
LOL!! no embarrassment at all. Had no idea you were still stuck on that discussion. It seems you had the entire conversation on you own. Given that this thread is about the Biden administration’s choice in challenging the Texas abortion law it is quite silly to keep engaging on a discussion on fascism. It was interesting before. now? not anymore.
“Nope. The bulk of Trump’s claims have been either without merit or without evidence.”
It is foolish to talk to one who intentionally remains in the dark. Over and over, you have been provided the proof just like you were provided with explanations explaining why you were wrong in the way you look at political ideologies.
Children that do not learn or do not want to learn, in years past, were placed in a corner with a dunce cap on their heads presumably to make them get the point that continuing in the same fashion would leave them dunces, as adults with little opportunity.
“Notice how conservatives suddenly went silent after the results of the Arizona audit were released.”
That is a lie, and you should know it unless you have been sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on your head. John Say just posted a tremendous amount of information from the Arizona audit. Information abounds in a world where you keep your eyes closed.
“S. Meyer, I don’t run away. What you see as “running away”
Of course, you do. You do not have the knowledge or intellectual ability to respond, so you waste time with answers that are either lies or based on severe ignorance. There is no other way to put it when a person is so reluctant to engage in responses that prove him wrong and that he repeats over and over again.
The election is exactly the same.
You claim the courts have decided election issues on the merits of the claims.
Then you can name a court that held actual hearings, that allow the parties to subpeona witnesses, review ballots, and equipment, to cross examine witnesses.
I am not aware of a single court that did any of that prior to the election.
I want to be even more clear – If YOU, John Q Citizen challenge an election, and the government can not PROVE absolutely that the election law was followed and that Fraud was impossible, then you are entitled to a hearing.
I do not care if you are republican democrat or wing nut.
The government is obligated to conduct elections such that they can be trusted. That requires laws that make fraud difficult, and make it certain that if it occurs those doing it will be caught and seriously punished. That requires complete transparency – so that not only is cheating impossible but that everyone KNOWS it is impossible. That requires transparency after the election.
Anyone who wishes should be entitled to examine ballots after the fact – and voting records.
Finally, the standard for counting ballots is 180 degrees off. There is no actual right to vote, but there is a right to government that we trust.
There is ZERO problems with election measures that make voting more secure – even if they make it more difficult.
There is not a right for voting to be easy.
I would note that from 2000 up until 2020 or a little before, democrats were actually concerned about election fraud.
Yet when we conducted the most lawless election in 150 years -suddenly everything is OK.
John B. Say,
“You claim the courts have decided election issues on the merits of the claims.
Then you can name a court that held actual hearings, that allow the parties to subpeona witnesses, review ballots, and equipment, to cross examine witnesses.”
I never made such a claim John. Let’s be real clear about that. What I did claim is that the courts decided or couldn’t decided on election issues due to lack of evidence, lack of standing, and have shown that no laws were broken or were “lawless” elections.
For example In Wisconsin the conservative supreme court refused to hear Trump’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the election not because it refused to decide on the merits, but because the case had to first go through the lower courts. Trump CHOSE to sidestep the lower courts where his case could have been decided on the merits.
Hotze v. Hollins; court deciding on Texas early voters using drive thru voting. “The Court finds that Plaintiffs lack standing to sue. Federal courts must determine whether they have jurisdiction before proceeding to the merits. Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 94-95 (1998). Article III of the Constitution limits federal jurisdiction to “Cases” and “Controversies.” One component of the case or controversy requirement is standing. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992). The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that an individual plaintiff raising only a generalized grievance about government does not meet the Article III requirement of a case or controversy. Id. at 573-74. This Court finds that the Plaintiffs here allege only a “generalized grievance about the conduct of government.” Lance v. Coffman, 549 U.S. 437, 442 (2007).
The Plaintiffs’ lack of a particularized grievance is fatal to their claim under the Equal Protection Clause. “The rule against generalized grievances applies with as much force in the equal protection context as in any other.” U.S. v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 743 (1995). Plaintiffs’ general claim that Harris County’s election is being administered differently than Texas’s other counties does not rise to the level of the sort of particularized injury that the Supreme Court has required for constitutional standing in elections cases. See id.; Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1933 (2018) (no standing in equal protection case when alleged injury involved “group political interests” and not “individual legal rights”).”
It was appealed to the 5th district court. They ruled as follows; “Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, USDC No. 4:20-CV-3709.
Before STEWART, GRAVES, and HIGGINSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
IT IS ORDERED that appellants’ motion for injunctive relief to issue a preliminary injunction banning drive-thru voting on Election Day, November 3, 2020, is DENIED.”
Here’s another one,
“Donald J. Trump for President v. Cegavske”
” Whether recent changes by the state legislature to Nevada’s voting procedures including, among other things, the expansion of voting-by-mail and a requirement that officials count ballots received up to three days after Election Day, violate federal election law and the Fourteenth Amendment.”
“Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske urged the district court to throw out the case, stressing that AB4 makes only “modest changes” to respond to the pandemic. What the Trump campaign is asking the court to do, she told the judge, is to weigh in on the wisdom of those changes. She noted that, although other states, including Florida, were also using mail-in voting for the 2020 elections, the Trump campaign has singled out Nevada “as the forum for high-profile litigation regarding vote-by-mail election processes.” But in any event, Cegavske concluded, the Trump campaign’s claims are purely speculative, as there has been no evidence of voter fraud in the states using mail-in voting.
U.S. District Judge James Mahan granted Cegavske’s motion to dismiss the case on Sept. 18. Mahan agreed with Cegavske that none of the challengers in the case had a legal right to sue, known as “standing.” Mahan stressed that “the key provisions of AB4 apply to all voters,” and the challengers had not shown how they or their members would be harmed by the law in a way that others would not. “Not only have” the challengers “failed to allege a substantial risk of voter fraud,” Mahan continued, but the state “has its own mechanisms for deterring and prosecuting voter fraud” — and the challengers have not alleged that these mechanisms will not work. What the case really boils down to, Mahan suggested, is that Trump and the GOP simply have “policy disagreements” with the law. Mahan also noted that the challengers had not asked to fast-track the case, even though they had “positioned [it] for last minute adjudication before the general election.”
https://www.scotusblog.com/election-litigation/donald-j-trump-for-president-v-cegavske/
There are more cases that all have a similar outcome. Nearly all claims Trump made either had no evidence to present to the court or others challenging the changes to election laws had no standing.
Here’s a link to all the cases that you seek.
https://www.scotusblog.com/election-litigation/donald-j-trump-for-president-v-cegavske/
Standing
I agree with you – I am hard pressed to think of a single election challenge that was lost where the court did not use standing as a basis.
Standing is also the issue in the current battle over TX SB 8. Oral arguments today indicate that Barrett and Kavanaugh are miffed because TX constructed the law deliberately using the courts standing rules to preclude anyone from having standing – atleast for all facial challenges to the law. The moment anyone in TX tries to enforce the law, standing will no longer be an issue and the courts will be able to look at the constitutionality of the law.
Regardless, TX did “game the system” and SCOTUS is a bit miffed. But their anger is misdirected. Barrett and Kavanaugh would be wise to read justice Lerhned Hand’s ruling on trying to game the tax laws. He told the IRS to go pound sand, that a core principle of the rule of law is that government make the law, and can require compliance with the letter of the law – NOT the spirit of the law. Hand implied that finding ways to legally avoid taxes not only was not criminal it was laudible.
Or put differently – as offended as people are about the standing gamesmanship in the TX law – the problem is NOT the TX law – it is the court made law on standing.
Standing does not exist – atleast not directly in the constitution. Nor is it part of any legislation. Like Qualified Immunity – Standing is a creation of the court. Further Standing IS a valid and important legal concept. What it is NOT is universal – except that is how the court created it. The court created doctrine regarding standing FAILS when the controversy being addressed is the excercise of government power. Standing can not be the impediment to challenging any laws facial constitutionality. More broadly – there are many legitimate instances in which standing can be a legitimate bar to a specific plaintiff suing a specific defendant. But Standing can not result in a legitimate controversy from being adjudicated by the courts.
Using the Election cases – If the Trump campaign did not have standing to sue state election commissions over allegations of election fraud, lawlessness or malfeasance – then some other party MUST. Whether the case is the TX abortion law or an election challenge – the Courts can not use standing as a means to avoid judicial review. Doing so is a failure on the part of the courts. That is one of several ways the courts failed us regarding the 2020 election.
But so you understand – when a court dismisses a case on the basis of standing – they are not saying the case has no merit, they are not saying, there is no evidence. They are not saying the conduct alleged is proper or the law is constitutional.
All they are saying is that that this plaintiff can not bring this case against this defendant.
I would further note that even using existing court standing rules – the Supreme court Failed in the TX vs. PA, … challenge.
This was the most blatant effort by the courts to duck making a difficult decision. The Constitution has specific provisions that allow states to sue each other – and those cases are the only cases in which the Supreme Court has “original jurisdiction”. they are the only cases that the Supreme court MUST hear. They are the only cases in which the supreme court sits as a trial court rather than as an apellate court.
The core to the TX vs. PA, … case is trivially simple, the constitution is a contract between the states. When one state fails to follow its own laws and constitution on a matter such as federal elections that impacts the citizens of all states, that state litterally breaches the contract that is the constitution. And more narrowly. The citizens of the state of TX are denied the equal protection of the law when the lawless conduct of another state results in the nullification of the votes of the citizens of TX.
There is also the separate issue of due process – when a state does not follow its own election laws and constitution – that is a violation of due process that in the context of elections harms the citizens of other states.
Regardless, the SCOTUS standing decision regarding the TX lawsuit was particulary egregious – because TX did have standing – the constitution gave the states standing to sue each other.
Svelaz
“I completely agree here. However, on the issue of the election. It’s not the same. Many of the claims by the Trump campaign have turned out to be either without merit, lack of evidence, and lack of standing.”
Svelaz
“I never made such a claim John. Let’s be real clear about that. What I did claim is that the courts decided or couldn’t decided on election issues due to lack of evidence, lack of standing, and have shown that no laws were broken or were “lawless” elections.”
Hmm, Suddenly “without merit” disappears from your claims.
Lack of evidence.
This is just about the most farcical claim.
The standard of proof necessary to file a claim and to get to discovery, and hearings is incredibly low. That was met thousands of times over.
While there are slight differences between lawsuits and investigations, the standard of proof required to proceed is fundimentally the same.
We have all listened to left wing nuts tell us for most of the past 4 years that the FBI had sufficient basis to investigate the Trump campaign for colluding with Russia.
So lets compare. Did the FBI have sworn affidavits ? Did the FBI have video that appeared to indicate ballots being scanned repeatedly ?
Did the FBI have evidence the equivalent of mismatches between the number of voters recorded and the number of ballots counted of over 200,000 in each of multiple different states ?
Even in a criminal prosecution the standard of proof required for a prosecutor to bring a case before the court is NOT proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the standard needed to win a criminal case. The standard needed to win a civil case like an election challenge – is more likely than not. The standard necessary to FILE an election challenge is approximately the equivalent of reasonable suspicion.
That more than existed.
Regardless, think about the implications of the idioctic decisions these courts made ?
If the evidence provided these courts is not sufficient to get to a hearing – WHAT IS ?
If you have to prove fraud just to get to discovery or to a hearing – no election fraud will ever be challengable.
Much of what the left does is incredibly short sighted.
Democrats eliminated the filibuster for court apointments and that allowed Trump to pack the courts with federalists.
While I think that is a good thing – most on the left do not.
Democrats in these states have by hook or crook made election fraud trivial. If you do not beleive Trump’s claims of fraud are true – try thinking about whether they are possible, and then whether you would beleive they were possible if it was republicans purportedly engaging in fraud.
I will assure you that the lawlessness of the 2020 election absolutely ensures that future elections will be different.
On the one hand we are seeing a massive explosion in poll watchers and in republicans serving as elections workers in democratic districts in Virginia right now. On the other hand – you have sent a message to the Karl Rove, Dick Chenney, Paul Manafort, types that democrats are going to engage in election fraud so they might as well too.
I can pretty trivially figure out how to rig the next election in my state. I could do it alone, myself with a small amount of money, and I could do so such that even if the fraud was detected I will never get caught. Or alternately I could do a false flag – like the stupid lincoln project white supremecist nonsense in VA today. I could engage in election fraud in a fasshion that was highly likely to be found, while still impossible to connect to me. What happens if I flood a deep red county in my state with 200,000 additional ballots for the democrat running for governor.
It is near certain that will be caught and democrats will be blamed.
AZ
You claims that the AZ audit proved Biden won – that is FALSE.
The AZ audit demonstrated that the Dominon scanner Counters in Maricopa county had a very low error rate in counting votes and did not have any political bias. In hours of testimony of problems and likely fraud, in hundreds of pages of report, that is probably the ONLY positive result for democrats. The scale of the problems found in AZ was over 10% of the vote.
In fact the Dominion through the election to Biden is just about the only election fraud Claim of the Trump campaign that was NOT found.
It would take hundreds of pages to list all the problems which were found in AZ – all of which are serious – whether they are fraud or not.
No one should trust an election where there are errors in the order of hundreds of thousands of votes.
No one should trust an election where there were more ballots than voters.
No one should trust and election where there are almost 40,000 duplicate votes.
Even if these problems are just innocent errors and not fraud.
But the most likely cause for most of these is fraud not error. Further some such as the duplicate votes, are most likely the tip of a much larger iceberg.
Regardless, the AZ senate refered the AZ audit to the AZ AG to conduct a criminal investigation.
The AZ AG is not especially reliable, so we will have to see what happens.
one further note – one of the reasons that there are now 56% of people who beleive the election was stolen is not because of the AZ audit -though that likely raised the numbers.
But because the Biden administration has failed, is incompetent, and has clearly lied about many things.
The worse these things get the less people beleive that claims of election fraud are “the big lie” and the more they start to beleive that claims there was no election fraud is the actual big lie.
Lawlessness.
Are you honestly arguing this – even the Time article done by democrats bragging about how they won – admits lawlessness.
The examples of states failing to follow their own laws are innumerable. That you would try to claim otherwise is frankly laughable.
Only the most zealotous on the left try to sell that.
John B. Say, after reading all of your responses I have noted the fundamental misunderstanding that you have regarding the election.
First, we both are in agreement over the legitimacy of standing with the exception of a few narrow points.
This comment from you is correct, “ If the Trump campaign did not have standing to sue state election commissions over allegations of election fraud, lawlessness or malfeasance – then some other party MUST. ” However that “other party” is essentially the voter. The only party who would be directly harmed by voter fraud. The problem is in order to claim harm that person or persons MUST produce evidence of said harm. Those who did have standing did not have evidence to show to the court. What you’re claiming as evidence as did the lawyers for Trump was speculation that fraud was committed. Speculation is NOT evidence. Lawyers for the Trump campaign were asked point blank by judges if they had evidence to present that would support their claims in all but one case they could not produce evidence, only speculation.
You say courts didn’t weight the cases on the merits of the Trump campaign’s claims. Here your fundamental misunderstanding is that a court shouldn’t have dismissed cases without looking into the merits. The problem is you have to have evidence first. None was presented and in some cases Trump lawyers admitted that they were not claiming fraud was being committed. Speculation that fraud may have occurred is NOT evidence. That’s the key problem with Trump’s claims.
Lawyers offered sworn affidavits as evidence and that is true, however those affidavits amounted to nothing more than hearsay which we both know is not admissible as evidence in any court of law. Mane were withdrawn when those submitting their statements learned they could be charged with perjury if their claims turned out to be false.
I provided to you direct links to cases and the related opinions citing exactly why many of Trump’s claims were either without merit or without evidence. Trump’s own personal lawyers ARE facing disbarment over making false claims in court. The reason why there is a lack of evidence is because trump lied. It’s as simple as that. You can parse it any way you want, but ultimately it still ends up being all about the evidence.
As for the Arizona audit. Yes the did find that Biden did indeed win there, even by a couple of hundred more votes than Trump. Yes you are correct that they did find 10% of problems, but none of those problems would have affected the outcome of the election. The majority were clerical errors, or misunderstandings over election procedures. Cyber Ninjas was clearly not competent enough to understand how the election system worked. They even claimed at one time that data was erased only to walk back that claim and admit it was not the case. It was a case of incompetence on their part.
“ The examples of states failing to follow their own laws are innumerable. That you would try to claim otherwise is frankly laughable.”
John, I gave you multiple examples refuting your argument that states failed to follow their own laws. Including the Pennsylvania case. I gave you the direct rulings and the exact explanations given by the courts. What I have noted is that you have not presented the violations you cite on the cases I presented to you. I would certainly welcome a deep dive into the Pennsylvania case and it’s five points where you claim they failed to follow their own laws. I can certainly go line by line the points made in the opinion and compare them to your claims against it if you want.
Give me a starting point and we can go from there. It’s up to you.
Svelaz;
“The other party is the voter” –
Cases were brought by voters and shot down on standing too.
I noted to you that the constitution assured Texas Standing – and SCOTUS still shot that down.
The thing YOU do not understand is the courts had no desire to inquire into election fraud.
They had allowed the lawless elections, and their complicity BEFORE the election assured they were not going to get inquisitive After.
BTW EVERYONE is harmed by election fraud.
“The problem is in order to claim harm that person or persons MUST produce evidence of said harm” Clueless as usual.
It is not necescary to PROVE harm to get to a hearing. In fact Evidence is NOT needed, a plausible allegation is sufficient to get to a hearing. But much more than plausible allegations were provided. There are long lists of the evidence provided in each state.
In GA there is video of an election official scanning the same ballots over and over.
There are litterally thousands of affadavits alleging observed Fraud.
That is way way way more than sufficient to get to a hearing.
No hearing was going to take place before Biden was inaugurated.
And the malfeasance of the courts – first giving their impramatur to the lawlessness BEFORE the election, and then putting their heads in the sand – just as you are after the election.
It takes less evidence to convict a person of murder than exists to demonstrate election fraud.
Aside from the courts complicity in election lawlessness there is one other significant issue – which the courts pointed out.
AFTER the election the courts were presented with an impossible choice.
Just as we see with the AZ audit – it is trivial to prove that fraud is significantly more likely than not.
But once election fraud has occured – it is rarely possible to undo it.
Some courts noted that they could not disenfranchise a million voters because of the malfeasance of 10 or 100 or 1000 – and they were not going to allow exploration of the possibility that it was 10,000 or 100,000.
But there is a huge problem with that logic.
If there is an election with exactly 4M voters, and 2M vote for A and 2M vote for B, and ONE fraudulent vote is cast for A.
The courts have a choice between disenfranchising @M A voters or 2M B voters. They do not have the choice to undo a single fraudulent vote.
This is a consequence of voting secrecy – which is critical to prevent many forms of large scale election fraud.
But a consequence of voting secrecy is that most forms of election fraud CAN NOT BE UNDONE.
Once an illegitimate ballot is counted, with extremely few exceptions there is no way to correct the problem.
This is why it is critical for courts to enforce the law BEFORE the election – there is no fix after.
In AZ they KNOW beyond any doubt that almost 40000 double or triple votes were counted.
But once those ballots are separated from their security envelopes and submitted to be counted – any possibility of fixing the problem is gone.
John B. Say,
“ “The other party is the voter” –
Cases were brought by voters and shot down on standing too.”
Yes, SOME were because they did not have EVIDENCE other than hearsay. Those that dud have standing offered no proof that they were being harmed.
“ The thing YOU do not understand is the courts had no desire to inquire into election fraud.
They had allowed the lawless elections, and their complicity BEFORE the election assured they were not going to get inquisitive After.”
Nonsense, the courts didn’t “allow”’ lawless elections. They couldn’t rule on the majority of cases because they lacked EVIDENCE or standing. The court’s can’t get inquisitive if there is no evidence that will satisfy their need to go further. All they were offered was speculation, poor or weak rationales, and hearsay.
“ Some courts noted that they could not disenfranchise a million voters because of the malfeasance of 10 or 100 or 1000 – and they were not going to allow exploration of the possibility that it was 10,000 or 100,000.”
That is correct. The courts would not disenfranchise a million voters because 10, 100, or 1000 may have committed voter fraud. Especially when it is often the case that those “fraudulent” cases end up being nothing more than common mistakes made by voters. You cannot explore the possibility that 10,000 or 100,000 were committing fraud until you have evidence that it has occurred with frequency in the past. You would still be asking the court to investigate based on pure speculation. You would be asking the courts to engage in a witch-hunt rather than a legitimate inquiry based on…evidence.
“ In AZ they KNOW beyond any doubt that almost 40000 double or triple votes were counted.
But once those ballots are separated from their security envelopes and submitted to be counted – any possibility of fixing the problem is gone.”
John, if they “KNOW” then they would have proof beyond reasonable doubt to present. Obviously they don’t. They only “know” because they are speculating that fraud must have occurred solely on the idea that Trump was supposed to win.
John cyber ninjas has very poor credibility and competence before taking on the audit. They were already biased based on the fact that it was run by a person who already believed Trump’s claims.
First speculation or more accurately a credible allegation is sufficient to get to a hearing and discovery.
You keep ignoring that
Next there is far more than speculation. There is plenty of actual evidence.
There is very little evidence that is more substantial than an affidavit from someone claiming to have observed a specific fraudulent act.
The defendant in an action will get the right to depose that witness, or later cross examine them.
And the affadavit may or may not hold up after scrutiny. This is the norms of court and the law.
But a single affadavit alone is sufficient to get to discovery and a hearing.
In fact a credible allegation alone is sufficient.
This is why the courts used standing – and then denied anyone standing.
People understand evidence better than standing – and idiots like you think that rulings on standing are the same as proof that the claim is false.
If I see you cheat at cards and another person loses alot of money -I can not sue you – the harm is to the other person. The other person must sue and I can act as a witness. That is how standing is supposed to work.
But lets say the money that was lost was stolen. The person who was cheated will not sue. I can not sue.
But that does not mean that no cheating occured.
When my case is dismissed and the defendant says that the court exhonerated him – that is a LIE.
John B. Say,
“ First speculation or more accurately a credible allegation is sufficient to get to a hearing and discovery.
You keep ignoring that”
Speculation is not synonymous with credible allegations. Those are two very different things. A credible allegation has to have credible evidence to support it. Most Trump cases didn’t have credible evidence or most times didn’t have any to present.
“ There is very little evidence that is more substantial than an affidavit from someone claiming to have observed a specific fraudulent act.
The defendant in an action will get the right to depose that witness, or later cross examine them.
And the affadavit may or may not hold up after scrutiny. This is the norms of court and the law.
But a single affadavit alone is sufficient to get to discovery and a hearing.
In fact a credible allegation alone is sufficient.“
An affidavit has to come from someone who directly witnessed the event and swear under penalty of perjury. Correct.
However most of the affidavits submitted by Trump lawyers that met that criteria were indeed scrutinized. Unfortunately upon questioning many turned out to be that the witness was not familiar with legal and common practices that here though to be fraudulent.
Many people believed and learned fraud was fraud was occurring from social media. Not exactly a trusted source of information. Many were indeed scrutinized in court and when questioned many claims crumbled.
“ If I see you cheat at cards and another person loses alot of money -I can not sue you – the harm is to the other person. The other person must sue and I can act as a witness. That is how standing is supposed to work. But lets say the money that was lost was stolen. The person who was cheated will not sue. I can not sue.
But that does not mean that no cheating occured.
When my case is dismissed and the defendant says that the court exhonerated him – that is a LIE.”
The problem with that scenario is that even if you did see me cheat at cards you would still have to prove that I cheated. You would have do show how I cheated and the proof that backs it up. The other person who would be able to sue would also have to prove that I cheated. A court can’t rule that I cheated without evidence. Any accusations against me would be hearsay at best. When the case is dismissed and the court finds me not guilty it means I did not cheat. As it always is the basic point. You have to have evidence. Not speculation or an allegation.
In the case of the election it’s more about Making allegations of fraud without evidence, credible evidence. None of which Trump ever presented.
“but none of those problems would have effected the outcome of the election”
Complete and total BS.
Whether those problems were negligent errors, honest mistakes, individual fraud or large scale fraud – there is no way to tell what effect they would have had.
There were almost 40,000 instances of people who voted multiple times. But knowing that John Doe voted 4 times and knowing who he voted 4 is NOT the same thing.
Several of the errors that the AZ audit found are most probably large scale fraud.
That means that tens possibly 100’s of thousands of ballots – probably for a single candidate were counted fraudulently.
But there is no way to identify the specific ballots that are fraudulent.
That is how secret voting works.
AGAIN secret voting is a critical requirement of elections. Without secret voting – we will eventually get mass fraud.
Mailin voting is NOT secret voting. Whether we got mass fraud in 2020 as a result of mailin voting is the subject of debate.
AZ demonstrates that is likely. But even if we did not in 2020- if we continue we will.
Recent criminal allegations in WI trivially demonstrate one moderately common form of mailin voting fraud.
Political operatives go to nursing homes and either coerce or induce old people to vote – or they vote for them.
In a single WI senior care fascility – of 42 votes casty residents 8 were cast by people who were not physically or mentally capable of voting.
That is from a single small fascility. And while 8 of the votes are clear fraud the rest are all suspect. The capacity to vote does not preclude vulnerable people from being induced or coerced – that happens to people who are NOT in nursing homes.
Different states have different laws to combat this. In WI specifically appointed election officials are required to witness the votes of all shutins. Doing so effectively converts a mailin vote to an absentee vote – abentee votes still conform to the secret voting requirements.
But the WI election commission unilaterally directed care fascilities that election officials were not required to witness voting.
The WI supreme court reversed the directive of the Wisconsin election commision – but 10’s of thousands of people in care fascilityies had already voted without witnesses, and again at the direction of the WEC local election officials counted those ballots.
The WEC has been refered to the racine DA for prosecution for fascilitating election fraud.
Whether an actual prosecution occurs – much like AZ will depend more on politics than anything else.
But even if the WEC members are convicted for fascilitating 20,000 fraudulent votes -those fraudulent ballots can not be removed from the count.
There is no fix for most forms of election fraud in a secret voting election.
You must catch the fraud BEFORE the ballots are counted.
This is one of the reasons for election observers.
John B. Say,
“ Whether those problems were negligent errors, honest mistakes, individual fraud or large scale fraud – there is no way to tell what effect they would have had.”
Yes, there is away to tell what effect they had. The number of such instances is quite small in comparison to the totality of the votes. Consistently such instances have been less than 1%. Even if viewed statistically it’s insignificant. No election will ever be perfect and with less than 1% of such instances of errors or actual fraud they do not affect the outcomes of elections.
“ There were almost 40,000 instances of people who voted multiple times. But knowing that John Doe voted 4 times and knowing who he voted 4 is NOT the same thing.”
Where’s the proof that 40,000 people voted multiple times? Nobody has provided any evidence of that claim.
“ Several of the errors that the AZ audit found are most probably large scale fraud.
That means that tens possibly 100’s of thousands of ballots – probably for a single candidate were counted fraudulently.”
There you go again, relying on speculation as evidence of fraud. When you find yourself saying “probably” you’re already making assumptions based on a lack of evidence.
They noted “errors” but they didn’t attribute them to being possible fraud. Cyber ninjas was not competent enough nor knowledgeable enough about election systems to make crucial distinctions that those who do this for a living understand. Just like you, they are making assumptions without any evidence to corroborate them.
It’s the mentality that there must be fraud or malfeasance because the election didn’t produce the results that were expected. It’s the only reason why there is such an obsession with finding this nonexistent fraud claims. Trump is feeding that unhealthy obsession because he believes he should have won even when he clearly did not.
Trump has lied so much about election fraud that any subsequent claims are no i longer taken seriously. The only recourse for individuals such as yourself or others of similar thought is to be on a never ending snipe hunt for fraud or malfeasance that doesn’t exist.
The problem with competence in understanding how elections work is with you.
Cyber ninja’s understand fully.
What you do not understand is that there is no remedy for the massive problems they found.
There is not even the means to know how these errors effected the election.
One of the critiques of cyber ninjas was that they were not experienced election auditors – there is actually no such thing.
There are organizations whose members claim to be election auditors – but there is no certification process and there are no state standards or requirements for election auditors. Frankly there are not many people who claim to be election auditors – because though election audits should be common place they are extremely rare and no one can make a living doing election audits.
But Cyber ninjas is certified – for auditing financial systems for bank fraud, credit card fraud, check forgery.
They are actual experts in examining paper documents for indicia of fraud.
One of the things the audit found was “forged” ballots – these are ballots other than the state printed ballots.
The counter claim is that polling places often printed ballots if they ran out.
That is true. It is also illegal. The state is supposed to print and distribute enough official ballots to have a surplus.
Just like the stupidity of destroying voting secrecy with mailin voting – when polling places start printing their own ballots that makes the detection of fraud harder.
Would we let banks print their own dollar bills if they ran out ?
Regardless the scale of the forged ballots was larger than purported shortfalls.
It is highly likely most of the forged ballots were NOT printed by polling places.
Regardless once again we have another instance of lawlessness destroying election security.
The reason that the state prints ballots is as an antifraud measure.
If you are going to allow polling places to print a few ballots – you might as well let them print all the ballots,
you have lost your ability to detect forgeries.
This is also a reasont hat AZ shoudl audit the rest of the state to determine if the maricopa county problems were unique or endemic.
Another consequence of ballots on incoreect paper was that there was bleed through – this caused significant overvoting.
John B. Say,
“ One of the critiques of cyber ninjas was that they were not experienced election auditors – there is actually no such thing.
There are organizations whose members claim to be election auditors – but there is no certification process and there are no state standards or requirements for election auditors.”
Yes John there are state standards and there are certification processes and requirements for election auditors.
https://www.electioncenter.org/registered-election-official.html
Each state has its own standards and requirements.
Cyber ninjas was not certified nor met any of the requirements. They were just hired because their ceo is strong supporter of trump. They were already biased long before doing their “audit”.
No Svelaz – there is NOT
What you linked to is a private business group trying to sell itself to states.
That is actually extremely common.
You own link notes only 3 states participating – that means 47 are not.
Just to be clear – I am not opposed to private certification programs.
Though I am universally opposed to public licensing programs.
One should not have to have a state license to braid hair, to make coffins, …
In this specific instance we are talking about a nascent profession.
As I noted before – todate there is not sufficient demand to build a profession of Election Auditors.
And TODATEthe most compent people at auditing elections are actually those such as cyber ninja’s.
They actually have significant expertise in the diverse fields that are needed – such as the computer forensic analysis of election systems.
The AZ audit found that the AZ voter registrations were hacked, that the voting machines were trivially hackable.
It was not able to determine whether the voting machines were actually hacked – because Maricopa County refused to honor the subpeonas for the routers.
That said the AZ also PROVED that the extremely high insecurity of the machines had not resulted in alterations of the vote count.
Put simply the audit showed a huge potential problem that is not yet a real one – or put differently – we were lucky.
That conclusion is specific to the voting machines, and the ballot counting. There has been no audit of the state voter registration records and no way to tell what the impact of the very real hack of the AZ voter registration system resulted it.
I would note this directly impacts the ballot audit.
If a voter was listed in the voter registration database – they were presumed to be a real legitimate voter.
The audit did only minimal checking of the legitimacy of voters – and still found thousands of instances of far too many people registered at the same address of people registered at addreessed that did not exist, or were not residences,
As you noted – many of these are “clerical” errors. But once again – it is difficult to tell clerical errors from actual fraud.
Without further investigation “clerical errors” are indistinguishable from actual fraud.
This is one of the reasons that most election laws require the voter information to be correct in order to allow that person to vote.
If the voter registration information is incorrect – the voter can get that changed. But if we allow people to vote where we do not verify their eligability to do so – we enable fraud.
We require people to vote at the location that corresponds to their address and to update their voter registration if their address changes, and most states update voter registration from DMV records – because people tend to keep those records accurate.
When we do not verify addresses – we enable people to vote multiple times.
We also enable large scale fraud.
cyber ninjas was hired because they are incredible good at what they do.
I would note that YOU have falsely claimed that the audit proved there was no Fraud.
When YOU claim that you are relying on Cyber Ninjas’ results – so which is it ?
Are they trustworthy or not ?
The AZ audit did put the nail into the coffin of several GOP claims of large scale fraud.
While there remains a great deal of reasons to be concerned about the computer systems used in voting.
They are highly vulnerable – and the Audit demonstrated that.
At the same time the claims that DVS was jiggering with the vote count has been soundly refuted – atleast in AZ
Also in NH – though again there were serious problems found.
The AZ audit also disproved the claim – atleast in AZ – that there was significant fraud in the ballot adjudication process.
i.e the claim that the voting machines were kicking out large numbers of ballots as uncountable, and then election officials were altering them for Biden.
I never personally bought the claims that DVS jiggered the vote count in the US.
Getting caught would have an astronomically high cost – to DVS, and to whatever party they were aiding.
At the same time we MUST have in place systems that assure that if organize election fraud of that type did occur – it would be caught.
We do need an AZ style audit of every single contested state.
If the results confirm Biden won -we restore trust. There is nothing that can be done that would be more effective in preventing an actual insurrection or a repeat of 1/6 than a broad audit of swing states that confirmed the election results.
The AZ audit did not confirm the results – but it did confirm the counting.
AND it exposed many areas of election vulnerability that must be fixed. as well as numerous problems that do cast significant doubt on the election and must be fixed in the future.
But we should not routinely have AZ style Audits.
What we should have is automatic random audits of every single election. These are far smaller, but other wise fundimentally the same.
After each election – pull 10% of the machines and confirm the software,and the counts for that machine.
Pull 10% of the ballots – and check them for indicia of fraud.
And provide a report on the findings to the legislature to make changes to election laws as required.
It is not possible to preclude many forms of fraud with mailin voting and we shoudl completely eliminate it.
But that is not politically possible at this time.
It is however possible – though difficult to dramatically reduce even eliminate the risk of organized mailin voter fraud. But that requires changes that democrats are going to fight.
These would NOT significantly impact the convenience of voters.
But it would take alot of changes. The most important of which would be being extremely serious about doing everything possible to verify that a mailin ballot was from a legitimate voter and rejecting it if ANYTHING is wrong.
That means checking the name, the address, the DOB, the DL #. and rejecting anything incomplete or wrong.
Signature matching has numerous problems – but at the very least a signature must be provided and there must be a 20% match.
Those rules alone would have radically altered the results – in AZ and in ever swing state.
Approx. 6% of mailin ballots – which is the historical norm, would have been rejected by even moderate conformance to these requirements.
But again after the elections there should be a random mailin ballot audit. This means selecting a small portion of mailin ballots and finding those voters and verifing that they voted, and that the ballot envelope with their voter information was sent in by them.
In addition to randomly auditing voter information on mailin ballots, Every single duplicate should be verified and where there is fraud there should be prosecutions.
Random audits of mailin ballots WILL preclude organized voting fraud. actually verifying mailin ballots will catch any significant scale organized voter fraud. It will not catch much individual small scale fraud. That is a problem – but it is a smaller problem, that has far lower risk of tipping an election.
Voter ID accomplishes the same purpose for in person voting. It does not preclude fraud but it makes it much harder, increases the odds of getting caught and makes organized voter fraud much harder.
Next, it MUST be an absolute requirement that ballots are printed by the state, and that those ballots include numerous anti-forgery features.
One example which most states -including AZ use is serial numbers barcoded on the ballot.
There are several important reasons for antiforgery measures on ballots – these make MANY forms of fraud impossible or certain to be caught.
Any “clerical” processes – such as photocopying blank ballots purportedly because a precinct has run out – which should never happen,
makes possible many many forms of organize election fraud – or election fraud by election officials.
One of the things I noted before was that mailin voting enables election fraud by election officials.
If ballots are only handled by election officials – any ballot that is forged indicates election fraud by election officials.
It indicates ballot stuffing.
But mailin voting means that ballots are handled outside the supervision of election officials.
That means it is impossible to know that a forged ballot came from a mailin voter or is evidence that ballot boxes were stuffed.
I noted that every single swing state had more ballots than voters who voted.
This is a mismatch that can not be allowed to occur. This is a HUGE indicator of organized election fraud.
We have claims in all swing states – including the affidavits you consider not evidence of boxes of ballots being snuck into counting facilities. By far the most probable explanation for more ballots than people who are marked as having voted is organized voting fraud.
If a mismatch – where the number of ballots is greater than the number of voters (by hundreds of thousands) is accepted as just “clerical error” – large scale organized ballot stuffing fraud by a small number of election officials is very easy.
It does not matter how accurate, honest and decent those counting ballots are – if someone snuck in 100,000 forged ballots.
I want to point out another issue regarding Ballots that you seem to miss.
Election spending in 2016 was under 7B, in 2020 is was 14B
that is actually small potatos.
As we see in congress today – the results of elections determines Trillions of dollars of spending.
Whether you like it or not ballots are essentially a form of MONEY
Every single ballot is a permission from citizens to spend money, or to spend it one way rather than another.
I have no problem with the billions spent to “influence” the election.
I do not care that Hillary manufactured the dirty dossier.
I care greatly when either as a result of errors, or incompetence, or as a result of political values those in government state acting to alter the outcome of elections.
The handling of ballots in elections by those in government – both the actual physical handling and the laws and processes are about the same as the handling of money by the banks or federal reserve.
Forging a ballot is the same as forging a $1000/bill
We would not allow banks of the federal reserve to behave carelessly with $1000/bills.
Exactly the same is true of ballots.
When the executive and/or courts weakens the handling of ballots they are enabling forgery.
And given what is at stake in elections – you can be certain that if you make election fraud easy – the fraudsters will come.
John B. Say,
“ But Cyber ninjas is certified – for auditing financial systems for bank fraud, credit card fraud, check forgery.
They are actual experts in examining paper documents for indicia of fraud.”
That’s false. Cyber ninjas is just an internet security firm. All they do is assess security of websites. From their own website.
“ Cyber Ninjas offers a variety of consulting services oriented around application security. These offerings are outlined in our services section and include application security assessments, consulting, and training. With all of our assessments we aim not only to find vulnerabilities, but to be sure you are equipped to fix what we found, and prevent it from occurring again.”
https://cyberninjas.com/services/
They are a consulting firm that specializes in web based security. They have zero experience in auditing an election.
Svelaz -we are talkign about 250K at the low end to 900K at the high end depending on how many ballots contained multiple problems.
Even 250K “clerical” errors is a disaster.
And I want to address that further.
One of the reasons for secret balloting – where the actual ballot never leaves control of an election official is that not only does it eliminate several external forms of fraud, But it results in the certainty that other forms of fraud MUST be by election officials.
When the state prints all ballots, and the ballots never leave control of election officials – any ballot that is not a state printed ballot – is not just fraud, by fraud involving election officials.
You, the left the media keep touting this as the most secure election ever – that is complete BS.
What you call clerical errors – even if true are
1). Sufficiently large to tip the election
2). destrictive of the anti-fraud measures that are supposed to keep our elections secure.
If Polling places were allowed to do the things you claim- which they were not (but some did).
That destroys the security of the election.
It enables the oportunity for outside fraud.
AND it enables the opportunity for inside fraud,
AND it makes it impossible to identify fraud, remove fraud, and prosecute fraud.
How long do you think the US financial system would remain secure if the FED allowed banks to print dollars on copy paper ?
Or quit using serial numbers or registering the printing of the bills ?
What you call “clerical errors” is either actual fraud, or lawlessness by election officials.
Further it enables actual fraud.
In all likelyhood it is BOTH.
John B. Say,
“ What you call “clerical errors” is either actual fraud, or lawlessness by election officials.
Further it enables actual fraud.
In all likelyhood it is BOTH.”
John, you’re clearly letting paranoia regarding voter fraud get the better of you.
Clerical errors, honest mistakes, whatever justification, you will always come up the most extreme outcome and deem it true without any evidence or you will confirm it due to lack of evidence.
At no point has it ever been proven that massive voter fraud as you claim has occurred. Your apprehension is dependent on the distrust of the system that was sowed on you by the claims Trump had made repeatedly. Trump has lied about many of his claims. His own lawyers are facing disbarment because they have been making false claims that Trump himself made.
It seems that the only way you would be convinced of the integrity of elections is if you personally counted every ballot and verified every fiber of the paper the ballot was made of to be official.
That’s the nature of being stuck on a perpetual series of conspiracy theories and speculation. You’re being taken advantage of by individuals like Trump and those who choose to mimic his behavior by constantly sowing doubt in your mind. It’s the very source of that distrust in government that you often cite as the problem.
Svelaz – you refuted nothing.
At best you mindlessly repeated – without any critical thinking talking point narratives of election fraud apologists.
John B. Say,
“ Svelaz – you refuted nothing.”
Actually I refuted quite a bit. You just chose to ignore the evidence before you.
There is no need to go deep into the PA (or other state) lawlessness.
Laws are created by the legislature. Not election officials, not governors, and not courts.
In fact the constitution specifically delegates elections laws to the state legislatures.
Further election laws are required to be in place months before the election -part of that is to allow for legal challenges, part of that is specifically to avoid the mess of 2020 where people did not know what was allowed.
In some states you were allowed to submit a mailin ballot multiple times AND to vote in person.
It was the responsibility of election officials to only count the last ballot.
This is also ONE of many reasons that mailin ballots and early votes must be counted last.
Because if the person voted on election day – all early ballots must be left unprocessed.
But secret voting means once a ballot is separated from its security envelope – that ballot can not be removed fromt he count if a later one superceeds it.
But other states did not check for duplicates and even allowed for counting of early ballots and mailin ballots to speed up ballot counting.
Any state that did that, could not allow people to void their own ballot by voting again or in person.
But because all this was made up at the last minute or because almost no one ever voted by mail before – people did not know what the rules were or got confused by different rules in different states.
This is an invitation for fraud.
What the audit clearly exposes is that AZ or atleast Maricopa county – did not check if someone had already voted.
That is a clerical error – and it results in fraud.
John B. Say,
“ There is no need to go deep into the PA (or other state) lawlessness.
Laws are created by the legislature. Not election officials, not governors, and not courts.
In fact the constitution specifically delegates elections laws to the state legislatures.
Further election laws are required to be in place months before the election -part of that is to allow for legal challenges, part of that is specifically to avoid the mess of 2020 where people did not know what was allowed.”
Well John of you went deep into the details. You would find that the Pennsylvania legislature did authorize election offices to make changes in regards to voting locations and set certain procedures. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court specifically noted that this was in place long before the 2020 election and was never challenged.
Legislatures create laws obviously, but they also delegate authority thru law and in Pennsylvania they did exactly that for election offices. If you actually delved into the details of the opinion you will find the statute that allowed them to do that. Legislatures CAN do that.
“ In some states you were allowed to submit a mailin ballot multiple times AND to vote in person.”
That’s false. No state allows you to do that.
“ Because if the person voted on election day – all early ballots must be left unprocessed.“
No John that’s not how it works. When a person votes by mail and ends up going to vote in person their mail in ballot is automatically not counted. The state knows one ballot was already sent to the address of the person who is registered. Upon voting in person the system detects that person voted in person and because of verification using ID the ballot sent to the address of the same registered person is voided.
The starting point is trivial.
Reboot your brain and review my posts.
Your rebutals AREN’T.
They are shallow, and poorly thought out.
You are under the delusion that conducting a safe trustworthy election is easy.
It is not. It is incredibly difficult.
In fact nearly every single thing that you do to make voting easier – makes the administration of the election harder and fraud more likely.
The constitutional provisions requiring secret ballots – are to prevent fraud.
The state laws that specific the order in which ballots are process, how and where they are collected, that even specify exactly how ballots are to be printed – are all anti-fraud measures – do not follow them and you get more fraud.
Many laws – such as the secret ballot requirement also means that if certain forms of fraud are found we KNOW it was by election officials – so we know where to look and who to prosecute.
There is more than one way to conduct a fraud free election. But there are not infinite ways. And most “good ideas” about how to conduct an election are actually bad ideas. Getting it right is hard.
Before mailin elections – in person fraud and fraud by election officials makes it certain that a small percent of elections in the US every year have results that are fraudulent. At this very moment dozens of high profile races in VA and NJ are being decided within 1%, currently the NJ governor race is within 0.1% and several VA races are that close.
The GA presidential election was within 0.25%.
The US presidential election in FL in 2000 was decided by less than 1000 votes
The prevalence of close elections guarantees that we will challenge the results – both the candidates and the voters.
Voter ID did not matter when election officials knew all the voters in their precinct.
Voter ID did not matter when elections were won by 10-20% of the vote.
10000 fraudulent votes does not matter when an election is won by 100000 votes.
But no matter how many excuses you make or how many times you rant “clerical error” or cite some nonsense from a politically biased fact check site that thinks its job is to manufacture excuses for the left.
The FACT is the election was self evidently lawless,
AND the extent of likely FRAUD that was found in AZ is not merely enough to have tipped AZ – but it is larger than what would be needed to tip the entire US presidential election.
John B. Say,
I’ve reviewed ALL of your posts and many are either woefully misinformed or just plain assumptions that lack credible evidence. You are certainly entitled to you opinion, but not your own facts. It is awfully clear that you are more invested in conspiracy theory than reality.
You have cited that a lack of evidence is reason to believe that it is proof that massive fraud has occurred. Fortunately every case that was before the courts with the exception of ONE. Was dismissed ether because of lack of evidence, standing, or outright false claims.
“You are under the delusion that conducting a safe trustworthy election is easy. ”
I have never made such a claim John nor have I stated that it would be easy. No single election is perfect. But you seem to take that imperfection as a reason to assume that rampant fraud or election malfeasance is afoot. It’s simply a product of being lied to too many times.
“The constitutional provisions requiring secret ballots – are to prevent fraud.”
Nope, the idea of secret ballots is to assure anonymity. Not fraud.
You argue that I use politically biased fact checking organizations, but you then rely on a politically biased “auditors” like the Cyber Ninjas which they have shown to be biased from the very beginning.
Your cases make MY point – the courts did not look at the merits of the cases or issues.
They also make my point about states acting lawlessly.
In your first example – there is no TX state law authorizing drive through voting or ballot drop off.
All aspects of handling ballots is critical to fraud prevention. Modifying ballot handling is not the purvue of the courts.
Federal courts generally do not have jurisdiction over state laws. But they do have jurisdiction over federal elections.
Or more accurately put they have as much jurisdiction as state courts and state executives, as much of federal elections is constitutionaly the sole domain of the state legislature – not the state as a whole. Arguably the federal constitution does not even expect the governor to sign election laws – this is much like congress and constitutional amendments – congress writes and passes a constitutional amendment, the states ratify it, the president has no role – nor BTW do the courts. No court can interfere in the process of enacting a constitutional amendment, only its enforcement after it is ratified.
Regardless, with all state laws but especially with election laws, the executive and judicial branches are responsible to administer and enforce them AS WRITTEN . They do not have the authority to alter them.
In 38 US states and 5 of 6 swing states those state constitutions require “secret ballots” . a requirment for secret balloting is that voting must be conducted such that no third party can ever know how a voter cast their vote. Mailin voting can not ever meet that criteria.
Secret ballots require that a voter is never in possession of a ballot outside the control of election officials.
Secret ballot state constitutional provisions were enacted in the 19th century because buying votes was so purvasive. that the political parties actually pre-printed filled out ballots and voters picked them up and were paid wafter they placed them into a ballot box.
Ballot harvesting is illegal in most states for exactly this reason.
You say that the law was followed – yet it is absolutely clear that it was not. In any state that had mailin voting and a constitutional requirement for secret ballots – there is no possibility that the law was followed.
That is just the most obvious way in which the election was lawless.
On my state – one of the swing states, not only we have mailin voting – with the magical impramatur of the state supreme court – despite not only a secret ballot constitutional provision , but a 2nd constitutional provision requiring in person voting on election day with only explicit exceptions
Nor were provisions of the state constitution the only election laws violated. My state had explicit laws governing observation of vote counting – these were not followed. It had explicit provisions that non-inperson ballots had to be turned in at the county office of elections.
Yet we had unattended ballot collection boxes all over the state. My state had explicit provisions for when absentee ballots had to be received by to be counted these were ignored. And on and on and on.
My state had strict voter ID laws – that were ignored .
Frankly my states laws were insufficient to prevent election fraud if they were followed as written
But by ignoring the laws the legitimacy of the entire election was undermined
I would further note that voters were PISSED, last spring – despite efforts by the goverrnor to muddle the ballot initiative language such that people would not know how to vote – voters stripped the governor of all claimed executive emergency powers.
That is a separate issue – that effected voting accross the country. Whether you accept that executives – the president and governors should have additional powers in the event of some emergency. that power can not last long past the next legislative session.
Emergency powers can only exist when the legislature can not function. When they endure for nearly a full year – that is tryanny and lawlessness.
It is never legitimate for the executive to unilaterally circumvent election laws. But even in an emergency the emergency powers of an executive must be limited in scope and limited in duration – and yet aaross the country they remain in effect., in may states.
We do not have a monarchy in the US. The federal constitution guarantees its citizens a republican form of govenrment – even in the states.
Governors do not RULE, they swear an oath of office to uphold the constitution and the laws of that state. Just as the president and every federal government employee does. Yet at all levels those on the left seem to think when they can not pass the laws they wish, that they can accomplish their goals by ignoring the law and doing as they please. That is lawlessness.
The president and governors must enforce the laws and constitution . If the law requires voter ID to vote – then voters must have voter ID to vote. If the law makes it illegal to enter the country without a visa or passport – then those without should not be allowed to enter or should be deported. and on and on.
If we do not like the law or the constitution – we can change those. But until we do we MUST follow the law as it is not as some of us wish it to be. And our courts are not merely required to do the same, but required to order the executive to do so.
John B. Say.
“Finally, the standard for counting ballots is 180 degrees off. There is no actual right to vote, but there is a right to government that we trust.”
There IS an actual right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The 14th amendment also ASSERTS the right. The 19th amendment extends the right to vote to women. The 26th amendment gives the right to vote to those 18 years of age. So clearly there is an actual right to vote.
Logic eludes you.
First rights do not come from government – no government can create a right.
The first amendment does not create a right to free speech, it merely notes its existance.
I argue here constantly that we must abide by the law or constitution, and change it where it is wrong.
I have never argued that the constitution is the word of guy carved in stone tablets handed to moses.
Rights as the declaration states are inalieneable and pre-exist government.
There was signficant debate over the inclusion of the bill of rights – its opponents correctly surmised that documenting something as a right would lead courts to the incorrect conclusion that other rights did not exist.
THERE IS NO RIGHT TO VOTE!
Read the declaration of independences – nowhere in it is there a claim that governments create rights.
The clear language is that actual rights predate government. Further that they are unalienable.
Government can neither create them nor destroy them.
Citizens are entitled to government that they can Trust to protect their rights – again READ THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
The constitution describes the STRUCTURE of government – its powers and limitations. It does not address the foundations of govenrment.
The justification of govenrment – the declaration of independence is the seminal american – even global document laying the foundations of the social contract.
Government exists to secure out rights. It continues to exist so long as we trust it to do so.
Elections and voting are incredibly important they are the means by which we attempt to assure that government has the consent of the governed.
BUT they are a measuring tool, and are only of value to the extent they accurately measure consent.
You have no understanding of rights.
We have no more right to vote that we have a right to a police force.
Voting is a tool to measure the consent of the governed – it is NOT that actual consent.
In 1989 the government of east germany vanished in front of our eyes.
There was no election.
Millions of people had withdrawn their consent – often long before, and were finally willing to step forward and say so.
They took to the streets- peacfully. And the east german government was gone just like that.
No Vote, no Election, just gone.
The people had withdrawn their consent.
If millions of americans took to the streets on 1/6 and said – we do not recognize the results of the election.
That would be it. The Biden administration would be gone.
In fact if sufficient numbers take to the street tomorow – the Biden administration is gone.
Almost any government can collapse as quickly as East Germany.
That is slightly more difficult in regimes where the police and military remain loyal to the government.
That would be why post 1/6 democrats had to try to purge the military and the national guard of alleged trump supporters.
“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
Churchill.
All that is necescary for the government to collapse is for its instruments of violence – the police and military to cease protecting it from its citizens. Just as happened in east germany.
No vote. Not even actual violence.
Your “evidence is lots of amendments that you claim extends the right to vote to various minorities.
You can not extend an actual right – because it has always belonged to everyone.
According to your concept of rights – slavery once was a right – and could be again in the future.
By mine – one that does not rest on the constituiton – the constitution rests on it.
Individual liberty was always a right. Slavery was never neither a right,.
Slavery was always an immoral infringement on liberty.
So let me ask you – was slavery ever moral ? Was liberty always a right ?
Or is individual liberty something that became a right with the passage of the 14th amendment ?
Do rights precede government ? or are they created and destroyed by government ?
Are rights inalienable ?
Government that is trustworthy and protects your rights – that is a right.
Good grief John, you’re rambling justifications make no sense. You’re conflating the declaration of independence with the constitution. The declaration of independence is NOT the supreme law of the land. It’s not what the courts look to for determining whether laws are CONSTITUTIONAL or not. They don’t look at the declaration of Independence.
“THERE IS NO RIGHT TO VOTE!
Read the declaration of independences – nowhere in it is there a claim that governments create rights.
The clear language is that actual rights predate government. Further that they are unalienable.
Government can neither create them nor destroy them.”
So by your own twisted logic you have no right to bear arms either. Interesting.
There is certainly a right to vote. It’s not a privilege is that is what you are hinting at. The rights to vote was extended to others who didn’t have it before. The logic being that others had them before those who didn’t .
The only favorable result for democrats of the AZ audit was that it discredited – atleast in AZ the claim that Dominion helped democrats throw the election to Biden. There have been atleast small scale but very serious election equipment problems in GA, and NH and MI.
But in every other possible way the AZ audit is a disaster for Democrats.
I would suggest getting a copy of the report and reading it. Depending on the degree of overlap between the problems found somewhere between 235K and 980K ballots had serious problems and should not be counted.
There were over 200K more ballots than voters.
Do you have an innocent explanation for that ?
There were almost 40K mailin voters who voted multiple times – and those ballots were counted.
Ballots that were damaged were duplicated – that is legal, but it is near certain that both the original and the duplicate ultimately were counted – that is not.
Tens of thousands of people whose eligability to vote can not be verified – voted and had their ballots counted.
The large number of duplicate ballots strongly suggests that there was large scale and undetected (and undetectable) organized fraud going on.
When I tell you that there were almost 40K voters who voted more than once, that could mean the person actually sent in more than one Ballot. But it could also mean that some group identified voters who were unlikely to vote and submitted ballots for them – that almost certainly happened in CA during the recall. If that is the case – it is not 40K of people voting twice that is the problem – it is closer to 400K people who did not vote – but someone else voted for them.
In GA the government ballot scans had numerous duplicate scans – likely ballots that were scanned multiple times.
In MI we have incompetent elderly people in homes who according to voting records voted, despite the fact that they were mentially unable to do so. This is more complex than that – because the election commission directed nursing homes to violate MI election laws.
In MU that is criminal.
These are just a few of the problems that have been found.
Just over 40K votes would have flipped the presidential election. Just under 100K votes would have flipped the house the senate and the whitehouse red.
Did that happen ? We do not know, and that is the problem.
John B. Say,
“There were over 200K more ballots than voters.
Do you have an innocent explanation for that ?”
That claim was based on a falsehood that couldn’t be corroborated by anyone including Cyber Ninjas. The numbers cited refer to statements made during a recent Arizona Senate briefing. However, they never said auditors had found 275,000 potentially fraudulent ballots.
Maricopa County officials and independent fact-checking organizations have also disputed the figures.
As for the claims of duplicate voting, that is false.
“Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: Arizona’s largest county in the 2020 election received and counted 74,000 mail-in ballots that had no record of ever being sent out to voters.
THE FACTS: False. The claim mischaracterizes reports that are intended to help political parties track early voters for their get-out-the-vote efforts, not tally mail-in ballots through Election Day. The reports don’t represent all mail-in ballots sent out and received, so the numbers aren’t expected to match up, according to Maricopa County officials and outside experts.
“We have 74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent,” Logan said at a meeting livestreamed at Arizona’s Capitol on Thursday. “That could be something where documentation wasn’t done right. There’s a clerical issue. There’s not proper things there, but I think when we’ve got 74,000, it merits knocking on a door and validating some of this information.”
Logan based his false claim on two types of early voting reports issued by Maricopa County: EV32 files and EV33 files. He claimed that EV32 files are “supposed to give a record of when a mail-in ballot is sent” and EV33 files are “supposed to give a record of when the mail-in ballot is received.”
That’s not accurate, according to Maricopa County officials, who tweeted on Friday that “the EV32 Returns & EV33 files are not the proper files to refer to for a complete accumulating of all early ballots sent and received.”
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-arizona-ap-fact-check-election-2020-campaign-2016-f0c36df59ee1069d65aa6a70a22d88cc
What the Arizona audit DID find is that Biden did indeed win. How is that “disastrous” for Democrats?
Sorry Svelaz – “that claim” is not uncorroborated – it is FACT, You are listening to far to many idiots.
You are also engaged in idiotic spin.
Both the audit and other inquiry outside the audit itself has exposed myriads of large scale problems in the AZ (and other elections)
Such as more ballots than people who voted.
You are correct those are not absolute proof of fraud. They are EVIDENCE of fraud.
All of the findings are damning. ALL of the findings indicate the election results should not be trusted.
But all are not incontrovertable proof of fraud. There are several possible explanations for many of these findings that do not constitute fraud – though in most instances the most probable cause for the discrepancy is fraud.
Regardless, in nearly all cases – whether fraud or not, they are consequential error that produces election counts that are not reliable.
Of course maricopa county election officials dispute the results of the audit – they are the ones that screwed up the election.
Though I would note that in many instances the results of the audit have been confirmed – either by the AZ dept of State or by Maricopa County.
As an example – the claim that the AZ voter registration database was hacked – has been confirmed – Hackers did managed to access and potentially alter the AZ election records.
I would note – Cyber ninja’s is ACTUALLY independent – fact check organization are NOT and have no access to the actual evidence.
The AZ audit report – the findings of which were summarized UNDER OATH in the Senate hearings that you dismiss as meaningless, was produced by auditors who directly reviewed the actual evidence – the actual ballots, voting machines and voting records.
Do you have a fact checker who has done that ?
Do you have anyone who will contradict the AZ audit report UNDER OATH ?
The same it true of the rest of your idiotic Faux refutation. You do not even have your numbers correct – and you blur different findings together.
There are over a dozen significant findings of Maricopa County election problems that are large enough to through doubt on the election results and indicate the probability of fraud – in many instance of ORGANIZED LARGE SCALE FRAUD.
While you are correct – none of those findings prove fraud beyond a reasonable doubt – that is why the report was refered to the AZ Attorney General for further investigation.
The most easy to undertand example is that of duplicate ballots. There are atleast 3 possible explanations for duplicate ballots:
First that the State handling and explanation of the suddenly imposed mailin voting process was so unclear that voters thought that their vote had not counted and voted a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) time.
Second that 17,000 plus individuals on their own fraudulently decided to vote 2 or more times, that is voter fraud but it is not organized systemic fraud and it PROBABLY did not significantly alter the outcome of the eleciton.
Third is that bad actors using public voter records submitted fraudulent ballots for people that were unlikely to vote – and the 17,000 duplicates are the instances in which they were wrong and those people did vote, and the actual fraud it most likely to be more than 100K ballots.
The AZ audit has no means to distinguish between those 3 choices. And in fact it is probable that ALL are true.
That some voters were confused by a suddenly new mailin voting scheme, that some voters engaged in election fraud AND that bad actors submitted large numbers of fraudulent ballots for voters that they did not expect to vote.
Regardless there are several key conclusions that you are oblivious to
The means by which the election was conducted do not prevent large scale error, or small and large scale fraud.
Maricopa county was either unwilling or unable to prevent duplicate ballots from being counted.
And that is just ONE of the dozen findings of large scale problems – there were myriads of small scale problems that did not have the potential to change the outcome of the election.
With respect to the rest of your nonsense – we do not challenge FACTS – with opinions.
I would separately note regarding you “factchecks”:
First they do not directly address the specific claims I have made.
The discrepancy between the number of ballots mailed and the number received is NOT the same as the discrepancy between the number of ballots counted and the number of voters recorded to have voted.
Next, your “factcheck” – does not even directly address the problem it claims to dispute.
Every state had different rules for the distribution and receipt of mailin ballots.
The process in some states was substantially more prone to fraud than others.
Regardless, some states had processes where it is possible from the records kept to identify clear instances of probable fraud.
Such as when more ballots are received than were mailed.
It is not possible to prevent error in an election with millions of votes.
But all errors are not the same and many discrepancies are indicators of fraud.
Receiving substantially more mailin ballots than were mailed is one of those – the actual discrepancy should be the other direction.
Counting more ballots than there were people who voted – that is another – and that occured in most of the swing states.
Again error is possible but it should always go the OPPOSITE direction.
One of the problems with the poor quality of education today and the inability of so many to engage in critical thinking is that you are unable to grasp the significance of data.
In processes that involve millions of data points handled by humans – error is unavoidable.
One of the reasons that Turley early on STRONGLY encouraged Biden to get behind auditing the election is because errors NORMALLY cancel out. It was near certain that Republicans would find wide spread error in the 2020 election.
The point at which my concerns about election fraud went from theoretical – Fraud is possible even likely because of the poor and lawless way this election was conducted to near certain that the election results were tainted by fraud was when relatively early on the few recanvases (not actual audits) that occured found significantly more Trump votes than Biden votes. While Trump never picked up even close to enough votes to flip the election. he was picking up votes at a rate of 10:1 or more over Biden in these recanvases.
The odds against that scale of one sided error are enormous.
This is also part of the failure of the courts. There were numerous limited checks on the 2020 election prior to the courts rulings.
None of these found sufficient issues to change the outcome but the results of nearly all of these either favored Trump or demonstrated problems of a scale 10 times larger than the margin of victory.
In GA Raffensberger promissed an audit – that did not occur. but the poor substitute for an udit resulted in a significant pick up of votes by Trump. That should not have happened.
Raffensberger promissed a full signature audit of Fulton county.
That did not happen – instead the GBI did a random signature audit of Cobb county – basisically shifting from the place in GA most likely to find mailin voting fraud to the least likely.
The GBI pulled 5000 ballots at random. Of those 300 hundred were found that should not have been accepted even according to the lax standards that Raffensberger negotiated with the Abrams group. Had the signature verification the law required occured the number of rejected mailin ballots would have been twice that.
Regardless the error rate was 6% – Biden’s margin of victory in GA was 0.25%.
But that is not the end of this of the 5000 mailin envelopes checked – 30 were found to be likely voter fraud, and they were refered to the AG for prosecution. That is 30 out of 5000 or a fraud rate of 0.6% – that is almost 3 times as large as Biden’s margin of victory.
A random audit is NOT the same as a complete audit. It is possible that the random selection of 5000 ballots through chance selected a higher than normal error and fraud rate. But it is highly unlikely.
Regardless the GBI signature audit is NOT proof of widespread election fraud, but it is a strong indicator that wide spread fraud and error were likely.
The correct response to the GBI audit should have been a state wide signature audit.
Instead the issue died. The lamestream press reported that only 300 bad signatures were found and only 30 instances of fraud.
Pretending that was out of all of Cobb county – not a sample of 5000 ballots.
Regardless, we have several generations who are mathematically challenged, who do not understand that 30 frauds out of 5000 is a large fraud rate, not a small one.
And we see you (and these idiot fact check organizations) conflating one problem with another, and misunderstanding the meaning of different types of errors. We expect to see LESS balots returned than sent out. When there is more that is likely – nearly certainly fraud.
We expect to see less votes than voters – each voter does not vote for every single office.
When the vote count is larger than the number of voters – that is significant error and nearly certainly FRAUD.
There are many possible explanations for the same person having voted multiple times.
NONE of them are good, All are indications of severe election administration problems. Most of them are indications of fraud.
But worst of all – some possible explanations are indications of LARGER organized Fraud.
Republicans made myriads of allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. A few of those claims have proven incredibly stupid.
The Bentham’s law claim was complete idiocy. Bentham’s law is an excellent means of detecting financial fraud, it is very good at detecting fraud where numbers should be random. But it does not work when other factors constrain the numbers.
Sydney Powells claim that DVS voting machines were deliberately miscounting votes was very dubious from the start – though it should have been simple to check – except no one did prior to the AZ audit. Eric Coomer has done himself and dominion nor help – he said absolutely stupid things that are likely to destroy Coomer and DVS’s defamation claim. Coomers visceral bias evidenced in his tweets, emails and deposition may not prove he and DVS engaged in election fraud – but that is NOT the standard. False accusations are not defamation when they are plausible – and Coomer has made them plausible.
Further the Windham NH audit demonstrated that DVS machines miscount folded (mailin) ballots, and the error is loppsided – the worst kind of error, and that DVS was aware of the problem – for years, and did nothing about it.
The problem with DVS equipment did not likely alter the 2020 election and had no impact on the presidential election.
But it likely altered the outcome of many close NH elections over the past couple of decades.
Other audits exposed significant problems with DVS equipment – Those problems did not inherently alter outcomes, but they did throw significant portions of the ballots – far more than allowed to human adjudicators which increases the odds of bias.
Democrats had a clue that the 2020 election was going to be disasterous – when a may mailin vote in Newark resulted in 25% of ballots being tossed. This posed a severe problem for democrats. Pandemic scare tactics that the left engaged in were certain to keep more democrats from voting in person than republicans. And a 25% error rate for mailin voting meant that mailin voting would not fix the problem.
Republicans in many states were cajoled into accepting mailin voting – understanding that the historical rejection rate for mailin votes is about 6% under any ordinary circumstances any gains for democrats from mailin voting would be canceled by losses due to ballot rejection rates.
There fore democrats and billionaire sponsored lawfare had to force states – especially swing states to accept a greater portion of mailin ballots.
But the measures that result in the high rejection rate for mailin ballots are all antifraud measures.
Decreasing the number of ballots rejected was going to have the effect of increasing the likelyhood and ease of fraud.
But those like you are either ignorant of that or do not care.
So long excepts from court decisons citing standing as the basis for their decision is proof somehow that Standing was NOT the basis for court decisions ? That they actually looked at the merits – something that is impossible without discovery, and hearings ?
So opinions from fact partisan fact check groups that opine conclusions about evidence they have not examined, on issues that are not those alleged somehow in Svelaz world refutes the expert conclusions expressed under oath of those who actually examined all the evidence ?
The draft version of the AZ report cited numerous instances of FRAUD. That language was removed fromt he final report – not because those conclusions were incorrect, but because they are not the appropriate domain for an auditing group. The auditors reported what they found. They were not hired – and the Senate did not have the authority to specifically investigate election fraud. The authority of the Senate to conduct the audit is based on its oversight responsibility. The Senate asked for an investigation of the election for the purpose of determining what it might do to improve the election – not to change the outcome, not to prosecute those who engaged in election fraud.
The auditors did not follow the evidence. They were constrained to the four corners of their role in auditing the election.
But the Senate has forwarded the auditors report to the AZ AG specifally for the purpose of conducting further criminal investigations into the likely fraud that was found. Unfortunately there are politics at play in the AZ AG’s office and I expect that we will see lots of words but no actions.
finally I find your positions really odd – you accepted the collusion delusion nonsense – on the thinest and most partisan of evidence that has all eventually been publicly debunked and which we now know was fully debunked by the FBI by Jan 2017.
Yet angry democrats – and their deep state collaborators contunied to plague as – and somehow persuaged you of this nonsens that the knew was false – for years.
Just recently we saw the remarkably stupid political dirty trick false flag white supremecist operation by Lincoln project against Youngkin.
We also now know without any doubt that the entire collusion delusion nonsense was another false flag political hatchet job by democrats.
We were told that Russian hackers hacked the DNC at the sponsoship of republicans – that has been so thoroughly debunked that it now appears more probable the DNC emails were leaked by a democrat whistleblower angry that the DNC was conspiring to tank Sanders.
Is there a claim of election malfeasance regarding republicans that is true ?
Given the frequency of election malfeasance by democrats – is it surprising that most people think that democrats stole the 2020 election ?
In fact I can not think of a single alleged instance of republican election fraud in my lifetime.
While on his deathbed democratic election officials confirmed stuffing ballot boxes for Johnson. The allegations that the 1960 election turned on fraud in illinois and Texas, we have had convictions of election officials in Philadelphia and other democratic strongholds.
Even most election problems appear to occur in democratic domains. The disasterous mailin primary in 2020 – was in NJ – Newark.
The mess in NYC where the election was initially off by hundreds of thousands of votes because election officials failed to sero the computers after testing the equipment.
If NYC can make mistakes over 100,000 votes – why do you think Maricopa county or Fulton County are doing better ?
Critical thinking is clearly a skill you have little experience with.
John B, Say,
“The draft version of the AZ report cited numerous instances of FRAUD. That language was removed fromt he final report – not because those conclusions were incorrect, but because they are not the appropriate domain for an auditing group. The auditors reported what they found. They were not hired – and the Senate did not have the authority to specifically investigate election fraud. ”
They were hired specifically to find fraud. It was the entire point of the audit. They looked at ballots that supposedly contained bamboo fibers or had water marks. To show fraud was committed. Obviously they found none. You cited they proved election servers were hacked and registrations were compromised. They were looking for fraud John. Don’t pretend they didn’t.
“So long excepts from court decisons citing standing as the basis for their decision is proof somehow that Standing was NOT the basis for court decisions ? That they actually looked at the merits – something that is impossible without discovery, and hearings ?”
John, you continue to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding regarding the courts inability to look at the merits. You can’t look at the merits of a case when there is no evidence to examine. The trump lawyers and other challengers to the election results or laws could not produce or were not in possession of evidence needed to show the court. All they offered was speculation which the courts rightly noted was not evidence.
In order to have hearings and discovery you first have to have credible evidence. It was the vital piece of information that none of trump’s lawyers could produce. All they could offer was evidence of hearsay and speculation.
“In fact I can not think of a single alleged instance of republican election fraud in my lifetime.”
It’s not hard to find. It’s happened recently. “(Reuters) – The North Carolina Republican political operative at the center of an absentee ballot fraud scheme that led the state to order a rerun of a congressional election was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice on Wednesday, officials said.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-north-carolina/north-carolina-republican-operative-charged-in-election-fraud-scheme-idUSKCN1QG2FS
While you are correct that many many many people beleive they were hired specifically to find fraud.
That is not only FALSE, it is obviously false. They were hired to audit the election. They were hired with the expectation that they would find large scale problems – which they did.
But most people capable of critical thinking would KNOW that much of the actual fraud that was alleged can not be proven by an audit of a partially secret ballot election.
The AZ audit found the high probability of fraud. It found the indicia of fraud. It found the basis for the AZ AG to seek out actual proof of fraud.
The Auditors did NOT contact voters to see if they had voted or voted twice.
That was outside their legitimate power.
It is not outside the AZ AG’s
The Auditors have no means to investigate where the additional ballots that have no record of a voter came from.
They do not even have the ability to determine which ballots do not have a corresponding voter.
The requirement for secret voting is NOT for partly secret voting.
I would note the audit was challenged by democrats as violating secret voting requirements.
That was the most hypocritical challenge – mailin voting violates voting secrecey.
Auditing CAN NOT.
But there is rationality in the democrats madness. Auditors were able to establish that almost 40,000 mailin ballots were likely fraudulent by examining the signatures, and addresses in the envelope.
If as MIGHT be technically possible the auditors could associate the fraudulent envelopes with the fraudulent ballots,
they actually could correct the count.
But doing so would violate voting secrecy.
John B. Say,
“Just over 40K votes would have flipped the presidential election. Just under 100K votes would have flipped the house the senate and the whitehouse red.
Did that happen ? We do not know, and that is the problem.”
Yes we do know. The claims about fraud in Arizona and other states have already been addressed and most have been found to be either false or erroneous due to poor understanding of election processes.
Here’s another case about drop boxes in Ohio,
” The state’s intermediate appellate court ruled on Oct. 2 that although Ohio law does not require LaRose to limit drop boxes to one per county, the law also does not require him to allow more boxes. However, the court added, if LaRose wants to allow more boxes, he is free to do so. LaRose issued a directive on Oct. 5 to clarify that county elections boards could decide to install additional drop boxes outside their offices and to have employees outside the offices to collect absentee ballots. But under the directive, voters would still have to go to an elections board office — and only to an elections board office — to return their ballots.
Early voting began in Ohio on Oct. 6.”
https://www.scotusblog.com/election-litigation/ohio-democratic-party-v-larose/
Here’s the Pennsylvania ruling and their reasoning on why exactly the law was followed.
“(a) General rule.–At any time after receiving an official mail-in ballot, but
on or before eight o’clock P.M. the day of the primary or election, the mail-
in elector shall, in secret, proceed to mark the ballot only in black lead pencil,
indelible pencil or blue, black or blue-black ink, in fountain pen or ball point
pen, and then fold the ballot, enclose and securely seal the same in the
envelope on which is printed, stamped or endorsed “Official Election Ballot.”
This envelope shall then be placed in the second one, on which is printed
the form of declaration of the elector, and the address of the elector’s county
board of election and the local election district of the elector. The elector
shall then fill out, date and sign the declaration printed on such envelope.
Such envelope shall then be securely sealed and the elector shall send
same by mail, postage prepaid, except where franked, or deliver it in person
to said county board of election.
25 P.S. § 3150.16(a). The last sentence of this provision is the primary focus of the first
question of law that we will address. The plain language of this sentence allows an elector
to mail her securely sealed envelope containing the elector’s “Official Election Ballot” to [J-96-2020] – 12
her “county board of election” or, more relevant to this issue, “deliver it in person to said
county board of election.” Id.
In Count I of its petition for review, Petitioner seeks a declaration that a reasonable
interpretation of Section 3150.16(a) of the Election Code permits county boards of
election to provide electors with as many secure and easily accessible locations to deliver
personally their mail-in ballots as each board deems appropriate.13 Petitioner suggests
that these locations can consist of mobile or temporary collection sites and that county
boards of election may utilize secure drop-boxes for the collection of hand-delivered mail-
in ballots.
Indeed, Petitioner contends that, by enacting Section 3150.16(a) of the Election
Code, the General Assembly clearly and unambiguously intended to provide the various
county boards of election with the option of accepting hand-delivered mail-in ballots at
any location controlled by the boards, not just at the boards’ central offices. In support of
this position, Petitioner points out, inter alia, that pursuant to Section 3151 of the Election
Code, the General Assembly empowered each county board of election to receive “ballot [J-96-2020] – 13
boxes and returns” in their offices or “in any such other place as has been designated by
the board.”14 25 P.S. § 3151.
Here’s the key issue that refutes your argument on the Pennsylvania “lawlessnes”.
” According
to the Secretary, this definition clarifies that, for purposes of Section 3150.16(a), “county
board of election” refers to a municipal body, not a physical office or address. In other
words, the Secretary believes that, when this definition is used for purposes of Section
3150.16(a), that Section unambiguously permits voters to deliver mail-in ballots in person
to places designated by county boards of election, other than their respective office
addresses.
In further support of this position, the Secretary asserts that the Election Code
contemplates that county boards of election will operate out of multiple locations. See 25
P.S. § 2645(b) (stating, inter alia, that the “county commissioners or other appropriating
authorities of the county shall provide the county board with suitable and adequate offices
at the county seat, property furnished for keeping its records, holding its public sessions
and otherwise performing its public duties, and shall also provide, such branch offices for
the board in cities other than the county seat, as may be necessary”).”
Clearly they WERE indeed following the law.
https://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/j-96-2020mo%20-%20104548450113066639.pdf#search=%22%27Supreme%2bCourt%27%22
You keep saying things – as if doing so makes them true.
Absolutely some of the hundreds of claims of election fraud have proved false. that should not be surprising.
That said NOT A SINGLE AZ AUDIT FINDING has been disproven.
Even YOUR “fact check” – failed to do so. It expressed a false opinion that was tangential to the actual findings.
Even YOU “court oppinions” – have all been decided based on standing – not merits.
You claim the laws were followed – because someone you choose to beleive says to.
You also believed that the Russians colluded with Trump to steal the 2016 election.
Believing something does not make it true.
the 2020 election was lawless – that is a statement of fact that is self evident based on the actual laws, and the means by which the election was conducted.
One of the sources you keep citing is courts. Yet it is the refusal of the courts to order the elections to be conducted lawfully that is a major part of the lawlessness, that is also a major part of the lack of trust that we have for government.
Again go back to the declaration of independence.
BTW the Declaration of independence is NOT stone tablets capturing gods word.
It is merely Jefferson, Adams and Franklin putting universal truth to pen eloquently.
The government of east Germany collapsed when the people withdrew their consent.
The US declaration of independence was not legally binding on Erich Honecker.
The universal truths it expressed were.
This is part of where I diverge from many conservatives.
While the rule of law requires that those in government impose the law AS WRITTEN.
The moral authority of that law does not come from the legislature or the constitution.
It comes from its coincidence with universal truths.
We strive to make the law and constitution congruent with truth, but that effort does not make them the same.
The sun rose today – no matter how many lawyers, and courts you get to say otherwise – the sun still rose.
That is not an opinion.
The 2020 election was self evidently lawless. That would be so, even if all the courts and most people felt otherwise.
But in fact most people grasp that the election was lawless.
When you or the courts or the left or the media tell us something that is obviously false,
you undermine your won credibility.
If you say that the sun did not rise today – should I trust you about that ? Should I trust you about anything ?
You and the sources you keep going back to told us that the russians colluded with Trump to steal the election.
But that was self-evidently false to many of us at the time.
Today we know it was just a hoax sold by the clinton campaign.
But you, the left, the media, deomcrats – bought that hoax.
So why should any of you be trusted regarding the 2020 election ?
Going a bit further – neither you nor I should have to rely on the AZ audit.
Elections must be transparent.
Each and everyone of us should have access to all the data to allow us to audit the election ourselves or to verify an audit done by others.
Ballot images should be publicly available. In the internet era they scans should be made available online to all.
Voter registration lists, and voter records should be available to us.
The AZ audit was conducted completely under online suprevisor – Kudos.
But all of us do not have access to the same data the auditors did and for each state.
You keep citing evidence that the courts were complicit in the lawlessness as if that makes things better
It only makes them worse.
AGAIN – as we saw in east germany – the courts are NOT the final arbiters.
The people are.
All government authority – including that of the corts rests on the consent of the governed.
This is why election fraud is so important.
The purpose of an election is to measure consent.
Fraud Manufacturers that consent.
The requirement that elections must not only be free of fraud but free of th appearance of fraud,
that they should be as transparent as possible, is to assure that the outcome of the election measures ACTUAL consent.
The sun rose today. It rose even if clouds covered the skies in the morning.
State election laws were not followed in 2020 -even if the same people who told us that the Russians helped Trump steal the 2016 election say otherwise.
Just to be clear – the AZ audit proved that at a minimum 10% of the mailin votes in AZ never should have been counted.
But because of secret ballot requirements (which mailin election violate) it is impossible to tell which ballots should not have been counted – only which mailin envelopes never should have been counted.
Turkey blog:. You throw rocks at Joe. What’s next? Trump again?
“Trump Ageners” is the new name for y’all.
Worth repeating loud and often: Biden is at 42% with the *entire* apparatus trying to prop him up.
Boom!
I’ve never seen a definitive answer to standing in an anti-abortion case. There was one supreme court ruling that used “either a close personal relationship to the harmed individual (in this case the fetus) or the case where the harmed individual is incapable of defending themself or even explicilty objecting”. I guess the father who doesnt want the fetus aborted could count as the close personal relation to the fetus and in the second situation the fetus would count as that which is harmed but can’t defend itself.
In Ethics classes, I would compare and contrast abortion to the situation of pulling the plug on an older person in a coma they are likely to come out of at a later date that has never made or living will and perhaps never thought of the issue. Like the fetus, if they were killed they would never know it and lets assume they would feel no pain. Most students say that this act of killing the coma person would be wrong since we can safely presume that it is highly likely they would not want to die and would say so once they were capable of doing so. But does that same presumption hold for the fetus who would likely be glad they were not killed? I did not include standing in lawsuits in my classes but in both cases there is individual who is harmed (killed) . I made sure to remark that “you cannot have evil without pain” is not a deciding factor since if you killed everybody instantly by atomic bombs or such there would be no pain but the most terrible evil of all. Nor did I allow consciousness be a criteria for acceptability of killing someone, since future consciousness occurs when the fetus develops further and the comatose person wakes up. So killing on the basis of present or non-present consciousness is a non-factor. I never graded on the basis of the postion a student took, but rather their level of depth of reasoning.
These “limit” issues like the beginning and end of life where the entity in question develops into or degenerates from a human who no one would allow to kill are the toughest . And that development is continuous ( the famous slippery slope) or has an overlapping set of stages of various human attributes at different times It is made to order for decision rather than deduction from certain axioms. We have federalism where state courts try to resolve tough cases that usually feature conflicts of basic rights and the federal court steps in if the decision appears to harm basic rights in the constitution. 50 states mean 50 trial and error efforts at working out tough questions rather than the one single attempt at justice by the feds.
The comic and director Jonathan Miller said this on Dick Cavett about 40 years ago – you can’t solve abortion issues by discovery (empirical or logic solution), all you have is decision (a rough resolution in an ongoing trial and error effort). Such is life where reality is sometimes insolvable as it has no clear definition.
REGARDING ABOVE:
RD is doing his very best to write a ‘seemingly thoughtful’ comment that ‘struggles to justify killing’. What a pretentious exercise!
The pro-life forces run weekend ‘boot camps’ where ‘soldiers’ learn to write variations of this comment. The idea is that the moral struggle will affect readers more than strict condemnation.
The answer to RD’s point is simple. A fetus has no rights. It’s not recognized as a person or individual by the law.
Ah yes. Svelaz sits in the arena and even though the young warrior has fought gallantly for his life with Svelaz it’s always thumbs down. He always cheers the loudest when the decapitation is complete.
Thinkthrough (Estovir) sits in an arena where it’s always thunbs-down on doctors and women.
SVELAZ: “A fetus has no rights. It’s not recognized as a person or individual by the law.”
++++
Probably not entirely true. Absolutes often are not in law. Consider:
https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx
How can you be prosecuted for killing a fetus if no rights are involved?
There are other, more complex, situations that touch on this issue.
Young, currently there is no law recognizing a fetus as having rights as an individual. The unborn have no rights whatsoever.
The issue of being prosecuted for killing a fetus involves the idea that has never been clearly determined if a fetus is an independent individual recognized as having the same rights as anyone else.
It IS a very complex issue for sure, BUT the law still doesn’t recognize a fetus as an independent individual who has rights.
BUT the law still doesn’t recognize a fetus as an independent individual who has rights.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Svelaz–
You should know that the absence of a law recognizing a fetus as an individual is not the same as saying “The unborn have no rights whatsoever.” I don’t care to explain it just now, but if you think about it objectively you will likely come up with your own examples.
Svelaz–
See my response to ATS regarding a fetus being a person in some instances under state law.
No wonder you stay anonymous…you put out Propaganda your Pravda masters dish out to you. What a load of hogwash. I am Pro Life, and I don’t have to go to a boot camp to know that killing your own baby is murder. Go back under the rocks you came out of.
I wonder if Roberts will now switch sides, on the basis that DOJ does not have standing. If granting the injunction means that DOJ will be empowered to roam freely attacking any state law or regulation, or local ordinance, it considers unconstitutional, that would represent a substantial augmentation of federal power. Even Roberts may consider this to be a step too far.
As someone who is pro-life, I do pray this backfires on the administration.
I would bet money that the Court will eventually declare the Texas law as unconstitutional. Based on your analysis, the DOJ may have let it’s passion surpass its’ wisdom.and experience Again, it is actions such as this which strengthen my conviction that the DOJ become an independent agency, altho I am at a complete loss as to how that could be accomplished
The Supreme Court with its new conservative majority has made it clear that precedent has little to no meaning and it has made that point several times already. The court still has the power to issue an injunction while the case is pending. A little known fact Turley never mentions. This is why the Biden administration is pursuing this emergency request.
Everyone knows and acknowledges this law is clearly unconstitutional. But the only entity that has not officially declared it so is the Supreme Court.
The Texas law has one major flaw that makes it completely unenforceable, even if a private citizen sues. No Texas judge can award the “bounty” the law that states any citizen can collect due to the fact that in issuing the award is an enforcement of the law. No state officials including judges can enforce it. If judges or clerks cannot be enjoined because they cannot enforce the law they cannot issue any award or judgment at all.
Abortion clinics should make that argument in Texas courts. But, the risk is too great for them so the federal government is stepping in. They do have a case in forcing the Supreme Court to confront the law’s obvious unconditional mechanism. Even 2nd amendment proponents are supporting the federal government’s efforts for fear that a similar mechanism will be used against 2nd amendment rights. They know if the Texas law is left intact they too are vulnerable.
And that’s the thing. Personally I don’t give a damn about abortion one way or the other. It’s just not an issue that is important to me. I am, however very concerned about the potential chilling effects on “real” as in Enumerated Rights.
I’m a free speech absolutist and my position is the same on the 2nd. I think that there needs to be far greater scrutiny and control over prosecutorial overreach and abuse.
SB8 attacks the heart of what makes America the nation it is.
law that states any citizen can collect due to the fact that in issuing the award is an enforcement of the law. No state officials including judges can enforce it.
The legal judgement will be enforced like all legal judgements are enforced. Judges have never had the power to force a settlement payment. But the judgement is inforce and the debt is real. Ignoring the judgement has consequences.