Even if ACB was on the court now Wouldnt Roberts have still gone with the left so it would have been 5-4? Maybe I am confused
With three or four liberals on the court, Roberts will always opine with them on significant issues. As the chief he can opine last, so he knows whose opinions have been rendered by the other seven (without RGB/ACB) or eight (with RGB/ACB).
And yes, with ACB on the court, Roberts will now probably side WITH the constitutional wing of the court, so he can give the main opinion at 6-3, in which he will “dissent within the consensus” to provide cover for future Democrat challenges. Probably Thomas and Gorsuch will also give opinions which are more strongly and appropriately worded, but since Roberts is the Chief, his opinion matters most.
I’ll be blunt: Had RBG survived, Roberts would have sided with her and the other three liberals on EVERY court decision involving elections. This would have been catastrophic, as virtually every election-related suit would have resulted in ruling in favor of Biden/Democrats, and have been binding to ALL other courts.
Since RBG didn’t survive, the court is temporarily 4-4, which means that Roberts will always side with the libs for any election issue. The only saving grace is that the decision is a split, which pushes the immediate decision back down to the circuit court. Unfortunately, this allows Pennsylvania’s fraudulent vote scheme to go on. (There **MAY** be a chance that even if the fraud vote scheme finds enough votes to overtake Trump, there could be a court case to try to dismiss some of those ballots based on certain irregularities, at which point ACB may be on the court to give the crucial 5th vote. Unfortunately, the way the Dems have framed the vote count scheme, this is extremely unlikely to detect fraud that is actionable in challenge.)
But the REAL challenges will be when states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and maybe even North Carolina, whose governors control the electoral vote process, refuse to certify Republican wins and withhold the electoral votes going for Trump. If the lack of electoral votes push him down to 269 or less, then the court would have had to make a decision on whether Trump would have been able to get those electoral votes through any reasonable process. Without ACB on the court, it would be likely that Roberts would rule that the votes are indeed invalid, pushing the decision to Congress. And THAT’S another ball of wax that won’t be pontificated here.
Suffice to say that ACB will most probably not let this chaos to prevail. Look for a 6-3 decision in favor of Trump on those issues, provided the Democrats can’t win with legitimate votes.