Posted on 11/27/2020 9:53:45 AM PST by Alter Kaker
Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof.
We have neither here. The Trump Presidential Campaign asserts that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair. But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the Campaign “doesn’t plead fraud. . . . [T]his is not a fraud case.” Instead, it objects that Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State and some counties restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. It offers nothing more.
This case is not about whether those claims are true. Rather, the Campaign appeals on a very narrow ground: whether the District Court abused its discretion in not letting the Campaign amend its complaint a second time. It did not. Most of the claims in the Second Amended Complaint boil down to issues of state law. But Pennsylvania law is willing to overlook many technical defects. It favors counting votes as long as there is no fraud. Indeed, the Campaign has already litigated and lost many of these issues in state courts.
The Campaign tries to repackage these state-law claims as unconstitutional discrimination. Yet its allegations are vague and conclusory. It never alleges that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes. And federal law does not require poll watchers or specify how they may observe. It also says nothing about curing technical state-law errors in ballots. Each of these defects is fatal, and the proposed Second Amended Complaint does not fix them. So the District Court properly denied leave to amend again.
Nor does the Campaign deserve an injunction to undo Pennsylvania’s certification of its votes. The Campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters. Plus, tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised. So we deny the motion for an injunction pending appeal.
You’re defending them. You’re pathetic.
Not in the least. read my other posts. i clearly state this case should’ve been thrown out. Rudy made a MAJOR mistake and not contesting it which would’ve had to be the first case to the Supreme court. HE didn’t. Which is why he is lost this major case
The judges threw it out. They don’t want to hear about voter fraud. Rudy and Jenna said they did include it.
I seem to recall one PA State Court case filed by GOP, then dismissed by the trial court for timeliness. As I recall, the PA Supreme Court declined to overturn the decision.
Part of the problem with us Monday morning quarterbacking is that we still don’t know all the details. According to PA law, to qualify for mail in ballots, voters needed to provide a drivers license number, address, and last 4 of SSN. I am not sure if Rudy is alleging that this law was not carried out correctly? Were the names and drivers license numbers and SSNs matched against a data base? Or could anyone request a bunch of ballots by giving fake data?
If poll watchers were denied proper access, what were they covering up? The logical conclusion is that extra ballots were illegally generated and somehow delivered at pre-planned time windows to poll counting stations. The timing had to be planned correctly, so that the right poll counters would be on duty, and the poll watchers would be held at bay.
I still don’t know. And because I still don’t know the exact details of the misconduct, I cannot speculate as to how it could have been prevented before the fact.
Hopefully a competent court will look at the evidence and render just relief.
Death threats to an attorney are not directly relevant to the merits of the underlying case. They just make a statement about the character of the people who support or oppose a litigant.
I know she was a member of the Federalist society, which is a conservative leaning group of legal thinkers.
I am not aware of the details of what she did. A portion of the court record can be found by clicking on the link below. I have court electronic filing privileges, which allows me to download all the public docket, but it costs $0.10 per page, and on something like this, it can add up real fast, so I did not look through the whole docket.
https://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/donald-j-trump-president-v-boockvar-et-al-420-cv-02078
We’re not communicating. “Threw it out” I meant the original case claiming that 100 feet is close enough to “observe” because there was no stated distance in the law. That case should be disputed. Because that case was the bases of the 3rd Circuit decision.
My understanding is that PA Supreme Court issued an ambiguous ruling that said precincts are NOT compelled to allow curing of ballots. But it did not specifically forbid it either.
I think the Republican-controlled precincts assumed that mail-in ballots would disproportionately favor Biden, so they did not make it easy to cure defective ballots. Even after they saw Dem controlled precincts put up ballot cure procedures, the Republican-controlled precincts did not act.
At the time, maybe it was reasonable to conclude that mail in ballots would break for Biden. But in retrospect, that was a mistake. Remember, a lot of the Republican-controlled precincts are rural areas. Many of the voters are elderly. So even die-hard DJT supporters may find it more convenient to vote by mail, rather than drive long distances in cold weather to the polls.
Since the whole mail in ballot system was very new, it was prone to mishaps, and in retrospect, Republican precincts should have bent over backwards to help voters cure defective ballots.
it is actually “en masse” (two words)
or they will be voted out en masse next election
By the same people who voted them in in the first place?
The term “observe” ballot counting would require the ability to read the ballots. this wouldn’t need an interpretation or a manipulation of the law. They could easily determine what “observe” means by the distance an observer can see lettering on a piece of paper. I assure you it’s closer then 100 feet.
This case would be thrown out if taken to an none corrupted court
Oh, I am not saying it will be easy.
Besides political and bureaucratic pressure, you also have the Constitution, which clearly delegates to the states, authority to regulate voting. The only thing the Constitution has to say about voting procedures for presidential electors is that Congress may determine the time and date of choosing electors. Other than that, and Amendments 15, 19, 24, and 26, the states run the show.
Passing uniform Federalized election security would have required careful maneuvering. Maybe provide a centralized database for states to check voter eligibility, and also an optional centralized voter registration and ballot generation system. After that, maybe add either a carrot or a stick to the states to use that database.
On the other hand, during DJT’s FIRST TERM, when GOP controlled both houses, maybe a Constitutional Amendment would have been in the cards.
Again, none of this was easy, but even if we do not deal with it now, we have to deal with it soon. As DJT said, America is the bank everyone wants to rob. And it’s easier to rob a bank if you can have a bank robber be hired as the bank manager.
I hope that you never argue anything or present any exhibits before a court.
Your grammar, punctuation, and spelling leave a lot to be desired; and those all speak to a failure to master detail.
My understanding is that PA Supreme Court issued an ambiguous ruling that said precincts are NOT compelled to allow curing of ballots. But it did not specifically forbid it either.
IIRC, Philly was one of those places that had a precipitous drop in the rate of rejected ballots over both past years, and even the primaries this year.
I could be wrong but I THINK it was the PA Supreme Court that authored, manipulated and put in place the 3 day extension.
I say this because I do recall it being discussed that the Supreme Court of PA DID in fact usurp the Legislature’s authority by doing what they did.
Sentiment among the Senators and Representatives present was highly hostile to the PA Supreme Court.
> Death threats to an attorney are not directly relevant to the merits of the underlying case. They just make a statement about the character of the people who support or oppose a litigant.
One wonders what thoughts transpire among the individual Supremes at this time. The way they ultimately decide this stuff might determine their own fate in the not too distant future.
Albeit somewhat indirectly, to be sure. And I hope that the justices may find that of some consolation as a truth and reconciliation committee wraps up its decision on them, and then the blade swoops down.
I guess what’s ‘going through the mind’ of an individual SCOTUS judge depends upon the individual who is doing the thinking.
I feel pretty confident that we have a few who realize that their responsibilities are more important than their personal lives and situations.
The judges didn’t listen to any of their voter fraud evidence.
a better version of a song embodying my vision of everyday lawyer life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2up_Eq6r6Ko
lol
Thanks for your intelligent posts-cum-musical accompaniment.
They definitely speak to the importance of the issues presented in this thread.
/s
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