Posted on 03/24/2021 8:06:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Do federal law and the U.S. Constitution prohibit states from enacting commonsense voting requirements designed to protect the integrity of the electoral process, apply to everyone, and impose no significant burden? The Supreme Court tackled this question several weeks ago when it heard oral arguments in a case entitled Brnovich v. Democrat National Committee.
Democrats are challenging the legality of two measures used by Arizona to ensure a free and fair electoral process. The first, known as the “out of precinct policy” requires individuals who vote in-person to cast their respective ballots in their designated election location.
The second policy limits who may handle mail ballots to the individual voter, his or her close family member, mail carriers, and electoral officials, a policy that effectively bans groups who target vulnerable populations from engaging in ballot harvesting. Democrats allege these policies have a disparate impact on minorities and both place an undue burden on the right to vote. An en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit court of appeals agreed.
In opposing Arizona, Democrats ignore the fact that the vote-by-mail process contains opportunities for fraud not present in traditional, in-person voting. Ballots are sometimes delivered and left unsecured in mailboxes in apartment buildings, assisted living facilities, and other highly populated locations.
As such, opportunities to illicitly collect and complete these ballots abound. Furthermore, sophisticated political organizations train and deploy operatives to visit these communities and collect ballots, exerting a hefty influence on vulnerable voters in the process.
The issue here is whether states may enact even the most basic and obvious protections for a system fundamental and necessary for the preservation of our democracy. The alternative is that elected representatives deciding the time, place, and manner of elections (as delegated by the U.S. Constitution) will be replaced by unelected judges seizing more power and imposing their wills on the people.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision, any protection that states use to ensure the integrity of the voting process will be in doubt. A well-funded and sophisticated cadre of attorneys stands ready to initiate challenges to such traditional measures as requiring receipt of mail ballots by election day, requiring mail voters to pay for postage for ballots, and requiring witness verification for mail ballots.
Until a few years ago, both Republicans and Democrats agreed that voting by mail posed inherent risks, requiring state-level prohibitions on ballot harvesting. In 2005, a blue-ribbon committee headed by President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State James Baker issued a report warning of the increased risk of fraud in mail voting.
It concluded when voting at home or in nursing homes, voters are susceptible to pressure and intimidation. It also found third-party organizations can operate illicit “vote-buying schemes” that are “far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.”
After extensive hearings and due deliberation, the Arizona legislature passed — and the governor signed — its law limiting who could handle mail ballots. The law prevents fraud and ensures confidence in the legitimacy of the election.
Despite denials from the left, ballot trafficking occurs. In 2018, a congressional committee found “ballot brokers” in California identified and targeted groups hoping to exploit the electoral process. In another well-known case, ballot trafficking adversely affected the outcome of a congressional race in North Carolina.
During the Supreme Court’s oral arguments, several justices sought to identify at what point, if any, facially neutral voter protections violate federal law and the Constitution. They wrestled with questions about how much courts should consider the intent behind a law and whether, as opponents to reasonable election integrity argue, a single legislator’s racially charged language during the bill’s deliberation can be imputed to the entire legislative body. These questions will need to be answered before the court can come to any resolution.
How the Supreme Court resolves Brnovich will transform the power states have under the Constitution’s Art. I, Sec. 2 to supervise elections. The stakes are high. This case, coupled with efforts in the U.S. Congress to nationalize election laws, threatens to permanently undermine state efforts to ensure election integrity.
The House recently passed H.R. 1, a bill that removes the authority of the states to regulate elections and federalizes the entire process. In the coming weeks, look for extensive debate in the Senate about Washington’s role in the electoral process with extensive pressure from the White House to amplify the role of the federal government.
The left has a goal: elections with no protections. Worryingly, a definitive striking down of Arizona’s ballot harvesting provision would clear the way for a national takeover through H.R. 1.
A decision on this case is expected later this spring or early this summer. In the meantime, while state legislatures are working to enact new voting protections to restore confidence in the electoral system, all of these measures are in jeopardy should the Supreme Court fail to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael J. O’Neill is the Assistant General Counsel at Landmark Legal Foundation.
Trump named a majority to the 9th Circus that ruled states are not allowed to set their own laws.
This is why we are losing.....even when we choose judges, we end up with bad ones.
The republic is doomed.
SCOTUS stinks.
The constitution is historically racist because it is written in cursive. The contemporary version is racist because it is written using words
Didn’t they say with the various election cases that they had no jurisdiction over state election matters? Hence the reason they didn’t hear the cases.
If so, how are they allowed to hear this?
According to SCOTUS, the states can run their elections as they deem
I guess now someone/something, as long as it isn’t Donald Trump, can now have standing.
If Gorsuch, Kavanagh and Barrett cave on this case they are completely in the tank for the Deep State voter fraud.
*************
Most officials who come to DC love being in The Club. Its the most important thing to them. Its called Potomac Fever and there is no immunity against it. Supreme Court justices are no exception.
Personally-right now, I think of the SCOTUS as a dead letter, populated by a bunch of overpaid tools
Biden: Look The SCOTUS has a important role to play in this.
Press: What is that?
Biden: Doing what I tell them. Ole Barrack waved his finger and they got all excited and they did what he told them to do.
Press: They did?
Biden: Damn right. We got Obama-care passed. I can’t have these freeloading judges going with the Republicans just because the Republicans got them in.
Press: How do you do it with these judges?
Biden: Like we do it with RINOs. My staff were involved with those junkets to Epstein’s pedo island. Judge Roberts was there leading a conga line of young boys into the washroom. You get the idea...
Press: So you got dirt on that Roberts.
Biden: Roberts is the canary in the coal mine... Once he sings they all get in line. With Mr. “party boy” K you have to threaten to stop the beer flow but once he starts crying in his beer, he’s in. Perky Barrette is the easiest to control with her addiction to teen magazines...
Press: So you learned a lot from Obama.
Joe: Yeah, Obama was like their big daddy who would get mad at them and they would quake and quiver to please him. Once they got daddy’s attention, they knew he loved them and they would do whatever it takes to make him happy. That’s the biggest part to it...
Press: Are you saying the SCOTUS is corrupt and cowardly, quaking and fawning before political authority and not the Constitution?
Joe: I don’t care what you call them... Just as long as they do what I say. End of story.
The Democrats would prefer that the US election process be open to all ... all 7 billion humans and perhaps a few that aren’t ...
They turned down all those cases due to Plaintiffs not having standing.
If Kavanagh, Gorsuch and Barrett cave on this case they are completely in the tank for the Deep State voter fraud.
I’m keeping an eye open for mention of the 12th Amendment (12A), one of the most trampled parts of the Constitution imo, thanks to the constitutionally undefined, Constitution-ignoring political parties.
Was there any mention by federal lawmakers of possible problems with state compliance with 12A on January 6th when anti-Trump Congress wrongly ignored (imo) other major concerns about alleged problems with the election?
Regarding possible problems with 12A, the states surrendered their power to make so-called “winner take all” laws for electoral votes, for example, when they ratified that amendment imo.
In other words, the states have been allowing votes to be stolen in broad daylight for decades, so actually no new problems in 2020 imo.
In fact, patriots are reminded that their “power” to vote for POTUS is a politically correct power under the states anyway, not a constitutionally enumerated power like powers to vote for senators and representatives.
In other words, the only thing different in 2020 that patriots finally got to see regarding a presidential election is, thanks to hero PDJT, very convincing (unrefutable?) evidence of ongoing presidential election vote-counting fraud, “the man behind the curtain."
Gossip goes that anti-constitutional republic Progressive Movement had to get Senate and POTUS under mob rule, elected by ordinary, low-information voters, in order to unconstitutionally centralize government power in DC.
“Trump named a majority to the 9th Circus that ruled states are not allowed to set their own laws.”
Trump may have come close, but he didn’t flip the 9th circuit outright.
Good thing we got Gorsuck, Kavanutz, and Commie Barrett to help us.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that they cannot.
Is that the same misguided, institutionally indoctrinated SCOTUS that wrongly (imo) decided not to examine PDJT’s evidence concerning alleged vote-counting fraud in the 2020 elections Texas v. Pennsylvania case?
Patriots are first reminded that the ongoing fight between the Constitution-ignoring desperate Democratic elite and constitutionally low-information despicable patriot majority voters is evidence of the following imo.
Democrats and RINOs have no intention of surrendering state powers that they have long been stealing from the states, along with stealing tsunami of state revenues uniquely associated with those powers, back to the states, state revenues stolen by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Patriots are also reminded that the states have never expressly constitutional given ordinary citizen voters the specific power to vote for POTUS like they have for both Houses of Congress.
More specifically, corrupt, desperate Democratic-bullied state governments have long since learned how to weaponize the politically correct popular vote for POTUS in their favor. This is evidenced by decades of activist states (all of them?) that blatantly ignore 12th Amendment (12A) electoral vote procedures, state so-called “winner take all” laws a blatant violation of that amendment imo.
Excerpted from the 12th Amendment: "The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice- President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate [emphasis added];--The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; […]"
So why wasn’t the broad daylight stealing of votes with “winner take all” laws of activist states ever decided unconstitutional under 12A?
I dunno.
Insight welcome.
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