Category: Elections

Clarence Thomas Blasts the Supreme Court for Ducking the Pennsylvania Election Challenge.

Few things are worse for public confidence in elections than having the rules changed in the middle of the game (or after it). An epidemic of late-in-the-day changes to the rules was particularly corrosive in 2020. Courts are ill-equipped to referee those changes when partisan tempers are running hot. The Supreme Court just threw away its last opportunity to remedy that problem before the next election cycle.

The Court this morning (Monday) turned away the remaining challenges to the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan. Some of these challenges were legally meritless, and none of them offered any legitimate grounds to change the outcome of the presidential election, but the Pennsylvania case in particular raised a serious, recurring issue of election law: whether state courts or state executive officials can use the general, open-ended terms of state constitutional provisions to throw out specific rules passed by state legislatures governing federal elections. Articles I and II of the Constitution reserve to state legislatures the power to set rules for federal elections.

That’s exactly what happened in Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania supreme court used the Pennsylvania Constitution’s general guarantees of “free and equal” elections and “free exercise of the right of suffrage” as an excuse to invalidate the state legislature’s explicit deadline for mail-in ballots to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day — the same time the in-person polls close. That deadline was enacted in 2019 and left untouched in revisions to the mail-in ballot rules during the pandemic in 2020. The Court should have heard the case before Election Day, in order t0 ensure that the rules of the road were set in advance. Refusing to hear the case either before the election or after the election guarantees that the issue remains unsettled for the next election.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, wrote a dissent blasting the Court for repeatedly ducking this issue (Alito added his own dissent). Normally, federal courts will not hear cases once they are moot, and that would normally be the situation here: Justice Thomas noted that there was no evidence in the record that the Pennsylvania deadline extension changed the result of any federal election. Normally, federal courts will also not hear cases when there is no injury yet or when they are not ripe — that is, nobody has been harmed yet. That was the argument raised by the dissent in a challenge to Minnesota changing its mail-in ballot deadline: We shouldn’t even require ballots to be segregated until we see if it would change the outcome. But that can risk creating a Catch-22: a case is always too early or too late. So, there is an exception to the mootness rule to deal specifically with situations where the ripeness and mootness rules together would make it impossible ever to hear a properly brought case: for an issue that is “capable of repetition, yet evades review.” As Thomas noted, the Court has invoked this rule in election cases before, and should have done so here to avoid repeating the problem:

[The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s] decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future. These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable. . . . An election system lacks clear rules when, as here, different officials dispute who has authority to set or change those rules. This kind of dispute brews confusion because voters may not know which rules to follow. Even worse, with more than one system of rules in place, competing candidates might each declare victory under different sets of rules.

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
How is it that all of a sudden, legal fights and claims of machine count biases are no longer seditious and treasonous behavior? Take a look at who it is making these challenges, then check the party affiliation—that is the needed detail in determining whether this is a grave and evil threat to our nation, or a morally correct attempt at correcting an error in noble and angelic fashion.

Democrats Are Challenging Two Elections Results While Somehow Not Attacking Our Democracy

It almost appears that the standards for accusing someone of threatening our democracy, challenging the integrity of the Constitution, and inciting treasonous behavior could possibly be fluid. After months of stern words from the press and clampdown efforts by social media titans towards anyone who dares to suggest election results were problematic, we now see a pair of candidates who are loudly complaining about the results in their elections.

Two things become quickly apparent; there is little outrage heard about these objections, and both of the obstinate candidates are Democrats.

In Iowa, a marginally tight Congressional race has been declared in favor of Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Her Democrat challenger, Rita Hart, has taken her case to the House of Representatives to have that body review the election and determine if action needs to be taken. The result of the race was razor-thin—Miller-Meeks won by just 6 votes. Hart, meanwhile, contends there is a district with nearly two dozen valid but uncounted votes that should be tabulated, giving her the victory.

The argument from the legal team of Miller-Meeks is that Hart never took the proper course of first filing claims in their state courts, before moving onto the House. Alan Ostergren, attorney for Miller-Meeks, stated “No amount of partisan spin can change the fact that the precedents of the House of Representatives require a contestant to first present her claims under state law.” A House committee will be formed to look into the results and make a determination.

Less close, but seemingly more intense, was the result seen in another House race, this one in New York. GOP candidate Claudia Tenney has defeated incumbent Anthony Brindisi. The 122-vote margin has led to intense efforts to see this result overturned. Brindisi has taken to the courts, something we have been told since November is offensive and a sign that there is an attempt to upset the natural order of our electoral system and threatens the core of our democracy.

Continue reading “”

Claudia Tenney to be certified as winner of New York’s 22nd race, judge rules

Oswego, N.Y. — Republican Claudia Tenney will be certified as the winner of New York’s 22nd Congressional District race, a judge ruled Friday, ending a three-month ordeal in the only undecided House race in the country.

The ruling represents the most definitive answer to who won in an election saga with many twists and turns, though it’s not entirely over yet. Democrat Anthony Brindisi has promised to appeal at the state court, and he could seek to contest the election results at the House of Representatives itself.

Even after the state certifies Tenney as the winner, it will take action by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to seat her.

Tenney, of New Hartford, is ahead of Brindisi by 109 votes. She earned 156,098 votes to Brindisi’s 155,989. Tenney’s margin amounts to a .035 percent lead over her opponent.

State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte ruled that counties and the state elections board are to certify the election, rejecting an effort by Democrat Anthony Brindisi, who occupied the seat until early January, to keep the election unofficial until his appeal to a higher court concludes.

Continue reading “”

Why Trump Voters Don’t Trust the People Who Count the Votes

Perhaps not since the nineteenth century have so many American voters so fervently doubted the outcome of a national election.

A Slate headline from December 13 reads: “82 Percent of Trump Voters Say Biden’s Win Isn’t Legitimate.” If even half true, this poll means tens of millions of Americans believe the incoming ruling party in Washington got its political power by cheating. 

The implications of this are broader than one might think. Under the current system, if many millions of Americans doubt the veracity of the official vote count, the challenge to the status quo goes beyond simply thinking that Democrats are cheaters. Rather, the Trump voters’ doubts indict much of the American political system overall, and call its legitimacy into question.

For example, if Trump supporters are unwilling to accept that the vote count in Georgia was fair—in a state where Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion—this means skepticism goes well beyond mere distrust of the Democratic Party. For Trump’s vote-count skeptics, not even the GOP or the non-partisan election officials can be trusted to count the votes properly.

Continue reading “”

Opinion: Just What Were You Expecting?

…………….

Here is my question for every American (remember my opening statements); What did you think would happen?!

What did you think would happen when you impeached, under false pretenses, a President who was the choice of close to half of America?

What did you think would happen when you spent each and every day denigrating 73 million Trump supporters, calling them “bitter clingers,” “deplorables,” who live in “flyover country,” who go to work, pay their taxes and just want to be left alone?

What did you think would happen when you stole an election, right out in broad daylight…with the help of folks who are supposed to be on our side…I’m talking about the Georgia Secretary of State here. Then did it again two days ago, with the help of the very same SECSTATE.

What did you think would happen when the Supreme Court of these United States refused to hear us on a case in which they have primary jurisdiction?

What did you think would happen when 74 million Americans watched the folks supposedly on their own team, tell them to roll over and suck it up?

Going forward…Knowing that 74 million Republican, Independent, along with a few million Democrat voters did NOT vote for stacking the Supreme Court, the admission of Puerto Rico & DC as states, the “Green New Deal,” massive wealth redistribution, gun confiscation or national lockdowns or mask mandates…What do you think will happen when a totally leftist controlled government tries to ram those policies down our collective throats?

I am very afraid. And you should be too. Rather than decry the brave patriots in DC today (minus actual criminals) we should take today as a cautionary pause. But we won’t. Y’all better Buckle Up.

Joint Session Of Congress, Pence Certifies Biden’s Presidential Victory

A joint session of Congress presided over by Vice President Mike Pence voted early Thursday morning to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s win against President Donald Trump after the Capitol was stormed earlier in the day by pro-Trump rioters. [evidence I’ve posted here shows otherwise ed.]

Every state’s votes were verified throughout the night. The states that were objected to received enough votes to certify Biden’s win, despite a small group of Senate Republicans who objected against the certification of Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Continue reading “”

They’re not really ‘there’ yet, but it doesn’t look good right now. Today will be a historic day in Congress as the electoral votes will be counted and there’s a lot of controversy about how it will or won’t play out. Hold onto your seats, the ride is going to get bumpier from here.

Chuck Schumer Declares Victory, Promises Change with a ‘Democratic Senate, Democratic House, and Democratic President’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Wednesday declared victory for Democrats in the Georgia Senate runoff races, one of which has been called for Raphael Warnock, promising change with a “Democratic Senate, Democratic House, and Democratic President.”

“It feels like a brand new day. For the first time in six years, Democrats will operate a majority in the United States Senate — and that will be very good for the American people,” Schumer said in a statement.

Continue reading “”

Having the Election Conform to the Constitution.

………..Cruz et al. cite the work of the commission as a possible model to resolve the current dispute.

“We should follow that precedent. To wit, Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.

“Accordingly, we intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed.”

It’s highly unlikely to work, of course. Even though Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s margin in the House is now very small, no Democrat will vote for it. And Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Senate? Forget about it. No matter what happens in the Georgia runoff elections for both Senate seats on Jan. 5, McConnell has already made his peace with a Biden presidency, and squishy “moderates” such as Sens. Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney will be sure to put the boot in.

Still, it’s the principle of the thing—something that’s always in short suppl

Georgia radio host John Fredricks said several voters in Republican precincts called his show Tuesday morning and told him that they were unable to cast their votes in the state’s runoff election due to malfunctions by Dominion machines. The callers said workers at the polls told them to put their ballots in a box, telling them their ballots would be scanned later.

Sen. Gohmert Says Republicans Need To Match Antifa, BLM Violence

Some one in office finally said it.

“If the bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy’ — basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM,” Gohmert told Newsmax in a Friday night interview.

Hilariously, Bloomberg describes Antifa as “a loosely-aligned movement that opposes fascism.”

On Thursday, Kernodle ruled that Gohmert hadn’t sufficiently argued that he suffered an injury by any action by Pence, and therefore had no legal standing to sue. The judge didn’t consider the merits of the case in his decision.

“Congressman Gohmert’s alleged injury requires a series of hypothetical — but by no means certain — events,” wrote Kernodle – a 2018 Trump appointee, adding “Plaintiffs presuppose what the Vice President will do on January 6” and “which electoral votes the Vice President will count or reject from contested states.”

GOHMERT ARGUED THAT PENCE HAS THE POWER TO HAND TRUMP A SECOND TERM BY SIMPLY REJECTING SWING STATES’ SLATES OF DEMOCRATIC ELECTORS, AND INSTEAD CHOOSING COMPETING GOP ELECTORS WHEN THE SENATE AND HOUSE MEET JOINTLY TO OPEN AND COUNT CERTIFICATES OF ELECTORAL VOTES ON JAN. 6. ELECTION EXPERTS HAVE SAID SUCH A FINDING WOULD CREATE A MAJOR CONFLICT OF INTEREST. -BLOOMBERG

Gohmert filed a notice of appeal late Friday, which was promptly dismissed Saturday morning

HOW MUCH VOTER FRAUD WAS THERE?

Voter fraud is a large and growing problem in the United States, and there is good reason to think that it exploded in 2020 on account of (among other things) unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots and deliberately lax controls in many states. John Lott has now produced a statistical analysis that suggests substantial voter fraud in Fulton County, Georgia and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Lott’s conclusion is that his analysis suggests a total of more than 55,000 fraudulent votes in those two counties. You can read Lott’s paper here. His statistical calculations are laid out in detail, and you can evaluate them for yourself.

Lott’s method is simple and rather elegant: he compares absentee votes in precincts in Fulton County, for example, with adjacent precincts in neighboring counties. He also controls for demographics. Since voting is done at the precinct level, while counting was done at the county level, and since there is no evident reason why precincts across the street from one another should show significantly different results, the approach makes sense.

But the evidence is still circumstantial. One factor in this year’s election in Georgia is that unattended ballot boxes were set up, but only in heavily Democratic areas. I don’t know whether all of them were in Fulton County, but I believe a lot of them were. Anyone could drop any number of ballots into these boxes. Why the state’s Secretary of State, a Republican, agreed to such an arrangement, which virtually cries out for fraud to be committed, is anyone’s guess. But he did.

Continue reading “”

It’s called ‘Sauce for the Goose, is Sauce for the Gander’ as in if it’s okay for you, it’s okay for me.

Sen. Josh Hawley Isn’t The First — And Won’t Be The Last — To Object To The Electoral

Jan. 6 won’t be the first time partisan lawmakers alleged that a wide conspiracy should nullify the results of a presidential election.

As Americans witnessed in 2017, such challenges also have the effect of weakening American trust in institutions. Two out of three Democrats, for example, believed Russia actually changed vote tallies despite no credible evidence, according to a 2018 poll from YouGov. Similarly, Trump’s crusade has led nearly 80 percent of Republicans to believe the election was stolen.

Just this week, Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley set off a flurry of criticism when he announced Wednesday his intent to object to the Electoral College certification Jan. 6. Hawley cited suppression from big-tech platforms as interference in the election along with election laws in Pennsylvania.

Hawley’s objection isn’t quite on the same level that we’ve seen from elements of the #stopthesteal movement, namely that somehow George Soros teamed up with Venezuela to rig voting machines (another election anxiety with a long history).

Still, the sentiment recalls liberal efforts in January 2017 to cast poorly made Russian memes on Facebook and mean emails about Chelsea Clinton as the deciders of 2016’s election, rather than the plurality of Americans who voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton.

America saw a situation similar to Hawley’s Pennsylvania contention in 2005, when a group of Democrats objected to counting Ohio’s 20 electoral votes after insisting Ohio’s election was riddled with widespread “irregularities” that favored former President George W. Bush, according to CNN.

Joined by Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer, objectors, including Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, said that a report by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found “numerous, serious election irregularities” in Ohio that led to “a significant disenfranchisement of voters,” according to CNN.

“How can we possibly tell millions of Americans who registered to vote, who came to the polls in record numbers, particularly our young people … to simply get over it and move in,” Tubbs Jones said at a press conference with Boxer, according to the report.

In order for a formal objection to be considered, a member of both the House and the Senate must question a state’s electoral votes in writing, according to The New York Times (NYT).

As required by the rules, lawmakers were sent back to their chambers for two hours to debate the challenge and vote on it, CNN reported. Ultimately Ohio’s electoral votes were awarded to Bush.

Bush’s 2001 highly contested win in the Supreme Court also led to attempts to object to the certification of electoral votes.

The 2000 election was overshadowed by conspiracies, including one that then-Governor of Florida Jeb Bush threw the election to his brother.

 

 

Tech Expert Shocks GA Election Fraud Hearing With News He ‘Got Into’ Voting System With WiFi

The man who invented and patented the technology that lets you scan items at the grocery store, create an airport boarding pass, and generate authentication codes just blew the doors off the Georgia State Senate subcommittee hearing on elections.

Tech expert Jovan Hutton Pulitzer claimed that to the extent there were election issues in Georgia, they could be explained by simply looking at the paper ballots. And he claimed to prove in real time that the system was susceptible to manipulation via WiFi because his team had broken in and were in it at the time of the hearing.

Pulitzer basically threw down, telling a Georgia Senate subcommittee looking into voter fraud to show him the ballots, give him two hours, and he’d show them if there was election fraud in Fulton County.

I only care what that piece of paper tells us. The paper, the paper. Verify the vote, verify the vote.

[…] I can determine where ink comes from, where paper comes from, whether it was mailed, whether it was folded, the difference of a duplicated press” and a mass copier.

Pulitzer wants to see the paper ballot because what he’s seen so far looks entirely janky.

He told the lawmakers that it’s not about the code in the machines that caused 93% of them to be set aside to be “adjudicated” by humans; all he needs to do is get a look the “Holy Grail” – the physical paper ballots.

Continue reading “”

Okay, so they found something. What are they going to do about it?
Answer: Nothing, because that requires courage and a decision.

Pennsylvania Republicans find ‘alarming discrepancy’ twice the margin of Biden’s victory.

Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania say an “alarming discrepancy” in the presidential vote count is two times larger than the margin of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Their analysis, released on Monday by state Rep. Frank Ryan and more than a dozen colleagues, found different vote counts when comparing Election Day data from counties and the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, system used by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar. They also raised suspicions about there being tens of thousands fewer votes in the presidential race than overall ballots…………

According to the GOP analysis, county election results showed 6,962,607 total ballots were reported as being cast, while the SURE system indicated that only 6,760,230 total voters actually voted, which is a difference of 202,377 votes. The Republicans said this 202,377 gap, coupled with 31,547 fewer presidential race votes seen in county data, amounts to ‘an alarming discrepancy’ of 170,830 votes, which is more than twice the reported statewide difference between Biden and Trump.

 Obama-Appointed Judge Who is Sister of Stacey Abrams Blocks Purge of 4,000 Voters in Georgia Before Senate Runoff Election.

Federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner just blocked 4,000 votes from being purged from voter rolls in Georgia ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections that will decide control of the U.S. Senate. On Monday, the Obama-appointed judge who also happens to be the sister of Stacey Abrams, ordered two counties to reverse a decision to remove more than 4,000 voters from voter rolls.

The judge concluded that the counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address data to invalidate registrations in the two counties of Muscogee and Ben Hill. Voting officials in the two counties had previously agreed to remove the 4,000 voters.

The Muscogee County board filed a motion on Monday arguing that Judge Gardner must remove herself from the case based on her relationship with her sister. The board also noted the involvement of Stacey Abrams in controversial voting rights groups ho are in hot water over their tactic.

MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF MOTION FOR RECUSAL

“The Court has reviewed the motion and finds no basis for recusal.”

Stacey Abram has been involved in questionable voting rights groups that are currently under investigation:

Maybe some Austinites are getting fed up the demoncrap politics.

Republican Mackenzie Kelly Wins Austin City Council Runoff. Local Paper Declines to Cover It

In a stunning upset, Republican Mackenzie Kelly defeated Democrat incumbent Jimmy Flannigan in Austin’s District 6 runoff Tuesday. Kelly ran on a platform that includes restoring police department funding and ending the city’s permissive homeless camping ordinance. She won with 52% to Flannigan’s 48%, a margin of just about 700 votes overall.

Kelly’s win, and Republican Jennifer Virden’s near-win in District 10, may signal a major shift in Austin voters’ thinking. The Democrat-dominated city was already up in arms over the homeless camping ordinance, which allows homeless people to camp just about anywhere they want all over the city (except city hall) since the council passed it unanimously in the summer of 2019. That has led to encampments under overpasses and even on the fringes of neighborhoods all over Austin. Those camps are unsanitary and unsafe; one of them recently burned. Continue reading “”