Pennsylvania ballots that come in up to 3 days after election day are to be counted, per the SC. Considering that it was a 4-4 decision, it unfortunately showed the hand of the 4 (soon to be 5) conservative justices. However, does today’s decision set a precedent for other states? If so, is that a big win for Democrats?
It’s huge for whichever side loses PA on Election Night. Because now they know the deficit that they need to overcome in the 3 days to come. If your side lost by two hundred thousand votes, now it’s time to manufacture two hundred thousand votes.
Since this is mail-in voting within one state, it doesn’t take 3 days for mail to get from one part of the state to another. 1-2 days would suffice.
Seriously? That is damned close to Qanon levels of conspiracy thinking. You really believe that with the level of scrutiny around this election that anybody can manufacturer 200,000 votes without getting caught?
200,000 may be a stretch. Perhaps reduce it by an order of magnitude. But yes, it is an immense advantage to know how many ballots you are trailing by, and hence the gap you need to overcome to win.
If you’re losing by 20,000 after Election Night, and know you have three days to make up the deficit…
(I will say, having been an intern for a political campaign before, I sure wouldn’t want to be the person whose job it is to lick and seal all those envelopes and stamps.)
How, exactly, are these imaginary people manufacturing even just 20000 votes?
Let’s call it 20,000 then. Who out there is up for committing 20,000 felonies? What a load of nonsense. Don’t forget, they’d all have to be postmarked by November 3rd too.
They can’t and they won’t. The ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day to be valid. This is a nonsensical claim. It is also an absurd tangent and will potentially derail this thread.
Utter bullshit.
It took four days for the last piece of mail I sent to another part of the city of Philadelphia. I know. I tracked it online. On what data are you basing your claim?
Two quotes from the PA decision:
After consideration, we adopt the Secretary’s informed recommendation of a threeday extension of the absentee and mail-in ballot received-by deadline to allow for the
tabulation of ballots mailed by voters via the USPS and postmarked by 8:00 p.m. on
Election Day to reduce voter disenfranchisement resulting from the conflict between the
Election Code and the current USPS delivery standards, given the expected number of
Pennsylvanians opting to use mail-in ballots during the pandemic.
We likewise incorporate the Secretary’s recommendation addressing ballots received
within this period that lack a postmark or other proof of mailing, or for which the postmark
or other proof of mailing is illegible. Accordingly, in such cases, we conclude that a ballot
received on or before 5:00 p.m. on November 6, 2020, will be presumed to have been
mailed by Election Day unless a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it was
mailed after Election Day.
So if a ballot is clearly postmarked on Nov 4. it won’t count no matter when it arrives. Only ballots postmarked by Nov 3 or with illegible or missing postmarks will be counted as long as they arrive by Nov 6 . So to make up 20,000 votes, you to need to find 20,000 people who requested a mail-in ballot by October 27 and inexplicably did not bother to mail it back on time, and then somehow arrange for them not to get a postmark of November 4. Good luck.
As for how the decision affects other states- it probably won’t affect them much. Apparently, the election law in PA required that ballots be received by 8 pm on election night. Some (maybe most) other states had two deadlines right in the law for mailed ballots.- one for a postmark and another for ballots that didn’t receive a legible postmark.
Besides what others are saying, the envelopes containing completed ballots, like mine now sitting in my country courthouse, can’t be legally opened before election day. Because of this unneeded requirement, news articles are predicting that the Pennsylvania mailed votes, already in storage, won’t be completely counted until Friday or Saturday.
Your IMHO baseless conspiracy theory is an example of why the next couple months may be among the more dramatic in U.S. history. If the GOP-controlled Pa. legislature listens to ideas like yours, and sends Mike Pence a phony list of electors, America might, this time next year, be much closer to autocracy.
It seems like in all likelihood there are going to be lawsuits after Barrett is confirmed that are more consequential than this one. They will likely not be on quite the same issue, and I still have some hope a second conservative justice will not want to rule the same way if the issue is something like a state refusing to validate their election or trying to change their laws on appointing electors, but I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t be worried at this point.
If they have the ability to cheat at will and manufacture as many votes as they want, why wait for election day to decide how much to cheat? Why would they only want to win by the lowest possible margin? Why not just flood the original voting day with all the votes and win in the first place?
As a conspiracy theory this doesn’t even make sense.
A 4-4 tie vote in the Supreme Court allows the lower court ruling to stand, but does NOT establish a precedent.
However, it does suggest how the Court is thinking, so that other lower courts may find it persuasive (although not binding). Also, prospective litigants may adjust their strategies regarding what kind of cases to bring in similar situations, or how they will argue them.
ETA: And of course, once Barrett is there, everything changes.
I don’t think it sets a precedent legally speaking. But if Florida wants to do y2k round two, politically speaking it’s a good indicator of the court’s leanings towards recounts. And it probably has some influence when lower courts consider their cases.
But I wouldn’t give our conservative justices so much faith. Roberts or somebody might pull a Warren and muster 9-0 when it comes to the real deal, especially if the future case goes up against something relatively unambiguous in the Constitution.
~Max
Was this a conservative vs liberal justice ruling?
If so, was this transparently partisan? Like “allowing this is better for democrats, disallowing this is better for republicans” and that was the basis of the ruling?
Or was there some sort of conservative legal framework vs liberal legal framework at play which could explain the ruling without being naked partisanship?
Because if not, and this is purely partisanship, then basically allowing partisan judges to rule on election law is fucking terrifying.
Language appropriated from the OP.
“conservative justices” means Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and if she is confirmed, Barrett.
~Max
So with a 4-4 ruling, Barrett could weigh in again in just a few weeks, whereas she couldn’t have had it been 5-3?
4 of the 5 conservative justices. Or is everyone calling Roberts a liberal now?
On a different case, yeah. If you don’t believe Senegoid or myself, read how ties don’t set precedent in so many words at, for example, time.com.
~Max