You say that like it’s a bad thing.
In my own opinion, the right to vote enumerated in the Constitution does not necessarily extend to presidential elections. If a state decides to award its electors based on a statewide vote, then the right to vote is implicated. Contrast with, say, the election of representatives for the House or Senate which necessarily involve the right to vote (see Art I sec 2 cl 1, “by the People of the several States”; and Amendment 17, “from each State, elected by the people thereof”).
~Max
Have you been asked to speak on his behalf, then?
Nope. I thought, had you known he was warned, perhaps you wouldn’t have made your post.
~Max
It’s not an extension, it’s explicit.
My emphasis.
Given that it specifically mentions presidential elections, can you explain how your opinion is at odds to that?
Just as there isn’t necessarily an election for every executive and judicial officer of every state, there isn’t necessarily an election for the electors for President and Vice President of the United States.
Heck, before the Seventeenth Amendment there weren’t always elections for Senators. Surely the Seventeenth Amendment wasn’t an idle enactment? ETA: nvm, capital “R” for Representatives.
~Max
Which may be one of the reasons why Senators are not mentioned in the 14th amendment.
But the electors for president are.
Okay, so your contention is that the state legislators can just pick whoever they want for electors for president, without having the citizens vote?
Does this extend to other offices? Can the state just choose all of its own legislators and executives, and not bother to hold elections and bother the citizenry with all this pesky suffrage stuff?
Pretty much. There’s Art 4 which some use to say the states have to have a republican form of government, but I disagree with that interpretation too.
I do not think the U.S. Constitution guarantees the individual right to vote in state elections, unless there are state elections.
~Max
How weird is it that “Postmarked by Election Day” isn’t considered a qualifying criterion in EVERY state?
I’m taking from this that you are claiming that a dictatorship would be in line with the constitution?
I’m not willing to say all forms of dictatorship are unconstitutional. If you want to go into details, we’ll have to move this to a separate topic. If you just wanted that admission, well, there you have it.
~Max
Not weird at all. Postmarks are far from perfect. Not all mail gets one and they’re often illegible.
Anyway, Oregon was the first state to go to All Vote-by-Mail and Election Day has always been the deadline to get the ballots turned in. Postmarks don’t mean diddly. We’ve been doing it that way since 1999 and no one’s complained. It hasn’t even come up in this year when lots of other states suddenly are doing lots of VbM.
BTW, the second state to do all VbM (Washington) does do the postmark thing. But they do other things differently. For example, they rolled it out on a county-by-county basis rather than the whole state at once. I forget which year they finally got all counties doing it, either 12 or 14, I think.
Well, I’ll be happy to leave it there, for fear that the Republican members of SCOTUS will be cribbing your notes.
Arizona’s ballots are sent back as “Business Reply Mail” (i.e., no stamp required). Do these even get postmarked?
Of course, it doesn’t really matter since AZ requires ballots be received by 8:00PM on election day. Even in normal elections you are constantly nagged to get your vote in the mail seven days ahead of the election day. It’s drilled into our heads so hard that I can’t conceive of someone actually mailing in a ballot late.
I don’t know if I’m reading too much into individual rulings but the fact that the SCOTUS just ruled 5-3 to keep a North Carolina mail-in extension in place is giving me hope. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the 3 liberals.
It seems like Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas are going to narrowly rule based on whatever a state legislature decides but Kavanaugh might become a wildcard.
I’m having a tough time pinning down Kavanaugh’s logic - he at the very least seems to have accepted that his “flipping the election” statement earlier was wrong. The voter confusion angle to me indicates that they will not change their minds on Pennsylvania.
I also don’t know what this says about the potential for a state legislature to appoint it’s own electors in spite of the popular vote. Honestly I still think they want to not make a decision but if you force them to they rule for a Republican legislature over voters - by this thinking they would allow state legislature to override the vote because it would probably be a suit against the state by Biden.
I think if the SCOTUS is concerned about voter confusion, they should also be concerned about undermining the expectations of voters, which I think is a legal opinion that opposes the idea of legislatures changing their electoral college appointment process after an election, but I could also see Kavanaugh just going the other way on that for whatever reason.
This may be wishful thinking but I think we have hit the high-water mark on when ballot deadlines occur and when ballots will be thrown out, but the “generate confusion and then have the legislature appont electors” strategy might still be on the table. Hopefully enough swing states will go to Biden and the narrative of a Biden blowout coupled with the amount of work required to get legislatures behind this in many different states will be insurmountable.
What is the other side? That seems so obviously true, I would like to hear if there is another side.
The other side is that state constitutions actually mean something, and if the legislature passes a law that violates it the state supreme court can overturn that law. Which, to me, seems obviously true.
So when the constitution said state legislature it actually meant the state legislature unless the state supreme court disagrees? I was hoping it was more rational.
I don’t know about the precedent as it affects other States, but the actual counting of votes is usually a big win for Democrats. Why, oh why, would Republicans spend so much time and resource trying to prevent it, if it weren’t so?