Category Archives: Trump 2020 v. Boockvar

Long delayed Dismissal of Trump’s infirm federal vote suppression case against the State of Pennsylvania and the boards of election of every one of its counties

Apparently not part of all the news that’s fit to print in today’s online New York Times, on Saturday federal judge (and Trump-appointee) J. Nicholas Ranjan [1] finally threw out Trump 2020 and the RNC’s attempt to prevent expansion of voting in crucial swing state during a pandemic.

Judge Ranjan went into great detail explaining why each claim by Trump and the RNC had to fall, as a matter of law, on the merits, for lack of evidence. I see the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office has already posted a PDF of the decision on its website. The judge began his 138 page decision (I’ve added paragraph breaks for easier reading):

After a careful review of the parties’ submissions and the extensive evidentiary record, the Court will enter judgment in favor of Defendants on all of Plaintiffs’ federal constitutional claims, decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state-constitutional claims, and dismiss this case.

This is so for two main reasons.

First, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs lack Article III standing to pursue their claims. Standing, of course, is a necessary requirement to cross the threshold into federal court. Federal courts adjudicate cases and controversies, where a plaintiff’s injury is concrete and particularized.

Here, however, Plaintiffs have not presented a concrete injury to warrant federal-court review.

All of Plaintiffs’ remaining claims have the same theory of injury—one of “vote dilution.” Plaintiffs fear that absent implementation of the security measures that they seek (guards by drop boxes, signature comparison of mail-in ballots, and poll watchers), there is a risk of voter fraud by other voters. If another person engages in voter fraud, Plaintiffs assert that their own lawfully cast vote will, by comparison, count for less, or be diluted.

The problem with this theory of harm is that it is speculative, and thus Plaintiffs’ injury is not “concrete”—a critical element to have standing in federal court.

While Plaintiffs may not need to prove actual voter fraud, they must at least prove that such fraud is “certainly impending.” They haven’t met that burden. At most, they have pieced together a sequence of uncertain assumptions:

(1) they assume potential fraudsters may attempt to commit election fraud through the use of drop boxes or forged ballots, or due to a potential shortage of poll watchers; (2) they assume the numerous election-security measures used by county election officials may not work; and (3) they assume their own security measures may have prevented that fraud.

All of these assumptions could end up being true, and these events could theoretically happen. But so could many things.

The relevant question here is: are they “certainly impending”? At least based on the evidence presented, the answer to that is “no.” And that is the legal standard that Plaintiffs must meet.

As the Supreme Court has held, this Court cannot “endorse standing theories that rest on speculation about the decisions of independent
actors.” See Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 414 (2013).

Second, even if Plaintiffs had standing, their claims fail on the merits.

Plaintiffs essentially ask this Court to second-guess the judgment of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and election officials, who are experts in creating and implementing an election plan. Perhaps Plaintiffs are right that guards should be placed near drop boxes, signature-analysis experts should examine every mail-in ballot, poll watchers should be able to man any poll regardless of location, and other security improvements should be made.

But the job of an unelected federal judge isn’t to suggest election improvements, especially when those improvements contradict the reasoned judgment of democratically elected officials. See Andino v. Middleton,— S. Ct. —, 2020 WL 5887393, at *1 (Oct. 5, 2020)
Case 2:20-cv-00966-NR Document 574 Filed 10/10/20 =- (Kavanaugh, J. concurring) (state legislatures should not be subject to “second-guessing by an unelected federal judiciary,” which is “not accountable to the people”) (cleaned up).

Put differently, “[f]ederal judges can have a lot of power—especially when issuing injunctions. And sometimes we may even have a good idea or two. But the Constitution sets out our sphere of decision-making, and that sphere does not extend to second-guessing and interfering with a State’s reasonable, nondiscriminatory election rules.” New Georgia Project v. Raffensperger, — F.3d —, 2020 WL 5877588, at *4 (11th Cir. Oct. 2, 2020).

As discussed below, the Court finds that the election regulations put in place by the General Assembly and implemented by Defendants do not significantly burden any right to vote. They are rational. They further important state interests. They align with the Commonwealth’s elaborate election-security measures. They do not run afoul of the United States Constitution. They will not otherwise be second-guessed by this Court.

source

I love that this young Federalist Society judge quotes Kavanaugh in supporting the principle (undercutting the Republican position in this case) that whatever the majority legislature decides to do regarding voting, unless it violates some specific constitutional or federal statutory provision, is legal.

fun fact from the decision:

Indeed, Secretary Boockvar stated that as many as 16% of voters nationwide had cast their ballots using drop boxes in the 2016 general election, including the majority of voters in Colorado (75%) and Washington (56.9%).

Judge Ranjan on Summary Judgment (dismissal for failure to provide sufficient evidence to support a claim)

The summary-judgment stage “is essentially ‘put up or shut up’ time for the non-moving party,” which “must rebut the motion with facts in the record and cannot rest solely on assertions made in the pleadings, legal memoranda, or oral argument.” (citation omitted)

If the nonmoving party “fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party’s case, and on which that party will bear the burden at trial,” summary judgment is warranted (another citation– zapped)

A bit analyzing the anecdotal and expert testimony evidence presented by Team Trump (from page 61):

Based on the evidence presented by Plaintiffs, accepted as true, Plaintiffs have only proven the“possibility of future injury” based on a series of speculative events—which falls short of the requirement to establish a concrete injury. For example, Plaintiffs’ expert, Mr. Riddlemoser, opines that the use of “unstaffed or unmanned” drop boxes merely “increases the possibility for voter fraud (and vote destruction)[.]” [ECF 504-19, p. 20 (emphasis added)].

That’s because, according to him (and Plaintiffs’ other witnesses), theoretical bad actors might intentionally “target” a drop box as the “easiest opportunity for voter fraud” or with the malicious “intent to destroy as many votes … as possible.” (declaring that drop boxes “may serve as a target for bad actors that may wish to tamper with lawfully case ballots before such ballots are counted”).

But there’s no way of knowing whether these independent actors will ever surface, and if they do, whether they will act as Mr. Riddlemoser and Plaintiffs predict.

As to the rest of the “put up or shut up” evidence:

In addition to Plaintiffs’ expert report, Plaintiffs’ evidence consists of instances of voter fraud in the past, including an article in the N.Y. Post purporting to detail the strategies of an anonymous fraudster, as well as pointing to certain prior cases of voter fraud and election
irregularities (e.g., Philadelphia inadvertently allowing 40 people to vote twice in the 2020 primary election; some counties counting ballots that did not have a completed declaration in the 2020 primary election).

Initially, with one exception noted directly below, none of this evidence is tied to individuals using drop boxes, submitting forged mail-in ballots, or being unable to poll watch in another county—
and thus it is unclear how this can serve as evidence of a concrete harm in the upcoming election as to the specific claims in this case.

Perhaps the best evidence Plaintiffs present are the several photographs and video stills, which are depicted above, and which are of individuals who appear to be delivering more than one ballot to a drop box during the primary election. It is undisputed that during the primary election, some county boards believed it be appropriate to allow voters to deliver ballots on behalf of third parties. But this evidence of past injury is also speculative.


Initially, the evidence is scant. But even assuming the evidence were more substantial, it would still be speculative to find that third-party ballot delivery will also occur in the general election. It may; it may not.

Indeed, it may be less likely to occur now that the Secretary issued
her September 28, 2020, guidance, which made clear to all
county boards that for the general election, third-party ballot delivery is prohibited. (“Third-person delivery of absentee or mail-in ballots is not permitted, and any ballots delivered by someone other than the voter are required to be set aside. The only exceptions are voters with a disability, who have designated in writing an agent to deliver their ballot for them.”). It may also be less likely to occur in light of the Secretary’s other guidance, which recommends that county boards place signs near drop boxes, warning voters that third-party delivery is prohibited.

pp. 62-63

Naturally, for part of their failed denial of Equal Protection argument Trump/RNC lawyers cited Bush v. Gore. Judge Ranjan did find their argument persuasive, another of their arguments that failed “as a matter of law” :

In this respect, Plaintiffs argue that they suffer an equal-protection harm similar to that found by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). There, the Supreme Court held that the Florida Supreme Court violated equal protection when it “ratified” election recount procedures that allowed different counties to use “varying
standards to determine what was a legal vote.” Id. at 107.

This meant that entirely equivalent votes might be counted in one county but discounted in another. See, e.g., id. (“Broward County used a more forgiving standard than Palm Beach County, and uncovered almost three times as many new votes, a result markedly disproportionate to the difference in population between the counties.”).

Given the absence of uniform, statewide rules or standards to
determine which votes counted, the Court concluded that the patchwork recount scheme failed to “satisfy the minimum requirement for nonarbitrary treatment of voters necessary to secure the fundamental right [to vote].”

p.75

and

In addition to their equal-protection challenge to the use of drop boxes, Plaintiffs also appear to argue that the use of unmanned drop boxes violates substantive due process protected by the 14th Amendment. This argument is just a variation on their equal-protection argument—i.e., the uneven use of drop boxes will work a “patent and fundamental unfairness” in violation of substantive due process principles (substantive due process rights are violated “[i]f the election process itself reaches the point of patent and fundamental unfairness[.]” (cite removed). The analysis for this claim is the same as that for equal protection, and thus it fails for the same reasons. But beyond that, this claim demands even stricter proof. Such a claim exists in only the most extraordinary circumstances.

p. 92

Got to love that “plaintiffs also appear to argue…”

Judge Ranjan, analyzing the poll watcher issue, provides a nice example of the quality of the evidence presented by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee:

For example, in his declaration, James J. Fitzpatrick, the Pennsylvania Director for Election Day Operations for the Trump Campaign, stated only that the “Trump Campaign is concerned that due to the residency restriction, it will not have enough poll watchers in certain counties.”

Notably, however, Mr. Fitzpatrick, even when specifically asked during his deposition, never identified a single county where the Trump Campaign has actually tried and failed to recruit a poll watcher because of the county-residency requirement.

(“Q: Which counties does the Trump campaign or the RNC contend that they will not be able to obtain what you refer to as full coverage of poll watchers for the November 2020 election?
A: I’m not sure. I couldn’t tell you a list.”).

p. 124

and

Plaintiffs argue that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic greatly reduces the number of people who would be willing to serve as a poll watcher, which further exacerbates the alleged problem caused by the county residency requirement.

The primary problem with this argument, though, is that Plaintiffs have not presented any evidence to support it. Plaintiffs have not put forward a statement from a single registered voter who says they are unwilling to serve as a poll watcher due to concerns about contracting COVID-19.

p. 128

[1]

Wikipedia gives the skinny on Judge Ranjan and his thoughtful handling of this shabby Trump/RNC attempt to suppress voting in a key swing state:

On July 10, 2019, his nomination was confirmed by a vote of 80–14.[9] He received judicial commission on July 12, 2019.

In August 2020, Ranjan ordered the Trump campaign to produce evidence of voter fraud in Pennsylvania by Friday, August 14. The Trump campaign must answer questions from Democratic groups, or admit to having no proof of election fraud. A hearing about the evidence is set for late September.[10] On August 23, 2020, Ranjan issued a stay on the Trump campaign’s lawsuit, pending the result of a similar state-level lawsuit.[11] On October 10, 2020, Ranjan denied the Trump campaign’s claims of voter fraud and allowed ballot dropboxes to remain in service.[12]

Apolitical Justices

The reason the Founders created a Supreme Court whose justices are appointed for life was to insulate the justices from political pressure. Lifetime appointment meant no campaigning for office, no glad handing double-talk, no political favors to repay, no voters to please or be accountable to. In principle, it was probably a good call– though “lifetime” is a bit problematic in a democracy where the will of the populace changes from time to time.

It’s true you had former slaveholders, in the years after the Civil War, unappealably ruling things like “the day of the Negro as special favorites of the law is at an end,” [1] (effectively ending enforcement of human rights for the descendants of slaves in the U.S. for a century).

It’s also true that the constitutional amendment (the Fourteenth) that the Supreme Court placed in a judicially-induced coma for human beings, over the century after its enactment, conferred a cornucopia of expanded rights on corporations, those legally created eternal money-making entities. Our highest court has ruled that corporations are persons, just like the rest of us, with human feelings and inviolable human rights too, like the right to political expression.

And so on, there are many examples of deeply political decisions, but, the original idea of the Founders the so-called Originalists always cite was to have an apolitical court.

Of course, the reverent conservative Originalists of the Federalist Society, who go back to the intent of the Framers in the Constitutional debates while the original document was being negotiated, tend to play down the significance of the later Civil War, and the post-war Amendments that, between 1865 and 1868, gave us, essentially, a new constitution.

The original intent of the Founders, for example, was to quietly compromise with wealthy slaveholders in forming a democratic republic. The Constitution protected “the importation of other such persons” until 1807, and apportioned representation in Congress based on each of “such persons” being counted as 3/5 of a person. These discreet compromises to protect “The Peculiar Institution” were explicitly rejected as unlawful when the Constitution was amended after a bloody and protracted rebellion was finally won by the United States.

Except, as you know, that former slaveholders retained political power and got the final say on how these laws would be interpreted in their own localities for the next century or so. They are still litigating their right to do so in 2020.

The original vision of justice in our checks and balances republic, though, was an apolitical court to decide matters of what was constitutional and what was not.

In other eras, Supreme Court justices were not always nakedly partisan ideologues. An Eisenhower appointee, Earl Warren, presided over the most progressive court in our history. Warren, a lifelong Republican, was insulated from politics, though there was an outcry by some for his impeachment after his court ruled (in a unanimous decision) that segregated schools were inherently unequal. The Framers, we note, were completely silent on the matter of racial segregation at law.

The shit-storm that immediately followed the Warren Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to enforce equality under the law, as the amended Constitution required (albeit in tortured, somewhat ambiguous legalese [2]), was in hindsight, predictable. Over six decades, the anti-democratic lunatic fringe John Birch Society, an extremist outfit, has, with literally billions shrewdly invested to achieve this remarkable result, morphed into the present day Trump/Republican party.

This right-wing zealot that Mr. Trump is poised to force down the throats of America for a generation (the court must be expanded under president Biden if McConnell manages to ram her 51-49 nomination through, as he is expected to) is the latest in what Senator Susan Collins hoped Kavanaugh would provide — an end to partisan 5-4 decisions, (hello partisan 6-3 decisions!) .

We hear the sound bytes from a Judge Amy Coney Barrett speech, explaining what she learned at Antonin Scalia’s knee when she clerked for him — that the original intent of the wealthy white men who wrote the Constitution more than two hundred years ago is the only thing that truly matters when interpreting the document. Sounds fair enough. Except, of course, that the world has changed a bit since the end of the nineteenth century.

Here is a recent example of a non-political 5-4 party line Supreme Court ruling, to show how well the original intent of the Framers about an apolitical court has been carried on into our time. The case arose out of a partisan dispute in Wisconsin about what precautions were reasonable to accommodate voters during a surging pandemic [3].

A federal court had ruled that during a pandemic, when there was a spike in requests for mail-in ballots and ballots for many voters to mail back would not be received by voting day, it was reasonable for that the State of Wisconsin to extend by six days the postmarking and counting of mail-in ballots, to allow for fuller distribution and return of such ballots. The RNC appealed and the appeals court agreed with the lower court that the slight extension of the deadline be extended.

However, the RNC was determined, since a majority Republican Wisconsin state supreme court hung in the balance (one Republican judge was up for re-election), to have the case heard by the Supreme Court.

Remarkably, it was immediately taken up. and the quickly rendered decision stopping the extended mail-in balloting was handed down the day before voting day

As Boof “51-49” Kavanaugh, writing for the 5-4 conservative majority, frames the issue. Kavanaugh decided that the pandemic, though serious, is not an issue that may be taken into consideration, as Wisconsin’s Republican court and state senate had decreed when the governor unsuccessfully tried to postpone the state election during a surge in Covid-19 cases:

The question before the Court is a narrow, technical question about the absentee ballot process.

The sole question before the Court is whether absentee ballots now must be mailed and postmarked by election day, Tuesday, April 7, as state law would necessarily require, or instead may be mailed and
postmarked after election day, so long as they are received
by Monday, April 13.

This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.

The dissent is quite wrong on several points.

The Court’s decision on the narrow question before the
Court should not be viewed as expressing an opinion on the
broader question of whether to hold the election, or whether
other reforms or modifications in election procedures in
light of COVID–19 are appropriate. That point cannot be
stressed enough.

From Justice Ginsburg’s “quite wrong” dissent (worth a read, the entire dissent is only a few pages):

The District Court, acting in view of the dramatically evolving COVID–19 pandemic, entered a preliminary injunction to safeguard the availability of absentee voting in Wisconsin’s spring election. This Court now intervenes at the eleventh hour to prevent voters who have timely requested absentee ballots from casting their votes. I would not disturb the District Court’s disposition, which the Seventh Circuit allowed to stand.

A Wisconsin’s spring election is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, April 7, 2020. At issue are the presidential primaries, a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, three seats on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, over 100 other judgeships, over 500 school board seats, and several thousand other positions.

As of April 2, Wisconsin had 1,550 confirmed cases of COVID–19 and 24 deaths attributable to the disease, “with evidence of increasing community spread.” On March 24, the Governor ordered Wisconsinites to stay at home until April 24 to slow the spread of the disease. Because gathering at the polling place now poses dire health risks, an unprecedented number of Wisconsin voters—at the encouragement of public officials—have turned to voting absentee. About one million more voters have requested absentee ballots in this election than in 2016. Accommodating the surge of absentee ballot requests has heavily burdened election officials, resulting in a severe backlog of ballots requested but not promptly mailed to voters.

The Court’s order requires absentee voters to postmark their ballots by election day, April 7—i.e., tomorrow—even if they did not receive their ballots by that date. That is a novel requirement. Recall that absentee ballots were originally due back to election officials on April 7, which the District Court extended to April 13. Neither of those deadlines carried a postmark-by requirement. While I do not doubt the good faith of my colleagues, the Court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement. A voter cannot deliver for postmarking a ballot she has not received. Yet tens of thousands of voters who timely requested ballots are unlikely to receive them by April 7, the Court’s postmark deadline. Rising concern about the COVID–19 pandemic has caused a late surge in absentee ballot requests.

The Court’s suggestion that the current situation is not “substantially different” from “an ordinary election” boggles the mind. Some 150,000 requests for absentee ballots have been processed since Thursday, state records indicate. The surge in absentee ballot requests has overwhelmed election officials, who face a huge backlog in sending ballots. As of Sunday morning, 12,000 ballots reportedly had not yet been mailed out. It takes days for a mailed ballot to reach its recipient—the postal service recommends budgeting a week—even without accounting for pandemic induced mail delays.

It is therefore likely that ballots mailed in recent days will not reach voters by tomorrow; for ballots not yet mailed, late arrival is all but certain. Under the District Court’s order, an absentee voter who receives a ballot after tomorrow could still have voted, as long as she delivered it to election officials by April 13.

… the Court’s order cites Purcell, apparently skeptical of the District Court’s intervention shortly before an election. Never mind that the District Court was reacting to a grave, rapidly developing public health crisis. If proximity to the election counseled hesitation when the District Court acted several days ago, this Court’s intervention today—even closer to the election—is all the more inappropriate.

… the Court notes that the District Court’s order allowed absentee voters to cast ballots after election day. If a voter already in line by the poll’s closing time can still vote, why should Wisconsin’s absentee voters, already in line to receive ballots, be denied the franchise?

The majority of this Court declares that this case presents a “narrow, technical question.” That is wrong. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court’s order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following election day, they could return it. With the majority’s stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance—to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin’s citizens, the integrity of the State’s election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation.

You can judge for yourself whose position is more rooted in the facts of the case, the applicable law, justice, reason and common sense. Never mind any of that, 5-4!

The RNC’s Hail Mary and Kavanaugh’s lightning quick 5-4 order didn’t work, at least as far saving the seat of the Wisconsin Republican up for reelection to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The fight continues, for certain.

[1]

Justice Joseph Bradley:

“When a man has emerged from slavery, and, by the aid of beneficent legislation, has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen or a man are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected.”

Ruling in the “Civil Rights Cases of 1883″

I defamed Bradley, he was not a former slaveholder, neither were his 7 colleagues who voted to strike down a law intended to enforce the Civil War Amendments . By 1883 only one Justice on the court was. That judge wrote a powerful dissent:

POWE
The opinion ends with Justice Bradley saying, “There comes a time when, after the emergence of slavery, a person must take on the role of mere citizen and cease being a special favorite of the law.” And what the Court is announcing then is, “Reconstruction is over. You’re just like anyone else.”

NARRATOR
There was only one justice who refused to join the majority. He was a starch-collared, fundamentalist Presbyterian and former slave holder from Kentucky named John Marshall Harlan. He was also the only justice who’d seen slavery and Reconstruction up close.

As attorney general of Kentucky just after the Civil War, Harlan had been a vocal opponent of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. He’d been among the office holders who stirred white rage against freed slaves. In Harlan’s hometown of Frankfort alone, there were 64 catalogued acts of white supremacist terror against freed blacks and their political allies. When Harlan saw the bitter fruit of his politics, he’d been shamed.

PRZYBYSZEWSKI
Even though he was raised as a white supremacist, raised as a slave holder, at the same time he firmly believed that his father had been an honorable white man, that he had never abused power. That may be a myth, but that’s what he believed. And he wanted to live up to that kind of honor. And so people threw his history back in his face. And he said, “I would rather be right than consistent.”

GILLMAN
The Northern members of the Court could talk in generalities about how the freedmen had become equal in the eyes of the law, and no longer needed the special help of the federal government. But Harlan knew better. He knew the predicament that blacks faced in the South. And he knew that civil rights could not be protected simply with the abstractions of the language of equality — that civil rights required the federal government to give the aid that was necessary.

NARRATOR
Harlan determined to dissent in the Civil Rights Cases and to dissent loudly, but once he began to write, he found himself paralyzed … until his wife pulled from storage a strange memento the Harlans had bought: the inkstand Chief Justice Roger Taney had used to write his infamous Dred Scott decision, a decision in which he had observed that blacks had no rights a white man was bound to respect.

PRZYBYSZEWSKI
She cleaned it. She filled it with ink and she put it on his desk so that when he came home from church one Sunday it was sitting there. And in effect, what she was reminding her husband was that the Dred Scott case needed to be undone.

AMAR
Harlan’s dissent in the Civil Rights Cases says, we the Court protected the rights of slave masters and upheld congressional laws protecting slave masters. And now, when the Constitution has been amended to protect the rights of former slaves, we’re striking down congressional laws designed to enforce that right. We are not treating the former slaves with the same kind of generosity that we once treated slave masters, and that’s hypocrisy.

GILLMAN
Harlan is that one voice on the Court that still embodies that previous commitment that was made just a few years earlier to that goal, to the goal of racial equality. But the rest of the country, and the Court, had moved on.

KLARMAN
The country doesn’t want to continue with this experiment in coerced reform of race relations in the South. And I think the Supreme Court is basically putting its stamp of approval on that. They’re saying the national government is not going to intervene anymore in Southern race relations. We are restoring home rule on the race issue to the South. We’re gonna return to the status quo, which is: upper-class whites in the South get to decide what race relations are gonna look like.

source

[2} the text of the 14th Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.[1]

[3] Wikipedia:

On April 6, 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, virtually due to the pandemic, that Governor Tony Evers could not delay the state’s 2020 primary elections, despite public fears of COVID-19.[9]

On May 13, 2020, in response to a lawsuit brought by the Republican-led state legislature, the Court ruled 4-3 to strike down an order issued by Secretary-designee of the Department of Health Services Andrea Palm, which extended the stay-at-home order previously issued by Governor Tony Evers.[10] The portion of the order that kept all K-12 schools closed for the remainder of the school year remained in effect.[11] The deciding vote to strike down the Secretary-designee’s order was by Daniel Kelly, who had recently lost his bid for re-election to Jill Karofsky.[12]

–

Trump’s Endless War on Voting Unfairness

Donald Trump attacks the integrity of American voting because he knows his support has always been about 39% of the electorate. They love him unconditionally, there are tens of millions of them, their minds will never be changed about Trump’s greatness, but they are a clear minority of the voting populace. He knows that every one of them must vote, and that millions of others must be stopped from voting if he is to have a chance to once again squeak by in the upcoming election (via the Electoral College) and stay in power.

All quotes below (except for the last one) are from a transcript of the current episode (highly recommended) of Trump, Inc., a collaboration between WNYC and ProPublica. The episode is called Block The Vote.

Prior to the 2016 election Trump spread the same distrust of unfair, rigged elections, gamed by sneaky illegal immigrants and the corrupt denizens of crime-infested cities:

DONALD TRUMP: Illegal immigrants are voting. I mean, where are the street smarts of some of these politicians? They don’t have any is right. right. So many cities are corrupt and voter fraud is very, very common.

And, just as he feared, they stole the election from him last time. There was also the problem with the massive zombie vote, those dead voters who stole the election from him. Don’t forget the zombies!

DONALD TRUMP: You look at the dead people that are registered to vote who vote.

MEG CRAMER: Right after he was inaugurated, The Washington Post reported that in a meeting with congressional leaders Trump claimed without evidence that three to five million people had voted illegally inflating Hillary Clinton’s totals. By telling this lie, Trump could claim that maybe he had not lost the popular vote.

DONALD TRUMP: And we’re going to do an investigation on it.

He was as good as his word, and investigate they did. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, run by Mike Pence and Kris Koback, folded its tents after two meetings — they’d found no fraud, beyond the 1,300 cases researchers for the right-wing Heritage Foundation discovered (total cases of voter fraud, in elections going back to 1982).

Anyone who reads the news learns over and over that voter fraud is extremely rare, that reports of massive fraud are misleading, that the myth of widespread voter fraud has been debunked many times. Even using the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s numbers, the incidence of voting fraud in 2016 was less than 1 in 2,000,000 — a few hundred thousandths of 1%.

We are sometimes told the incidence of voter fraud is “less than 1%”, which is true, but misleading, it is far less than a ten-thousandth of one percent.

With constant repetition by the president and his Attorney General this baseless myth thrives, as galvanizing to millions in that solid 39% base as the one about the Satanist cannibal pedophiles who run the Democratic party.

But here’s the really creepy part. A right-wing lawyer working for the Heritage Foundation is advising a group of Republican state attorneys general on how to use disproven legal theories about electoral fraud to take control of state elections and “safeguard the integrity of the upcoming election” to support the president and his followers. This man, Hans von Spakovsky, is the Heritage Foundation’s expert on voter fraud:

HANS VON SPAKOVSKY: All we have to do is look at the many cases, proven cases of absentee ballot fraud to understand that the problem with absentee or mail-in ballots is there the ballots that are most vulnerable to fraud, to being stolen. And they also…

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Hans von Spakovsky who is well known to ProPublica’s Jessica Huseman.

JESSICA HUSEMAN: Hans von Spakovsky is a longtime voter fraud conspiracy theorist, and he got his start like many people who are now doing strange things in the world of voting in the 2000 election.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: After that, he went to work for the Justice Department under President George W. Bush.

He eventually wound up at the Heritage Foundation where he became their resident expert in making thinly-sourced voter fraud claims.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: In 2018, von Spakovsky was called in to be an expert witness in a federal trial over a Kansas law that required proof of citizenship in order to vote. Von Spakovsky was there to present data on noncitizen voting.


JESSICA HUSEMAN: The judge basically dismissed all of his testimony, called it cherry picked, called it biased. Said that he was more of an activist rather than an unbiased expert witness. And her opinion basically said that she gave his testimony no real credence in her decision.


ANDREA BERNSTEIN: The judge, Julie Robinson, wrote von Spakovsky’s statements were premised on several misleading and unsupported examples and included false assertions. She said his generalized opinions about the rates of noncitizen registration were likewise based on misleading evidence and largely based on his preconceived beliefs about this issue, which has led to his aggressive public advocacy of stricter proof of citizenship laws. Von Spakovsky maintains a database of what he calls some 1,300 cases of vote fraud.

So, naturally, he is now working behind the scenes for Mr. Trump’s re-election. He has apparently been hosting Republican-only strategy meetings for state government officials involved in overseeing the 2020 election. The frequency of these meetings is increasing as the already contested election approaches, and officials of the Trump administration are involved in the strategizing.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Von Spakovsky’s meetings were attended by state, secretaries of state. These officials are often partisan but their job is to ensure the integrity of their state’s elections.


MIKE SPIES: The purpose of the meeting was essentially to sort of jointly strategize.


ANDREA BERNSTEIN: And, again, only Republican officials were invited to the meetings. Up until 2020, they met basically a couple of times a year in Washington. Republican congressional staffers sometimes came and on at least one occasion so did officials from the Justice Department, Trump appointees.

The participants at these meetings are encouraged not to take notes, as everyone gets on the same page. Some took notes, some failed to carefully delete all emails and phone logs, two dogged reporters found some things.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Mike and Jake found an example of what it looks like for elections officials to be on the same page as von Spakovsky. In July, a voting rights group in Ohio publicly advocated that more absentee ballot drop boxes be placed at schools, libraries and other public places across the state’s 88 counties so that voters could vote more easily. According to a July 15 email, one of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRosa’s deputies immediately called and emailed von Spakovsky asking to discuss the matter. Weeks later, LaRosa announced he did not have the authority to add more than one ballot receptacle per county. Voting rights advocates say that will make it harder for people who want to avoid the crowds of a polling place to cast a vote. They’re challenging the decision in court. Just this August, von Spakovsky invited officials to another meeting. The invitation said the convening would, quote, “gather the chief state election officials together to strategize on advancing their shared goal of ensuring the integrity of the elections they administer in their home states.” This time, a new official joined the group, a Trump appointee from the Department of Homeland Security.

It’s kind of self-evident that the Ohio Secretary of State, as a matter of law, would only be authorized to add one absentee ballot drop box per county. I mean, who could even challenge such a reasonable assertion? And if they wanted to, it would cost a lot of money and require a team of good lawyers — and an adverse ruling could be appealed past the date of the election, rendering it moot anyway.

And so on. Listen to the episode, fascinating and more than a little bit horrifying. Many of these characters need to be prosecuted and locked up, after their man is out office and out of the pardoning business.

The episode also has a nice summary of the federal case in Pennsylvania I’ve been trying to follow (Trump v. Boockvar), and a related ruling:

Another example, in Pennsylvania, a federal judge ordered the Trump campaign to provide evidence to back up its claims about the dangers of voter fraud, quote, “and if they have none state as much.” That’s the case where the campaign called the shift to mail-in voting the single greatest threat to free and fair elections. The campaign submitted a 524-page document, which according to the news site The Intercept did not include any examples of mail-in vote fraud. The federal judge put that case on pause until a similar case was decided in state court. In that case, Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of several provisions that make voting by mail easier, writing that claims of heightened election fraud involving mail-in voting are unsubstantiated. The pause on the federal case has been lifted, and the case is ongoing.

There’s also Nevada where the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit challenging that state’s expansion of mail-in voting. On September 18, a judge dismissed the lawsuit calling the campaign’s claims about the dangers of vote fraud impermissibly speculative. The judge wrote not only have plaintiffs failed to allege a substantial risk of voter fraud, the state of Nevada has its own mechanisms for deterring and prosecuting voter fraud. The Trump campaign has 30 days to appeal.

Perez [Myrna Perez, director of the Voting Rights and Elections program for the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. –ed] pointed out that these lawsuits have consequences beyond the resulting legal decisions.

As this writer succinctly points out (emphasis mine):

Nominally, Trump and his political sycophants are trying to stop state and local officials from making voting-by-mail more accessible during a pandemic.

But, in fact, the real aim is simply to push into the public sphere the false claims that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud. Each court battle or legislative fight gives them the opportunity to keep sowing those doubts, ready to be harvested later.

source

Federal Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan assessing Trump/RNC claims in federal case to limit voting in Pennsylvania

“…while Plaintiffs do assert one facial constitutional challenge and allege a few violations of statutory provisions 

that are probably not ambiguous,

these claims are intertwined with those that are less clear.”  

[source]

Dig it.

Like the claim, for example, that undergirds the entire case: uncheckable potential for massive anti-Trump voter fraud — which, using the conservative Heritage Foundation’s data, happened — on both sides — once in every 2,225,000 cases in 2016.

A veritable tsunami of Democrat treachery!

Why Trump/RNC is spending millions on lawsuits to stop mail-in voting — at a glance

These two graphics give you the picture of why limiting mail-in voting is such an important issue to the RNC. Look at the pictures, no need for a thousand words. Visual word to the wise.

These screenshots are from Fareed Zakaria’s recent piece on a nightmare scenario (he calls it a “deeply worrying” scenario) for November 4, 2020. The first set of numbers is from a CNN poll, the second is from a Democratic data firm called Hawkfish. (Full disclosure: I do not have Tucker Carlson’s numbers on these issues, nor Sean Hannity’s).

The rationale behind all these Republican lawsuits, of course, being the danger of massive Democratic electoral fraud in a rigged election. The RNC is trying to prevent a terrible electoral crime, like those 62 fake votes the Heritage Foundation documented in 2016 (out of 138, 846,571 votes cast.)

Danger: one out of every 2,239,460 votes is cast by a partisan fraudster!

Try saying that with a straight face. If you’re not too busy spreading the word of the well-connected and mysterious oracle Q.

Evidence vs. No Evidence (and the 44/millionths of one percent odds of winning on the merits, after exhausting all appeals)

We live in a bizarre and dangerous time when arguments presented without evidence can prevail — particularly in the algorithm-driven Court of Public Opinion. This court is not presided over by particularly sophisticated judicial minds. Any assertion that sounds legally plausible will do to support a claim already endorsed by partisans. Doctrines like Presidential Privilege, or Sovereign Immunity sound pretty impressive, and pretty darned absolute and unassailable. Case closed!

Blanket Unlimited Protective Presidential Immunity (for the president and anyone who has ever talked to him): BINGO! Sounds like a winner, unless you look at every previous Supreme Court ruling on less audacious claims of presidential immunity.

Fortunately for our democracy, laws and legal precedents govern when legal doctrines may be applied – and when they may not be applied. The final word on what is lawful is given to the courts of our country. These cases are won or lost based on who has the superior evidence for their claim. If powerful sounding legal doctrines are misused by the government, as Bill Barr routinely does, simply as stumbling blocks to delay the court’s final determination of a claim the AG (and every other legal scholar) knows will fall — that’s fatal for our democracy and the delicate system of checks and balances that upholds it.

Trump’s only hope for an outright, or at least arguable, electoral victory is chaos, confusion, fear, rage, violence and the suppression of millions of votes from people he’s alienated by his divisiveness and incompetence.

He’s favored in this hope by the winds of the highly infectious pandemic he decried and denied for months, a rampaging, deadly, airborne disease that creates chaos, fear, confusion. 39% of Americans couldn’t care less that he deliberately lied to the nation about the severity of the virus, as he revealed for posterity during his many recorded talks with Bob Woodward.

He’s favored by the discord he sows every day, the fear, rage and violence he inspires as he publicly strives to keep everyone calm. Those who follow him will insist he is the Law and Order candidate striving to keep everyone calm. They will faithfully repeat what the president himself has said, defending his decision to lie about the deadliness of the novel coronavirus.

He is NOT favored by the evidence for virtually any of his claims.

He’s not the brilliant dealmaker and great businessman he boasts about being; he’s a fraud and a snake-oil salesman, a serial failure saved from bankruptcy by vast family wealth over and over. Just before his election he settled a case to shut down his fraudulent university, as president his charitable family foundation has been shuttered for illegal activity.

Trump is well-known to be a compulsive liar. It is a compulsion, he literally has to lie. He is in jeopardy of prosecution for multiple crimes once he is no longer president. He’s been kept in office so far, in the face of massive evidence of his obstruction, abuse of office and other wrongdoing, only by fervent true believer AG Barr and soul-dead Senate leader McConnell. Trump is wounded and dangerous.

Please look at and memorize this number to trot out at your next virtual cocktail party: 44/millionths of one percent:

44/millionths of one percent

Rate of voter fraud in the United States 2000-2016: 0.0000044%

The president’s repeated claims about massive vote-by-mail fraud are not supported by any evidence. Voter fraud is a brazen lie told to help suppress the numbers who will be allowed to vote. You can read about the lack of evidence of voter fraud he and the RNC submitted in a federal suit they recently brought to limit mail-in voting during a pandemic [1].

Trump’s presidential commission on Election Fraud, created soon after his razor thin 78,000 vote Electoral College victory in 2016, tasked with finding the three million fraudulent Hillary voters that gave her a wide margin in the popular vote (many of these voters were dead Mexicans, as I recall Trump saying) found zero evidence. Headed by voting rights zealots Mike Pence and Chris Kobach, the commission shut down after two meetings, having turned up no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

By now, everyone should know Trump’s election rigging voter-fraud claim is false, a lie, 100% bullshit. The rate of demonstrated voter fraud is, let’s repeat it, to help remember the nano-percentage of cases of actual voter fraud, to drop into conversation:

44/millionths of one percent

Rate of voter fraud in the United States. 2000-2016: 0.0000044%

Yet the media continues to report on claims of widespread voter fraud like it is a real issue.

I read one in the NY Times the other day, grotesquely contorted to appear fair and balanced, that made me hate them anew. All they needed to do in that article was somewhere provide the number of actual, documented voting fraud cases from 2000-2016: 0.0000044% (or use the equally descriptive “statistically insignificant”). They dared not cite that damning fact, for whatever accursed reason, in assessing the truth or falsity of Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud and a rigged election.

You read the NY Times article and emerge with the idea that some very smart lawyers believe that mail-in fraud is much more widespread than in-person fraud. Perhaps as much as 200% more prevalent: 97/millionths of one percent, one imagines. Even if it is 1000% more prevalent, that’s 44/100,000ths of one percent. Come on, Grey Skank… sheesh, what is in it for you?

Trump has been pushing this load of crap since he announced that he was running for president in 2016. Check out this report from the Public Broadcasting System, October 2016, completely debunking this ignorant blowhard talking point.

As for American votes actively suppressed, recently, votes already legally cast and yet actually not counted, keep reading. This exchange is from the latest interview by national treasure Bill Moyers, about a federal lawsuit this Republican election lawyer is bringing to trump the multiple frivolous Trump lawsuits arguing for the need to curb unsubstantiated, widespread voter fraud [and also to throw a wrench into Trump’s ongoing conspiracy with mega-donor Postmaster General DeJoy to slow the delivery of mail]:

DAVID BERG: We have to prove imminent harm. In order to get any kind of injunctive relief from any court in the country, you have to prove that you are in imminent danger of losing, in this case, a valuable right, for which no money can compensate you. This is at the heart of this democracy: a free, unfettered right to vote. In this case, we were able to show, this is what we think is the harm. This is what we think we can say to the court. “Look, your Honor– ” I wouldn’t say, “Look, your Honor.” But I would say, “Your Honor– we have four people here. Their experience, from all published reports, is no different from millions of Americans. Their right to vote was unconstitutionally burdened, as the test goes.”

BILL MOYERS: In their primaries.

DAVID BERG: In their primaries. Yes, exactly. And in the runoffs. So, we say to the court, “That’s not something that a voter should have to confront.” And we can’t be certain, given everything that’s happened with the United States Postal Service, that this is not going to happen again. “This” being the failure to deliver the ballots in response to applications. And then, and this is also critical, because this is unknown to the voter. There were tens of thousands of votes that arrived too late at election officials’ offices during the primary season, and in the runoffs, Bill. And they weren’t counted. Used to be that, you know, you postmarked your mail-in ballot on the last day before the election, and it’ll get counted. We don’t have that assurance anymore.

BILL MOYERS: So what are you asking the court to do?

DAVID BERG: The court can look to the causes. There are four causes of the slowdown, probably more that we don’t know about. But there are four that widely publicize. The most serious of the causes, you’ve probably heard DeJoy and other of his cohorts at USPS–

BILL MOYERS: Postmaster DeJoy, President Trump’s appointment to be postmaster general.

DAVID BERG: Yes, exactly. He’s bragged about the fact in an email to all of the 600,000 employees of the United States Postal Service that the rate of delivery has really improved. On-time delivery has gone from 83% to 94% in just a month. That’s just about as trustworthy as when he, DeJoy, said he would suspend all the changes. Which was just a head fake, was just three card Monty with our election. When he said he’d suspend the changes that he was making at the post office claiming it just to be for cost-cutting, what he really meant to say was, I’m not going to reverse the changes I’ve already made, which has created slowdowns in mail delivery, failure to deliver mail all over the country. Especially more pronounced in some parts than others. So what we’re asking the court to do is lift the hiring freeze. Thousands of postal workers have been sidelined by the Coronavirus. And the fallacy of this business about delivering on time, Bill, if your trucks all leave on time, that’s one thing. But they leave on time without the mail. They are no longer allowed to do late deliveries or special deliveries to customers. So the mail stacks up, and that makes the delay even worse. So yes, he’s telling us the trains are running on time. But they’re empty.

[1] Trump’s claim in the case — that mail-in voting:

… denies any procedural visibility to candidates, political parties, and the public in general, thereby jeopardizing the free and fair public elections guaranteed by the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. The most recent election conducted in this Commonwealth and the public reaction to it demonstrate the harm caused by Defendants’ unconstitutional infringements of Plaintiffs’ rights. The continued enforcement of arbitrary and disparate policies and procedures regarding poll watcher access and ballot return and counting poses a severe threat to the credibility and integrity of, and public confidence in, Pennsylvania’s elections.

full amended complaint here

is not only unsupported by evidence (in apparent contempt of a judge’s order) but these claims are identical to Kremlin talking points about the upcoming US election. How a federal lawsuit is allowed to go forward, unsupported by evidence of any kind, in spite of the unambiguous order of the federal judge that Plaintiff’s submit evidence or STATE THAT THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE, is a modern American judicial mystery.  The failure of the news media to report on it is a modern American media mystery. 

self-dealing source 

further attempts to shed light on this hideous story

I just wrote to Bill Moyers (and I have a few other news outlets on my list for today, including FAIR, the Intercept and VOX):

I am a long-time admirer of Bill Moyers (a national treasure) and was delighted recently to discover his podcast, which continues his excellent and sorely needed journalism.  I am hoping somebody at BillMoyers.com will delve into this unreported story with direct effect on the 2020 election:

Trump appears to have ignored a federal judge’s 8/13/20 order to produce evidence of vote-by-mail fraud or state that he has no evidence.

Citing often-debunked mail-in voting fraud claims, the Trump campaign and the RNC brought a federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania AG and all 67 counties for making voting easier and safer during the pandemic (Trump v. Boockvar).  Judge Ranjan (a Trump appointee) ordered Plaintiffs to produce evidence of their claims OR STATE THAT THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE, by August 14. 

Several news outlets reported on the judge’s order, and his subsequent stay of the case (abstaining while state courts rule on many of the claims) but only one article (on The Intercept) has featured the lack of evidence presented by Trump and the RNC in their 524 page submission. 

 Stoking fears about mail-in voting fraud was recently reported as a Putin talking point for the US election.   It does not seem that Trump and the RNC submitted any evidence for their claims of massive mail-in voting fraud.  Not big news?

A headline might be:  Trump, in contempt of order by Trump-appointed judge, refuses to admit he has no evidence of voter fraud.    

I am happy to do my part fleshing out this important news story, which I have been following since Judge Ranjan’s 8/13 order.  McClatchy, the NY Times, Democracy Now!, the Intercept, Pittsburgh Public Radio station WESA (the federal court is in Pittsburgh) and other news organizations I contacted do not seem to have followed up on my pitch a few weeks back.   The media silence is puzzling and dismaying.   You can find links to my research HERE (along with the online docket for the case, which is HERE).   Please contact me if I can be of assistance with this story.   Here is what I posted yesterday:

Election Fraud: evidence or no evidence?

Why isn’t this “high profile” case front page news? It turns on the demonstrable falsity of Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims of massive voter fraud. These false claims are being actively spread by Putin, as well, according to US intelligence reports.

Trump v. Boockvar is the federal lawsuit brought by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee to prevent the Democratic Attorney General of Pennsylvania and the Election Boards of all 67 Pennsylvania counties from making voting easier and safer during a pandemic. The aim of the lawsuit is clearly to suppress the vote in a state whose twenty Electoral College votes Trump won by less than one percent (0.7%) in 2016. The judge has allowed the case to proceed without evidence of voter fraud being presented by the president’s lawyers (who were ordered to produce evidence by August 14th)

A sitting president and his party’s national committee are using campaign donations to fund an expensive federal lawsuit, forcing the massive expenditure of tax payer funds by a state/defendant trying to make ends meet during a pandemic.

Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?

Here’s the recent NY Times report about how Trump uses campaign funds to finance his many presidential legal battles.

Here’s the skinny on the flood of lawsuits Trump is having paid for by donors.

Incidentally, Trump’s claim in the case — that mail-in voting:

… denies any procedural visibility to candidates, political parties, and the public in general, thereby jeopardizing the free and fair public elections guaranteed by the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. The most recent election conducted in this Commonwealth and the public reaction to it demonstrate the harm caused by Defendants’ unconstitutional infringements of Plaintiffs’ rights. The continued enforcement of arbitrary and disparate policies and procedures regarding poll watcher access and ballot return and counting poses a severe threat to the credibility and integrity of, and public confidence in, Pennsylvania’s elections.

full amended complaint here

is not only unsupported by evidence (in apparent contempt of a judge’s order) but these claims are identical to Kremlin talking points about the upcoming US election [1]. How a federal lawsuit is allowed to go forward, unsupported by evidence of any kind, in spite of the unambiguous order of the federal judge that Plaintiff’s submit evidence or STATE THAT THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE, is a modern American judicial mystery.  The failure of the news media to report on it is a modern American media mystery.  

Judge to Trump and Putin: put up or shut up!

The judge in the case, J. Nicholas Ranjan, a Trump appointee, ruled almost a month ago that Plaintiffs must submit evidence of the massive fraud they are claiming will take place if Pennsylvania’s voting modifications for the pandemic are allowed to go forward or STATE THAT THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE.  

Judge Ranjan didn’t necessarily want to make this order against his benefactors, Trump and the RNC, he granted defendants’ motions asking for that order. Trump and the RNC plainly didn’t have good enough arguments for the judge to allow him to deny the motion and let them continue the case without a shred of evidence.

A federal lawsuit where the incumbent president and his massively wealthy party are using campaign funds to fuel a suit against a state to prevent the expansion of voting in a presidential election, during a pandemic — based on MASSIVE FRAUD they have produced no evidence of — eh, nothing to see here.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE?

[1]

A bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security alleges that Russian state actors are seeking to “amplify criticisms of vote-by-mail” in the U.S. election, with specific critiques echoing those made by President Trump and his allies.

additionally:

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released in August found “irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling” in the 2016 election, concluding that Russia and China are both working to “disrupt our democracy, exacerbate societal divisions, and sow doubts about the legitimacy and integrity of our institutions, our electoral process and our republic.” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said in a statement that Russia is actively working to “denigrate” former Vice President Joe Biden and “boost” Trump’s candidacy

source

Election Fraud: evidence or no evidence?

Why isn’t this “high profile” case front page news? It turns on the demonstrable falsity of Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims of massive voter fraud. These false claims are being actively spread by Putin, as well, according to US intelligence reports.

Trump v. Boockvar is the federal lawsuit brought by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee to prevent the Democratic Attorney General of Pennsylvania and the Election Boards of all 67 Pennsylvania counties from making voting easier and safer during a pandemic. The aim of the lawsuit is clearly to suppress the vote in a state whose twenty Electoral College votes Trump won by less than one percent (0.7%) in 2016. The judge has allowed the case to proceed without evidence of voter fraud being presented by the president’s lawyers (who were ordered to produce evidence by August 14th)

A sitting president and his party’s national committee are using campaign donations to fund an expensive federal lawsuit, forcing the massive expenditure of tax payer funds by a state/defendant trying to make ends meet during a pandemic.

Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?

Here’s the recent NY Times report about how Trump uses campaign funds to finance his many presidential legal battles.

Here’s the skinny on the flood of lawsuits Trump is having paid for by donors.

Incidentally, Trump’s claim in the case — that mail-in voting:

… denies any procedural visibility to candidates, political parties, and the public in general, thereby jeopardizing the free and fair public elections guaranteed by the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. The most recent election conducted in this Commonwealth and the public reaction to it demonstrate the harm caused by Defendants’ unconstitutional infringements of Plaintiffs’ rights. The continued enforcement of arbitrary and disparate policies and procedures regarding poll watcher access and ballot return and counting poses a severe threat to the credibility and integrity of, and public confidence in, Pennsylvania’s elections.

full amended complaint here

is not only unsupported by evidence (in apparent contempt of a judge’s order) but these claims are identical to Kremlin talking points about the upcoming US election [1]. How a federal lawsuit is allowed to go forward, unsupported by evidence of any kind, in spite of the unambiguous order of the federal judge that Plaintiff’s submit evidence or STATE THAT THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE, is a modern American judicial mystery. The failure of the news media to report on it is a modern American media mystery.

Judge to Trump and Putin: put up or shut up!

The judge in the case, J. Nicholas Ranjan, a Trump appointee, ruled almost a month ago that Plaintiffs must submit evidence of the massive fraud they are claiming will take place if Pennsylvania’s voting modifications for the pandemic are allowed to go forward or STATE THAT THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE.

Judge Ranjan didn’t necessarily want to make this order against his benefactors, Trump and the RNC, he granted defendants’ motions asking for that order. Trump and the RNC plainly didn’t have good enough arguments for the judge to allow him to deny the motion and let them continue the case without a shred of evidence.

A federal lawsuit where the incumbent president and his massively wealthy party are using campaign funds to fuel a suit against a state to prevent the expansion of voting in a presidential election, during a pandemic — based on MASSIVE FRAUD they have produced no evidence of — eh, nothing to see here.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE?

[1]

A bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security alleges that Russian state actors are seeking to “amplify criticisms of vote-by-mail” in the U.S. election, with specific critiques echoing those made by President Trump and his allies.

additionally:

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released in August found “irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling” in the 2016 election, concluding that Russia and China are both working to “disrupt our democracy, exacerbate societal divisions, and sow doubts about the legitimacy and integrity of our institutions, our electoral process and our republic.” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said in a statement that Russia is actively working to “denigrate” former Vice President Joe Biden and “boost” Trump’s candidacy

source

Trump and Barr’s proof of massive mail-in voting fraud — or not

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, in her most recent nightly Letter from an American:

He [AG Barr, interviewed on CNN] said that hostile foreign powers could send thousands of mail-in ballots to this year’s election, creating massive voter fraud. When pressed, Barr admitted there was no evidence for such a claim. The U.S. Intelligence Community has no evidence that foreign countries are trying to manipulate mail-in ballots. [Heather, this would be a great place to include a sentence on Republican “evidence” submitted in federal court two weeks ago]

Trump is also continuing his attacks on mail-in votes, insisting they will usher in voter fraud despite their widespread previous use that showed no evidence of fraud, and despite the fact that the president himself votes by mail. [or here]

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee, in compliance with the federal judge’s order, submitted documentary proof of massive vote by mail fraud (or stated that they had no proof) in Trump’s federal case against the State of Pennsylvania, Trump v. Boockvar. Rather than citing Barr’s admission, when pressed by an interviewer, that there is no evidence for such a claim, why not look at the filing by Plaintiffs in the federal court in Western Pennsylvania? Did they submit evidence or, as the judge ordered, did they state they had none, as the judge ordered them to do if they had none?

Americans are simply not being told anything about this “put up or shut up” moment in a federal lawsuit brought to limit voting by a party that has become used to making incendiary claims without evidence of any kind.

On the bright side, we are told today that Mr. Trump will cut through all the Deep State red tape and cure COVID-19 by November 1, or kill countless Americans trying an untested vaccine or vaccines. Either way, victory Donald!

I need to send the facts of Trump v. Boockvar to Bill Moyers and Janine Jackson at FAIR. How can it be that nobody is reporting on Trump’s non-existent evidence of voter fraud in a federal lawsuit about the immediate (and longer term) future of democracy? WTF?

The Extreme Right Never Sleeps — Thousand Year Reich edition

In response to the pandemic, Pennsylvania made it easier for citizens to vote for president without going to polling places in person. In person voting is the preferred method for pandemic deniers to cast their votes, polls show. Pandemic deniers tend to be followers of the president who brilliantly handled the virus already, though his enemies keep snarkily pointing to the 1,000 Americans a day still dying from it, the “six million” who have allegedly been infected to date. A majority of Democratic voters appear to favor mail-in voting. So keeping down the number of votes cast by mail would appear to be the key to Trump winning the 20 electoral college votes of a battleground state he won by a fabulously slim 0.7% mandate in 2016– as well as every other state where it could be close.

Naturally, when they heard Pennsylvania was making it easier for absentee ballots to be cast, Trump and the RNC cried foul, fraud, unconstitutional, illegal, shameful, shameless, bloody murder, coup d’etat etc. They filed a federal lawsuit to stop it on June 29, 2020. You can see the history of this unreported on lawsuit and read all the filings in the case by clicking HERE.

The judge in that case, a Trump appointee named J. Nicholas Ranjan, ordered Plaintiffs to produce evidence of their claims of vote-by-mail fraud or state that they had no evidence. Donald J. Trump for President and the RNC were not deterred, apparently submitting 524 pages of clippings from Breitbart and FOX news, pages containing many accusations of shameless, massive electoral fraud but no proof of anything. After the judge stayed the case until October 5 for Pennsylvania courts to decide state law claims, Trump’s lawyers, on Friday, filed a request for a preliminary injunction– to prevent irreparable harm to the Trump campaign. It reads in part:

Without this relief, Defendants could begin irreversibly commingling potentially illegally cast ballots with other ballots from mid-to-late September 2020. Therefore, to prevent irreparable, constitutional harm to them and their fundamental rights, including without limitation their right to free, fair, and honest elections, and to preserve the ability to obtain an accurate count of the validly cast ballots in the November 3, 3030 General Election if this Court or any other court determines that any such ballots have been illegally cast, Plaintiffs ask this Court to modify the stay in its August 23, 2020 Order (ECF # 410) to provide for limited, preliminary injunctive relief and to modify the stay lifting date from October 5, 2020 to September 14, 2020.

Let’s run a bit of that back, because my “punchline” is embedded in legalese and is easy to miss.

…their right to free, fair, and honest elections, and to preserve the ability to obtain an accurate count of the validly cast ballots in the November 3, 3030 General Election

Trump’s motion was submitted with a glaring typo that refers to an election 1,010 years in the future, indicating either sloppiness in preparing the hurried application for emergency relief — or a more sinister intent to retain power by contesting election results for the next thousand years.

The second theory makes sense, from a poetic, non-evidence based point of view. Hitler and the original Nazis often vowed that their racially pure reign would be “The Thousand Year Reich.” Their administration was in power twelve years before self-destructing, as any regime based on hatred, rage, brutality and mass murder ultimately must destroy itself. Still, there are shades of so many of the original Nazi beliefs and techniques among Mr. Trump’s hard core of personally loyal party of the Leader zealots, haters and scofflaws, that it’s no surprise their lawyers made this Freudian slip.

Now if only the national news media would report on this crucial election case! Drawing attention to the president’s Twitter endorsement of truckloads of armed men driving in a caravan to violently confront protesters in Portland is important — but so is this federal case about how actual votes will actually be legally cast in 2020.

Fascists and their followers are capable of anything, have no shame, and they never sleep; neither can the rest of us, until our imperfect but crucial democracy is protected.