Major law news: The USSC voter role purge opinion revisited; Trump judges attack mail-in ballots

As I argued yesterday, a recent USSC emergency decision allowed Virginia to purge a voter role. The purge was clearly, undeniably illegal under federal law. There was zero dispute about any illegality, until the USSC apparently silently just blew a hole in a federal law with zero explanation. The entire decision is shown below:

Translated into English that says the federal trial court decision to block the voter purge by Virginia is reversed. Virginia can purge the voter role as it had planned to do. If the people trying to block the purge don't like this decision, they can appeal it to the 4th Circuit and, if they lose there, then they can appeal it back to us. In other words, the voter role will be purged and if the losers here want to contest this on appeal they can go ahead and do it and we'll see how that plays out in appeals court over the next year or two. 

This terrifying decision was 6-3. All six radical right authoritarian Republican Party judges apparently voted to eviscerate a reasonable federal election law without a single word of explanation. 

On top of this being terrifying, it is deeply galling that the three Democratic Party judges simply say they disagree and would allow the court to stop Virginia's voter role purge. They too do not deign to offer any explanation for their opposition to Virginia's voter purge or the trial court decision to block it. We get bupkis for an explanation. The USSC shows no respect for citizens who want to know what is going on and why. Instead we get insulting, contemptuous silence.

The three Dems here appear to be either (i) grossly incompetent due to arrogance or who knows what, (ii) the court has a rule, likely in secret, that if in emergency cases like this the dissenting judges offer an explanation for their dissent, the authoritarians will turn the USSC far more corrupt and authoritarian than it already is, maybe by completely shutting the Dem judges out of all cases, or (iii) something else is going on that I am unaware of.

Peanut gallery commentary:

Peanut 1. Not good. Not good at all. The EDVA [Eastern District Virginia trial court decision] seemed very solid to me.

Peanut 2. That's because it is. It's literally against federal law to purge the voter rolls this close to the election. The fact that they're ignoring that is more proof that they'll interpret the law anyway they want.

3. Does ignoring federal law open then up to impeachment? Wouldn't that be the only check on the power of the Supreme Court left since legislation does not seem to have an effect?

4. Problem is impeachment doesn't mean shit without one party in control of both Chambers sadly ....

3 again. I still think there would be some benefit to just carrying out the impeachment process (even if it failed) to remind these Justices and more importantly the public that there is a mechanism by which to remove these corrupt judges once the tide turns against them.

2 again. If. If the tide turns against them. That's this election. This is the best chance to change the course of this country. I don't know when we'll get another if we miss this one. Presidential immunity is a hard one to overcome. (emphasis added) 

5. Thank everyone who voted for any Republican after the Federalist Society was founded in 1982 in order to create exactly these sorts of legal outcomes. 

The presidential immunity that the highlighted comment referred to is the recent USSC case that put a sitting president above the law. 

Consider this: Between our rogue authoritarian republican USSC and the enraged, vindictive rogue dictator that Trump would be if he is elected, the threat to democracy, transparent governance (honest govt.), inconvenient truth, civil liberties and the rule of law would all be under deadly, lethal threat. But, even if Trump loses, the USSC is still there to keep blowing gigantic holes in our democracy! Power is flowing from democracy to authoritarianism.

I cannot make clearer how dismal our situation is. I wish I could.

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Slate reports about a terrifying decision from the hyper-radical authoritarian 5th Circuit appeals court Circuit. The 5th Cir. constitutes three states, TX, MS and LA. A panel of three authoritarian Trump appeals court judges just blasted a hole in laws that allow mail-in ballots that were mailed before election day but received after election day to be tossed out. Slate writes:

Three Trump Judges Just Issued a Shock Ruling 

That Could Wreak Havoc on the Election

On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit handed down a shock decision declaring that states may not count ballots that are mailed by Election Day but received shortly thereafter. By its own terms, the ruling applies only to Mississippi, throwing the legality of its voting procedures into question just 11 days before the election. Nationwide, however, 18 states and Washington, D.C., accept late-arriving ballots; the 5th Circuit’s reasoning would render all these laws illegitimate and void, nullifying hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ballots. The court’s obvious goal, aside from destabilizing a close election, is to tee up a Supreme Court decision that could wipe out all these laws in one fell swoop.

The Republican National Committee manufactured this dispute as a test case to end the widespread practice of accepting ballots that come in after Election Day, but are postmarked by Election Day. (Republicans believe that these ballots are disproportionately likely to support Democrats.) The RNC filed its lawsuit in Mississippi because the state counts late-arriving ballots and falls within the 5th Circuit; conservative lawyers knew they could get a favorable ruling from the far-right court.* RNC lawyers argued that federal law requires all votes to be received by Election Day, not just cast by Election Day. And they claimed that this federal rule overrides, or “preempts,” state laws to the contrary.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sharply rejected this argument. He pointed out that under the Constitution, “the times, places and manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed” by the states, though Congress may “make or alter” the state’s laws. Congress has not prescribed specific rules for mail ballots, instead leaving those decisions up to the states. The fact that Congress created one “Election Day” does not mean that it intended to void ballots that are cast by that date but, for whatever reason, arrive shortly thereafter.

Now the 5th Circuit has disagreed. The three-judge panel that decided this case is made up of extremely far-right, ultrapartisan appointees of Donald Trump: Andrew Oldham, Kyle Duncan, and James Ho. In his majority opinion joined by Duncan and Ho, Oldham latched on to federal law setting out “the day for the election.” He then declared that this is “the day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials.” Oldham asserted that a ballot is not actually “cast” until “the state takes custody of it”—a contested question on which federal law is silent. By fabricating this atextual rule, he was able to insist that late-arriving ballots are actually “cast” after Election Day.  

But the 5th Circuit has now created a vehicle for the justices to visit this issue after the election and potentially strike down nearly 20 states’ laws, making voting exponentially harder in the future.

One can clearly see the onslaught of lawsuits over this cannon blast at voting rights. Again, the intense hostility of radical right authoritarian Republicans (not conservatives) to free and fair elections and voting rights cannot be much clearer than this. Flimsy excuses, hypocrisy, flawed logic, flawed, bad-faith reasoning and cynical false assertions of facts are the basis on which Trump judges make their authoritarian anti-democracy decisions.

Q: As time passes and the authoritarian threat becomes even clearer than it was just a couple of years ago, does it feel more and more like bitter, unresolvable disputes over ideologies and beliefs that drove the US Civil War and WW2 were never settled? 

In my opinion key aspects of both the Civil War and WW2 are still being fought right now. Those wars never ended. 

That was 1980

What we have now has been a long time

 coming, but now here it is