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7 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Texas’ all-GOP Supreme Court wont let its largest county (home to Houston & 5 million people) mail applications for mail ballots to all voters. GOP has already made mail voting hard by requiring voters under 65 to have an excuse & allowing just 1 drop off location per county
Rulings such as this one show the importance of judicial elections, & 4 of 9 Texas Supreme Court seats are up for election in 2020. If Dems win just some of them they could be positioned to flip the court later this decade & use it to protect voting rights & fight gerrymandering
Meanwhile, Texas’ GOP Supreme Court has rejected a right-wing challenge to GOP Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order extending early voting by a week
A third lawsuit has been filed (in state court) over GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's directive that Texas counties may only have 1 mail ballot dropoff location regardless of population. Dems & voters of color are heavily concentrated in just a few massive counties brennancenter.org/sites/default/…

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More from @PoliticsWolf

Stephen Wolf Profile picture
8 Oct
Trump is inciting far-right violence like this with his calls for white supremacist militias to "stand by" & refusing to promise a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.

The alarms are flashing red for the risk of right-wing violence after Election Day.
Michigan is already one of the least democratic states in U.S. because GOP gerrymandering has entrenched minority rule. GOP won legislative majorities despite Dems winning more votes in 3 of last 4 elections & GOP barely won the 4th. Yet even that isn't enough for the far-right Image
Good on Michigan's GOP state Senate leader for this, but more Republicans need to stand up & condemn far-right attempts to violently overturn our democratic order like today's militia plot, & it starts with the rhetoric coming from the very top of the GOP Image
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
6 Oct
Absurd. Indiana exempts voters age 65+ from the mail voting excuse requirement. 26thAm says: "The right of citizens ... to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of age"

Same logic on race would violate 15th Amendment & lead to Jim Crow if carried to its logical extreme
🚨 I repeat, a federal court just let Indiana GOP ignore the 26th Amendment using logic that if applied to race would no exaggeration bring back Jim Crow policies!

This is a huge attack on the right to vote. 15th, 19th, & 26th Amendments have near-identical language by design!
This is the 2nd federal appeals circuit to make such an outrageous ruling in recent months. The 5th Circuit did the same exact thing over Texas' requirement of an excuse only for absentee voters under age 65. The current SCOTUS could gut the 26th Amendment if it reaches them
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
6 Oct
Pennsylvania's GOP legislature, which owes its majority to gerrymandering & won fewer votes than Dems in 2018, is effectively arguing that state courts (in this state Dem-run) cannot constrain the legislature from setting federal election law.

They want to destroy fair elections
Earlier this year, Pennsylvania's GOP-gerrymandered legislature passed a constitutional amendment to gerrymander the state Supreme Court (which is currently 5-2 Dem) after it struck down the GOP's congressional gerrymander in 2018. They want to permanently entrench minority rule
This is the logic of Pennsylvania GOP's argument. It's patently absurd, but in 2015, 4 GOP-appointed Supreme Court justices dissented that "legislature" in US Constitution means the literal legislature, which taken to its logical extreme would mean barring state judicial review
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
6 Oct
Supreme Court Republicans have ruled in favor of voting restrictions literally every single time a case has come before them this year except in one that had unusual circumstances (RI, where Dem officials settled with challengers)

This will only get worse if Barrett is confirmed
It's possible this ruling was based on the closeness of the election & thus had the liberal appointees on board, but if the federal judiciary weren't already so tilted to the right, a federal court may have suspended South Carolina's absentee witness requirement months ago
Absurd: Over 100,000 ballots have already been mailed out, & if they aren't received by Oct. 7, they'll be rejected for lacking a witness signature. Given the Trump admin's sabotage of the Postal Service, someone could've mailed it days ago & it still not be received by then
Read 6 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
18 Sep
Democracy was nice while it lasted
If Republicans replace Ginsburg, there will be a majority of 5 GOP justices appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote & confirmed by GOP Senate majorities that won fewer votes collectively than Dems.

They will use this majority to further gut voting rights
Republicans have not won more votes than Dems for all 100 senators collectively since the 1994-1998 elections. They've won the popular vote once for president in the last 3 decades. And yet, they're about to gain an even more extreme Supreme Court majority.

How democracies die
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
11 Sep
Thanks to Trump's appointees, 11th Circuit just upheld the Florida GOP's racist poll tax barring nearly 800,000 people, 43% of whom are Black, from voting even though FL makes it impossible for many to even find out how much they owe in court fines/fees dailykos.com/story/2020/7/1…
Republican-appointed judges are partisans in all but name. A veritable poll tax in the year 2020 even though the 24th Amendment bans explicit poll taxes AND "other" taxes producing the same effect.

Vote if you can, but the GOP has ensured this will not be a free & fair election
A majority of those subject to the Florida GOP's poll tax owe at least $500, & a many owe even more than that Black voters are disenfranchised by this poll tax at 3 times their share of the population & far more than whites electionsmith.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/jones-…
Read 5 tweets

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