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27 Oct, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Once Barrett is confirmed, a majority of 5 Supreme Court conservatives will have been confirmed by senates where the GOP majority represented fewer Americans than the Dem minority. 3 of them by a president who lost the popular vote, & 2 by a president who lost it in his 1st term
Minority rule has come to the Supreme Court, joining the presidency & Senate. 5 GOP justices were confirmed by senates where the GOP majority represented fewer Americans than the Dem minority, & the GOP will use SCOTUS to entrench minority rule. My latest: dailykos.com/stories/2020/1…
Trump has openly said he wants Barrett on SCOTUS before Election Day so that the court will hand him victory instead of the voters, & Brett Kavanaugh just endorsed the legal theory behind Bush v. Gore.

This is a red alert moment for democracy. GOP is trying to steal the election
With Justice Barrett, the Supreme Court may soon rule to throw out countless valid votes after Election Day & gut the rest of the Voting Rights Act & anything Dems would pass in the future.

If Dems win in 2020, court reform by 2022 is non-negotiable if democracy is to survive
Republicans are going to blow up the very foundation of federalism in order to stop any state supreme court from trying to protect voting rights, giving Dems no alternative whatsoever beyond expanding the Supreme Court to disempower its lawless majority of partisan radicals
It isn't just the Supreme Court that Dems will have to fix in order to restore majority rule & democracy. Republicans packed the courts at every level by blockading Obama's nominees & ramming through judges in the middle of an election.

At least 1/3 of voters have already voted!

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More from @PoliticsWolf

Stephen Wolf Profile picture
21 Oct
1/9 [Thread] With Trump waging unprecedented attacks on fair elections as president, many say democracy is on the 2020 ballot, & that's literally true in states with ballot measures on voting rights, gerrymandering, & more. We detailed 24 measures here: dailykos.com/stories/2020/1…
2/9 Three states are voting on redistricting measures, with VA voting on a creating a bipartisan redistricting commission, MO voting on the GOP's effort to gut 2018's legislative redistricting reform, & NJ voting on a cynical Dem effort to aid incumbents
3/9 Several states may change their electoral systems. AK & MA could adopt forms of ranked-choice voting. St. Louis, MO could become the 1rst major locality to adopt approval voting. FL could adopt a deeply flawed top-2 primary, & MS could end its Jim Crow-era "electoral college"
Read 9 tweets
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
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
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
7 Oct
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
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

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