1. Misgivings About SCOTUS's Dismissal of the Texas Lawsuit
I am not a constitutional scholar, but allow me to dispel a few misgivings about the Texas lawsuit dismissal by SCOTUS, if you will. Read this thread at your own peril. :-)
2. First of all, let me register my disappointment at SCOTUS's summary dismissal of the lawsuit on the grounds of lack of 'standing.' I concur with Alito and Thomas that the case should have been accepted on principle alone, regardless of merit.
3. And the principle is a simple one. For every legal case in the nation, there has to be a recourse to a court of law. Now in matters of disputes between multiple States, SCOTUS has the exclusive jurisdiction, i.e. such a lawsuit can be filed with and only with SCOTUS.
4. So SCOTUS must accept such a lawsuit on principle, because there is no other recourse if it doesn't. That I believe is the meaning of the statement that Alito and Thomas attached to the summary dismissal. It was not a dissent, just a reiteration of their longstanding position.
5. So I would have preferred for SCOTUS to have accepted the case and rendered a more detailed decision because it would have served a great purpose of providing guidance for all such future cases.
6. My disappointment only goes that far and no further, because I never thought SCOTUS would overturn the result of the election. I always thought the most SCOTUS would do is throw it back to the States, but with a clearer guidance on next steps.
7. This case is not like Bush v Gore which dealt more with questions of the mechanics of counting votes and such. This case had much more of a philosophical underpinning.
8. The core issue in this case dealt with the impact of decisions made in some States regarding the conduct of the election on the citizens residing in other States in the nation.
9. Texas alleged that the defendant States (GA, MI, WI, PA) had made changes to their election rules by a process that violated the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and repercussions of that illegality had negatively impacted citizens of Texas.
10. And what was the illegality the defendant States were accused of? It was that the executive branches in those States had made changes to their election rules that the U.S. Constitution only granted power to the legislative branches in those States to make.
11. The facts here are not in dispute. That is exactly what happened to a number of election rules regarding mail-in ballots in defendant States. The only dispute is about the significance of those facts and a corrective recourse.
12. The reason I believe SCOTUS would never have allowed this argument to go too far is because just by acknowledging that Texas had a legitimate complaint, they would have opened a Pandora's box of unbelievable and unmanageable proportions -- a republic-destroying precedence.
13. It would legitimize every State in the nation having a right to poke its nose into every other State's business whenever any State wanted to make a change to their election rules or processes, because obviously every such change has national repercussions.
14. Any SCOTUS justice with even a modicum of intelligence wouldn't go there, and they would be right not to. There is a rather simple answer here, which is obvious to even a layman like me.
15. The U.S. Constitution gives each State in the nation a certain number of electoral votes that is equal to the number of members of Congress from that State.
16. The U.S. Constitution also gives each State legislature the right to decide its own way to choose those electors and how those electors cast their votes for electing the President of the United States. And that is it.
17. Beyond that the federal constitution does not interfere with the inner workings and decisions of individual States. Texas has no say in who Pennsylvania votes for and what process Pennsylvania uses to decide that.
18. Now if Pennsylvania does something illegal in the way it changes its election rules, then it only Pennsylvania's business and nobody else's to seek recourse to fix it.
19. If Pennsylvania executive branch usurped Pennsylvania legislature's authority, then the wronged party is Pennsylvania legislature, and therefore the only party that has 'standing' in a court case is Pennsylvania legislature.
20. If Pennsylvania legislature wants it can sue Pennsylvania executive branch in Pennsylvania Supreme Court to seek redress, and if the resolution there is unsatisfactory, seek recourse from the U.S. Supreme Court.
21. But here is the kicker. Even after all that if the case landed up in U.S. Supreme Court, in my view, SCOTUS will still throw it back in Pennsylvania legislature's face on account of the case being frivolous.
22. How so? Well, SCOTUS will say why are you seeking redress from the U.S. Supreme Court when you have the Constitutional power to redress your own damn grievance? After all, you have the sole authority to decide who your electors vote for.
23. If you don't like what your executive branch did to you, you have the power to override the results produced by your executive branch processes, and tell your electors to vote differently. End of story.
24. And there you have it. It is down to each State to clean up its own mess. Texas cannot force them to, and SCOTUS cannot help them.
That is my layman's legal analysis of the situation. Call off your hounds directed at SCOTUS justices. Focus on individual States.
The End
P.S. This is what States' rights in practice look like. Sometimes they can break your heart. Then again, the U.S. Constitution is not a romance novel. 'Keeping the republic' requires tough but grown up decisions, like the one SCOTUS made. It's a balancing act, not a disco dance.
Disclaimer: As I mentioned at the outset, I am no constitutional scholar, but I can read and interpret the Constitution just as well as any other layman, and I am a keen student of important SCOTUS decisions, which I try to read in full, because MSM invariably misleads.
I did not intend the above thread to be taken as anything more than what I claim it to be, and that is a one layman's opinion that hopefully provides rich food for thought for the readers to explore further in consultation with people they trust on Constitutional matters.
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1. Personal Declaration of a Break with Donald Trump
I have defended President Trump against unfair and vicious attacks from the media and the Democrats relentlessly for four years. I am profoundly thankful to President Trump for his many accomplishments for our blessed nation.
2. President's accomplishments are varied and many, ranging from eviscerating ISIS, turbocharging the U.S. economy to create unprecedented levels of employment before Covid struck, criminal justice reform, restoring America's military strength, ...
3. facilitating historic peace deals in the Middle East, taking a tough stand against China, appointing the highest caliber conservative justices, and expediting the development of Covid vaccines with Operation Warp Speed, to name only a few. For all of those and more, thank you.
Lin Wood and Sidney Powell strike me as grade A grifters. They are amassing a lot of donations. When they told Georgia Republican voters not to vote on January 5, they came across to me as possibly compromised too (wouldn't Democrats love for them to carry on with that message).
Tweets like Lin Wood's above do no good to either President Trump or to the Republican Party at this point. If anything, they may cost the Republicans the Senate on January 5.
Many of you think highly of Lin Wood and Sidney Powell. I don't. We can agree to disagree on this.
With due respect, this makes little sense, sir. Why are you not scheduled to take the vaccine first? You, Mike Pence, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Dr. Fauci should be among the first people in the country to be vaccinated, followed by all members of Congress and the SCOTUS.
1. The Biggest Real Problem with Our Voting System
Whether by design or happenstance, the U.S. has ended up in almost all the States (with rare but relatively small exceptions) with a system that rigorously defies fraud detection and correction for absentee ballots.
2. In this thread I will use the term 'absentee ballot' for all ballots that are not cast in person. It includes all mail-in ballots of course in this usage of the term.
3. By combining absentee ballots with the need to keep the ballots 'secret' has solved one problem by creating another, i.e. secrecy is implemented at the cost of making it harder to detect and almost impossible to correct fraud.
1. You Can Torture Data Until It Confesses To Anything You Want
Which is precisely what some people are doing to the Georgia vote counts from 2020 election. It certainly piqued my interest, as official data is readily available from the State's website. What does it say?
2. For starters, Georgia has some unique characteristics in this election that lend themselves to an interesting bit of analysis that is either not possible or not easily doable for any other state. In addition to the President, both State Senators were also on the ballot in GA.
3. And that allows each party's senate candidate to be used as a control data sent against that party's presidential candidate for each voting channel (in-person versus mail-in) to spot any glaring statistical anomalies/impossibilities in voting that might suggest fraud.