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By Doug64
#15161184
Drlee wrote:@Doug64

You simply won't read the case law. Your assertions are incorrect.

Besides. Those are state issues decided by state courts. And decided against Trump right down the line. I have cited Pennsylvania twice and you ignore it.

The SCOTUS did not get involved because there was no violation of the constitution. Simple as that. Trump lost. You are wrong. Every legal expert in the country knows it. Get over it and move on.

Check out the article below, for why 3 out of five Republicans and seven out of twenty of both Independents and Likely Voters as a whole still believe that "President" Biden didn't win the election fairly.
Yggdrasill wrote:Which states besides Pennsylvania?

When you sort out individual cases making their way through the courts, there were twenty-eight cases in six states--twelve cases involving Pennsylvania, six for Georgia, and two or three each for Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. Plus a lawsuit filed by the Texas AG and signed on to by other state AGs aimed at four of those states. Note that the Texas lawsuit didn't involve any cases of voter fraud, rather focusing purely on the actions of state officials and courts. See the article below.

Yggdrasill wrote:Also, it sounds like you have a different definition of legitimate than I do. I don't see any single instance where laws, rules, and procedures were not followed. Just because Courts ruled against Trump, or Trump's lawyers did not make Constitutional arguments, does not diminish the legitimacy of the outcome.

My definition of "legitimate" is as I said--elected by enough votes cast in accordance with state laws passed by the state legislatures (or Congress, if it chooses) as authorized by the Constitution. The Constitution does not grant state officials the power of override those legislatures, and in this country we have jury nullification, not have judicial nullification, therefore Biden doesn't meet my definition of "legitimate."

Rugoz wrote:Zero proof that state law was violated. The Wisconsin SC ruling didn't go in your favour either, you grossly misinterpreted it.

How did I "grossly misinterpret" the Wisconsin ruling?

Verv wrote:I became really interested in any sort of conservative or reactionary idea that was not based on classical liberalism because it has appeared to be the case that the Neocons really are, ultimately, just a different brand of liberals pumping the brakes. They're ultimately just 10-15 years behind the left, and perhaps the only things that do not change are just fiscal conservatism.

I remember someone defining Neocons as people that have no problem with Big Government, so long as it doesn't involve domestic policy.

Verv wrote:If we can choose to not tolerate certain categories, then everythign changes, and we are liable to see free speech continually redefined to suit the needs of the elites.

Governments (and corporations) think that free speech is a marvelous idea, so long as "free" is defined as "responsible" and "responsible" is defined by them.

Here's an excellent overview of the election lawsuits by Bob Anderson. Note that he doesn't always say that the judges were wrong, and in some cases where he clearly thinks they were I don't agree. But one thing he makes clear is that the merits of the cases had little to do with most of the decisions, and in some cases where it did the reasoning was ludicrous.

Courts Repeatedly Refused To Consider Trump’s Election Claims On The Merits
On Monday, without comment, the Supreme Court ended the last of the 2020 election cases, rejecting Trump v. Wisconsin Election Commission in a one-line order. It was a quiet ending to a tumultuous election season, but like a football game with a contentious call at the end, the debate over who really won will likely go on much longer.

The courts have always served as a pressure-relief valve on our internal disagreements. From the battle with an unscrupulous car dealer to a nasty divorce that requires discernment over how to split everything from the antique Corvette to the kids, wise judges can help to bring peace and healing. Surely, for a nation reeling after a tempestuous presidential election filled with strange occurrences, the courts were needed to bring us together.

We needed the steady hand of impartial jurists. Most of all, the losing side needed to know that a fair shake was given, and that justice prevailed, even if it wasn’t the outcome they wanted. That did not happen after Nov. 3. Despite a stack of cases that worked their way through the legal system, we remain bitterly divided.

A Rasmussen survey last month found that 61 percent of Republicans say Joe Biden did not win the election fairly. That number hasn’t changed much since early January, when 69 percent of GOP voters voiced the same concern. That 34 percent of all voters and 36 percent of independents agree with them is a strong signal that something went terribly amiss in the maelstrom of election cases.

The election is over. There has been an inauguration. So why did ABC’s George Stephanopoulos feel the need to berate a U.S. senator and his audience with the demand, “Can’t you just say the words: This election was not stolen?” Why must he shout, “There were 86 challenges filed by President Trump and his allies in court. All were dismissed!”

Perhaps, the answer lies in the details of those cases, as much in how they were adjudicated as in the final rulings.

Taking Stock of the 2020 Election Case List

Let’s start with some clarity: The list of more than 80 cases includes both the same cases that were appealed through various courts and many that had no direct tie to the president’s legal team or the Republican Party. In reality, there were 28 unique cases filed across the six contested states by President Trump or others on his behalf.

Twelve were filed in Pennsylvania, six in Georgia, and two or three in each of the other states. Of course, there was also the lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against the state of Pennsylvania that had the potential to change the outcome. So let’s call it 29.

To be sure, that is still a lot of cases. Yet to understand why there is still widespread unease with the election, would it not be better to stop demanding conformity and instead dig deeper to see what the courts told us in those cases, and what they did not? A review of them shows that, contrary to a common narrative, few were ever considered on the merits.

Death by Technicalities

First of all, we can recognize that many of the cases produced no useful information relative to election integrity. We learned nothing from a lawsuit dismissed by a state judge in Georgia (Boland v. Raffensperger) on the basis that the plaintiff had sued an “improper party” rather than hearing the merits of why the ballot rejection rate allegedly dropped from 1.53 percent in 2018 to 0.15 percent in the 2020 general election.

Also, did 20,000 people vote who do not live in the state, when Georgia’s electoral votes were allotted by an approximately 12,000 margin to Biden? We never learned the answers to those questions nor even examined the evidence, because Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was not a candidate for office nor the election superintendent who conducted the election, and therefore per state law, was not liable.

Similarly, a Trump lawsuit in Michigan (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Benson) alleging state law was violated by the failure to allow access by observers, and seeking to stop counting, was ruled moot since it was not filed until 4:00 p.m. on Nov. 4, after votes were counted. The judge simultaneously relieved the secretary of state of responsibility for any wrongdoing because she had issued guidance requiring admission of credentialed challengers.

So we are left with the memory of the videos of vote counters clapping as Republican observers were evicted and of covers being placed over windows. The judge on this case also said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson bore no legal responsibility for video monitoring of drop boxes nor of making video from such surveillance available, despite a recently passed law requiring surveillance of all drop boxes installed after Oct. 1.

A lawsuit in Pennsylvania, Metcalfe v. Wolf, claimed “approximately 144,000 to 288,000 completed mail-in and/or absentee ballots” in Pennsylvania may have been illegal based on testimony from a U.S. Postal Service contractor. The contractor said he was hired to haul a truck of what he believed to be this many completed mail-in ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. The complaint also alleged there was “evidence” of ballots that were backdated at a postal facility in Erie.

The judge tossed it since the state’s Election Code required their request to be filed within 20 days of the alleged violation, which was Nov. 23. They filed Dec. 4. We’ll never know if that truck brought in pallets of completed ballots—an amount sufficient to overturn the state’s Electoral College vote.

In Wisconsin, the Trump v. Evers suit alleged that violations of state election law had occurred in Milwaukee and Dane Counties as municipal clerks issued absentee ballots without the required written application, that they illegally completed missing info on ballots, that absentee ballots were wrongly cast by voters claiming “Indefinite Confinement” status (and for which no ID was provided), and that Madison’s “Democracy in the Park” event violated election laws.

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear the lawsuit, sidestepping a decision on the merits of the claims and instead ruling the case must first wind its way through lower courts—an effective death sentence given the timing.

Absurdities: When ‘Shall’ Doesn’t Mean Shall

At times, judges resorted to Clintonian wordsmithing to relieve a word of its recognized meaning. A state Supreme Court judge in Pennsylvania was tasked with reviewing the eligibility of 2,349 mail-in ballots that were purportedly defective according to the state Election Code (Ziccarelli v. Allegheny County Board of Elections).

In the court’s decision, he noted “We agree with the Campaign’s observation that…the General Assembly set forth the requirements for how a qualified elector may cast a valid absentee or mail-in ballot … We further agree that these sections of the Election Code specifically provide that each voter ‘shall (emphasis added) fill out, date, and sign’ the declaration on the outside envelope. We do not agree with the Campaign’s contention, however, that because the General Assembly used the word ‘shall’ in this context, it is of necessity that the directive is a mandatory one …”

Indeed. Why even write laws? Perhaps the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would feel differently if their rulings were subjected to such an open interpretation.

A federal lawsuit in the same state (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar) included a claim that some Democrat counties implemented a “notice and cure” policy, allowing defective ballots to be fixed and counted, while Republican counties did not, thereby creating an equal protection issue.

The judge found that two individual plaintiffs had indeed been harmed by the denial of their votes, but that they lacked standing since the defendant (Democrat) counties “had nothing to do with the denial of Individual Plaintiff’s ability to vote” as their “ballots were rejected by Lancaster and Fayette [Republican] Counties, neither of which is a party to this case.”

So the judge effectively created a legal “Catch 22” in which one must show direct harm from an unrelated party in order to prevail. Logically, under this standard, no equal protection claim could ever be substantiated.

In a Nov. 5 filing (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Philadelphia County Board of Elections), Republicans alleged that the Philadelphia County Board was “intentionally refusing to allow any representatives and poll watchers for President Trump and the Republican Party … [and] continuing to count ballots, without any observation” by Republican poll watchers. The Commonwealth Court agreed on appeal that observers be allowed within six feet of vote counting while complying with COVID-19 protocols.

However, the state Supreme Court reversed that ruling, finding that the Election Code allows the board to make rules “for protecting its workers’ safety from COVID-19 and physical assault,” and that the only requirement is that “one authorized representative of each candidate in an election and one representative from each political party shall be permitted to remain in the room”— not necessarily within close-enough range to observe vote-counting (emphasis original in court decision). So what is the point of an observer who cannot observe anything?

In the case of Ward v. Jackson et al. in Arizona, an issue over election observers was ruled as “untimely” since “the observation procedures for the November general election were materially the same as for the August primary election, and any objection to them should have been brought at a time when any legal deficiencies could have been cured.” Lacking in that statement was an explanation as to why any Republican observers would have been needed in a Democrat-only party primary.

Judicial Blindness: See No Evil

In the same lawsuit (Ward v. Jackson et al.) the judge also rejected a claim of improper signature verification after allowing a review of 100 sample ballots. Plaintiff and defense experts found 6 and 11 percent of signatures, respectively, to be “inconclusive.”

On the same page of his opinion, the judge noted that out of the total 1.9 million mail-in ballots, only approximately 20,000 had been identified as having a signature issue, or 1 percent. There was no explanation as to why poll workers found six times fewer issues with signatures. The math would suggest either a bias to accept, despite signature issues, or that the sample examined was statistically invalid.

Further mystifying, he wrote that “there is no evidence that the manner in which signatures were reviewed was designed to benefit one candidate or another.” But surely fraud can easily benefit the offender alone, even with use of a uniform vote-count procedure. Fill out 1,000 ballots consisting of 500 for Trump and 500 for Biden, then mix in 100 more that are fraudulent for Biden and count them using any method. Who wins? It’s not a hard possibility to imagine, but the judge ignored it.

He also concluded “the evidence does not show illegal votes”—in a state in which an estimated 419,000 illegally present foreign citizens reside, and which went to Biden by a margin of just more than 10,000 votes out of a total of more than 3.2 million.

Importantly, the judge noted at the outset that “the Plaintiff in an election contest has a high burden of proof and the actions of election officials are presumed to be free from fraud and misconduct.” It’s a fair statement of the law. It’s also an indication of the difficulty in prevailing, even when issues exist. Every case across the nation was evaluated under a similar high hurdle, with the status quo treated as sacrosanct.

Too Early and Too Late

Republicans also often found themselves in an impossible “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation on the timing of challenges to election laws.

In Georgia Republican Party, Inc. et al. v. Raffensperger et al, candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue sued prior to their U.S. Senate run-offs, alleging harm would occur from unconstitutional election procedures. Their counsel noted (on appeal) that the court “dismissed the case for lack of standing, reasoning that ‘the Supreme Court instructs that a theory of future injury is too speculative to satisfy the well-established requirement that threatened injury must be certainly impending.’” Filed too early.

In the same state, a federal judge dismissed Sidney Powell’s lawsuit (Pearson v. Kemp), in part citing that it was filed too late—it should have been filed before the election. As another example, in Trump v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, a judge dismissed the president’s suit saying it involved “issues he plainly could have raised before the vote occurred.”

Together, it demonstrated the hurdle that many election cases faced—denied before the election as “speculative,” or afterward as too late.

The Clock Ran Out: January 6

Several lawsuits were resolved not by a weighing of merits, but as a practical consequence of the electoral vote on Jan. 6 that certified Biden as the winner of the presidency.

Trump had filed suit on Dec. 4 in Georgia (Trump v. Raffensperger) alleging violations of state election law and the inclusion of specific ineligible votes: 66,247 underage votes, 2,423 persons not registered, 15,700 who had changed address, 1,043 who illegally listed a P.O. box address as their address, 8,718 who died prior to their votes being cast, 92 absentee ballots counted prior to the date those voters requested a ballot, 217 ballots shown as applied for and sent out and received on the same day, and 2,560 votes from felons with uncompleted sentences. These were significant numbers in an election that was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes.

The suit had also noted that 305,701 had applied for an absentee ballot more than 180 days prior to election, thereby violating state law. Importantly, it also took issue with the secretary of state’s Consent Decree with Democrats, which allowed signature matching on envelopes and applications, but not versus registration rolls. And it cited the low 0.34 percent rejection rate of mail-in ballots, a tenth of the rate of prior elections, despite a six-fold increase in number of such ballots cast.

The suit was withdrawn on Jan. 7, with none of the issues resolved, the day after Congress met and the matter was rendered moot.

Another Georgia suit (Still v. Raffensperger) alleged that Coffee County Board had been unable to replicate electronic recount results, and that the error was sufficient to put the outcome of that county in doubt, with a potentially similar issue in others across the state. It noted that Raffensperger had forced an arbitrary Dec. 4 deadline to certify the results despite the county’s letter of the same date saying the results “should not be used.”

The legal battle continued, and the state’s counsel eventually demanded in a Jan. 3 letter that all lawsuits against Kemp, Raffensperger, and the State Elections Board be dropped in order to “cooperatively share information.” Otherwise, they would remain in a “litigation posture”—quite a telling comment. Why was cooperation ever resisted?

Trump’s counsel accepted the offer of dismissal to get information they had requested, but it came as the timeframe to use it ended on Jan. 6. The suit was withdrawn on Jan. 7.

The Supreme Court Punted

The nation’s highest court showed some early inclination for involvement in the brewing election issues, such as Justice Samuel Alito’s order to separate certain late ballots in Pennsylvania in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar. Yet it soon took a different tone. A petition to expedite a hearing was denied and later the court refused the case.

In December, the court rejected a key lawsuit filed by the state of Texas (Texas v. Pennsylvania), and joined by 18 other state attorneys general, alleging that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin violated the U.S. Constitution by changing election procedures through non-legislative means. The justices ruled that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of the election held by another state.
The court could have held these claims up to the objective light of justice, and either exposed it all as painfully true or wildly false, but it didn’t.

In Kelly v. Pennsylvania, Rep. Mike Kelly claimed that the recently enacted Act 77 to expand mail-in balloting violated the state constitution, as amended in 1967, that “allowed for absentee ballots to be cast in the four (4) exclusive circumstances authorized under Article VII, Section 14.”

He also noted that “the legislature first recognized their constitutional constraints and the need to amend the constitution in order to enact mail-in voting, sought to amend the constitution to lawfully allow for the legislation they intended to pass, and subsequently abandoned their efforts to comply with the constitution and instead enacted Act 77 irrespective of their actual knowledge that they lacked the legal authority to do so unless and until the proposed constitutional amendment was ratified by approval of a majority of the electors …”

A Commonwealth Court judge agreed on Nov. 25 and ordered that any action to certify the election be stopped, pending an evidentiary hearing two days later. However, on Nov. 28, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed that decision, saying the “Petitioners sought to invalidate the ballots of the millions of Pennsylvania voters who utilized the mail-in voting procedures established by Act 77 and count only those ballots that Petitioners deem to be ‘legal votes.’”

Yes, that is exactly what the plaintiffs sought—the counting of only legal votes. But again, like many other courts, this one relied on a philosophy that excluding any ballots would disenfranchise voters. So they set aside the state constitution for their own preference.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to expedite an appeal on this case when it would have mattered, then recently refused to hear it at all, a decision Justice Clarence Thomas called “inexplicable” in his dissent.

The Supreme Court also refused to hear any of Sidney Powell’s cases—in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan—and in doing so, deprived Americans of the chance to hear evidence for and against very serious claims that electronic voting machines could be manipulated. Of all of the allegations, perhaps none more so instilled fear into voters as the possibility that our votes could be tampered with and changed, thwarting democracy itself.

Did the machines really show decimal totals for votes rather than integers? Were they designed to flip votes, and in such a way that no audit could trace it? Were these machines connected to the internet on election night, and did data show that foreign actors accessed it? Voters will never know. The court could have held these claims up to the objective light of justice, and either exposed it all as painfully true or wildly false, but it didn’t.

When most needed, the court that once took the time to render a decision on whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable chose to punt on each of the key presidential election cases. American voters are worse off for it as confidence in elections erodes.

Lessons Learned

President Trump always had a very uphill climb to prevail. This wasn’t a one-state battle as in the George W. Bush versus Al Gore contest. Trump was effectively required to play six-dimensional chess, in six states, all in the span of a few months.

As Andy McCarthy noted, “a brutally tight time frame took effect [upon contesting the election], imposed by state and federal deadlines. It is a drastic departure from the normal litigation pace of investigation, legal research, and the formulation of cognizable claims.” Indeed, it was a nearly impossible task. It was even harder when Trump’s attorneys were influenced and threatened.

In the end, should we be surprised that voters retain a strong sense of skepticism over the outcome of the presidential election? That a man who largely campaigned from his basement, who exhibited signs of age-related mental decline, could handily defeat a vigorous incumbent who drew immense crowds is naturally hard to believe.

The election of 2020, which included more than 155 million votes, was decided by approximately 300,000 votes in six states, or 0.2 percent of the electorate, all of which came by an unnatural flip of results late on election night. Despite judges’ repeated hand-wringing that any court action would disenfranchise millions of voters, the reality is that millions of others may have been disenfranchised, and they instinctively suspect so.

The one thing many voters seem to have learned through the legal chaos is that it’s easier to commit election violations than to stop them. So the electorate remains divided—even after “86 election cases.”
By Pants-of-dog
#15161226
Doug64 wrote:
    First of all, we can recognize that many of the cases produced no useful information relative to election integrity. We learned nothing from a lawsuit dismissed by a state judge in Georgia (Boland v. Raffensperger) on the basis that the plaintiff had sued an “improper party” rather than hearing the merits of why the ballot rejection rate allegedly dropped from 1.53 percent in 2018 to 0.15 percent in the 2020 general election.

    Also, did 20,000 people vote who do not live in the state, when Georgia’s electoral votes were allotted by an approximately 12,000 margin to Biden? We never learned the answers to those questions nor even examined the evidence, because Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was not a candidate for office nor the election superintendent who conducted the election, and therefore per state law, was not liable.


So, if we click on the link, we go to the PDF of the lawsuit, which provides this footnote for the 20,312 supposed voters who are not actually Georgia residents.

Here is the footnote:
Braynard, Voter Integrity Project: Findings and Conclusions, at 25:35, YouTube (Nov. 24, 2020) (This video encapsulates the findings of the Voter Integrity Project's analysis and presents Matt Braynard's conclusions and recommendations.), available at
.

Braynard’s project is laughable and has been shown to be wrong.

Here is an analysis of Braynard’s work by a Harvard statistician who has experience in election analysis:
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov ... 62.1_1.pdf


    Summary
    2. Matthew Braynard’s report makes six Claims:
    (1) 18.39 percent of registered voters of Georgia who were sent but did not return absentee
    ballots did not request absentee ballots;
    (2) 33.29 percent of voters who were sent absentee ballots but were not recorded as having
    returned absentee ballots stated that they did mail their ballots back;
    (3) 1.53 percent of registered voters of Georgia who changed addresses before the election
    and were recorded as having voted stated that they did not cast a vote;
    (4) 20,312 absentee voters were not residents of the State of Georgia when they voted, and
    (5) 1,043 early and absentee ballots were cast by people who were registered at post office box addresses; and
    (6) 234 Georgians voted in multiple states.
    3. None of these claims meets scientific standards of my fields of research, including survey research, political science, statistics and data sciences. There is no scientific basis for drawing any inferences or conclusions from the data presented. None of the estimates are presented with statistical measures that meet standards for evaluating evidence.
    ....

    7. Claims (3), (4), and (6) are based on list matching. The list matching methodologies are not described adequately. The lack of a complete description of list matching methodology fails to meet scientific standards of transparency and data presentation. What little information is presented suggests that it is based on methodologies that have been debunked by statisticians and by the US Civil Rights Commission for producing large numbers of incorrect matches.
    ...

But since Braynard has already received close to $200,000 for this lacklustre effort, and no one actually cares if he is right, he is certainly happy with his work.

A similar critique of Overholt’s affidavit is also available online.

So, I merely chose the first example in that Gish Gallop, and it proved to be wrong. If we pick one at random and it seems to be wrong, it is logical to assume that many or all of the other claims of election malfeasance are also wrong.
User avatar
By Drlee
#15161357
You can run around and find a lawyer who will take any theory of any case and stopping just short of losing his/her license make an argument. Sometimes these arguments seem good to a layman. The thing is though these cases and EVERY ALLEGATION has been investigated by the best minds in the country and they could not make a case compelling enough to even get courts to listen to it not to mention get the SCOTUS to take it up.

There is nothing here. Trump lost. He lost fair and square. There was no significant voter fraud. He was not stumped for any votes. He simply lost. The fact that you are butt hurt and can't understand it does not alter a single fact.
By late
#15161360
You guys have a lot more patience than I do.

You think this one will ever figure out that not only is his horse dead, it never existed??
By Dimetrodon
#15161367
Drlee wrote:You can run around and find a lawyer who will take any theory of any case and stopping just short of losing his/her license make an argument. Sometimes these arguments seem good to a layman. The thing is though these cases and EVERY ALLEGATION has been investigated by the best minds in the country and they could not make a case compelling enough to even get courts to listen to it not to mention get the SCOTUS to take it up.

There is nothing here. Trump lost. He lost fair and square. There was no significant voter fraud. He was not stumped for any votes. He simply lost. The fact that you are butt hurt and can't understand it does not alter a single fact.

In addition, lawyers are firstly and foremost human like the rest of us, and because of that, they are not immune from buying into conspiracy theories and other nonsense all while believing they're thinking about something when they're only feeling. I wouldn't be surprised that there are (albeit a small amount of) lawyers who believe that Trump's "case" was valid, and believe so simply because they drank the Trumpian cool aid themselves.
#15162092
Verv wrote:You thought I was signaling about how much I care about conservatism? I think you were just eager to talk about Clarence Thomas.


Then you can't read. I know you're a white nationalist who follows nazis on Gab because you "love ideas" and just can't get enough of them, but even you should be able to understand that my point was that judicial experience or knowledge are not primary concerns for reactionary politicians seeking to appoint a SCOTUS judge. In fact, conservatism rejects expertise as eggheaded nonsense antithetical to the gut instinct aka the "common sense" they keep talking about, which is just a rhetorically unsound claim that their ideas are self-evident.

I was pointing out that the populist conservative movement (if that is what we can refer to Trumpism as) is very young, and there'd be nobody in the 1990s that was in the midst of law school anticipating this.


The majority of burgeoning young reactionary shitheads at B-tier law schools in the 90s would probably be overjoyed to learn that judicial knowledge or experience are unnecessary. They would still be hampered by class restrictions. Thomas was Yale educated, but spent little time as an actual judge before his SCOTUS nomination. Hence why he did not receive the American Bar Association's endorsement.

Anyway, whatever old man shit you're repackaging is as intellectually dead and dumb as whatever the old guard conservative thinkers have been putting forth. And is, in fact, no different from it except that it has been memified and regurgitated by dorks like Gavin McInnes trying to convince the world's lamest people that traditionalism is the new punk.

Paul Gottfried's The Great Purge deals precisely with this topic.


I believe there's many books out there that deal with this in addition to it, whether directly or indirectly.


Tell us what you learned from the books. I don't care about an Amazon landing page.

My knowledge about it comes from old articles that have referenced the phenomena as I have not read this book but would definitely like to.


For a guy who FUCKING LOVES IDEAS you sure hate talking about them. Stop assigning us homework and tell us what you learned from these amazing books you can't stop telling us exist.

The fact that you can only say "it's in a book" or "I read this" while having literally zero ideas to put forth only reinforces everything I have said about conservatism being an intellectual void.

"I read a book. It said things that confirm my beliefs."

"Such as?"

"You should read this article which agrees with me."

Do you see how this isn't a conversation? Do you see how this makes everything you believe look stupid, when you claim you love ideas but can't even regurgitate simple summaries of the ideas you love to consume?

I am starting to question your love of ideas when the only thing you seem to be capable of saying is, "I read a thing that agrees with me. You should be aware that it exists. I have to go now, my home planet needs me."
By Doug64
#15162426
And of course, Drlee and Pants-of-dog once again completely ignored the point of the article, which is that the large majority of the cases were not dismissed on the merits and therefore made no determination of the validity of the plaintiffs' arguments. And therefore one cannot simply point at those dismissals as proof that the cases had no merit. And since a number of them had nothing to do with traditional voter fraud but rather illegal--and therefore unconstitutional--acts by state officials and judges, simply crying that there wasn't enough provable voter fraud doesn't work, either.

And just last week, another state judge ruled that Michigan's Secretary of State illegally altered the rules to judging signatures, which means that all the votes judged by her false procedure are invalid and so should not be counted toward Biden's total in that state:

Judge rules Benson's ballot signature verification guidance 'invalid'
State Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray has ruled invalid Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's guidance issued to Michigan clerks in early October that instructed them to presume the accuracy of absentee ballot signatures.

Because Benson did not go through the proper rule-making process when issuing the guidance, clerks do not need to comply with it for future elections, Murray ruled last week.

"The presumption is found nowhere in state law," wrote Murray, an appointee of Republican former Gov. John Engler. "The mandatory presumption goes beyond the realm of mere advice and direction, and instead is a substantive directive that adds to the pertinent signature-matching standards."

The office of Benson, a Detroit Democrat, declined comment on the decision.

The Michigan Republican Party, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, celebrated the decision but noted it came too late to make a difference in the November election.

"It was clear from the outset that the secretary of state had violated Election Law by unilaterally directing local clerks to ignore their statutory obligation to compare absentee ballot signatures," said Ted Goodman, communications director for the state GOP.

Michigan law requires clerks to match required signatures on absentee ballot applications and absentee ballot envelopes with the voter signature on file to ensure the person submitting the ballot is the same one registered to vote in Michigan.

But state law doesn't define what it means for signatures to "agree sufficiently."

Benson on Oct. 6 instructed clerks who were matching signatures that they "must perform" their duties under the "presumption" that the signature is valid and uphold the signature's validity if there were "more matching features than nonmatching features." Whenever possible, clerks and election officials were instructed to resolve slight differences "in favor of finding that the voter's signature was valid," Murray wrote.

Allegan County Clerk Robert Genetski and the Michigan Republican Party filed a complaint the same day and amended it Dec. 30 to argue the directive was unlawful. But Genetski did not allege that Benson's directive "caused him to accept a signature that he believed was invalid," according to Murray's decision.

The judge didn't rule on whether Benson's directive violated state election law, but did say the directive violated the Administrative Procedures Act, the process that must be followed when an agency creates new rules.

"....Nowhere in the state's election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid, nor did the Legislature require that signatures are to be accepted so long as there are any redeeming qualities in the application or return envelope signature as compared with the signature on file," Murray wrote.

"Policy determinations like the one at issue — which places a thumb on the scale in favor of a signature's validity — should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA or by the Legislature," he wrote.

The Administrative Procedures Act requires state agencies that are developing a rule to better implement state law to go through months of public notices, drafts, impact analyses, public comment and public hearings.

When a final version of the rule is complete, it is submitted to the Legislature's bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. The committee has 15 session days to take action on the rules before they are finalized and filed with the secretary of state.

Murray rejected a request for additional audits to look at the effect the directive had on the November election.

The Michigan Constitution only speaks to "election results," not to the process by which signatures are matched, and the Constitution leaves the manner by which an audit is conducted to the secretary of state.

"There is no support in the statute for plaintiffs to demand that an audit cover the subject of their choosing or to dictate the manner in which an audit is conducted," Murray wrote.

Rep. Matt Hall, R-Marshall, praised the court's decision, calling Benson's directives "clear violations of her authority."

"If she wants to make changes like these, she needs to work with the Legislature or properly promulgate them through the laws we have on the books -- in this case the Administrative Procedures Act," Hall said.


Also, in Texas four people have been arrested on 150 counts of voter fraud. And in North Carolina twenty-four more noncitizens have been charged with the crime of illegally voting. Note that the latter are cases for the 2016 election, not 2020, showing just how difficult it can be to investigate such cases. But of course these reports must be lies, because the MSM(D) has repeatedly assured us that voter fraud never happens and therefore voter integrity laws are just attempts to suppress the vote while pretending to be concerned about a nonexistent problem.
User avatar
By Godstud
#15162427
@Doug64 You are being purposefully dishonest. Voter fraud does happen. It does not, however, happen on a scale that would alter an election, no matter how much you may delude yourself into believing so, at the behest of your cult leader(Trump).

edit: spelling
Last edited by Godstud on 22 Mar 2021 05:46, edited 1 time in total.
#15162431
Doug64 wrote:Some dumb gay shit I didn't read.


Have you finally decided whether Trump is a traitor or a bitch?

Is there some reason you can't accept the logical conclusion of your beliefs that Trump is both a genius who won and a loser who lost, but for some reason didn't fight flagrant and obvious election fraud?

Lmao you worship a fake tanned bitch. You lost. Your ideas and beliefs are stupid and unpopular, and when a polarizing moron who represents them assumes the office of POTUS they lose resoundingly. Congratulations on spending decades of effort into turning yourself into a shitty person nobody likes at the personal or electoral level.

"There is no way the clearly retarded person who wears his hair in a half-windsor knot and cakes his face in fake tan solution could ever lose. A vast conspiracy is the only option. I am smart."

-An Anonymous Idiot on PoFo
By Pants-of-dog
#15162467
Doug64 wrote:And of course, Drlee and Pants-of-dog once again completely ignored the point of the article, which is that the large majority of the cases were not dismissed on the merits and therefore made no determination of the validity of the plaintiffs' arguments.


You keep repeating this without explaining it.

This sounds like you heard it from a conservative talking head and just decided to repeat it.

I looked at the specific merits of a randomly selected argument, and that was how I could “ simply point at those dismissals as proof that the cases had no merit”.

How about you pick one, ad we discuss the merits?
User avatar
By Rugoz
#15162498
Doug64 wrote:How did I "grossly misinterpret" the Wisconsin ruling?


I already wrote this a while ago:

It's up to the voters to decide whether they are "indefinitely confined":
https://wislawjournal.com/2020/12/14/wi ... -confined/

Then, the Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed out Trump's lawsuit because "the challenge to voters who were indefinitely confined was without merit" (among other reasons):
https://wislawjournal.com/2020/12/14/wi ... n-lawsuit/

Your side did not win on merit, it lost.

Needless to say this was about a technicality, electoral fraud wasn't even on the table.
#15162518
Something tells me that saying "Of course everything I said was bullshit and I knew it at the time" isn't going to help her case.

Trump truly surrounds himself with the best people. Only massive election fraud could explain his loss.
User avatar
By Drlee
#15162667
I did not bother to read that blather that Doug posted. Nothing there could possibly interest me or affect the outcome of the election.

Traitors like Doug believe that it is OK to undermine our electoral process as long as they get to keep their assault rifles just in case they need to shoot down 10 people who were dangerously grocery shopping.

But then there is absolutely no IQ test for membership in the republican party or Trump's suck-buddy brigade. Obviously.

@SpecialOlympian

The tweet was :lol: :lol: :lol: Saw this today. When the judge stops laughing lets see what she refers to the bar association.
User avatar
By Tainari88
#15162717
SpecialOlympian wrote:Lmfao



Let us be truthful. The job of these attorneys is to lie a lot. Dominion and the public must know this automatically and thus, lying is part of the job description of lawyers. I have had such bad experiences with lying lawyers that I now assume most of the bullshit that comes out of their mouths is a lie. But they still need to be sued.

Lol.
User avatar
By Tainari88
#15162735
SpecialOlympian wrote:Then you can't read. I know you're a white nationalist who follows nazis on Gab because you "love ideas" and just can't get enough of them, but even you should be able to understand that my point was that judicial experience or knowledge are not primary concerns for reactionary politicians seeking to appoint a SCOTUS judge. In fact, conservatism rejects expertise as eggheaded nonsense antithetical to the gut instinct aka the "common sense" they keep talking about, which is just a rhetorically unsound claim that their ideas are self-evident.



The majority of burgeoning young reactionary shitheads at B-tier law schools in the 90s would probably be overjoyed to learn that judicial knowledge or experience are unnecessary. They would still be hampered by class restrictions. Thomas was Yale educated, but spent little time as an actual judge before his SCOTUS nomination. Hence why he did not receive the American Bar Association's endorsement.

Anyway, whatever old man shit you're repackaging is as intellectually dead and dumb as whatever the old guard conservative thinkers have been putting forth. And is, in fact, no different from it except that it has been memified and regurgitated by dorks like Gavin McInnes trying to convince the world's lamest people that traditionalism is the new punk.





Tell us what you learned from the books. I don't care about an Amazon landing page.



For a guy who FUCKING LOVES IDEAS you sure hate talking about them. Stop assigning us homework and tell us what you learned from these amazing books you can't stop telling us exist.

The fact that you can only say "it's in a book" or "I read this" while having literally zero ideas to put forth only reinforces everything I have said about conservatism being an intellectual void.

"I read a book. It said things that confirm my beliefs."

"Such as?"

"You should read this article which agrees with me."

Do you see how this isn't a conversation? Do you see how this makes everything you believe look stupid, when you claim you love ideas but can't even regurgitate simple summaries of the ideas you love to consume?

I am starting to question your love of ideas when the only thing you seem to be capable of saying is, "I read a thing that agrees with me. You should be aware that it exists. I have to go now, my home planet needs me."


Hello there Special Olympian, you should know by now that conservatives and creative thinkers don't really go hand in hand.

I know how you think Special Olympian. Eres un artista. You are an artist and as such your thinking process is always interpreting conventional information into something new and yours. You have to see that people who are not creative don't really think that way. They worry about things such as security and being right all the time in their own minds. They want to think that their failures are justified and they seek to exploit their advantages in life.

I was watching a documentary about some Netflix documentary about rich white people who wanted to make sure their kids got in to an Ivy league college or university and paid some old ex high school coach with low moral compass and greed? Some money to bribe admissions officials. True story. They claimed to be Black or Latino or Native American and claimed to be star athletes in obscure rich people sports like sailing and rowing and etc.

They paid for their low scoring kids to have professional test takers take their tests for them. All of it was to make sure they had images of prestige. Interesting 'prestige' in French means 'deception'. That is all that class conscious privilege is. Lies and bullshit. Who is superior? Who is the one chosen by God....etc etc.

I am not fooled by people claiming to represent spirituality and have no sense of justice and love for human beings very different than they are. Intolerance for differences is the first sign of people with insecurity issues. Envy, jealousy and the need to have people kneeling to their own egos is problematic. But I find it is the hallmark of the ones with very little creative energy in life.
By Doug64
#15162796
@Drlee, I'm quite aware that your mind is made up, so we shouldn't bother you with facts.

Godstud wrote:@Doug64 You are being purposefully dishonest. Voter fraud does happen. It does not, however, happen on a scale that would alter an election, no matter how much you may delude yourself into believing so, at the behest of your cult leader(Trump).

edit: spelling

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia has a list of close elections. In the US in 2020, there was the Iowa 2nd District for the US House of Representatives that the Republican won by only six votes (that's the one that many in the House are trying to steal right now); the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, won by 401 votes; a seat in the Florida State Senate, won by 32 votes; another seat in the US House, this one the New York 22nd District won by the Republican by 109 votes; a Pennsylvania State Senate seat won by 69 votes; yet another US House seat, California's 25th District won by the Republican by 333 votes. In 2018, a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives was won by the Democrat by 1 vote; so was a seat in the Alaska House of Representatives; in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, one seat was won by 2 votes. I could go on and on, it's quite a list. But the point is, elections close enough to be flipped by a handful of fraudulent votes happen all the time. They just don't normally happen at the presidential level, thanks to the Electoral College.

Rugoz wrote:
I already wrote this a while ago:

It's up to the voters to decide whether they are "indefinitely confined":
https://wislawjournal.com/2020/12/14/wi ... -confined/

Then, the Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed out Trump's lawsuit because "the challenge to voters who were indefinitely confined was without merit" (among other reasons):
https://wislawjournal.com/2020/12/14/wi ... n-lawsuit/

Your side did not win on merit, it lost.

Needless to say this was about a technicality, electoral fraud wasn't even on the table.

Wrong case, the one I've been referring to was The Wisconsin Republican Party v. Dane County. In that one, the Supreme Court ruled that since the law states that individuals are the ones that decide if they are indefinitely confined, neither county clerks nor an order of the governor could declare them indefinitely confined due to the pandemic. Furthermore, they declared that the individual electors must base that decision according to the criteria set out in the law--age, physical illness or infirmity--and that those criteria do not encompass an emergency order by the governor requiring people to stay home except for limited circumstances, the possession of those criteria by other people (such as a pandemic), or having trouble obtaining or uploading a valid photo ID. None of this contradicts the Court's ruling against Trump, because what the Trump campaign was seeking was the rejection of ballots cast without photo ID due to indefinite confinement as a class where the proper course would have been to prove that particular voters fraudulently granted themselves that status. I can't really say that I disagree with the Court here.

And another example of why mass mail-in balloting is a bad idea, this time from Montana:

A River of Doubt Runs Through Mail Voting in Big Sky Country
A mountainous, 2,600-square-mile region with a population of approximately 119,600 does not seem like your prototypical setting for machine politics. Yet a recent audit of mail-in ballots cast there found irregularities characteristic of larger urban centers — on a level that could have easily swung local elections in 2020, and statewide elections in cycles past.

The Biden administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, and the Democratic National Committee are collectively pressing to both nationalize, and make permanent, many of the extraordinary pandemic-driven voting measures implemented during the 2020 election —particularly mass mail-in voting.

Political leaders and prominent media outlets have dismissed concerns raised by critics that such measures invite voter fraud. But could the election in small-county Missoula call all that into question?

The story at hand begins during the pandemic summer of 2020, when the then-governor, Democrat Steve Bullock, issued a directive permitting counties to conduct the general election fully by mail. In the run-up to the election, a court also struck down Montana’s law aimed at preventing ballot harvesting.

Missoula, Montana’s second most populous county and one of its most heavily Democratic, opted in to the universal vote-by-mail regime.

In response, in October 2020, several county residents with experience targeting election integrity issues formed a group to ensure the legitimacy of the 2020 vote. The members contended that Missoula County had shown anomalies in elections past.

In November, the group approached state Rep. Brad Tschida, a Republican, to formally take up the issue. Tschida hired a lawyer involved in the group, Quentin Rhoades, to represent him in corresponding with Missoula County Elections Administrator Bradley Seaman, a Democratic appointee and a longtime supporter of progressive causes.

Seaman’s office complied with Tschida’s request for access to all of the county’s ballot envelopes, and on Jan. 4 a team of volunteers, overseen by Rhoades, conducted an audit with the assistance of the Missoula County Elections Office. The audit consisted of both a count and review of all ballot envelopes and comparing that to the number of officially recorded votes during the Nov. 3, 2020, general election.

Its conclusions were troubling: 4,592 out of the 72,491 mail-in ballots lacked envelopes— 6.33% of all votes. Without an officially printed envelope with registration information, a voter's signature, and a postmark indicating whether it was cast on time, election officials cannot verify that a ballot is legitimate. It is against the law to count such votes.

What’s more, according to auditors, county employees claimed that during the post-election audit, some of the envelopes may have been double-counted, possibly indicating an even higher number of missing envelopes.

Auditors also tested a smaller, random sub-sample of 15,455 mail-in envelopes for other defects. Of these, 55 lacked postmark dates, and 53 never had their signatures checked — for a total of 0.7% of all ballots in the sample. No envelope had more than one irregularity.

Extrapolating from the sub-sample, that would make more than 5,000 of Missoula County’s votes — roughly 7% — with unexplained irregularities.

Still another issue arose during the audit that aroused auditors’ suspicions: Dozens of ballot envelopes bore strikingly similar, distinctive handwriting styles in the signatures, suggesting that one or several persons may have filled out and submitted multiple ballots, an act of fraud.

One auditor asserted that of 28 envelopes reviewed from the same address, a nursing home, all 28 signatures looked “exactly the same” stylistically.

Another auditor reported that among the envelopes she reviewed, two very unique signatures appeared dozens of times, describing one such signature as starting out flat, moving to a peak, and tapering out, and another as consisting of numerous circles — a “bubble signature.”

Auditors were unable to conduct a more comprehensive count because, they say, Missoula County elections officials refused to permit them to take pictures of the signatures, and envelopes were not shared across the different tabulation tables at the audit, so reviewers could not cross-compare ballot samples.

Another concern of the auditors: The county elections office did not provide access to video footage it claimed to have recorded of vote-counting activities.

Contacted by RealClearInvestigations for comment on these issues, Seaman cited an agreement by the parties to the audit that no photographs of ballot signatures would be allowed. And he said the county's video of vote-counting "was past the retention schedule when requested” although Rhoades' Dec. 22 emailed request for it -- an email examined by RCI -- was within what Rhoades described as the 60-day window during which county records must be retained by law.

Finally, Seaman explained the 4,592 ballots without envelopes found in the audit as a discrepancy due to the lack of a “double-check process.” The auditors said that during the audit, the only concern raised by the election office staff was the opposite — that envelopes might be double-counted, not undercounted — and they claim that they followed all the procedures laid out by the county. Rhoades told RCI that when he asked Administrator Seaman after the audit about more ballots recorded than the envelope count, Seaman appeared extremely nervous and had no explanation.

The magnitude of defective — and potentially fraudulently cast — ballots identified during the Missoula County ballot audit is particularly troubling given the small margins by which local 2020 elections were decided, and previous statewide elections have been decided.

The 2020 local House District 94 race was determined by 435 votes; that of local House District 96, a mere 190.

In 2012, Bullock won his gubernatorial race by just 7,571 votes. Montana’s then-superintendent of public instruction, also a Democrat, won her race by an even smaller margin of 2,231 votes. If Missoula County generated problem ballots on the level of those cast during 2020, they may well have swung these statewide elections.

Concerns over mass mail-in balloting are essentially a Republican issue. The party-line vote in which the Democrat-controlled U.S. House passed HR 1, a bill that would result in universal mail-in voting across America, is a testament to this fact.

The Missoula audit appeared unprecedented in auditing all ballot envelopes. Other counties, including Cobb (Georgia) and Maricopa (Arizona), conducted 2020 audits drawing on relatively small ballot envelope samples.

What comes next for Missoula County, given the discrepancies identified? State authorities say they are concerned about the findings, and may well take them up in a joint hearing of the Montana Senate and House judiciary committees. State representatives are also seeking to reinstate laws that would restrict ballot harvesting, as well as other election reforms.


All in all, there are good reasons why most developed countries ban or seriously restrict absentee voting.
User avatar
By Rugoz
#15163056
Doug64 wrote:Wrong case, the one I've been referring to was The Wisconsin Republican Party v. Dane County. In that one, the Supreme Court ruled that since the law states that individuals are the ones that decide if they are indefinitely confined, neither county clerks nor an order of the governor could declare them indefinitely confined due to the pandemic. Furthermore, they declared that the individual electors must base that decision according to the criteria set out in the law--age, physical illness or infirmity--and that those criteria do not encompass an emergency order by the governor requiring people to stay home except for limited circumstances, the possession of those criteria by other people (such as a pandemic), or having trouble obtaining or uploading a valid photo ID. None of this contradicts the Court's ruling against Trump, because what the Trump campaign was seeking was the rejection of ballots cast without photo ID due to indefinite confinement as a class where the proper course would have been to prove that particular voters fraudulently granted themselves that status. I can't really say that I disagree with the Court here.


No, not the wrong case, the first link I posted is about v. Dane County.

The court ruled that the county clerk was wrong in saying on Facebook that the stay-at-home order counts as a reason, but the court asserts that it is up to voters themselves to decide whether they are indefinitely confined or not.

Trump wanted to throw out all these votes (from your PDF):

Rather, the Campaign argues that all voters claiming indefinitely confined status since the date of the erroneous Facebook advice should have their votes invalidated


Hence the ruling:

The Campaign's request to strike indefinitely confined voters in Dane and Milwaukee Counties as a class without regard to whether any individual voter was in fact indefinitely confined has no basis in reason or law; it is wholly without merit
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