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We’re back from the holiday break and have Georgia on our minds. As such we welcome Erick Erickson, host of “Atlanta’s Evening News” on WSB AM/FM, and he joins to us to analyze “suitcase-gate” and give us his take on January’s double US Senate election in the Peach State. (Erick’s podcast is available right here on Ricochet.)
Then we talk to old friend Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. As the Covid-19 vaccination comes to market, what’s the best way to do it? Who gets priority and who shouldn’t be bothered?
Eustace C. Scrubb walks away with the coveted Lileks Member Post of the Week for his essay on the passing of David Prowse, one half of the man behind Darth Vader.
Music from this week’s episode: The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels.
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The whole thing is a joke. The only thing that matters is if you have a decent, honest governor and smart people working on the data. I think it’s a waste of time for a regular citizen to try to deal with it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: In similar situations it can be only necessary to show that there was cheating. e.g., the horse that won was drugged, etc. It is not necessary to somehow prove that the drug made the horse run X percent faster than it would have otherwise, and that’s why it won. If the horse was drugged, it is disqualified. “End of line.”
You are writing up your own set of rules and expecting everyone else to follow them. But there aren’t many state or federal judges who would accept your argument.
Even federal judges nominated by Trump are ruling against Trump. Trump doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
The bar is closing and the drunk Trump refuses to leave.
Which might only prove that the standards previously used for this kind of case, are inadequate. Perhaps the Supreme Court will address that. But even if they don’t, that doesn’t prove that “show us X number of fraudulent ballots that changed the outcome” is the proper standard. Or that everything must come down to a certain date, Because Reasons.
OK, I’ll play along: the Trump legal team has had multiple opportunities to demonstrate that the horse was drugged and each time, the drug test has come back negative. Furthermore, the horse racing commissioner (Barr) has said that he has seen no evidence that the horse was drugged. So when exactly will you stop beating this dead horse?
Everything does come down to a certain date, December 14 2020, because federal law.
You can’t adjudicate elections with this many paper ballots.
The country needs to have a big discussion about ballot harvesting.
It’s not a drug test, that was an analogy. In this case, it would be more like, the horse that “won” ran impossibly faster than it ever ran before in any other race, indeed perhaps arguably faster than any (un-drugged) horse has ever run before. That would indicate a value in pursuing further, perhaps including blood tests. If the horse owners have stalled beyond the time when a drug test would be usable, that can be looked at as further evidence as well. If nothing else, that the race needs to be re-run and with careful attention paid that the horse not be drugged (again). But merely waving away with something like “it’s a horse, and horses run, therefore it’s unproven” is at best silly.
What could end up being the most important issue is that the courts which have considered this case so far – and most of them don’t seem to have actually looked at the merits – may be (as I used to call it) “administratively incapable” of doing what is needed in these situations. And it may be that the Supreme Court is the at the level needed to tell everyone else what needs to be done.
But even if the Supreme Court were to rule that having Some Result by Some Date is somehow more important than getting it right, wouldn’t prove that it was valid.
As promised, I reached out to Erick about Mollie’s piece and he suggested you all watch this piece in which GA election officials go through the entire video and explain what is occurring.
Yes, we fully understand that a news story with actual Georgia election officials and investigators carefully and methodically explaining what is going on in the video frame by frame will not convince the hundreds of election law and voting procedure experts on this site who have years of practical experience in their field, but we can’t really do anything about that. We were tasked to get a response from Erick and we did.
You might also read this from Erick, which he published earlier today. It’s quite detailed.
Update: Fixed a broken link to the news story above.
If indeed “they haven’t looked at the merits,” that’s the fault of the lawyers for not presenting the case correctly to them. But I sympathize with the courts and even to a degree with the lawyers. Because the arguments for this are so convoluted and lacking in evidence, and hence they move all over the place and are impossible to follow. I mean, you can’t even be consistent in your own metaphor. It changes every time someone points out how flawed it is.
P.S. For what it’s worth, a couple of very well known Conservative Constitutional law experts have predicted to me that the Supreme Court is not going to hear any of these cases. Make of that what you will (not much, I’m guessing).
I get 404 on that link. But if that’s the same video that Mollie “debunked” then what’s the point?
Analogies tend to be imperfect because they’re analogies. The only “pure” “analogy” might be the case itself, which is not an analogy. But if the case itself were clear to everyone, there would be no need for analogies to start with.
Meanwhile, if what you describe actually happens, there might be a number of possible explanations.
For one, it could mean that their consideration process hasn’t caught up to the 21st or even the 20th century in terms of electronic manipulation and other issues. “Deadlines uber alles” would be a poor excuse to allow fraud to succeed.
For another it could mean that they just don’t want BLM/Antifa showing up at their homes, as has happened with other office-holders far lower than SCOTUS.
I don’t think BLM/Antifa would consider it somehow off-limits to threaten SCOTUS. They have been threatened over far less.
Exceptions are made all the time due to extenuating circumstances. For that matter, governors etc thought they had to extend voting deadlines – and may have done so illegally – due to covid. But now they argue that the deadline for the electoral college vote is inviolate? Ridiculous.
It’s federal law. Given that Trump hasn’t had much success in court up until now, why would the US Supreme Court extend the December 14 deadline? Just to let Trump whine and complain even longer?
No. Trump needs to shut up and go home. He lost. He needs to stop the whining and get out of town.
It’s also federal law, including the Constitution, that governors etc don’t get to change election laws like they did. Expecting courts up to the Supreme Court to damn well do something about that, is not whining.
Apologies, copy and paste error. Try this one.
It was your analogy, not mine. If you knew it was that easy to knock down, why did you pose it in the first place.
Never mind. I already know the answer to that question.
You’ve been pushing this theory for a while now and I don’t think it’s well very thought through. Because it’s been tried as recently as today on the right and it didn’t work there either:
Armed protesters alleging voter fraud surrounded the home of Michigan’s secretary of state
P.S. It would be a HUGE public relations win for the Right if BLM/Antifa got anywhere near a SCOTUS Justice or even made a threatening statement about it. But it would not work. The Justices (and most elected officials and judges in my experience) are made of very stern stuff. They are not scared of idiots.
I try to make my analogies as simple and commonplace as possible, even if that means reducing “accuracy.” (And, as I pointed out earlier, the only truly “accurate” analogy is the case itself. Which, if it were already understood, would require no analogies to perhaps help understand it.) Even if a “better” analogy would be some comparison with some obscure European battlefield engagement in WW I or something, that wouldn’t be helpful.
And dismissing the analogy with something like “but this is a presidential election, not a horse race” is not helpful either.
And, “fraud is okay as long as nobody can prove by Dec 14 that it was enough to change the outcome” is not in the Constitution either. Judges make up stuff like that. And it can be changed, if they’re willing to look at what is possible now, and to admit that the previous standard was probably not very good even when it was first invented.
Point of order: Can you show us in the Constitution where it says this? Looking forward to this one…
I’m certainly not the first to point out that the Constitution specifies voting standards in the states are determined by the LEGISLATURES. Have you ignored all the others?
With arguments as cogent as that one, you ought to be on the Trump legal team. And your timing is perfect — I hear there is an opening for lead attorney. You should absolutely apply for the job.
OK, and which Governors unilaterally changed election laws? I am aware of cases in WI and PA (although if memory serves, the latter was a case involving a change made by the legislature, not the Governor), but those were ultimately decided by the courts before election day. Where else did a Gov change election laws by edict?
“governors etc” means governors, secretaries of state, “election supervisors,” and others who illegally tampered with their states’ election laws.
You see, “etc” is an abbreviation of “et cetera,” which means “and other similar things”, or “and so forth.” So “etc” means I didn’t need to list all the other suspects in detail.
I think you might have a point here.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court was out of line, in my opinion, when they changed the deadline for mail in ballots. The US Supreme Court was tied 4-4 on whether to hear that appeal, if I remember correctly. Someone will correct me if I am wrong on that.
But even if the US Supreme Court had reversed the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, as I think it should have, there are not enough votes that were received between November 3 and November 6 to change the outcome in Pennsylvania.
But hey, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was wrong. Maybe with Amy Coney Barrett on the court, Trump’s legal team will win that one. But they would only win it, in my opinion, if it were September 2020, not December 2020.
It’s too late. Time to prep for the next election.
If you weren’t talking about Governors, why did you include them at all in your example? But OK: Which governors, secretaries of state, “election supervisors,” and others (ETCETERA) illegally tampered with their states’ election laws? Name names please.
I think the Wisconsin Board of Elections did tweak some things. Not sure.
I think an argument can be easily made that a Dec 14 “deadline” is only assuming a clean process otherwise. If the process is not clean, that doesn’t mean that cheating succeeds just Because Deadline. If you like, I would be all in favor of locking up those responsible for not properly meeting the deadline: governors, state Supreme Court justices, whoever. But the idea of “Deadlines Uber Alles” is just silly. If that’s all that matters, then the state governors could just write down whatever electoral vote they like and send it over on Dec 13, and nobody could do anything about it. Because Deadline.
I don’t think I disagree, although I believe SCOTUS only ruled that ballots postmarked on election day were still valid. That seems reasonable to me. Anything postmarked after that should be DQ’d.
To be honest, I worry that the deadline is too late in the process and that it gives the losing candidate too much time to ask for recounts and more litigation.
I’d prefer it if the electoral college deadline and the Safe Harbor date were moved up, perhaps to one week or two after the election.
I didn’t like it when Al Gore asked for one recount after another and I don’t like it when Trump files one hopeless lawsuit after another.