Yesterday, I chided our appellate courts for taking their good old time to decide an uncomplicated elections issue that, one way or the other, should have taken them 15 minutes to decide. Do you count undated mail-in ballots that were received on or before election day or not? Since the Pa Supremes have pretty much signaled they must be rejected, there's little point in arguing the issue. The courts have wasted two months since the election. Thanks to their delay, the Lehigh County bench is one judge short. What amazed me is that the Commonwealth Court piously pronounced that this issue demanded an immediate decision.
These judicial delays undermine public confidence in the integrity of our elections system.
Amazingly, the Pa Supreme Court, which is responsible for this mess, ducked the case.
Now, to make matters worse, the ACLU has injected itself with a federal lawsuit. Blogger Michael Molovinsky believes that judicial wannabe Zach Cohen is behind that lawsuit. We both also wonder how five of the voters whose undated ballots were rejected found out that their votes were in trouble. They were obviously solicited.
Here's my question for the ACLU. Why did they wait until all state courts had ruled before filing their lawsuit? They are claiming a violation of federal law and should have filed suit immediately.
There is no difference between what the ACLU is doing and what Donald Trump's campaign did.
Sour grapes.
7 comments:
Perhaps they had to be able to show they exhausted their state remedies before asking for an injunction?
Your post does not suggest that you took the trouble to ASK the ACLU why the suit was filed when it was. So much for your citizen journalism.
Certainly the defendants are free to raise this as a defense, and the court will rule on it.
Article I, section 4 of the Constitution says: "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations." What gives the Federal government the right to get involved in a state election for judges?
9:11 & 10:52, The ACLU is suing under federal law and there is thus no need to exhaust state remedies. Also it is quite clear to me that this lawsuit is politically motivated. If it was clearly about counting undated ballots, the lawsuit should have been filed last year. In could have been filed at the same tiome that Cohen sought relief from Reibman. Instead, the ACLU waited. The ACLU is quite obviously politically motivated. This is not a matter of good government. To be fair, I will call them but I doubt they will persuade me I am wrong. That's if they bother speaking to me. I've tried in the past without success. They are just as unresponsive as state government. That's been my experience.
I am conflicted in this case, but I do see a distinct difference between the last prez election in which one side clearly lost and was trying desperately with false accusations to overturn the clear will of the majority whereas in this local election the will of the people was discounted because of some voters committing a clerical error.
But should a person's vote not count because they cannot follow directions even if they are tracked down to verify their intentions? Maybe those people should not be able to vote as their mistakes do slow down the vote count. On the other hand, do we want the will of the people despite some not being able to follow directions, in essence, an intelligence test?
What's the point of dating a MIB anyway? If it's not mailed too soon to the voter, it's obviously not going in be submitted too early. And if it's received or postmarked (whatever the rule is to be) by a certain date, then obviously it was filled out during a certain period of time.
Now a signature, that's a fine requirement.
MIB require a date and signature, period
i would like to vote at 6 am...but not allowed, those are the rules, abide or GTFO
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