#MuhJudges: Kavanaugh and Barrett Refuse to Consider Illegal Ballot-Counting Changes in Pennsylvania

Before the inauguration: Not timely

After the certification: Moot

It's almost as if they're willing to resort to claiming any ol' doctrine to avoid saying that you're not allowed to violate the Constitution when you change election rules last-minute.

Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas dissented.

On Monday, the Supreme Court threw out several of the remaining challenges to the 2020 presidential election as moot, considering that former President Donald Trump conceded to Joe Biden, who has now become president. Yet Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, arguing that the Supreme Court should have taken the opportunity to clarify election law, especially in the case of Pennsylvania.

"The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the ‘Manner’ of federal elections," Thomas wrote. "Yet both before and after the 2020 election, nonlegislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead. As a result, we received an unusually high number of petitions and emergency applications contesting those changes."

Thomas argued that the cases Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Veronica DeGraffenreid (2021) and Jake Corman v. Pennsylvania Democratic Party (2021) presented "a clear example" of election law issues that the Supreme Court should put to rest. "The Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots: 8 p.m. on election day. Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days."

"That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future," Thomas argued. "These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable."

I can explain it: the "Shadow conspiracy" article in Time Magazine explained it.

The Shadow Conspiracy article in Time was written to alert the left that these changes were absolutely critical to fake-winning the election, and that therefore, anyone on the left and anyone supporting the permanent corrupt Deep State must fight with all their might to keep these illegal rules in place.

Remember, these last-minute illegal changes were mostly justified by the pandemic threat.

But the left might not have that justification in 2022.

So the people who rigged the election told their stories to Time to let the rest of the left know: Even if there is no major pandemic threat in 2022, you must fight tooth and nail to retail the illegal rules changes we instituted supposedly "because of the pandemic."

Or else you'll just lose.

I guess the Supreme Court figured that much out.

Alito also wrote a dissent, which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined. Alito argued that these cases "present an important and recurring constitutional question: whether the Elections or Electors Clauses of the United States Constitution… are violated when a state court holds that a state constitutional provision overrides a state statute governing the manner in which a federal election is to be conducted. That question has divided the lower courts,* and our review at this time would be greatly beneficial."

"Now, the election is over, and there is no reason for refusing to decide the important question that these cases pose," Alito argued. While a decision in these cases "would not have any implications regarding the 2020 election," it would "provide invaluable guidance for future elections."

By the way, they keep saying that this wouldn't effect the results of the election because they have repeatedly sifted the number of challenges down to the point where we're talking about just a couple of thousand ballots.

They've figured out other ways to ignore the challenges to all the other ballots.

It's like breaking down a cargo into a hundred pieces and saying of each tiny piece, "No, this won't meaningfully affect the ship's seaworthiness. No this one also won't meaningfully affect the ship's seaworthiness. No this one also won't appreciably affect the ship's seaworthiness..."

Yeah but take them all together and the ship sinks.

Let me put this simply:

Teams that are winning and have the advantage in points don't start changing the rules for what counts as a "point" behind-the-scenes.

The team that is behind changes the rules.

Is that a noncontroversial enough take?

Or are we now at the point where we pretend that the team ahead on the scoreboard starts making sketchy rules-changes just to pad their margin?

Robert Barnes @scotusreporter BREAKING: Scotus won't take up Pennsylvania elections case that challenged state supreme court decisions to extend deadline for mail-in ballots. Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch disagree

@julie_kelly2
Looking at order list now. It looks like SCOTUS killed every election lawsuit filed by Trump and other parties. Only Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito dissented in rejecting PA GOP v PA SOS case. We have no institution to protect our elections. Thanks Barrett and Kavanaugh!

posted by Ace at 12:19 PM

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