September 27, 2020

"There is no question some ballots will be mailed to people who have died, or moved or are no longer eligible to vote."

"But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot, an act which would be a felony. And even when isolated instances like this happen, they don’t swing presidential elections.... There is also no question that some election administrators... will make errors in handling ballots. There are weak links in our election process.... There are a few steps that election administrators and the media should take given that we are going to have an imperfect election and given that these imperfections may be cynically manipulated by political operatives who want to throw the election results into doubt.... The media need to report claims of misfeasance in elections with caution.... The days leading up to November’s election may be rocky. But competence, patience, transparency and perspective are the best antidote to attempts to manipulate small-scale election problems into a full blown crisis."

From "Don’t fall for claims of voter fraud. Political operatives want to turn errors into a way to throw the election" by Richard L. Hasen (L.A. Times).

76 comments:

MayBee said...

I guess I would be more sympathetic to the argument that the extra ballots don't really matter if I hadn't lived through the hanging chads in Florida.

I do like his exhortation for reporters to just kind of not report on the problems.

Unknown said...

Never fear

Schwarzenegger's donkey will be counting ballots this year

Big Mike said...

Three questions for Mr. Haden. First, wouldn’t random error go more or less equally in both directions? Why do voting and vote-counting go almost exclusively in one direction? And, third, is there any way to fix this that doesn’t involve bloodshed?

Asking that last one for a friend.(rural Virginia, where I live, has done well in keeping our election rolls clean).

wendybar said...

BULLSHIT...With all the hate against Trump in this country...I would EXPECT the haters to do exactly what this (obviously Progressive) person says they won't.

PhysicistDave said...

I was born in St. Louis and grew up in St. Louis County, so we saw lots of news about the state "across the river."

We just took it for granted that of course the votes from Mayor Daley's Chicago (Cook County) always came in slowly because Daley had to find out how much ballot-box stuffing he had to do to offset the (largely Republican) vote from down-state Illinois.

(I also grew up assuming that a stint as governor of Illinois was automatically followed by a jail sentence: part of their state constitution or something.)

The lengthy counting of mail-in ballots over a week or two in the coming election is just perfect: anyone who doubts that there will be massive fraud must believe in the tooth fairy.

gilbar said...

So, according to Richard L. Hasen; voter fraud is only an issue in isolated cases; those cases being, where a democrat's loss is small.

As long as a democrat wins; there is no fraud
if a republican wins....it's because republicans managed to turn errors into a way to throw the election"

if republicans REALLY want to win elections, their win must be greater than the margin of fraud

Rocketeer said...

"Almost never."

As for the rest, well...just trust him.

Jersey Fled said...

How many votes did Franken win by? And that was enough to get us Obamacare.

rhhardin said...

Don't set up a system that nobody will trust in the first place.

MD Greene said...

This is bullshit. The spouse and I got unsolicited ballots from our former state for this year's primary. We sent them right back with notes saying we had moved. I have ostensible "friends" who are true believers in one candidate or the other other this year. I am certain they would be happy to vote twice if given a chance because they value their points of view more than behaving ethically. (BAMN, you know.) This distresses me.

Additionally, in 2016, a Manhattan friend who was scheduled to be working in LA on election day, put in a timely request for an absentee ballot. It arrived the day AFTER the election. BTW, first-class mail travels from coast to coast much faster than stuff headed from NYC or LA to Little Rock or Cleveland. (By the way, how efficient is mail delivery in Kenosha and Louisville now?)

Crap like this may not throw the election, but we will never know, will we?

I only want every single vote to be a legitimate one. Doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Kevin said...

Is that what happened in 2000, small-scale election problems?

Or were those just the first step in a massive effort to endlessly recount the ballots until the preferred candidate could be declared the winner?

And that guy wasn’t running against “Literally Hitler”, where the normal rules had been publicly rescinded on the front page of the NYT.

Birkel said...

"...almost never..."

That is an admission that sometimes the dead or moved away do have their ballots returned.
And they are returned by felony fraudsters.

I appreciate the LA Times reporting the truth, even if inadvertent.

Mary Beth said...

Summary: People don't cheat, but when they do it doesn't matter. Our officials entrusted with running a fair election aren't competent to do so and the press shouldn't cover that incompetence because it makes people not trust the process.

Wilbur said...

"we are going to have an imperfect election and given that these imperfections may be cynically manipulated by political operatives who want to throw the election results into doubt."

We'll see if Dick Hasen says that if Trump looks like the winner the morning after.

Amadeus 48 said...

I see the words, but I don't hear the music. I don't really think Rick Hasen is doing anything but blowing smoke here.

"But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot, an act which would be a felony."

How can he say that when what some states are doing has never been done before? This isn't applying for an absentee ballot. This is sending live ballots to addresses that may not even exist and to millions of unknown addressees without their request or consent. If there are 150 million registered voters (whatever that means today) in the US and 170 million ballots returned or voted, will Hasen concede there is a problem? But what will he do about it then?

tim maguire said...

He’s probably right that mistakes will be more common than fraud, that fraud will be rare, and that neither is likely to affect the outcome of the election. The real threat to confidence in the system is the determination by the media and the Democratic Party to insist that these things won’t happen, that claims that they will are made in bad faith, and that we cannot take steps to assess and improve ballot security because claims that ballots aren’t as secure as they should be is just part of the Republican project to suppress minority votes.

traditionalguy said...

Ballot harvesting is mass fraud rendering all election results totally corrupted. And no opined experts on absentee ballots deals with that new reality constructed by the Soros machine to replace removal of their rigged electronic vote counts that struck them by surprise in 2016.It has as its sole goal the stealing of all elections by faked vote counting. The Fake pre-election polls are done for a cover for the rigged vote totals. Which means Fox News faked polls are owned and directed by Soros. Deal with that.

David Begley said...

He doesn’t know that! Al Franken stole his seat.

Why do we tolerate cheating by the Dems?

Krumhorn said...

Complete gaslighting horseshit! Unpurged voter rolls are exactly how fraudulent votes are cast. I have seen it first-hand, and it’s not an isolated issue. This is why the Dems fight every effort to purge the enrolled lists of those who have not voted in recent elections, and they certainly fight to the death over voter ID.

They call those efforts voter suppression, but that’s shorthand for fraudulent vote-casting suppression. There is a huge difference between absentee ballots that must be requested by the registered voter and ballots mailed to all voters without a triggering request. It is delusional to believe for a second that massive voting fraud will not be the result. The leftie community organizer types have this tradecraft down cold.

- Krumhorn

Temujin said...

Interesting that he does not mention that there may be some people who try to corrupt a few ballots. After all, it's not like that's not happened before. Just who are these people who are not able or willing to acknowledge reality? "Experts" come and go on this topic. Telling us that even thinking there is fraud is either racist, or wrong.

Or, maybe it's real and true. The facts are that it is true. And it is why Democrats are so adamant about preventing voter ID, and making mail-in voting nationalized, while trying to implement ballot harvesting from state to state. Who would do this? When you argue against it for obvious reasons, they call you racist and say you are working to disenfranchise voters. Huh?

It's time there were some serious adults in the room. Time to make it clear that not everyone is going to vote. Not everyone takes their citizenship seriously. Not everyone cares enough to go out and register. I mean, they only have 4 years between elections to get a voter ID. And for God's sake: Who does not have a state photo ID? If you don't, you're either an illegal immigrant, or you're not taking part in our society and probably- I'm going out on a limb here- don't care about voting anyway.

Stop this nonsense. Experts who come out for stringing out elections, making it less secure and easier to commit fraud should never be taken seriously. They should be mocked and laughed at.

iowan2 said...

I rarely find things I dont seek out. If If I want to hunt pheasants, I am never going to get any if I dont take my gun and go to the fields. I can search forever at the parking garage at the hospital, and again, will find no pheasants.

Jeff Brokaw said...

100% bullshit gaslighting.

Has he heard of Mayor Richard J. Daley manufacturing ballots — cast by dead people and folks at nonexistent addresses — stealing the 1960 election for JFK?

That was 60 years ago, and they have found new ways to cheat since then.

Means, motive, opportunity, that’s all you need.

Crimso said...

"But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot"

Know what else "almost never" happens? Unarmed black men being killed by police. And yet...

RichAndSceptical said...

When I vote at the polls on election day, I have to show identification before I am allowed to vote. Do people voting by mail have to "show" identification? If not, wouldn't this be grounds to declare them invalid votes? Is it legal to require identification for one set of voters and not for another?

Leland said...

That reads like a "how to" masquerading as a warning. How often is "almost never"? The same as "isolated instances"? Aren't those acts actually a felony?

An editor allowed this to be published.

All this could be avoided simply by not having mail-in ballot elections, or reduced by minimizing just who can vote by mail-in ballot.

J Melcher said...

And even when isolated instances like this happen, they don’t swing presidential elections....

Are we then to infer that invalid ballots are not worth filtering out of Congressional contests, Mayoral races, State Constitutional Amendment referenda, bond elections, school board trustee selections ... ?

How important does a nominally democratic (little-d democrat) decision have to be before a tainted process becomes a concern?

Here's how it works in Dallas. Note that the journalist names names -- Kathy Neely, Carol Reed, Jan Gore. These are people who ENSURE that applications for mail ballots are sent "on behalf" of voters who will vote "the correct way" on local issues. So the voter may care about the bridge or the swimming pool or the council -- but the vote harvester "helper" then gets HER choice of president or congress critter or (at that time) which party on a straight party ballot.

Texas has since abolished straight party voting, which may or may not be a good thing, but is in response at least partly to abuses as described.


https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/absentee-minded-6391500

Ken B said...

There are more than 450 federal elections, and thousands of state and local elections. Even if what Hansen says about the reliability of the presidential vote were true, there would still be a serious problem. There are several hundred million ballots. “Almost never” can still be tens of thousands of ballots.

CWJ said...

"There are weak links in our election process."

Let's work on those rather than add more. But that's not part of the agenda.

Jeff Brokaw said...

There is a much bigger picture here that these kinds of analyses leave out: trust.

Much of the public has lost all trust — and I literally mean ALL of it, as in 100% — in public governance of all kinds.

Why? Well, let’s see ... Russia collusion bullshit, lies on FISA warrants, obvious obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, perjury before Congress, planting lies in the media to gaslight the American public, impeachment bullshit, COVID lies, lockdown lies, riots with no attempts to control them to promote public safety and in fact local officials actually promoting and protecting the rioters, out of control looting, and so much more.

And that’s all just in the last 3 years. People like me have had enough of all these people.

It’s a pretty good bet there are *millions* of us out there. Probably tens of millions.

These cute little “but there’s no vote fraud” arguments arenot just wrong, they are continuing the erosion of trust in public governance at *ALL* levels.

Butkus51 said...

Sounds like they are setting the table for another coup.

Matt Sablan said...

"And even when isolated instances like this happen, they don’t swing presidential elections...."

-- It's so weird to see some people suddenly so vociferously insisting every vote does not matter.

tcrosse said...

"...almost never..."

What, never?
No, never.
What, never?
Well, hardly ever.

Chris of Rights said...

Here's how I know that's crap.

Every time conservatives (or whomever) brings up the fact that we need to have fair elections where we can be confident in the election results, the left screams that additional security isn't necessary. They admit the possibility of the problem, but then hand wave and tell us not to worry about it.

Isn't it worth a few extra bucks and a little extra time to ensure the integrity of our elections? Shouldn't we all be in agreement upon that? Shouldn't you be suspicious of someone who is willing to spend time and money on virtually everything else other than that?

I know that I am.

tim in vermont said...

I know for a fact that they plan to mail a ballot to my summer home in Vermont, where I used to live and vote, and that live ballot is going to sit in my rural mailbox for anybody to swipe.

stlcdr said...

Some states are very close. It is possible for a single vote to switch the presidential election.

If individual votes didn’t count, why do we take great pains to ensure ‘your vote matters!’?

tim in vermont said...

"Has he heard of Mayor Richard J. Daley manufacturing ballots — cast by dead people and folks at nonexistent addresses — stealing the 1960 election for JFK?”

My favorite part of that whole thing was the town in Texas where everybody who hadn’t voted until right before the "polls closed” then came in and voted in alphabetical order.

Barry Dauphin said...

Shorter version: It's mostly accurate vote counting.

Tommy Duncan said...

I'm Joe Biden and I approve this message.

stlcdr said...

Oh, and why does he say ‘a felony’?

As if, “oh, a felony? In that case I better not do this illegal thing, even though the chance of me getting caught is negligibly small”.

Tommy Duncan said...

Blogger Jersey Fled said...

"How many votes did Franken win by?"

The exact exact same number of votes that fit in the trunk of a Chevy Vega.

JAORE said...

Bush v. Gore.

Almost never, limited numbers, can't make a difference......

D.D. Driver said...

Here's an idea. Go watch the polls. Go watch the ballot counting. The GOP is always looking for poll observers. I've done it a number of times. If you are genuinely concerned about voter fraud it is you right and duty to do something about it.

Nothing is inevitable. Go prevent it!

Wince said...

From "Don’t fall for claims of voter fraud. Political operatives want to turn errors into a way to throw the election" by Richard L. Hasen (L.A. Times).

"Throw"?

Doesn't that usually mean to "deliberately lose a game, cause your team to lose"?

Throw a fight: To lose a match in a combat sport, especially boxing, intentionally. Usually done in order to take advantage of the bets placed on one's odds of winning. Other determiners and modifiers can be used instead of "a," depending on the context.

Michael K said...

That newspaper is read in the Santa Ana precinct (lots of illegals) that had a turnout of 114% of registered voters in 2018.

gilbar said...

PhysicistDave said...
a stint as governor of Illinois was automatically followed by a jail sentence: part of their state constitution or something.)


the Illinois state Constitution clearly states:
All governors shall serve two terms. The 1st in Springfield, the 2nd in prison

mikee said...

Political operatives want to turn mail-in ballots into a means of stealing an election.
FTFY.

Balfegor said...

What reason do we have to believe these supposedly isolated instances of misconduct are not indicative of a broader failure of applicable controls, particularly given that certain political interests have fought tooth and nail against basic remediation (e.g. cleaning up voter rolls), adoption of additional compensating controls (e.g. stricter voter ID), and investigation into the scope of the actual problem (e.g. Trump's attempted investigation into voter fraud, which fizzled because states refused to cooperate by sharing the necessary data). People in a position to know certainly haven't acted like they think this is a non-issue. Why should we think it is?

cacimbo said...

Many college students register to vote at their college address.Between graduations and corona one corrupt campus employee could easily access hundreds of ballots sent to former students.

Enlighten-NewJerse said...

New Jersey election officials mailed 3,751,489 ballots to registered Democrats and Republicans for the July 7th primary. A total of 1,466,366 ballots were cast and counted with 2,285,123 unused.

For the general election everyone listed on the registration rolls will receive a mail-in ballot and vote counters have been told to assume signatures on ballots returned are valid. What could go wrong with this fraud proof system?

Koot Katmandu said...

So predictable. The media should report with caution. Honesty I guess. Usually they just try and hide the narrative.

I think it is clear the Ds will try and steal any close election with mail in ballots. When they see how many votes they need to win and check the rolls for how many Ds did not vote they will look for ways to cast those votes after the fact. Why else would they demand mail in vote need no post mark?

I will only have confidence in this election if one side wins by a huge margin. Landslide other wise cheaters gonna cheat. The hate for PDT is really and not rational in many cases.

James Pawlak said...

Do not forget the ballot sent to a dead cat.

mockturtle said...

""But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot, an act which would be a felony."

And they know this how?

Njall said...

I lived through the election in Washington State that I believe Dino Rossi actually won. They kept recounting until they got the result they wanted, which was also coincidentally the final allowed recount. So Chris Gregoire “won”.

The Democrats, I believe, are motivated to cheat in every election, and do, because they are on the side of all that is right, good, and true. How much more now that we have a literal Nazi in the White House who is just waiting for this election to crank up the machinery for the next Holocaust.

William said...

The people who report on mostly peaceful protests will report on mostly honest elections. There are more fraudulent ballots than questionable police shootings. Questionable police shootings are a sign of systemic racism. Fraudulent ballots,however, are anecdotal rather than systemic. If you contest this issue, you are guilty of voter suppression and that's all part of systemic racism. Skepticism on the reporting surrounding this issue is also symptomatic of systemic racism. So, for that matter, is the adoption of Haitian children. There is very little in American life, besides voting for Democrats, that cannot be demonstrated as contributing to systemic racism.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Democrats are liars. but please - don't even think for a second that a pack of liars would cheat.

iowan2 said...

There are more than 450 federal elections, and thousands of state and local elections

There has never been a federal election. Federalism is a real thing. Sometimes even leftist admit it's .

Amadeus 48 said...

Does vote fraud ever impact elections?

No, no, no, no, not really.

BUMBLE BEE said...

RGB will be voting by mail this year!

Joe Smith said...

Voter fraud should be a mandatory 20 years in federal prison, no parole.

Both sides yammer on about it being our most sacred duty, but nobody treats it like it really is.

If minorities are too stupid to get a free ID or get themselves to the polls, then they are too stupid to vote.

I would argue that you should at least pay more taxes than you receive from government handouts in order to vote...

Yancey Ward said...

I think the Democrats are realizing the trap they have fallen into, and are now trying to get their people to the polls instead, but maybe too late given all their COVID-19 hysteria. The Republicans are not going to let big ole piles of ballots to show up unexamined in detail like they did in Arizona and California in 2018, and tried in Florida. They will challenge every single mail-in-ballot with clearly inappropriate witnessing, signatures, and postmarks, and they will have a master list of all the dead on the voter rolls, too, for comparison- this is open public information, it is just that Democratic jurisdictions don't promptly remove such voters, but they can't keep Republicans out of the polling stations where ballots get counted.

Additionally, I think the Republicans are prepared to go toe to toe with the Democrats on the harvesting and fraud- beat them at the their own game.

Jamie said...

But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot

Oh, well, as long as it almost never results in felony voting fraud. It's reassuring to know that we'll have a mostly legal election.

MD Greene said...

Koot Katmandu said:

When they see how many votes they need to win and check the rolls for how many Ds did not vote they will look for ways to cast those votes after the fact. Why else would they demand mail in vote need no post mark?

This is how it has been done in city elections in the Northeast at least since the days of Tammany Hall. A city election in Paterson, NJ, was voided by a state judge just this spring.

This is how Lyndon Johnson got into the House of Representatives and, more egregiously, into the US Senate against the wish of Texas voters.

This kind of fraud undermines trust in election results, and trust is at a low point already in our seriously divided country.

If the person who tossed those service members' votes before they could be counted were sent to prison for a substantial period, that would be a good start. Why no investigation, or investigative reporting, to identify the perpetrator here?

Jupiter said...

"Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain!"

Michael K said...

Blogger Njall said...
I lived through the election in Washington State that I believe Dino Rossi actually won. They kept recounting until they got the result they wanted, which was also coincidentally the final allowed recount. So Chris Gregoire “won”.


At the time I wondered how Rossi and Coleman in MN allowed that to end that way. That may have been the model for Bush v Gore but it didn't work.

Michael K said...

Additionally, I think the Republicans are prepared to go toe to toe with the Democrats on the harvesting and fraud- beat them at the their own game.

I certainly hope so. Even Steve Bannon congratulated the Democrats on their organization in 2018.

D.D. Driver said...

""But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot, an act which would be a felony."

And they know this how?


Because this is America. The election process is open and transparent. If you want to go down and watch as poll workers open up ballots run them through the machines, you can go and watch. I have done it many times.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

"But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot, an act which would be a felony. And even when isolated instances like this happen, they don’t swing presidential elections."

Hey look, it's lying Rick Hasen, out doing his schtick.
George Bush won Florida in 2000 by 500 votes. 48.847% to 48.838%

That's by 1 vote in 10,000

And it "swung the presidential election."

Here's known facts:
1: When States try to clean up the voting rules, getting rid of inactive and dead voters, Democrats always object.
2: When States try to require voters to show photo ID before voting, Democrats object
3: Democrats are fighting this year to send out ballots to every single registered voter
4: Democrats are fighting this year to decrease teh verification requirements on returned ballots
5: When President Trump tried to set up a commission to actually look into vote fraud, to get all the information on every person who voted, so they could look for dead voters, for double voters, for non-US Citizen voters, Democrats fought and obstructed, and made sure the commission went nowhere
6: Democrats have repeatedly accused Trump, and Republicans in general, of being "Nazis". Of being "literally Hitler". Of being "a dictator.

If you look at all those facts, and think "gosh, it's totally ridiculous to think that the Democrats would try to engage in vote fraud in order to keep Hitler from winning re-election", you are either so stupid you can't walk and chew gum at the same time, or you are a lying left-wing hack

"There is also no question that some election administrators... will make errors in handling ballots."

I believe the accepted term is "mistakes were made".

"There are a few steps that election administrators and the media should take given that we are going to have an imperfect election and given that these imperfections may be cynically manipulated by political operatives who want to throw the election results into doubt."

1: The "political operatives who want to throw the election results into doubt" are the ones pushing for all the mail in balloting. The ones pushing the utterly discredited "Trump Russian Collusion" narrative

"The media need to report claims of misfeasance in elections with caution."
2: The Press need to cover up for our vote stealers when they screw up and get caught

"The days leading up to November’s election may be rocky. But competence, patience, transparency and perspective are the best antidote to attempts to manipulate small-scale election problems into a full blown crisis."
3: "Competence" by those "weak links"? It's nice to see that this lie is so weak that even Hasen can't come up with a good way to push it.

To quote a political leader: Get in their faces. Monitor everything every vote counter does, and do not let them get away with anything.

If someone shows up to vote, and it's recorded that they voted by mail when they didn't? Scream. report it on Facebook. report it on Twitter. Get it out so other voices can pick it up and amplify it, even after Facebook and Twitter censor it

When Facebook and Twitter censor reports? report that. Pile on. Scream loud and long that they are trying to steal the election, because that is exactly what they are doing.

Don't let them get away with it

J Melcher said...

"But that almost never translates into those ballots being returned by someone else as a voted ballot, an act which would be a felony."

I missed this before. So, it's perfectly legal for officials of the state and county to mail OUT ballots regardless of the validity of the registration records. The officials entrusted with powers to run the election, the officials under oath to certify and sanctify the democratic process, the officials who have all the training in law and administrative processes -- all the officials are exempt from any penalty or criticism in wildly issuing massive numbers of poorly controlled ballots OUT.

But let a voter or someone who thinks he might be a voter or someone "helping" a voter send an uncontrolled unjustified invalid ballot IN ? Ah, that's a felony... The common man can be prosecuted. Fined. Even sent to prison. A person might spend years in prison for sending an invalid ballot IN.

The officials who issued that ballot may wind up with a nasty story about them showing up on the nightly TV news for some fraction of the 90 second broadcast a week or so after the election.

gilbar said...

D.D. Driver said...
If you want to go down and watch as poll workers open up ballots run them through the machines, you can go and watch. I have done it many times.


really? and, while watching, YOU can TELL who the ballot was filled by?
You can See the signature? and you can TELL that the signature is not a forgery?
Color me impressed! You are LITERALLY, a super human!

gilbar said...

Crazty Jane said...
This is how Lyndon Johnson got into the House of Representatives and, more egregiously, into the US Senate against the wish of Texas voters

now now, be fair!
MANY people randomly vote in alphabetical order; after the polls closed: Happens All the time!
</sarc

Bruce Hayden said...

“ Why else would they demand mail in vote need no post mark?”

Here is another part of this. How did Bush v Gore end up in the US Supreme Court? How could they legally justify intruding into state election issues? Because the US Constitution guaranteed federal elections under rules enacted by the state legislatures. Not the judicial branch, or the executive branch, but the legislative branch. And the FL Supreme Court was changing the rules, after the fact. So we have state courts deciding, on a partisan basis, to waive parts of state election laws because of “COVID-19”. Ballots not received early enough to count? COVID-19. Ballots lacking valid signatures? COVID-19. Governor mandating mail-in voting? COVID-19! Etc. Theoretically, the federal courts could invalidate ALL of the special COVID-19 voting provisions enacted by Dem politicians and mandated by Dem judges.

Thus one big reason for the Dems to get their people to vote legitimately, in person - because their ballots are more likely to get counted by the federal courts. And one big additional reason that the Dems are apoplectic about Judge Barrett getting confirmed before the election - CJ Roberts is not a firm vote to follow Bush v Gore. ACB would be and would guarantee at least a 6-3 decision (my expectation is that if she is confirmed, Roberts won’t be able to play Hamlet any longer, so he can control writing the important decisions, but instead will forced into voting with the rest of the Republican appointed Justices). May pick up votes from Breyer and Kagan too. Sotomayor and, in the past Ginsberg, are/were the only sure votes against them.

If ACB is confirmed, and if there is the expected rampant cheating that we all expect from the Dems, to give the Harris/Biden ticket a chance of winning, I fully expect that those attempts at cheating will be turned back, again, by SCOTUS on grounds similar to those used by that Court 20 years ago.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Bruce Hayden said...
And one big additional reason that the Dems are apoplectic about Judge Barrett getting confirmed before the election - CJ Roberts is not a firm vote to follow Bush v Gore. ACB would be and would guarantee at least a 6-3 decision (my expectation is that if she is confirmed, Roberts won’t be able to play Hamlet any longer, so he can control writing the important decisions, but instead will forced into voting with the rest of the Republican appointed Justices).

Yes, this is precisely it.

Furthermore, so long as Roberts expects ACB to be confirmed, he is under great pressure to vote 5-3 to shut down any Dem cheating before ACB is confirmed.

Because, to the extent that he really does "care about the reputation of the Court" he needs the Court speaking with the same voice before and after the election, and he needs to not be seen doing a 180 when he's no longer the deciding vote.

The Chief Justice gets to decide who writes the decision, so long as he's in the majority. So I expect a whole bunch of 5 - 3 and 6-3 decisions written by Roberts slapping down "judges" who try to rewrite the rules. But I only expect this because RBG is dead,a nd ACB is going to take her place before the election

glacial erratic said...

Well, that puts my mind to rest! So much for misfeasance!

Now let's talk about malfeasance and nonfeasance.

lgv said...

Rarely, if ever, does my house get robbed when I leave and forget to lock the door. What happens when I announce to the world that my house in unlocked and there are no security cameras?

Bruce Hayden said...

The timing is so coincidental. Project Veritas just released video of rampant voter fraud in the Somali community in MN.

jg said...

Isolated incidences of one fraudulent vote never swing elections, so logically the thousands of fraudulent votes won't either, provided they're "isolated".