With the Senate’s passage of the Covid relief bill along Party lines, Wrongo is certain that given the chance, the GOP will do to Biden precisely what they did to Obama: Obstruct nearly everything in the hope that it will help them return to control of House and/or the Senate in 2022.
There may be agreement on an infrastructure bill, but if the filibuster remains in place, that will be the only other thing that Democrats achieve before the 2022 midterms.
Itâs important to remember that a family of four that makes $13.25/hour is living at the poverty level if they are working a 40-hour week. Few of those workers receive retirement, health benefits, or paid vacations.
Yet America is willing to provide many school-age children in this socio-economic segment three meals a day, often when school isnât in session. Itâs analogous to America failing to provide health care to the neediest, while letting the most critically ill into a local emergency room. The case for increasing the minimum wage is overwhelming.
Rome is burning. We should be willing to overpay for more fire extinguishers. That means end the filibuster. On to cartoons.
Opinions differ based on viewpoints:
Elephant plans to update Seuss:
People are starting to think we might get back to normal:
Florida Beach – photo by Wrongo. Most years, weâre in FL looking at the ocean this week. Thatâs another thing cancelled by Covid.
The House passed HR 1, the âFor the People Act,â an omnibus voting rights, and ethics and campaign finance bill. If passed by the Senate and signed by Biden, the legislation would set national standards for federal elections, require nonpartisan redistricting, and put the brakes on hundreds of bills introduced by Republican legislatures across the country to limit ballot access in the wake of Democrats gaining control of Congress and the White House.
Jonathan Last says that Senate Democrats now must make three calculations as they decide whether to take up the legislation:
Do they have the votes to pass it?
Do they have the votes to break the filibuster?
If the answers to (1) and (2) are yes, should they move forward?
Letâs assume for the sake of this discussion that the answers to (1) and (2) are yes. Then, of course they should move forward! Last observes that:
We have one party with a smallâbut clear, and durableâmajority.
We have another party that has given up on trying to create a majority and instead has retreated into attempts to use systemic leverageâof both geography and anti-democratic gerrymandering â to preserve power for their minority.
Last says the only counter to the Republicanâs efforts to game the system is to use the system to create more democracy â to lessen the points of leverage available to Republicans.
So, the Senate must pass HR 1. That expands voting. It moves the leverage away from politics and for the first time in America, towards the people. Last brings up a NY Magazine interview with David Shor, where he says:
âSince the maps in the House of Representatives are so biased against us, if we donât pass a redistricting reform, our chance of keeping the House is very low. And then the Senate is even more biased against us than the House. So, itâs also very important that we add as many states as we can.â
So, if Democrats can kill the filibuster and pass HR 1, a next step is to bring up statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Republicans will howl, but as Last says, if the Dems have learned anything in the last four years itâs that there are only two relevant questions when Congress acts:
Are you explicitly forbidden from doing something by the black letter of the law?
Do you have the votes to do it?
If the answer is No to the first and Yes to the second, then you can do it. That is exactly what Republicans did every time in the Trump era. Remember Merrick Garland, and Amy Coney Barrett? Remember that members of the Trump administration refused to testify in front of House committees?
Remember too that the Constitution allows Congress to add states by simple majority vote. If Democrats have the votes, then they can also do that. Republicans aren’t the only Party who can use the political leverage available in our system.
The difference would be that Republicans have used that leverage to empower electoral minorities, while the Democrats in this case, could use that leverage to empower electoral majorities.
Vote suppression is the Republicanâs default position. They have become truly authoritarian, despite continuing to give lip service to the Constitution and to democratic principles. January 6 taught us that the only election reform Republicans will unanimously accept is one that declares its candidates the winners regardless of the electionâs results.
To do any of this, the Senate Democrats need to be united, and that is the most important test for new Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) laid out the case for getting rid of the filibuster:
âWe have a raw exercise of political power going on where people are making it harder to vote and you just canât let that happen in a democracy because of some old rules in the Senate…â
Schumerâs task is to corral Democrats Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). Surely, they see the Republican Partyâs antidemocratic bad faith. The Republican Party is no longer republican.
As Wrongo has said before, Jan. 6 should have shattered any illusions about the intentions, not just of Trump and his dead enders, but about the Republican Partyâs allegiance to our Constitutional republic.
Democrats must act accordingly. And as soon as possible.
The course of action available to them wonât be an option in 2022 after the GOP passes all the voter suppression legislation that they now have pending.
El Matador State Park, Malibu CA â 2021 photo by stephencovar
Itâs commonly accepted knowledge that itâs hard to look away from a slow-motion train wreck. We should note that itâs even harder when you are riding on the train. And itâs harder still when some of the people riding along with you would be totally happy to see it wrecked.
Letâs start by revisiting CPAC and Trump. He attacked the Supreme Court for not overturning an American election, and his supporters cheered. We canât let ourselves forget how wrong that was, and if unchecked, its implications for the future.
Second, the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans has decided that Catholics may take the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines, but not the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine. They say the J&J shot is âmorally compromisedâ, since it was developed using cloned cells derived from fetuses aborted nearly a half a century ago.
âItâs worth noting that another Catholic diocese not far away, in Tyler, Texas, has rejected all three vaccines as having been âproduced immorallyâ….But….the Vatican itself is administering the Pfizer vaccine (with Pope Francis and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, among its recipients).â
The faithful in New Orleans and Tyler, TX must decide whether they must be more Catholic than the Pope. Anybody else wonder how America can get the pandemic behind us when religious leaders wonât follow science?
Third, as Bill Kristol notes at the Bulwark, our democracy is in crisis. For the first time in our history, we failed to have a peaceful transfer of power, and Republicans want to ensure that fewer people can vote next time around. Theyâre supporting many new voting restrictions at the state level.
The Brennan Center has identified 253 bills to restrict voting rights in 43 states that would impose measures to make voting harder. They include reducing early voting, limiting the use of mail-in ballots, eliminating drop boxes, and imposing new voter ID requirements.
This is crucial to our democracy, since Democrats only control 15 states, none of which is a swing state like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Republicans have compounded the Demâs problems through aggressive gerrymandering in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
Itâs difficult to understand how in a democracy, there is any discussion of restricting the right to vote. Unless we protect this right, weâre heading down a slippery slope. So to help avoid this slow-motion train wreck, Democrats need to get as many people registered as possible right now.
Finally, secession is on the map again, exactly where you might have expected it to be. Bright Line Watch, in a study released in February, showed that one-third of Republicans said they support secession. And it gets worse: Half of Republicans across the former Confederacy (plus Kentucky and Oklahoma) are now willing to form a newly independent country. Here is Bright Line Watchâs map of secessionist support by Trump approval ratings:
The Texas Republican Party recently supported a referendum on Texas seceding from the union. While secessionist rhetoric is couched in claims about fiscal responsibility and burdensome federal regulations, it doesnât take much to see ethno-nationalism lurking behind it.
Secession in Texas is a combination of nativism, xenophobia, and white grievance. Texas secession Facebook pages are saturated with fantasies of forcing Democrats to leave the state and seizing their property. Just like the Confederates of the 1860s, this modern secessionist push is rooted in large part in maintaining white supremacy and authoritarian governance.
The increasing marriage of secessionist chatter and GOP ideology should be cause for concern since it is widespread throughout the heartland of America. Of course, state-level secession is illegal in the US. Even Justice Scalia said:
âIf there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.â
America has argued about secession since the days of John C. Calhoun, who worked to protect the southâs commitment to slavery from the 1820s until his death in 1850. Trumpâs efforts to overturn an election in which Black voters did so much to defeat him in the south, recalls Calhounâs efforts to deny them citizenship and the franchise almost two centuries ago.
Weâre living in a moment when we will see whether American democracy survives these attacks on it by Republicans.
The ability to vote is central to our Democracy. It is at the core of our belief system and without it, all else is meaningless.
The impeachment trial is behind us, but the Big Lie of the 2020 election, that there was massive voting fraud, remains with us. That Lie is propelling Republicans in many states to try to minimize, or end entirely, mail-in voting.
Traditional same day, in-person voting has dropped from more than 90% of ballots cast in the 1990s to 60% in 2016, to just 28% in 2020. Early in-person and vote-by-mail now accounts for 71% of total voting.
Overall, despite the Big Lie, early and by mail voting was a remarkable success. It was less prone to errors than expected, and had almost zero documented fraud. As expected, 538 reports that absentee votes broke blue, Election Day votes, red. They only have data for 15 of the 50 states, but it is consistent:
âBiden won the absentee vote in 14 out of the 15 states (all but Texas), and Trump won the Election Day vote in 14 out of the 15 as well (all but Connecticut).â
Trump used this historic change in voting patterns to claim that Democrats used mail ballots to steal the election. Now, in a backlash to the historic trends in voter turnout, Republicans are again looking to make it more difficult to vote.
A new report by the Brennan Center for Justice shows that legislators in 33 states have introduced 165 bills to restrict voting rights. The proposals primarily seek to: a) limit mail voting access; b) impose stricter voter ID requirements; c) slash voter registration opportunities; and d) enable more aggressive voter roll purges.
Many of these bills parrot the same lies Trump used to claim the election was stolen. And theyâre sponsored by the same state officials who backed Trump’s efforts to reverse the results of the election.
Remember how narrow the Biden win was: he won three states by a combined margin of 43,560 votes: Arizona (10,457 votes), Georgia (12,636 votes), and Wisconsin (20,467 votes). These three states have 37 electoral votes, and had Trump won all three, the Electoral College would have been tied, 269 to 269. Then the House would have determined the winner, with each state delegation getting one vote. Since the Republicans hold a majority of state delegations, Trump would have won a second term.
âRepublicans came, at most, 43,000 votes from winning each of the three levers of power.â
Just 32,000 votes would have flipped control of the House to Republicans, while 14,000 votes would have kept control of the Senate in Republican hands. The Republicans have a built-in structural advantage in all three political levers of power: In the House it’s gerrymandering; in the Senate it’s the population imbalance favoring rural states; and in the White House, it’s the Electoral College.
So, beating back voting restrictions has to be a top priority.
Republicans have been restricting voting for years. We were lucky that state and local election officials acted in the best interests of the people and the country. That may not happen next time, so these anti-democratic pieces of legislation must be highlighted publicly and fought tooth-and-nail.
Think for a minute about last weekâs impeachment trial: 34 GOP senators representing just 14.5% of the US population can block the conviction of an impeached president. Said another way, the 57 senators who voted to convict Trump represent 76.7 million more Americans than the 43 senators who voted to acquit him.
We should also remember that every state sets its own rules when it comes to voting and counting the votes. And weâll soon see the impact of Republican gerrymandering, once the 2020 census is complete. The long-term solution is a Constitutional amendment that finally establishes that all citizens have the right to vote, and describes the approved methods of voting.
Time to wake up America! Voting reform must be a top priority just behind beating the Coronavirus and getting kids back in school. To help you wake up, listen to John Fogerty perform his newest, “Weeping In The Promised Land“, released this January:
Partial Lyrics:
Forked-tongued pharaoh, behold he comes to speak
Weeping in the Promised Land
Hissing and spewing, it’s power that he seeks
Weeping in the Promised Land
With dread in their eyes, all the nurses are crying
So much sorrow, so much dying
Pharaoh keep a-preaching but he never had a plan
Weeping in the Promised Land
Weeping in the Promised Land
This is another very powerful video, a must-watch.
Third Selma March, 1965 â photo by Charles Fentress Jr  shows Frank Calhoun, 16, of Meridian, MS, his face smeared with white suntan lotion and the word “VOTE” written on his forehead.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead marchers on March 21 to March 25 from Selma, Alabama to the state capital in Montgomery. It was their third attempt after a brutal crackdown by police on their first try on March 7, that caused the injuries that resulted in calling the first march “Bloody Sunday.”
On Aug. 6, President Lyndon Johnson signed the national Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the VRA, with its decision in Shelby County vs. Holder.
Since Martin Luther King Jr delivered his iconic “I have a dream” speech in August 1963, the number of Black Americans elected to the US Congress has dramatically increased. But it took until 2019, more than 54 years later, for the share of Black members serving in the House of Representatives to equal the percentage of Black Americans in the US population (12%).
To date, only seven states have sent a Black representative to the US Senate, and many states have never elected a Black representative to either House of Congress.
Here’s a look at Black representation in every US Congress since 1963:
A few words on the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Since the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013, 1,688 polling places have been shuttered in states previously bound by the Act’s preclearance requirement. Texas officials closed 750 polling places. Arizona and Georgia were almost as bad. Unsurprisingly, these closures were mostly in communities of color.
In December 2019, the House passed HR 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, now named the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, to restore the safeguards of the original VRA. It’s been collecting dust on Mitch McConnell’s desk ever since. He and his GOP colleagues continue to sit idly by as Republican state officials suppress the vote with no accountability.
If your vote didn’t count, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to suppress it. There’s no telling what change we’ll be able to make once we win the battle for voting rights.
So, time to wake up America! Change has to come. The fight didnât start with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and it didnât end with John Lewis. The fight continues. To help you wake up, listen again to Sam Cookeâs âA Change Gonna Comeâ. It was released as a single in December 1964.
Cooke was inspired by hearing Bob Dylanâs âBlowinâ in the Windâ, and was also moved by Dr. Kingâs August 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. But it was Cookeâs experience in October 1963, when he and his entourage were turned away from a whites-only Holiday Inn in Shreveport, Louisiana, despite having reservations â that directly triggered him to write “A Change is Gonna Come.”
“Change” was released as a single two weeks after Cooke’s murder at age 33Â on Dec. 11, 1964. It was quickly embraced by civil rights activists.
Still relevant, in so many ways, itâs possible to see it as a comprehensive review of the Trump administration. The linked video is as powerful to watch as the lyrics to Cookeâs song are to hear:
(There will not be a column on Election Day or Wednesday unless something huge happens. Normal posting will resume on Thursday.)
The Daily Escape:
BREAKING! Investigation by the Wrongologist confirms Trumpâs claims about voter fraud!
24 hours to go, fingers crossed. The next few days are going to have plenty of emotional ups and downs.
Even if the result is a Biden victory, waiting for it is going to be nearly unbearable. The alternative outcome? A disaster. Votersâ opinions always tighten in the last few days, so there isnât a ton of reassurance to take from the last minute polls.
Wrongo wrote 25 posts in October, containing about 18,000 words, mostly about national politics. It seems like there shouldnât be much more to say, but here goes.
With early voting nearly over, more than 91Â million Americans have already cast their ballots. If the current rate holds, more than 100Â million ballots will have been cast before Tuesday. That massive early turnout will equal about 72% of the 139Â million votes cast in 2016, and for the first time in history, a majority of ballots will have been cast before Election Day.
Some slightly encouraging news. A new NYT/Sienna poll (November 1) shows Biden leading in several battleground states:
In Pennsylvania, Siena College says that only about 33% have voted early. Those whoâve already voted favor Biden 79%-16%. But among the two-thirds yet to vote, Trump has a 57%-34% lead. The math says that if those numbers hold, Biden will get 48.4% to Trumpâs 42.9% of the vote, with ± 7% undecided. Trump would have to take all of the PA undecideds to come out on top, so Biden seems to have the advantage.
Again, this sounds good, but Republicans arenât going to lay down in their efforts to steal the election.
For one piece of proof, the WaPo says that it reviewed an email in which Trump’s camp sought ballot security information from Cumberland County in Pennsylvania: They wanted the names of people who transport the ballots after the polls close, the names of people who have access to the ballots afterward, and precise information about where ballots are stored, including room numbers.
We know this because of an alarmed commissioner. You can bet this is going on across the US, and Trump is actively encouraging it. Hereâs a 3am tweet:
âIf Sleepy Joe Biden is actually elected President, the 4 Justices (plus1) that helped make such a ridiculous win possible would be relegated to sitting on not only a heavily PACKED COURT, but probably a REVOLVING COURT as well. At least the many new Justices will be Radical Left!
Trump is making it clear not only that he is planning to contest the results of the election all the way to the Supreme Court, but that he fully expects the Court to hand him the win.
Think about this: Two years after Obama won in 2008, helped by an unprecedented small donor campaign, John Roberts writes the majority opinion in Citizens United which allows GOP donors to tip the scales going forward.
A year after Obama won in 2012 with record minority turnout, John Roberts wrote the majority opinion striking down key parts of the Voting Rights Act which immediately led GOP-run states to enact barriers to minority voting.
And now SCOTUS, with three Justices (including Roberts) that were part of the Republican team in 2000 in Florida that helped GW Bush win at the Supreme Court, is poised to disqualify millions of legitimate votes to keep the GOP in power.
âWe kept counting on others to save us â our institutions, our political leaders, our courts â but help never arrived…And as we waited for someone, anyone, to do the right thing, we moved closer to the end….Now all we have left is the people. The voters, for all their failings, may prove more trustworthy than their supposed guardians. They may deliver us by delivering an irrefutable landslide to Biden. Or, failing that, by going out into the streets in an American version of âpeople powerâ to foil the plot against their democracy.â
Will the system work? That we even have to ask the question is the answer.
It may come down to mass demonstrations, just like we’ve seen in dictatorships. Sometimes the guns are aimed at the people; sometimes they’re aimed at the despot.
Wake up America, it comes down to us. At the ballot box, or if necessary, in the streets. To help you wake up, listen to âI Wanna Be Sedatedâ from the Ramoneâs 1978 album âRoad to Ruinâ. Being sedated for the next few days doesn’t sound so bad:
Has anyone else noticed that since his impeachment, Trump has lost a step? He no longer speaks about fighting the system, or his accomplishments. Itâs all about how heâs been ganged up on, and mistreated. Maybe impeaching him wasnât a complete failure after all.
Weâll see in two days if the blame game was a winning strategy:
It may be hopeful news or maybe just a deep fake, but several outlets are reporting that Trump has canceled his election night party. The party was to be held at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, but instead, heâll party at the White House.
But hereâs a good reason to be nervous. Forbes reports that the Post Office is failing to deliver on time in key places:
âBattleground states in the presidential election are suffering from some of the worst ballot delivery delays in the country….and with state laws or court rulings requiring mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, several states face a particularly high risk of voters having their ballots arrive too late to count, potentially impacting close races.â
Every Vote should be counted! Shouldnât the Supreme Court support that?
Full color at Smugglers Notch, Jeffersonville, VT â October, 2020 photo by Kyle Seymour Photography
Four days to go. Lots of people want to check out, to stop thinking about the election or about the Coronavirus. People are fatigued by the partisanship, by the tsunami of misinformation on social media, and the incessant and repetitive commercials.
Wrongo was texted nearly 20 times yesterday by various candidates begging for money. His email is flooded with all caps scare messages from the Parties or from specific candidates. Unsubscribing is fruitless, they will worry about that next month, if ever.
Who can blame people for wanting it to be over? The fact is, this whole Covid-45 presidency has been stressful, with little or no downtime for a break.
Hereâs some frightening information: The NYT reports that the stress of presidential elections may increase the incidence of heart attacks and strokes: Scientists tracked hospitalizations for acute cardiovascular disease in the weeks before and after the 2016 presidential election, among about three million adults who were enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente Southern California health care system:
âThe study, in PNAS, found that hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease in the two days following the election were 61% higher than in the same two days of the preceding week. The rate of heart attack increased by 67% and of stroke by 59% in the two days following the election. The results were similar regardless of the age, race or sex of the patients.â
Wow, we knew that Trump has been bad for the health of all Americans. But more heart attacks and strokes just because America holds an election?
So try and relax over the next few days. Protect yourself: Maybe go out to dinner on Election Night. Get a massage. Turn off notifications on your mobile phone, and donât turn on your TV before 9pm.
There were two election cases decided by the Supreme Court on Wednesday. One was in North Carolina. From the AP:
That led to this tweet from Adam Sewer:
The other case was in Pennsylvania, where the Court refused a plea from Republicans that it decide before Election Day whether election officials can continue receiving absentee ballots for three days after Nov. 3. While the PA order was unsigned, it was apparently unanimous, though three justices (Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch) said the court might return to it after Election Day.
In the North Carolina case, the same three Justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, said they would have granted requests from Republican lawmakers and the Trump campaign to block lower court rulings allowing the longer deadline.
The two cases involved similar issues. In Pennsylvania, the question was whether the stateâs Supreme Court could override voting rules set by the state legislature. In North Carolina, the question was whether a state election board had the power to alter voting rules set by the legislature.
On Wednesday, Justice Alito said he thought that the election would be âconducted under a cloudâ:
âI reluctantly conclude that there is simply not enough time at this late date to decide the question before the election….Although the court denies the motion to expedite…[the petition] remains before us, and if it is granted, the case can then be decided under a shortened schedule.â
This is the Supreme Court saying that the election is proceeding under a cloud, and that they reserve the right to revisit their opinion!
They just gave Trump a green light to protest the election.
We should never normalize how bizarre it is that we are all having to expend an inordinate amount of energy making sure that our votes get counted. Even the Supreme Court isnât clearly on the correct side of making certain that all votes count. That shouldnât be normal.
Americaâs in the midst of changing how we vote, from largely in-person on Election Day, to largely In advance, either by mail or through in-person early voting. States and counties need to adapt to this revolutionary change, and that will take time to get it right.
We should designate Election Day as a National Holiday.
America actually holds 50 state elections for president, not a national election. We need to change state and local laws to allow for counting the early voting before Election Day. All states should count all ballots so long as they are postmarked on Election Day. After all, the IRS accepts your tax return without penalty based on the postmark, not when it is opened.
Amy Coney Barrett is now a Supreme Court Associate Justice.
It is the first time in 151 years (since Edwin Stanton in 1869) that a justice was confirmed by the Senate without the support of a single member of the minority party. Even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA), who backed Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 (and Barrett for her circuit court seat three years ago), didnât support her this time.
As Marsha Coyle noted on PBS, the Supreme Court went 11 years until 2005 without a change in Justices. In the next four years, the Court saw seven new Justices. Now weâve seen three more in just four more years.
Justices are staying on the Court longer. In the 19th Century, the average tenure of a Justice was less than 10 years, due mainly to shorter life expectancy. Now that itâs becoming increasingly common for them to serve into their 80s, Justices are serving for 25 years, or more.
All of this is background to what weâll have to get used to from Amy Barrett in the next few decades, including this quasi-campaign event:
There were understandably a few negative reactions:
Whatever happens going forward, please, please letâs not call her âACBâ as if she is some great legal mind akin to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett is to RBG what Clarence Thomas is to Thurgood Marshall; a facsimile of a Supreme Court Justice.
The NYT has a series of articles on How to Fix the Supreme Court that are worth your time. In one article, Emily Bazelon says this:
â….Republican dominance over the court is itself counter-majoritarian. Including Amy Barrett, the Party has picked six of the last 10 justices although it has lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections…â
The Republican Party doesnât represent the majority of Americans. So it tries to achieve its goals by other means, even if that means perverting the intent of our Constitutional system.
We know that clear majorities of Americans favor reproductive rights, limiting political donations, stricter gun control and reversing climate change. But since the GOP controls the courts, it hopes to prevent these viewpoints from ever becoming law.
Movement conservatives are using a theory of judicial construction (Originalism) that didnât exist until about 40 years ago. And theyâre using it to overturn long-standing precedents, while also inventing novel constructions not found in the Constitution when it suits them (see Shelby County vs. Holder).
Among the options addressed in the Timesâ article are: (i) Dividing the work of the Supreme Court into two parts, Constitutional issues and all others that concern interpretation of existing laws and statues. This would establish a Constitutional Court, an idea that several other countries have instituted (among them, France, Germany, and South Africa); (ii) Term limits for Supreme Court Justices; (iii) Adding more Justices to the Supreme Court; and (iv) Expanding the lower Federal Courts.
The Framers rejected the idea of a judicial retirement age. It was envisioned that a lawyer would need a lifetime of experience to become fully versed in the precedents that would govern their decisions as a Supreme Court Justice. But now, we have Amy Barrett serving as a Justice at age 48. The youngest Supreme Court judge ever was Republican Joseph Story, who was 32 when James Madison appointed him.
OTOH, term limits almost certainly require a Constitutional Amendment, since it would create an involuntary retirement from the Court.
Biden has said he will convene a commission to study Supreme Court reform. That kicks the can down the road. This is probably a good idea for now, until we see the decisions made by the current conservative majority in a few of the signature cases coming up this term. There is now a 6-3 MODERATE conservative majority on the Court, and depressingly, a 5-4 REACTIONARY majority on the Court.
For now, all we can do to change the Court is vote out of power those Republicans who denied Obama an appointment, only to cram three Justices through on Trumpâs watch. We start by flipping the Senate in November.
Republicans are doing everything they can to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in the courts. The good news is that stopping them is easy: VOTE.
May the confirmation of Barrett be the last thing that the national Republican Party ever accomplishes.
âThe specific issue in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) cases concerns two Arizona laws that require certain ballots to be discarded. One law requires voting officials to discard in their entirety ballots cast by voters who vote in the wrong precinct (rather than simply not counting votes for local candidates that the voter should not have been able to vote for).
The other law prohibits âballot collectionâ (or âballot harvestingâ) where a voter gives their absentee ballot to a third party, who delivers that ballot to the election office. (Arizona is one of many states that impose at least some restrictions on ballot collection.)â
These cases are being brought under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, (VRA) signed by LBJ, which prohibited racist voting laws that were prevalent at the time. In 2013, the Supreme Court in Shelby County vs. Holder effectively deactivated the Actâs preclearance regime that required states with a history of racist voting practices to âpreclearâ new election rules with officials at the DOJ.
And the Courtâs decision in Abbott v. Perez (2018) held that lawmakers enjoy a strong presumption of racial innocence so that it is now extremely difficult to prove that lawmakers may have acted with racist intent (for example, in gerrymandering a district) except in the most egregious cases.
These two Arizona DNC cases involve a different element of the VRA, the so-called âresults testâ that prohibits many election laws that disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.
Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear these cases, the Courtâs Republican-appointed majority could potentially dismantle the results test. It might water down that test to such a degree that it no longer provides a meaningful check on racism in elections.
â…uncontested evidence in the district court established that minority voters in Arizona cast [out of precinct] ballots at twice the rate of white voters.â
Sound racist to you? Of course!
One reason that people in Arizona may vote in the wrong location is that some Maricopa County voters, for example, must travel 15 minutes by car to vote in their assigned polling location, having passed four other polling places along the way.
In addition, many Arizona voters of color lack easy access to the mail and are unable to easily travel on their own to cast a ballot. As the Arizona appeals court explained:
â…in urban areas of heavily Hispanic counties, many apartment buildings lack outgoing mail services,â
And only 18% of Native American registered voters in Arizona have home mail service. The appeals court also said that Black, Native, and Hispanic voters are:
â…significantly less likely than non-minorities to own a vehicle and more likely to have inflexible work schedules.â
Thus, their ability to vote might depend on being able to give their ballot to a friend or a canvasser who will take that ballot to the polls for them. In any event, a majority of the appeals court judges who considered Arizonaâs two laws decided that they violated the Voting Rights Act.
So, now it is appealed to the Supreme Court. More from Vox:
âAs a young lawyer working in the Reagan administration, Chief Justice John Roberts unsuccessfully fought to convince President Reagan to veto the law establishing this results test; some of his memos from that era even suggest that the results test is unconstitutional. And Roberts is, if anything, the most moderate member of the Supreme Courtâs Republican majority.â
This case will be decided by the Court without Amy Coney Barrett. That means it will take at least two conservative justices to side with the three remaining liberal justices, a tall order in these times. Of course, a four-to-four decision would let the appeals court decision stand.
Time to wake up America! Nothing we can do now will change the decision on these cases. That chance was lost in 2016. And the rights of voters of color to cast their ballots is in greater peril now with Ginsburg off the bench.
What we can do today and most importantly on November 3, is to stop the right wing in its tracks.
There can be no further gutting of voting rights in the future.
