WITH NO ASSHOLES BARRED from pro- persecuting Donald Trump, it takes time and attention to keep up with it all, but here’s a digest for the week on the broader topic of election integrity. First, Trump got a victory of sorts from the U.S. Supreme Court when on Monday, it denied a writ of certiorari from anti-Trump lawfare activist, John Castro, who has racked up cases in multiple states to get the 45th president off state ballots to be the 47th.
The Court relied on the good old standby, standing, in this case out of Arizona. And this happens to be a very good example of where it was, indeed, lacking, especially given the Court correctly believed Castro’s candidacy was a mere pretext to sue. The Court effectively affirmed U.S. District Court Judge Douglas L. Rayes’ refusal to hear Castro’s case in December. Not a surprise, but still welcomed.
Maine was one of those states that flirted with the notion of denying Trump ballot access there, but the Dems in the Pine Tree State haven’t ruled out throwing rocks at the 45th President. They have threatened to convert the state’s electoral votes to ‘winner-take-all’ if Nebraska goes through with a plan believed to benefit Trump. Specifically, Nebraska’s G.O.P. is seeking to amend its system to prevent Biden from obtaining an electoral college vote by winning the state’s Omaha-district, as occurred in 2020.
In essence, Maine is attempting to ‘cancel’ a Trump advantage in blue-state Nebraska by ensuring an equal and opposite Democrat advantage for Biden in red-state Maine. It’s just talk at this point, and may not happen, given a special session would have to be called in Nebraska’s legislature and pass a Democrat-led filibuster. Recall Maine and Nebraska abandoned winner-take-all in the electoral college in favor of vote-splitting-by-district since 1972 and 1992, respectively, being the only two states to have done so. Maine claims it doesn’t want Nebraska ‘gaming the system,’ but hypocritically has no qualms about doing so itself. Fortunately, Maine courts reined in Dem activists when they tried to get Trump off the ballot earlier this year.
Election integrity also took a hit on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected G.O.P. Senate candidate Kari Lake and former Arizona Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem’s lawsuit concerning voting machines being wrongly certified due to their optical scanners for use there. Again, the high court simply affirmed a lower court and appellate court rejection of the lawsuit from 2022 based on standing. Lake’s attorney issued a statement, here.
The Supreme Court also issued a denial of cert. on Monday involving voters in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. South Carolina, and Tennessee where older voters can obtain obtain absentee ballots for any reason at all, but younger voters cannot. Challengers maintained this violated the 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971 to lower the voting age to 18, barring age-based discrimination.
Absentee ballots are one thing, but mail-in ballots, another, and they will be a subject of intense debate in the upcoming election. A three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently ruled 2-1 in a mail-in ballot case out of Pennsylvania, overturning a lower court in favor of the Republican National Committee over the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sec. (a)(2)(B), regarding signature verification and dating on ballots. (Hopefully the R.N.C. will be a force to reckon with going forward after the recent appointments of Michael Whatley and Lara Trump as co-chairs.) An R.N.C. statement was issued, here. There are supposedly 81 ‘voter integrity’ legal actions launched by the R.N.C. in the current election cycle.
The R.N.C. was targeted by the Biden Justice Department recently after unveiling a program to monitor the polls for fraud. R.N.C. Senior Counsel for Election Integrity Christina Bobb was indicted for an alleged scheme to use allegedly false claims to challenge Arizona’s alleged results in the 2020 presidential election. Bear in mind the timing of the charges, which suggests a clear intent to intimidate and chill any dissent in election matters going into November. Note Bobb is presumed to be not guilty until she either pleads guilty or her case is tried and she is found guilty.
Election interference by Dems continues with the weaponization of government and multiplicity of agencies. Among the latest are attempts to ‘de-bank’ MAGA Republicans, including (again) former Trump attorney John Eastman, who held accounts with Bank of America and USAA that were unceremoniously closed without notice by utilizing apparently very broad and vague Depositary Agreements that authorized the banks’ “right to no longer do banking business” with customers for any reason(s) or no reason(s) at all. Along with the use of lawfare, this is a Dem weapon of first choice to intimidate, harass, and chill the speech and actions of Republicans perceived to pose a credible threat to them.
sua sponte 