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Texas v. Pennsylvania (view source)
Revision as of 00:17, February 10, 2021
, 00:17, February 10, 2021Added to page
At this point, the suit turns to the so-called "Ryan Report" issued by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in November 2020, which found that 118,426 mail-in ballots had postmark dates which could not be credited based on their dates of receipt by election officials. 58,221 of those ballots were returned ''before'' the listed date on which they were mailed, and 51,200 were returned ''on'' their mailed date, while most of the remainder had no mailed date at all. It further notes a previous ruling from Justice Alito that ballots with irregularities had to be separated, a ruling that the state of Pennsylvania promptly ignored. The reasoning, it suggests, seems to have been that once the ballots were combined, the Supreme Court wouldn't dare to throw all of them out, since many would have been cast in a legitimate manner.
At this point, the suit turns to the so-called "Ryan Report" issued by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in November 2020, which found that 118,426 mail-in ballots had postmark dates which could not be credited based on their dates of receipt by election officials. 58,221 of those ballots were returned ''before'' the listed date on which they were mailed, and 51,200 were returned ''on'' their mailed date, while most of the remainder had no mailed date at all. It further notes a previous ruling from Justice Alito that ballots with irregularities had to be separated, a ruling that the state of Pennsylvania promptly ignored. The reasoning, it suggests, seems to have been that once the ballots were combined, the Supreme Court wouldn't dare to throw all of them out, since many would have been cast in a legitimate manner.
The case concludes that all of these violations must have been committed with the express purpose of giving an advantage to the Biden presidential campaign: not only are Boockvar and most of the other participants in the "friendly lawsuits" Democrats, but Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in which poll watchers were blocked from observing the counting of votes, are the major Democratic strongholds in the state, and 70% of requests for mail-in ballots were from registered Democrats. Regardless of intent, though, a variety of established laws on state elections were demonstrably violated, and, constitutionally speaking, the results of the election cannot be certified by the Electoral College or by Congress.
The case concludes that all of these violations must have been committed with the express purpose of giving an advantage to the Biden presidential campaign: not only are Boockvar and most of the other participants in the "friendly lawsuits" Democrats, but Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in which poll watchers were blocked from observing the counting of votes, are the major Democratic strongholds in the state, and 70% of requests for mail-in ballots were from registered Democrats. Regardless of intent, though, a variety of established laws on state elections were demonstrably violated, and, constitutionally speaking, the results of the election cannot be certified by the Electoral College or by Congress.
===Georgia===
As far as the breaking of electoral laws in Georgia is concerned, the suit especially singles out Governor [[Brian Kemp]] and Secretary of State [[Brad Raffensperger]] (both [[Republicans]]), for having unilaterally, and without legislative approval, abandoned the established method of signature verification for absentee ballots. As in Pennsylvania, state law stipulates that absentee ballots cannot be opened prior to the opening of the polls on the morning of Election Day; nonetheless, Raffensperger and the state election board adopted a rule to begin opening and processing such ballots approximately three weeks before that point.
Moreover, and again much like how events unfolded in Pennsylvania, the Secretary of State and Georgia Democrats used a "friendly lawsuit" to evade a statute that absentee voters who want to "cure" their ballots can do so (up until three days after Election Day), provided a) the ballot has been rejected on account of a defective signature or some other error, and b) a clerk on the election board then contacts the voter in writing to come and correct it. The lawsuit Raffensperger and Georgia Democrats used to violate this, since known as "The Settlement," ended in a ruling that a ballot with a defective signature could only be rejected if two out of three registrars agreed it was defective (and all three must then write their names on the ballot and explain their reasoning). The ruling also required that notice of the rejection be provided by telephone, if possible. Moreover, election officials were encouraged to provide registrars with guidance and training materials affiliated with the Georgia Democratic Party.
"The Settlement" thus made it nearly impossible to challenge ballots with a defective signature. The case observed that the rejection rate of absentee ballots was only 0.37% in the election, compared to 6.42% in the 2016 presidential election (prior to the adoption of these new rules). Since absentee ballots favored Biden by a nearly two-to-one margin, it continued, there is no reason to doubt that "The Settlement" was arrived at for the express purpose of favoring him in the election; indeed, simply normalizing the rejection rate would be far more than enough to flip the state to Trump. As in Pennsylvania, however, the constitutional issue in Georgia wasn't the number of ballots affected, or which candidate they favored, but the fact that state law was broken to count them.
==References==
==References==