Even before President Joe Biden’s long-speculated withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, allies of former President Donald Trump floated the possibility of suing to block Democrats from having anyone other than Biden on the ballot in November.
But election administration and legal experts said the timing of Biden’s exit on Sunday makes it unlikely that any Republican ballot access challenges will succeed, with some calling the idea “ridiculous” and “frivolous.” Democrats are on safe legal ground as they identify a new standard-bearer, they say, because the party hasn’t officially chosen its nominee. That typically occurs with a vote of delegates at the party’s convention.
“It’s ridiculous for people to talk about ‘replacing Biden.’ He hasn’t been nominated yet,” said Richard Winger, a leading expert on state ballot access laws and the longtime editor of the “Ballot Access News” newsletter.
They absolutely have no legal basis, my only worry is that they have activists in SCOTUS which showed us multiple times that they don’t care what the Constitution says.
Exactly.
It used to be the case that sane people with a modicum of understanding of our government/legal system, or even the ability to do a bit of research, they could just laugh this off.
But uh, nope, now we live in corrupt/activist Supreme Court era, which throws out decades of precedent and functionally invents new laws as it pleases.
What I love about Clarence Thomas is he is giving us the road map to oppressive systems we have to take down. He has observed the unspoken rules and has codified them into law with his rulings. When Clarence gets exorbitant gifts for his influence it’s not because he’s greedy, we’ll it is, but it’s also him saying, “these are the rules, I get rewarded because I have the seat of power.”
Clarence is not a secret freedom fighter but he might as well be because he is shining a light and exposing the ugliness that is our judicial system.
Historically speaking, we Americans usually ignore what the SCOTUS says. Virginia was practically segregated into the early 1970s, for example, well over a decade after Brown v Board of Education.
That’s the hilarious part of the SCOTUS. They kind of don’t matter.
The response to an unjust SCOTUS is to ignore them. Like what are they actually gonna do about it?
Step 1 of the plan is to at least make people aware of the plan.
There’s more options available than expanding the court or whatever. Ultimately, the reigns of power largely rest in Congress and the President. Supreme Court is the moral center, they’re only effective if people believe their judgements to be moral and just. Otherwise, their statements are just fancy words on a piece of obscure paper.
Supreme Court has no ability to write laws or enforce them.
GOP: but it was our only strategy!
Threatening to sue over spurious, trumped up claims has been a Trump strategy for half a century now.
They already made it public that they will do everything to invalidate democrat votes and that they won’t accept any outcome that isn’t a Trump win.
It’s going to be Jan 2021 but worse again.
Friendly reminder to check your voter registration. Many states are un-registering voters for dumb reasons.
Why is this even a thing in the USA? In Belgium, everyone over the age of 18 just gets a letter in the mail. Making people go for tedious registration and what not sounds very undemocratic to me.
That’s because it is! Just one of the thousands of many little ways the American Republicans have made life worse for everyone, including their own. Gerrymandering and tampering with voter registration are historically Republican strategies that serve no purpose other than voter disenfranchisement. They can’t win a popular vote and they know it, so their best strategy is to prevent people from voting in the first place. Hence their history of arcane voter registration rules, disgustingly absurd gerrymandered districts, removal or last-minute changing of acceptable voting locations in Democratic areas, voter intimidation, even active voter endangerment via refusal of water bottles during summer heat - not as in they wouldn’t give you water at the voting lcoation - no, you aren’t allowed to have water, even if you brought your own, even if someone showed up and tried to donate water to you. They took it right out of our hands. Meanwhile we were standing in a line in a parking lot with no shade in 96F weather for multiple hours because local republican leadership also shut down all other democratic voting locations within an hour’s drive.
It is disgustingly undemocratic, dangerous, abusive and frankly it’s embarrassing. These are not politicians, these are spoiled little children stamping their feat and screaming “no, I get to be king, and you have to go home!” They actively will not associate with the word “democracy” anymore because it’s too close to accidentally being called a Democrat.
If you’ve noticed Americans being a little more pissy than usual recently in the last several years, it’s largely because people are starting to open their eyes to this truth. It’s nothing new, but it is starting to get noticed. Trump flipped over a big ol’ rock and suddenly everyone saw all the worms and slugs squirming underneath.
On the surface, it’s not bad. If, for example, you move from one state to another, your previous state may not know you don’t live there anymore. So if they see you haven’t voted in that state for a while, they’ll assume you don’t live there and remove your name from their registration.
The problem is, as usual, how it gives conservatives in the US cover to remove legitimate voters. If you haven’t moved but also haven’t voted for the last several election cycles, you might get removed even if you intend to vote in this election. And you can see how that’s a short jump to “Oh no, we accidentally removed a whole bunch of people who were going to vote against us and darn it, wouldn’t you know there’s no way to fix this in time!”
Why is this even a thing in the USA?
Belgium has a population of only 11.7 Million, a population density of 387 per square kilometer, and a whopping 98.8 percent of the population is Urban.
We have 30 times your population, 1/10th of your population density, and 20% less of our population is Urban.
The United States has 28 Million people, more than twice your entire population, that MOVES every year. Over a million people immigrate into the United States every year, meaning we could literally populate your entire nation in just a decade.
All of that means you cannot simply “send everyone a letter”.
It’s like the old saw “Everything works fine in a small network.” So no offense but relatively speaking Belgium is a tiny network compared to what we’ve got going on in the United States.
Thankfully I’m in the clear where I live. Got some mail in ballets for a different election for everyone in my apartment. Just hoping that nobody tries to do like what was done last time and have republican mail people dump the mail in votes somewhere random. Luckily it wasn’t anywhere near my neck of the woods, but I’m always worried it’ll happen.
You can bet the National Guard would be deployed if a similar coup attempt is planned this time around.
I would have bet on a more drastic response to a mob attacking an official building in the first place. But that didn’t happen either.
That’s for sure. Every one of those fuckers should have gone directly to jail that night. If that had been a George Floyd protest they would have just opened fire.
It’s stupid enough that Ohio demands that the nominee be on the ballot before the convention and even they give a deadline after August.
You know as they say: if it looks ridiculous and sounds ridiculous, it’s most likely the GOP.
