Election 2020: Do Biden, Garland Face Disaster in Georgia?

Another relatively light load, not too surprisingly, given the holiday. Jonathon Turley, writing at USA Today thinks Joe Biden, Merrick Garland have set themselves up for disaster in Georgia voting rights case, especially in light of the Supreme Courts decision on the new Arizona voting law

While the court just stated a narrow interpretation of Section 2, the Biden administration advanced a sweeping interpretation and a strikingly unfocused claim of racial discriminatory impact. While the claims are not identical, this case will now go forward in conflict not only with the general thrust of Brnovich, but in reliance on the same type of presumptions of racism rejected by the court. This follows the court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that effectively ended preclearance requirements for states like Georgia under the Voting Rights Act.

Ironically, the Justice Department filed on the eighth anniversary of the Shelby decision, but chose to file before it could read the last post-Shelby opinion on laws burdening the right to vote. In the new decision, the court declared that all voting rules create some sort of burden but "mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of Sec. 2."

None of that bodes well for the Georgia lawsuit. Indeed, it strongly suggests that the Biden administration is setting itself up for failure. The case is weak, the precedent is hostile, and timing is suspect. So why would Attorney General Merrick Garland green light a case that seems likely to fail in spectacular fashion?

While I have great respect for Garland, this does seem like a rare moment of weakness in yielding to political pressure from the White House and Congress. The lawsuit legitimates Biden’s over-heated rhetoric on Republicans dragging the nation back into the Jim Crow era.

Stacey Lennox at PJ Media says the  SCOTUS Decision on Arizona Election Law Is the Good News. Now for the Bad News.  He doesn't make the bad news too clear, but I think it's the Democrats aren't through screwing around. 

Snead explained that HR-4 does that, and it is worse than being judged on 50-year-old data. The formula does not test any objective metric regarding elections. Instead, it appears to be a measure of how many left-wing groups don’t like your laws.

If your state has been sued over voting laws and you have either lost or settled, then it counts as a mark against you. If you get enough marks against you, then you are in preclearance. If the AG objects to a voting change, that counts against you for preclearance.

And, say if you have a city that has persistent problems, and that city is sued and loses or settles, then that counts as a mark against an entire state. If there are nine lawsuits against a subdivision of a state over a 25-year period and one against the state proper, then the state is in preclearance. And it is retroactive too.

This formula would transform the entire election process into one big game of lawfare, giving partisan groups the ability to target states and cities with a barrage of lawsuits. The retroactive provision only increases that likelihood. Moreover, the ensuing politicized legal battles would cost millions of taxpayer dollars to oppose because settling still counts against the formula.

Stacy McCain uses the Arizona decision to explain July 4: Why I Am a Populist

This is the true cause of our struggle. There is nothing wrong with America that the ordinary citizens of this nation can’t solve for themselves, if only their efforts were not thwarted by the decadent elite.

Thank God for the Supreme Court majority in the Brnovich v. DNC case, which rejected claims by the Democratic Party that Arizona was not capable of running its own elections without federal interference. What this case was really about is not “voting rights,” but rather about centralized authority. Do we really want to say that no local election is legitimate, unless the rules and the outcome are approved by the Powers That Be in Washington, D.C.? I don’t think so, and if there is anything that can unite populists in America, it should be opposition to further centralization of power. You see, the decadent elites love centralized power because the elites exercise enormous influence in Washington, whereas their influence in Arizona (or Georgia) is not so decisive.

Some would say that my populist impulses are rather crude, but I can think of no better rule for public life than this: Figure out what side of the issue the New York Times is on, then join the other side and fight like hell.

Twitchy, ‘They saw the polling’: Third-ranking Democrat in the House openly embraces a photo ID requirement for voting, but  Andrea Widburg at Am Think calls out Rep. James Clyburn for outright lies about Voter I.D. A politician lie? Not worth breaking out my shocked face.

At WaEx, Emily Brooks explains why Republicans are rallying against ‘woke’ ranked-choice voting, such as that which has roiled the NY City Mayoral primary. Just read Stacy above. If the prog-Dems are for it, it is presumptively a bad idea, and the bar against acceptance should be extremely high. In this episode, Tucker Carlson takes on the NYC primary, as well as other issues:

Da Fed reports how a Watch Dog Group Calls For Investigation Into Democrat Lawmakers Abusing Proxy Voting System. Politicians abusing the system? Still not worth the wear on my shocked face.

On May 15, 2020, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi authorized the ability to vote by proxy “at any time,” after being “notified by the Sergeant-at-Arms that a ‘public health emergency due to a novel coronavirus [was] in effect.’” Due to the public health emergency caused by the China virus, members of Congress were allowed to vote remotely by proxy.

In letters dated about a year later, the aforementioned seven representatives all granted their votes by proxy to another representative. According to FACT, all seven members directly claimed that they couldn’t “physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency” caused by the China virus.

Recent media reports suggest this was a lie. While the seven Michigan representatives missed in-person voting, they were willing and able to meet in-person for political purposes, just not in Congress.

The members appear to have missed votes to attend an event with Biden in Dearborn, Michigan where he toured a Ford Motor facility and delivered an address.
. . .
“It appears obvious that Reps. Dingell, Kildee, Lawrence, Levin, Slotkin, Stevens, and Tlaib abused the proxy vote system by making an affirmative choice to physically attend an in-person political event,” Executive Director of FACT Kendra Arnold said. “Clearly, if they were able to spend the day in public with President Biden, then they were more than capable of doing their elected duty of voting in person.”

“[T]he true reason they did not attend was because they were physically present at another event—and a highly political one at that,” Arnold continued. “[…] The abuse of the proxy vote is evident because each Member made an affirmative choice to ‘physically attend’ another event, and had they not done so they were clearly capable of attending the House proceedings.”

Voting by proxy for merely political purposes violates the House resolution, which mandates that proxy votes are only permissible when due to the “public health emergency.” The proxy voting system clearly “was not authorized for any other purpose.”

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