The Supreme Court: RIP Literally Everything

Well every swing state has a Republican legislature, I think, and they can all just vote to give Trump their electors.

@Narrator

This is the Supreme Court thread but in any case, no they can’t. States have laws specifying how their electors are chosen. It’s too late to change those laws now that voting is in progress and in any case the Governor would have veto power. The electors are certified in accordance with that law by the Governor, not the legislature. I think every swing state has a Democratic Governor except Florida and Georgia?

Edit: And Arizona, I guess, if you count that.

https://twitter.com/niccolethurman/status/1320942357152366593?s=20

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Read what Kavanaugh just wrote and consider that Gorsuch agreed. Remember ACB is an originalist and read the Constitution, then tell me whether you trust Alito and Thomas on this one.

The Pennsylvania GOP has openly discussed the possibility.

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i’ve thought about that a lot actually…

someone could change history with a shitty $100 rifle and an address written on a scrap piece of paper.

No they haven’t. The Senate majority leader there was quoted in an Atlantic article in a sort of out-of-context way implying that he’d discussed the possibility, but he later released this statement:

I have had ZERO contact with the Trump campaign or others about changing Pennsylvania’s long-standing tradition of appointing electors consistent with the popular vote," Corman said in a statement. "The General Assembly is obligated to follow the law and the law is the Election Code, which clearly defines how electors are chosen and DOES NOT INVOLVE THE LEGISLATURE.

His emphasis, and the reason the emphasis is there is that choosing electors does not, in fact, involve the legislature. Once the election is underway, the electors must be chosen by popular vote count. Doing otherwise would be in clear violation of both state and federal law. In fact, it was exactly the principle that you can’t change how votes are counted once the election is underway that the Court claimed to be upholding in Bush v Gore.

Again, the courts have broad latitude to screw around with which ballots are counted and how long they’re counted for and so on, so a legal fight over electors is definitely possible if results are close enough for that stuff to matter. What you can’t do is just throw out the principle that electors are chosen by popular vote. You’re then in “but what if the Supreme Court just ignores the law” territory, in which case you might as well cut out the middleman and go straight to “but what if the Supreme Court declares the election invalid and that Trump is President-For-Life”.

I think you might be on to something here.

Someone could change history by over-serving Kavanaugh the next time he’s at a bar.

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Looking at reddit megathread. It is initially sorted by newest comments. Top two comments when I loaded it up are everything

I’m a little scared for my future as an LGBTQ youth and woman

Damn it feels good to be Republican

There it is in a fucking nutshell

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We always knew Kav would be like this. Dude was screaming about Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories during his confirmation. They will roll back state extensions for when they can receive ballots, but they aren’t just going to order all mail in ballots tossed.

You guys have definitely lost the plot too much tonight even for ME lol.

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Maybe you missed that Trump tweeted out that the election must be called on November 3rd

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Trump has been saying insane shit like this for months, an insane Trump tweet sends you guys into orbit? As Riverman said there was no new information today, other than the Supreme court striking down the extension which sucks a lot but isn’t surprising.

Like if you didn’t think Trump was going to scream about voter fraud and want to stop the count after election night you’re kind of dumb. People have predicted that for a long time. But that only matters if it’s close and it doesn’t seem like its going to be close. I highly doubt we will just refuse to count mail in ballots received before election day.

It would fully delegitimize the court, the country would be completely destabilized, markets would crash. Donors don’t want that, and donors are who really run shit. Plus most Republican politicians absolutely hate Trump and would way rather run against Biden in 2024 than run after Trump in 2024.

They will cheat if its close and it isn’t a 100% clear coup to the general public, but they aren’t gonna go full dictator mode. Kav and ACB probably go for it but I doubt the rest would.

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The much bigger concern is right wing militia’s burning down mail in ballot places.Like if they decide to bomb the Philidelphia mail in ballot counting place its GG

Luckily they’re incompetent and hopefully the FBI is on the lookout for that. I know LOLFBI but Wray isn’t a deplorable asshole.

I think the Kavanaugh obiter endorsement of the insane Gore-Bush dissent of Rehnquist was the big thing arising today (I believe). Made for pretty depressing reading for me at least. I agree that court destroying the election would not be palatable for a large enough section of the population to make odds on the low side but they’ll try and it’ll lead to lots of depressing protesting and fighting.

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One thing to realise is that the conservatives on the Supreme Court are not there to get Trump back in. The Presidency has less long term value than is generally believed. They’re not going to the mat for Trump any more than McConnell is. He’s a useful idiot to them and they play the long game, it’s pretty obvious he’s becoming a liability and they’ll be perfectly happy to jettison him and get back to the real business of imposing anti-labor laws, vote suppression, the enhancement of the power of capital and social conservatism.

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Jeb! Says hi.

Is there really no provision in place for things like that, like no chance for a revote? If a bomber disenfranchises a million people then it’s just, “Welp, the terrorists won this round?”

His statement doesn’t deny that they discussed the possibility.

I have no faith in Republicans on this. They’ve at least discussed appointing their own electors and at least some legal scholars think they could. They could come up with a few justifications.

This keeps me up at night. The entire margin of victory in Pennsylvania is sitting in a known location.