Are Democrat judges foolishly expanding mail-in voting rules in their states?

By Andrea Widburg, AM THINKER

For months, Democrats have been planning to win the election through mail-in voting. This is because mail-in voting easily allows fraud. Democrat judges have done what they can to help by riding roughshod over state voting statutes to increase opportunities to mail ballots after the election. Doug Ross, however, argues that, if you look at the Constitution, these judges may be encouraging their state’s citizens to cast votes that cannot be counted in federal elections.

One of the most egregious examples of judges running amok came out of Pennsylvania. That state’s Supreme Court, which has five Democrats and only two Republicans, looked at the state’s explicitly written statute governing mail-in voting and decided to expand upon its terms:

Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have previously been due by the time polls close on Election Day. But the court’s order adds a three-day extension to receive ballots that are postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Ballots with a preelection postmark will now be counted as long as they are received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 6, three days after the polls close.

The court also wrote that ballots “received within this period that lack a postmark or other proof of mailing, or for which the postmark or other proof of mailing is illegible, will be presumed to have been mailed by Election Day unless a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it was mailed after Election Day.”

In other words, after the polls close, if Trump has won (as I believe he will), Democrats can then figure out how many more votes they need to change the outcome and simply deliver the ballots without even bothering with the pretense of mailing. In theory, that’s how you win an election, every single time. Lazy voters don’t have to bother with polling places or deadlines. They just wait until called upon to act.

Pennsylvania’s not alone. Activist judges in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin have also entered rulings throwing over their state’s statutes regarding mail-in voting and, instead, substituting judge-made rules that drag voting out far beyond the November 3 election.

Doug Ross thinks these activist judges may have been too clever by half. Typically for Democrats, these activist judges don’t know the Constitution:

All of these illegal proclamations directly contravene state law and are simply naked, partisan attempts to swing the election.

More importantly, they are in clear violation of the Constitution.

Article I, Section 4

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof…

The Judicial branch — at any level of government — has no role in deciding the times, places and protocols for Congressional elections.

Ross reads the Constitution to mean that, while the judge-made rules can affect state elections, they cannot affect federal elections. At the federal level, the only elections that count are those that comport with legislation. Put another way, only the people’s representatives in a given state have the authority to decide how federal elections should be handled in that state. Judges don’t have that power.

Doug says the same line of thinking applies to the presidential election:

As for the presidential election, the Constitution is equally clear, as Mark Levin has repeatedly pointed out.

Article II, Section 1

…Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector…

Once again, the legislature is wholly responsible for directing the manner of presidential elections.

If the new rules from the activist judges suppress in-person voting, that may prove to be a disaster if the subsequently mailed ballots get thrown out. No wonder Democrat bigwigs are starting to encourage their peeps to vote in person.

This is the kind of issue that will ultimately end up before the Supreme Court. That’s why the Supreme Court must have nine justices. Better still, these justices should owe their intellectual fealty to the United States Constitution, not to political outcomes and policymaking. They need to be the type of people who look to the Constitution first and follow where it leads. Amy Coney Barrett has made clear throughout her career that she is that judge.

September 27, 2020 | 5 Comments »

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  1. New York can’t even handle absentee ballots competently. My 96 year old mother received a military absentee ballot after having applied for a permanent disability ballot. Before this article came out, I had wondered if it wasn’t a deliberate ploy to make it seem as though the military voted against Trump since my mother lives in a very liberal area. Go to article for photos of different typos on the absentee ballots. And they only have to be postmarked by Nov. 3 not before!

    NYC voters are wrongly receiving mail-in ballots marked for military use
    By Carl Campanile, Nolan Hicks and Aaron FeisSeptember 28, 2020 | 1:48pm | Updated
    Enlarge Image
    Residents received these ballots designated as an absentee “military ballot.”
    Residents received these ballots designated as an absentee “military ballot.”Juan Arellano Jr.
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    Voters in New York City have received mail-in ballots for the 2020 presidential election marked for military use despite never having served in the armed forces — causing confusion and concerns over whether the ballots can or should be used.

    The misprint makes it appear that the voters received a “Official Military Absentee Ballot” instead of a “Military/Absentee Ballot,” leaving several borough residents who received the documents — including two Post journalists — worried that their votes might not be properly tallied.

    “I believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, referring to the constituents in his Sunnyside district who have reached out to him about receiving the ballots. “It appears that everyone has gotten this particular ballot.”

    Experts from both sides of the political aisle said the typo ultimately wouldn’t matter because the city Board of Elections uses the same ballots for both military voters and traditional absentee voters who live in the same district.

    But it comes amid an already gathering storm over whether all absentee ballots would ultimately be counted in the high-stakes presidential election.

    “There’s just mass confusion about these ballots and what people are supposed to do with them,” said Van Bramer, who told The Post he has received at least a dozen complaints from constituents.

    “People were already not trusting this process and they were already not trusting the Board of Elections to count the ballot right.”

    Beyond Sunnyside, non-service members also reported receiving the ballots in neighborhoods including Richmond Hill, Forest Hills and Astoria. Another was reported in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg.

    Van Bramer, a Democrat, said the issue only adds to the worries in an already topsy-turvy election cycle that has seen an inordinate number of voters look to mail-in voting with the coronavirus pandemic raging on.

    Van Bramer said he was informed by the city BOE that the issue stemmed from a typographical error, wherein a dash meant to separate the words “absentee” and “military” was dropped.

    “This apparent typo just has everyone confused and believing these are invalid ballots,” he said. “It’s absolutely outrageous that when everyone is watching them, they still screw up the most basic thing, which is printing the ballot correctly.

    “Did no one proof this?”

    A spokeswoman for the city BOE confirmed that the punctuation was dropped, but insisted the ballots would be fully counted and that mail-in voters in all five boroughs should expect similar forms.

    “All absentee ballots are labeled `Absentee Military Ballot’, even for non-military voters,” said the BOE’s Valerie Vazquez.

    Some 520,000 ballots have already been mailed but the Elections Board could not say how many of those have the error.

    “It’s a screwup,” said John Ciampoli, veteran Republican elections lawyer. “I’ve been known to go after technical stuff in my day but that doesn’t even rise to that level.”

    Enlarge ImageResidents received these ballots designated as an absentee “military ballot.”
    Residents received these ballots designated as an absentee “military ballot.”Juan Arellano Jr.
    Election lawyer Martin Connor — a former Democratic state Senator from Brooklyn — pulled out his absentee ballot for the first time while on the phone.”I could see where voters would get confused and say, `I’m not in the military,’” Connor said. “There should be a dash or a slash.”

    But he said any challenge to the ballot would be tossed out as “frivolous.”

    The flubbed ballot header left Carl Flanigan, 48, confused.

    “My first reaction is that I’m not in the military and didn’t ask for a military ballot,” the theater manager said. “I have a lot of respect for people in the military who sacrifice for our country. I would feel ashamed if I represented myself as in the military.”

    Any absentee ballot cast in New York can be challenged for a variety of reasons, though six election law experts — three Republicans and three Democrats — interviewed by The Post Monday said there was little chance the typo would lead to a successful contestation.

    “It’s the same ballot for absentee or military,” said Sarah Steiner, a leading Democratic election lawyer and head of the New York City Bar Association’s Election Law Committee. “Not a problem, no legal implications.”

    Still, the latest city BOE flub left the co-chairman of the state Board of Elections, Doug Kellner aghast.

    “I’m not happy about this,” said Kellner, who vowed an inquiry into the matter. “There are lots of questions of whether there is adequate quality control [at the city BOE].”

    The body has previously caught flak from the White House on its handling of mail-in balloting for June’s primary contests, which were widely seen as a test run for remote voting’s viability in November.

    President Trump in particular has voiced significant concerns about the security and expediency of mail-in voting, and Democratic challenger Joe Biden has reportedly bolstered his legal staff for a potentially bitter and protracted legal battle over possible hinky ballots.

    https://nypost.com/2020/09/28/nyc-voters-wrongly-getting-mail-in-ballots-marked-for-military-use/

  2. Invalidating the ballots from 14 states will fraudulently give the victory to the Republican party which will be confirmed by the Supreme Court graced by Trump’s new appointee
    It would be much easier and faster (and not hypocritical) to just cancel the elections by an executive order and declare the dictatorship of Der Fuehrer.

  3. why invalidate ballots fromt the whole state and cause ‘unfriendly’ actions? Only those late ballots that violate Fed. statutes should not be accepted and thrown out.

  4. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court will not dare to throw out the election returns in the fourteen or more states where the courts have approved illegal and fraudulent voting. Even if they did find the time to do this, they would not dare to throw out returns reported “under the governor’s seal”(as the election law of 1877 phrases it) by the executive departments of each state government. Rightly or wrongly, the court will not risk the armed insurrections, the threats to their own lives and property, and the very real prospect of civil war if they were to invalidate the elections in any state.