Dem
50
GOP
50
An item we had yesterday was about efforts by the Republican Party to block overseas votes being cast for elections in Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The official reason for this is [wave hands around] "um, fraud." This is both dishonest and insulting to the intelligence of anyone who follows politics. The "G"OP has been pulling these stunts for long enough, at this point, that we all know exactly what is going on. They've concluded that overseas ballots now skew Democratic, after having skewed Republican for many years due to the previously right-leaning military vote. It's reprehensible; if you're entitled to vote in U.S. elections, you're entitled to vote in U.S. elections, end of story.
The good news is that these efforts appear to be going absolutely nowhere. Yesterday, two different suits were shot down in two different states by two different judges. In Michigan, Judge Sima Patel found that the state's rules for overseas ballots are legal and valid and that, even if that were not the case, the lawsuit was brought too close to the election. In North Carolina, Judge John Smith ruled that there is a minor defect in the plaintiffs' suit, in that they had "not presented any evidence" that fraud was occurring. You can imagine the Republicans' lawyers saying: "Shoot! We knew we forgot something!"
So, people's right to vote will not be taken away. That's good. Even better, we would say, is the reminder that courts tend to move very fast when they need to, and they tend to have very little tolerance for this kind of nonsense. Donald Trump and the RNC batted .000 in 2020, and there's no indication they'll be able to reverse that trend in 2024, when and if they file another gaggle of meritless suits. (Z)