Dem
49
GOP
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Yesterday, we noted a decision out of Mississippi, where anti-democracy Republicans managed to get their case before a trio of Trump-friendly judges, and to redefine state law so as to exclude mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. These things do happen sometimes but, on the whole, the judiciary has been steadfast this year in protecting people's right to vote. There were three more cases on that front yesterday.
First up is North Carolina, where the RNC and other Republican groups are trying to get 225,000 voters kicked off the voter rolls. The basis of their suit is that those voters used a registration form that did not require them to provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, meaning their registrations are invalid. Be clear, the form was a government-created form, which means that the 225,000 folks are innocent of any wrongdoing or error here. If anyone is to be blamed, it's the government staffers who created the form.
The legal maneuvering here is actually a little complicated, but in addition to making their (very thin) argument and establishing their (somewhat dubious) standing, the RNC, et al., pushed very hard to get the case heard in state court. Officially, that is because states are tasked with overseeing elections. In truth, it is because the North Carolina judiciary is considerably more stacked with Republican-friendly judges. In any event, the "federal or state court" question was decided in favor of "state court" by a federal district judge. That decision was appealed, and yesterday a three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the correct answer was "federal court."
The majority ruling from Judges Roger Gregory and Nicole Berner, and the concurrence from Chief Judge Roger Diaz, make pretty clear that the trio is unimpressed with the overall argument, particularly given that the suit was brought very late in the cycle. Diaz also remarked that the plaintiffs achieved standing "by the barest of threads." So, the suit doesn't look too likely to succeed when it is heard by the lower federal court to which it has now been remanded. More importantly, there is zero chance that the case will be fully adjudicated in the next 6 days, and less than zero chance that a federal judge would allow 225,000 people to be de-registered the week before an election. So, it's a fail for the RNC.
Next up is another North Carolina decision, and one that makes clear that the state's judiciary is not entirely in the bag for the Republican Party. This one involves the ongoing case (in North Carolina; there are also cases in Pennsylvania in Michigan) to block a bunch of overseas votes from being processed. The RNC already lost that case at the North Carolina superior court level. And yesterday, they lost at the appeals level. The RNC could take a shot with the NC Supreme Court, but again, with less than a week before the election, the chances of getting calendared are poor, and the odds of winning are poorer still. And even if the GOP pulled a pair of rabbits out of the hat, the result would just be appealed to the federal courts, on the basis that it violates both the Voting Rights Act and the Uniformed And Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, and the decision would be stayed. So, count this as a second fail for the RNC.
And finally, it's another overseas ballot decision, this one involving the Pennsylvania case. This suit was brought by several Republican members of Congress, and yesterday it was tossed by District Judge Christopher Conner. In his ruling, Conner not only rejected the plaintiffs' argument, but he also gave them a bit of a spanking, chiding them for the "inexcusable delay" in bringing the suit just weeks before the election, and telling them their argument is based on "phantom fears of foreign malfeasance."
For those keeping score at home, that's three strikes and the GOP was out, at least yesterday. Again, we concede there are some federal judges willing to prioritize their Republican politics—James Ho, Aileen Cannon, Trevor McFadden, Neomi Rao, etc. But there are also plenty of Republican-appointed judges who prioritize the law, including two of the four jurists listed above (Gregory and Conner). We end with the same basic observation that we make a lot in these pieces: If Donald Trump is going to try to steal the 2024 election through the courts, there is no reason to think he'll be any more successful at doing so than when he tried it in 2020. (Z)