Dem
49
GOP
51
While we are on the subject of last-minute election changes, the Virginia decision is not the only one of them. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal from Robert Kennedy Jr. to get off the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin, which he had fought bitterly to get ON a few months ago. But that was when he thought his presence would hurt Joe Biden. Now he thinks it will hurt Donald Trump. That makes all the difference.
Both Michigan and Wisconsin said it would be impossible to remove Kennedy now. Early voting has started and millions of ballots have been printed and mailed out already. In fact, in Michigan, 1.5 million ballots have already been returned and another 264,000 people have already voted in person. Having some voters get one list of candidates and other voters get a different list of candidates would tie the courts in knots after the election—not that printing and distributing new ballots before Tuesday would have been feasible. It would have been chaos to even try.
In an unsigned order, the Supreme Court turned down Kennedy's request. However, Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented. Was he expecting Michigan to go to FedEx Office and have them produce over 5 million new ballots by Friday and then get them distributed by Tuesday? What about people who already cast a ballot? Would all those votes be burned and people told to show up on Tuesday to vote in person? This is beyond despicable and shows what some justices will do to help the Republican Party any way they can. Remember, what Kennedy wanted was unambiguously illegal. He wanted to get off the ballot after the deadline for getting off the ballot had passed. He had zero legal case. He just found the law inconvenient. Gorsuch felt that was good enough.
Of course we don't know how many votes Kennedy will get and who the voters would have chosen had his name not been on the ballot. If the people doing the exit polls on Tuesday ask every Kennedy voter: "If Kennedy had not been on the ballot, who would you have voted for?" then we might know, otherwise, we will probably never really know. (V)