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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I think it's a bit of an open question - yes, in order to be a Republican at this point you have to believe in many horrible things, likely connect to at the very least subconscious bigotry (and for many open bigotry), and thus being willing to vote for people who try and muck up the democratic process, but that's not necessarily the same thing as being will to directly tamper with democracy with you own hands by messing with ballots.
Some people are definitely willing to do that, so it's not like it's an unfounded concern, but I do also understand skepticism at the idea that your average Republican in a polling place is specifically trying to mess up Democratic ballots or something along those lines.
We'll just have to see what happens.
I'll repeat what I said earlier, all the important midwestern states this election where Biden has a solid lead have democrats in important positions who would try to prevent elections being stolen, and honestly it's probably not going to be that close in those anyway to the point where any tampering would have to be quite massive and obvious. If Biden wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin then Trump can win Florida, Arizona, Texas and Ohio and still lose.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Oct 27th 2020 at 9:30:52 AM
"Yeah, but that is almost certainly not going to happen at this point, unless the polls are much more inaccurate then they were in 2016 or something happens to upend the race (which I can't imagine at this point.)"
Heh, now who's being the optimist? Though I agree.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.To go a bit more into detail, of the six swing states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina have Democratic governors. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona have Democratic Secretaries of State, while North Carolina has a Democratic-majority Board of Elections. Wisconsin has a tied Election Commission, meaning Democrats have veto-power over changes. Furthermore, Pennsylvania and North Carolina also have Democratic-majority State Supreme Courts.
So in 5/6 swing states, Republicans do not have the power to unilaterally make decisions or change processes.
There are checks in place to ensure the unscannable ballots in Tarrant County are replicated accurately. From The Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
Board members work in pairs, and each member must be from a different political party.
Pairs look at the returned mail-in ballots one at a time and, if both members agree that the ballot is in proper condition, the ballot is then ready to be counted. However, if, both members can’t agree on the condition of the ballot, the ballot is put aside so that a larger election board group can make a final decision on it.
Such disagreements are rare, Garcia said. So far, only 22 mail-in ballots have been rejected by the board, he said.
Edited by nova92 on Oct 27th 2020 at 5:43:31 AM
Setting aside the obvious difficulty of implementation for a bit, I've been musing a bit on what a concise Judicial Reform amendment would look like.
There would be 4 goals here:
1. Formally define Judicial Review, and it's limitations
2. Establish term limits and retirement ages
3. Limit the influence of blatant partisanship on Judicial appointments
4. Require Justices to recuse themselves from cases where they have a conflict of interest
So I'm thinking something like this
Section 1: The Supreme Court shall, in deciding a case before it, have the power to void federal legislation that is found to be in conflict with the constitution, and to void executive action or state legislation that is found to be in conflict with the constitution or federal legislation. If the Supreme Court finds that legislation or executive action is in conflict with the constitution, then three fourths of both the Senate and House of Representatives, with the concurrence of the President, may declare that no such conflict exists and the legislation or executive action will be restored.
TLDR: Defines what the heck Judicial Review actually is, and allow a mechanism to overrule the Court without passing an amendment, but not one that can be feasibly utilized without bipartisan support
Section 2: There shall be nine justices on the Supreme Court, who shall serve single terms of 18 years, with terms expiring one at a time one year or three years after a Presidential election. No justice shall serve above the age of 80 on the Supreme Court or any inferior court. If a Supreme Court justice term ends before they have reached the age of 80, they may chose to fill any vacancy in an inferior court without requiring the consent of the President or Senate, but may not be reappointed to the Supreme Court. If a Justice dies or resigns before the expiration of their term, then their replacement shall serve only the remainder of their term, however will be eligible for reappointment to the Supreme Court provided they have served less than nine years.
TLDR: Kills Court packing, sets fixed 18 year terms and an age limit of 80. Also allows termed-out Justices to fill any vacancy on an inferior court they want to ensure they don't need to worry about future employment
Section 3: No one shall be appointed to the Supreme Court unless they have served on inferior courts or an inferior court for at least eight years. If the Senate and President fail to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court in a span of six months, then the President may instead fill the vacancy with the concurrence of at least four members of the Supreme Court.
TLDR: Requires 8 years Federal court experience to be a Supreme Court Justice, and lets the President get the consent of the Supreme Court itself if the Senate stonewalls them.
Section 4: Supreme Court Justices shall be required to recuse themselves in all cases involving the President who appointed them, as well as any sibling, child, or parent of the President in question or themselves. Supreme Court Justices shall also be required to recuse themselves from any case involving an election where they are a voluntary candidate in, or a business owned or managed, by one or more of the aforementioned individuals.
TLDR: Sets up some pretty obvious rules on Justice recusals.
I'll admit I went a little overboard here , lot of legalese by someone who doesn't really write legalese, and I'm certainly not going to claim it's perfect. But I wanted to actually write out what an actual Judicial Reform Amendment would look like, plus I felt like it was a slightly more productive use of my time then compulsively checking newsfeeds that I don't actually benefit from checking more than once a day.
- No real arguments, though I would include that Judicial Review should be allowed to review other Judicial Cases as well. Also, if Congress and the President can just ignore what the Courts say with 3/4ths each, you might as well change how Amendments work to only focus on Congress and the President, cause as it stands, you're basically creating a separate form of Amendment Creation.
- I'm against term-limiting for the Judiciary because, thinking it over, if Judges were term limited, it would've given Trump more Justices then the 2 hacks and the 1 thief he's put in now. Judicial Term Limits don't solve the problem the court has.
- Mostly agree, although I think it should be 5 of the 9 in your case scenario. If its only 4, then any wack-a-do can get in in a situation where a determined ass of a President (like Trump) picks them and an opposing Senate knows all too well they are bad, but the President won't budge. 5 makes it more likely a Bipartisan Pick must be picked, unless the Court is stacked hard.
- This one is terrible to be honest: Cases like Obergefell v. Hodges would make it that Same-Sex Marriages are illegal (No Kagan and Sotomayor, it becomes 4-3), but cases like Bush v. Gore wouldn't change at all (5-2). Justices need to be able to fulfill their duties immediately; any delay, especially one as long as 7 years, makes them worthless to add.
Edited by DingoWalley1 on Oct 27th 2020 at 11:19:26 AM
Could you elaborate on this, DingoWalley1? One nominee in the first and third year of a Presidential term (the way Falrinn described it) would have given Trump 2 Justices, but I think you mentioned something similar with a different method of imposing term-limits. Would like to know how the number-crunching works out.
Okay, so I am getting the numbers a bit confused; Stephen Beyer turned 80 in 2018 so in my head I was like "Trumps got Judge 1, 2, and 3 3 years in a row", but then I realized both Ginsburg and Beyer would both be gone in the early 2010s. So in this instance I am wrong.
As for the other instance, lets say that in 1980 Congress put in place the 18-year term limit for all Justices at once (cause I can't think of a good math system to divide the elections), then in 1998 the courts Term limit is up and Bill Clinton has to replace them all, but only with Moderates since the Republican Senate would never let a Liberal Court take place. 18 years later, it's 2016 and Trump has a Republican Senate that kills the Filibuster for Judicial picks. Trump gets to put in not 1, 2 or 3 Judges, but 9. All having the reactionary "Originalist" Interpretation of the Constitution. Would be the death of America as we know it, even worse then the current 6-3 division.
The terms would be staggered so that only one Justice's seat is up for appointment every two years. That was the point of the term being set to 18 years. Presumably at the initial set-out the Justices would draw lots to determine the order of whose seat is up first, unless they go by age.
Edited by megarockman on Oct 27th 2020 at 12:02:34 PM
The damned queen and the relentless knight.https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/election/article246741881.html
South Carolina forbids discarding mismatched signature ballots.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.For context:
“If any county board of voter registration and elections ... is employing or plans to employ a signature matching procedure, it must stop doing so immediately,” Andino wrote. “Further, any absentee ballot that, as a result of a signature matching procedure, has been rejected, disqualified or otherwise set aside so that it will not be counted should immediately be included with those absentee ballots that will be counted, assuming that absentee ballot otherwise complies with (the absentee voting portion of state law).”
There wasn't even a rule to discard absentee ballots on those grounds, which is probably why it's been immediately thrown out and discarded ballots are being checked.
The age limit would definitely be unconstitutional since it's discriminatory on the basis of age, which the SC has ruled against several times.
I'm personally against term limits since it's building off a trend I see in American politics with people treating experience like it's a bad thing.
I'm also against limiting the SC to 9 justices, but that's mainly because it ignores the logic of why there are nine (because that was the number of court circuits at the time plus one) and instead holds 9 up as the important number rather than the reasoning behind it. Following that logic there should be 13 justices, which conveniently would swing the balance of the court and make it an easier sell since you can dress it up as "this is how the founders decided it, isn't that how the Originalist think things should go?"
Meet the talking Trump skeleton
Edited by megaeliz on Oct 27th 2020 at 2:25:42 PM
Edited by rmctagg09 on Oct 28th 2020 at 3:22:08 PM
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.I used to be in favor of them before I saw how they kept progressives out of power.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Most proposals would also have meant going into Obama's terms with seven Republican-appointed judges (Reagan, Bush, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Bush, Bush or similar) then no doubt the latter replacements would have been stonewalled, having at no point >4 democrat judges, and going into Trump's term with 2 or 3.
So, proposing term limits tends to run into the problem that by now it would be an 8-1 or 9-0 conservative majority with four people handpicked by the Federalist Society.
The mob is always the final defence, JFK’s statement that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." was a reminder that the institutions have to allow some level of change or risk their power to prevent change being taken from them.
The rule of law is always finally enforced by the threat of violence, that’s what the monopoly on legitimate violence means.
And it’s not just the risk of a mob that the Supreme Court would face, the Capitol Police answer to Pelosi, the nearby Virginia National Guard answer to their democrat governor.
Even Mitch Mc Connell has pushed back on Trump’s coup talk, because he knows such an attempt would fail.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranYeah I don't think having an age limit for who can be in office means we are treating experience like its a bad thing. Its more that people who are in their 60s, 70s, or 80s are just out of touch with a lot of current issues, how they affect people and how most people feel they can be dealt with. That's why politicians like AOC are so popular - because they are in touch with the people and have a keen understanding of what issues are relevant in the present day. Remember that bill that was in Congress that would have prevented the Army from recruiting kids on Twitch, and how it didnt pass because most of the people there had no idea what Twitch was? Or all those Congressional hearings where they interrogated Zuckerberg, but it was painfully clear they didnt understand how Facebook worked? It's stuff like that where we would benefit from having an age limit on who is in office
Edited by Xopher001 on Oct 28th 2020 at 11:17:53 AM

They don’t need violence to steal the election. They just need things like what tclittle linked above. The original ballots couldn’t be scanned, so now individuals - including Republicans - will be filling out new ballots that are supposed to precisely duplicate the submitted ones, and scanning those. Will they do it honestly? Who knows? Relying on the good faith of Republicans hasn’t brought anyone anything but grief for decades.
The problem is that there is no evidence that this is plausible, to meaningfully impact the votes you'd need a massive number of people to cooperate to do something that could quite literally destroy their lives if it gets out.
If this was some extremely close race it might be more probable, but it's not. We're likely either going to get a solid win or a landslide, neither are situations where shenanigans like this are remotely effective.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang