On Thursday, less than 48-hours after Glenn Youngkin’s boat-racing of Terry McAuliffe went into the history books, Merrick Garland’s Justice Department filed a nuisance lawsuit against the State of Texas over changes to voting laws.
In response to the obvious abuses of the voting process engineered by Democrats in several states (and on several benches) to use the ‘pandemic’ as a tool to successfully cheat Joe Biden into the White House, several state legislatures have passed laws delineating clear rules and procedures for future elections. It is right. The U.S. Constitution invests state legislatures with plenary authority for establishing “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.” Executive orders and judges have no business mucking around with established rules a few days before an election or, as in 2020, changing the rules as the election took place.
Like so often, Texas Legislature has a set of commonsense reforms in place to make sure elections are free and fair.
Bans 24-hour voting
In 2020, Harris County, the home of Houston, opened eight locations for around-the-clock early voting — an option that was popular with shift workers in the racially diverse county.By limiting the time counties are allowed to offer 24-hour voting, it will be illegal for them to do so.
The law also expands the current requirement of at least 12 hours of early voting on weekdays in the second week it’s allowed to include counties with more than 55,000 residents — up from the current 100,000 cut-off.Bans drive-thru voting
Another provision in the law that applies to Harris County is prohibiting drive-thru voter. In 2020, as local officials sought ways to safely conduct the election amid the coronavirus pandemic, 127,000 people in the county cast their ballots at 10 drive-thru centers — including a parking garage at the Toyota Center, the home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.New vote-by-mail ID mandates
Texans who are voting by mail — those who are over age 65, out of the county on Election Day or have a disability or illness that prevents them from voting in person are eligible — will now need to provide either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number twice: once on their absentee ballot application forms and once on the envelope in which they return their ballots.Those numbers will then be matched against voters’ records to confirm they are who they say they are — a change from the current signature matching process. Under the new law, those whose votes may be invalidated due to technical issues can correct their errors online. If there is not enough time, the counties may notify voters via phone or email. They can also cancel mail-in ballots by calling them back. Or they can vote in person.
Officials are prohibited from sending unsolicited mail-in applications for the ballot
This bill makes it a crime to send someone mail-in applications that the person didn’t request or to fill out any parts of mail-in ballot applications they are sending.It also prohibits public officials from being able to “facilitate” the unsolicited distribution of absentee ballots by third parties — which means local elections officials cannot provide absentee ballot request forms to get-out-the-vote groups. According to law, political parties will still be able to send unrequested absentee ballot application forms, but they will have to make payment.
Harris County attempted to mail an application in 2020 to all its registered voters. However, the Texas Supreme Court declared that it was not allowed by the Texas election code to allow for the sending of uninvited applications. Other counties also sent applications to registered voters 65 years and over by Election Day. This is the oldest age group in Texas that can vote by mail.Empowers Poll Watchers
Partisan poll watchers cannot be denied “free movement” at polling places under the new law — except for being able to watch a voter cast their ballot at a voting station. They are “entitled to sit or stand near enough to see and hear the activity” at the polling place.Poll watchers are also entitled under the law to watch poll closing activities, “including the sealing and transfer of a memory card, flash drive, hard drive, data storage device, or other medium,” and to follow the transfer of election materials to a regional tabulating center.
The bill, which is a concession to Democrats allows for training of poll watchers as well as the possibility that poll-takers can be expelled from polling stations without notice if they break the law.
New requirements for assisting voters
In provisions that advocates said are barriers to voting, those who assist people with disabilities — other than those voters’ caregivers — will be required to fill out a document showing their name, address and relationship to the person they helped cast a ballot. Assistants would also have to take an oath pledging to obey certain limits to their assistance, promising only to help with “reading the ballot to the voter, directing the voter to read the ballot, marking the voter’s ballot, or directing the voter to mark the ballot.”Checks on the monthly voter rolls
The Texas secretary of state’s office will be required to check monthly to make sure no one is on the state’s voter rolls who said they were not a citizen when obtaining or renewing their driver’s license or ID card.
There is nothing to stop you from voting for ballot-box stuffing or illegal votes. My question is: Why was the law allowed to allow these abuses? But in the eyes of Merrick Garland’s legal SturmabteilungAll evil is this.
The Justice Department’s complaint alleges that provisions of Senate Bill 1 will harm eligible Texas residents seeking to exercise their right to vote, including those with limited English proficiency, voters with disabilities, older voters, members of the military deployed away from home and American citizens residing abroad.
The complaint also argued that, even before Senate Bill 1, Texas had already imposed some of the strictest limitations in the country on granting voting assistance to certain citizens and on mail-in voting, even during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Laws that impair eligible citizens’ access to the ballot box have no place in our democracy,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “Texas Senate Bill 1’s restrictions on voter assistance at the polls and on which absentee ballots cast by eligible voters can be accepted by election officials are unlawful and indefensible.”
Facially, the Justice Department’s claim is nonsense. The Justice Department’s claim that any person is unable to vote has been proven false. In fact, just four months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Arizona law that the federal government also claimed ‘suppressed’ voting.
Two restrictions were at issue in the case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257. One made it illegal for election officials to dispose of ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct. The other made it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice that critics call “ballot harvesting.” The law made exceptions for family members, caregivers and election officials.
The Supreme Court demolished the challenge to Arizona’s law in a 6-3 decision:
In his opinion, Alito observed that the Supreme Court has never weighed in on a Section 2 challenge to a law regulating the “time, place, or manner” of voting. Rather, voting-rights advocates have typically used Section 2 to bring “vote-dilution” lawsuits – challenges to redistricting maps that are alleged to dilute minorities’ voting power.
The “core” of Section 2, Alito emphasized, is the “requirement that voting be ‘equally open.’” And the determination of whether voting is “equally open” to all, he added, should be made taking all of the circumstances into account.
Alito declined to provide an “exhaustive list” of what circumstances courts should consider to determine whether a law violates Section 2, but he outlined what he described as “several important circumstances” that, particularly when taken together, strongly suggest that it will be more difficult for plaintiffs to prevail in the future in cases arguing that a voting law violates Section 2. He noted first that the size of the burden imposed by a voting rule is “highly relevant.” “After all,” he wrote, “every voting rule imposes a burden of some sort.” “Mere inconvenience,” he added, “cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of” Section 2.
Courts should also consider, Alito wrote next, the extent to which the voting rule being challenged differs from voting practices in 1982, when Congress amended Section 2 to prohibit any policy or practice that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” “[I]t is relevant,” Alito stressed, “that in 1982 States typically required nearly all voters to cast their ballots in person on Election Day and allowed only narrow and tightly defined categories of voters to cast absentee ballots.” Indeed, Alito observed, “only three States permitted no-excuse absentee voting” in January 1980. Put another way, Alito continued, it is doubtful that “Congress intended to uproot facially neutral time, place, and manner regulations that have a long pedigree or are in widespread use in the United States.”
Alito said that if a voting law has a greater impact on certain racial and ethnic groups than it does others, the courts must consider how large this disparate effect is. Alito stated that even though there may be some disparate effects, it does not necessarily mean that all people have the same opportunity to vote. “The size of any disparity matters,” and any comparisons should be “meaningful”: “What are at bottom very small differences should not be artificially magnified.”
Courts should also consider the challenged voting rules in the context of the state’s entire voting system, and the other opportunities that it provides to its voters, Alito noted. Therefore, he wrote, “where a State provides multiple ways to vote, any burden imposed on voters who choose one of the available options cannot be evaluated without also taking into account the other available means.”
Alito concluded that fifth and final, the courts need to examine why certain voting rules are being imposed by states. Although guaranteeing that votes are cast freely is “a valid and important state interest,” wanting to prevent voter fraud is, Alito made clear, also a “strong and entirely legitimate state interest.”
The DOJ complaint was thrown out of the window by this decision. So why did they bother to file it?
Two reasons could be responsible for this, my guess.
First, after the thrashing the Democrats took nationwide on Tuesday, the Biden bunch has to do something to convince its base that it a) cares about them and their issues…SPOILER ALert: It doesn’t…and b) it is trying to prepare the battlefield for 2022.
If you read the leftist critique of Tuesday (read the first third of my post titled CNN Story on Milk and Inflation Reveals Progressive Influencers to Be Jerks and Losers as They Trash a Family Trying to Make Ends Meet and AOC Responds to Tuesday’s Election Results and Republicans Should Thank Her), you’ll see that they believe McAuliffe lost because he didn’t push their Marxists and anti-freedom agenda hard enough. Biden needs to demonstrate that he supports them in order to bring them back aboard.
Second, the so-called “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act” is stalled in the Senate. The federalization of all elections by this patently unconstitutional law, which is in direct contradiction to our national traditions and the U.S. Constitution, has been stalled in the Senate. However, the left and national media are supportive it to the greatest extent possible. If the Supreme Court knocks down enough of Garland’s attempts to LARP as a state legislator and change laws, they probably believe that they can make “voting rights” a battle cry in 2022.
About Post Author
