OFFICIAL ELECTION RESULTS - NC & OTHER STATE ELECTIONS

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JCTarheel82 said:
I was looking at the composition of the Court and 2028 is the earliest Dems can regain the majority. The only seat up for grabs in 2026 is the lone Dem on the court (Anita Earls) so she must defend her seat, and then we have to flip all three Pub seats up for reelection in 2028 to gain a 4-3 majority. If Trump does indeed execute the terrible agenda he has promised, the political climate over the next four years could be conducive to making this possible.
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I don’t think Earls is running again.
 
This past set of Statewide offices show that if the Dem party would put some add $ forward for these jobs-well we might win some
 
ZenMode said:
[VIDEO] Democratic officials in Pennsylvania county choose to defy state court’s vote count ruling

CNN's Marshall Cohen reports on Democrats in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, choosing to defy a state Supreme Court ruling by validating provisional ballots that were missing a matching signature.

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That's not really what is happening there at all. It's bad reporting. Also, it's not just Bucks County (which, by the way, voted red so they aren't trying to swing the race in favor of Dems).

The state Supreme Court has made a mess of the voting law in PA. A good friend of mine has clerked on that court for a while, and while I can't spill any details, the basic problem is the tension between the legislatures' restrictive voting statutes and the state's constitution, which is very much pro-democracy. And that came to a head earlier this year in the Supreme Court's ruling about undated ballots. That's the "ruling" supposedly being denied.

But in reality, that ruling was not a ruling at all. It was dismissed on procedural grounds -- basically the plaintiffs sued in the wrong court (PA has a complex court system) and thus the Supreme Court didn't have jurisdiction. The underlying question of whether the ballot-dating requirement is constitutional remains unanswered. Three of the Justices on the Supreme Court wanted to address the question by using something called "King's bench jurisdiction" but there wasn't a majority for that.

So in absence of King's Bench jurisdiction, there are only two ways for the issue to be presented to the Court. First, the county boards can refuse to count the ballots . . . and then in a very close race, one of the candidates will sue and we will get a Florida 2000 situation where the PA Supreme Court could be put in a position to decide the national election. The other way is for county boards to count the ballots, as they are doing, to put the issue in front of the state Supreme Court in a less charged setting. Indeed, those actions are being challenged (I think by the secretary of state) so we will get a decision on this. And having a decision, either way, is better for PA than no decision at all.

That's what this is about. It's not about trying to steal an election. I base my conclusion on 1) having read the relevant opinions; and 2) from my friend who is like an assistant coach, sort of.
 
superrific said:
That's not really what is happening there at all. It's bad reporting. Also, it's not just Bucks County (which, by the way, voted red so they aren't trying to swing the race in favor of Dems).

The state Supreme Court has made a mess of the voting law in PA. A good friend of mine has clerked on that court for a while, and while I can't spill any details, the basic problem is the tension between the legislatures' restrictive voting statutes and the state's constitution, which is very much pro-democracy. And that came to a head earlier this year in the Supreme Court's ruling about undated ballots. That's the "ruling" supposedly being denied.

But in reality, that ruling was not a ruling at all. It was dismissed on procedural grounds -- basically the plaintiffs sued in the wrong court (PA has a complex court system) and thus the Supreme Court didn't have jurisdiction. The underlying question of whether the ballot-dating requirement is constitutional remains unanswered. Three of the Justices on the Supreme Court wanted to address the question by using something called "King's bench jurisdiction" but there wasn't a majority for that.

So in absence of King's Bench jurisdiction, there are only two ways for the issue to be presented to the Court. First, the county boards can refuse to count the ballots . . . and then in a very close race, one of the candidates will sue and we will get a Florida 2000 situation where the PA Supreme Court could be put in a position to decide the national election. The other way is for county boards to count the ballots, as they are doing, to put the issue in front of the state Supreme Court in a less charged setting. Indeed, those actions are being challenged (I think by the secretary of state) so we will get a decision on this. And having a decision, either way, is better for PA than no decision at all.

That's what this is about. It's not about trying to steal an election. I base my conclusion on 1) having read the relevant opinions; and 2) from my friend who is like an assistant coach, sort of.
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Here's how things appear from my POV which your explanation seems to ignore..
  • There is an existing law that sets requirements for dating and signatures for Mail-in ballots.
  • The PA supreme Court ruled that the existing law needs to be followed....as laws should be as long as they are on the books.
  • The 4 counties election commissions are basically saying "Nope, we're going to count them anyway", supposedly at the request of the (currently losing) Dem candidate's lawyer.
If the desire is to get the case back into court, ok. A ruling and change in the law wouldn't be (shouldn't be) retro active. It should impact future elections.

To an outsider, this looks an awful lot like some form of attempted election fraud and sets a very bad precedent.
 
ZenMode said:
Here's how things appear from my POV which your explanation seems to ignore..
  • There is an existing law that sets requirements for dating and signatures for Mail-in ballots.
  • The PA supreme Court ruled that the existing law needs to be followed....as laws should be as long as they are on the books.
  • The 4 counties election commissions are basically saying "Nope, we're going to count them anyway", supposedly at the request of the (currently losing) Dem candidate's lawyer.
If the desire is to get the case back into court, ok. A ruling and change in the law wouldn't be (shouldn't be) retro active. It should impact future elections.

To an outsider, this looks an awful lot like some form of attempted election fraud and sets a very bad precedent.
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Are we going to go through this again? This weird dance you like to do, where you argue with me about things you know nothing about and I know a lot about?

The PA Supreme Court actually did not rule earlier this year that the "existing law needs to be followed." It ruled that the challenge to existing law was not filed correctly. That isn't remotely the same thing. And there is no question of retroactivity. If the law is unconstitutional, then it can't be enforced. The counties would not be prevented from counting the ballots. That's how law generally works in this country, and it's not retroactivity. Last year, it interpreted the statute but did not consider the constitutional question.

In addition, this question has been greatly complicated by the interaction of state and federal law, and this issue has been litigated in parallel in federal and state court. It is a mess. That's why there is so much confusion.

But earlier today, the PA Supreme Court weighed in on the issue. It directed the counties not to count the undated ballots. It declined to reach the constitutional question, as is its right. You will now see all the counties obey this order, as it is finally unambiguous. And then the litigation will proceed in ordinary course, maybe.
 
superrific said:
Are we going to go through this again? This weird dance you like to do, where you argue with me about things you know nothing about and I know a lot about?

The PA Supreme Court actually did not rule earlier this year that the "existing law needs to be followed." It ruled that the challenge to existing law was not filed correctly. That isn't remotely the same thing. And there is no question of retroactivity. If the law is unconstitutional, then it can't be enforced. The counties would not be prevented from counting the ballots. That's how law generally works in this country, and it's not retroactivity. Last year, it interpreted the statute but did not consider the constitutional question.

In addition, this question has been greatly complicated by the interaction of state and federal law, and this issue has been litigated in parallel in federal and state court. It is a mess. That's why there is so much confusion.

But earlier today, the PA Supreme Court weighed in on the issue. It directed the counties not to count the undated ballots. It declined to reach the constitutional question, as is its right. You will now see all the counties obey this order, as it is finally unambiguous. And then the litigation will proceed in ordinary course, maybe.
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Nothing I said really conflicts with what you said.

There was a law on the books that would prevent the counting of specific ballots. The counties knew which ones those were. The fact that the PA Supreme Court hadn't ruled on that law doesn't change the fact that it sets a bad precedent for the election commissions to count ballots that they know shouldn't be counted. Again, the law was in place and they knew it was in place. Clearly the 20k gap was unlikely to be closed by a recount. The number is just too high. By counting the ballots, knowing that mail-in ballots are generally more likely to be Democrat the Republican, they risked adding a huge controversy if those ballots would change the outcome of the election.

In other words, the government, particularly as it relates to elections, shouldn't knowingly go against an existing law to make some kind of political point.
 
superrific said:
Are we going to go through this again? This weird dance you like to do, where you argue with me about things you know nothing about and I know a lot about?

The PA Supreme Court actually did not rule earlier this year that the "existing law needs to be followed." It ruled that the challenge to existing law was not filed correctly. That isn't remotely the same thing. And there is no question of retroactivity. If the law is unconstitutional, then it can't be enforced. The counties would not be prevented from counting the ballots. That's how law generally works in this country, and it's not retroactivity. Last year, it interpreted the statute but did not consider the constitutional question.

In addition, this question has been greatly complicated by the interaction of state and federal law, and this issue has been litigated in parallel in federal and state court. It is a mess. That's why there is so much confusion.

But earlier today, the PA Supreme Court weighed in on the issue. It directed the counties not to count the undated ballots. It declined to reach the constitutional question, as is its right. You will now see all the counties obey this order, as it is finally unambiguous. And then the litigation will proceed in ordinary course, maybe.
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"The PA Supreme Court actually did not rule earlier this year that the "existing law needs to be followed." It ruled that the challenge to existing law was not filed correctly."

Something isn't adding up here. Multiple sources have said that PA supreme court ruled a total of three times that the undated ballots shouldn't be counted. Here is the story on the first ruling from September. Here is the story for the second one:

Undated mail ballots won’t be counted in next week’s election, Pa. Supreme Court rules
In a scathing opinion, one justice chastised Commonwealth Court for elevating the issue so close to Election Day

www.inquirer.com

Undated mail ballots won’t be counted in next week’s election, Pa. Supreme Court rules

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court made it clear it will not rule on undated ballots before voters go to the polls for Election Day next week.
www.inquirer.com www.inquirer.com
 
superrific said:
Are we going to go through this again? This weird dance you like to do, where you argue with me about things you know nothing about and I know a lot about?
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Pennsylvania Supreme Court rebukes Democratic election officials who counted undated mail ballots

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday rebuked Democratic-controlled elections boards that counted undated and misdated mail ballots, siding with Republicans and reiterating that such votes are invalid.

Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks counties voted to count hundreds of such ballots in recent days despite previous rulings from the court that they cannot be included in this election.

“It is critical to the rule of law that individual counties and municipalities and their elected and appointed officials, like any other parties, obey orders of this Court,” Justice David Wecht wrote, joined by Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy, in a terse concurring opinion.

 
ZenMode said:
Pennsylvania Supreme Court rebukes Democratic election officials who counted undated mail ballots

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday rebuked Democratic-controlled elections boards that counted undated and misdated mail ballots, siding with Republicans and reiterating that such votes are invalid.

Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks counties voted to count hundreds of such ballots in recent days despite previous rulings from the court that they cannot be included in this election.

“It is critical to the rule of law that individual counties and municipalities and their elected and appointed officials, like any other parties, obey orders of this Court,” Justice David Wecht wrote, joined by Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy, in a terse concurring opinion.

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As any lawyer will tell you, Supreme Courts almost never admit to mistakes. It's always someone else's fault for "misreading their precedents." In this case, "the orders of the Court" were not clear and the fault there was in large measure of the Court's own making. Sort of like how SCOTUS created this new rule about gun rights, and then the lower courts followed the rule and invalidated a law preventing guns from being banned as part of protection orders and restraining orders, and then SCOTUS had to come in and say, "no, this isn't what we meant, you got it all wrong" and then basically restated the same rule with only a tiny bit of additional clarity. It will be rinse and repeat until the abomination of Bruen is removed. Until then, SCOTUS will keep on blaming everyone else.

My friend literally drafted one of the opinions and/or statements published in this case. There was a significant battle inside the chambers of a swing vote to decide how to proceed. The clerks wanted to go one way; the Justice another; and the clerks couldn't change his mind. It was not the cut-and-dried issue that these articles would have you believe.

The factor that proved decisive in that swing vote chambers was the statement by one of the members of the canvassing board that was paraphrased to me as "we can do whatever we want, because precedent means nothing, just look at Roe v Wade." That's idiotic and deserves a rebuke. That's really what the harsh tone was aimed at. But what do I know? I've only talked to someone who was literally on the scene.

Anyway, it all worked out. PA Supremes clarified; they got the result they sort of wanted; and all is well.
 
ZenMode said:
"The PA Supreme Court actually did not rule earlier this year that the "existing law needs to be followed." It ruled that the challenge to existing law was not filed correctly."

Something isn't adding up here. Multiple sources have said that PA supreme court ruled a total of three times that the undated ballots shouldn't be counted. Here is the story on the first ruling from September. Here is the story for the second one:

Undated mail ballots won’t be counted in next week’s election, Pa. Supreme Court rules
In a scathing opinion, one justice chastised Commonwealth Court for elevating the issue so close to Election Day

www.inquirer.com

Undated mail ballots won’t be counted in next week’s election, Pa. Supreme Court rules

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court made it clear it will not rule on undated ballots before voters go to the polls for Election Day next week.
www.inquirer.com www.inquirer.com
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As your source noted, the August ruling was thrown out on a technicality.

What's not adding up for you is that those cases are actually about the Court's exercise of "King's Bench jurisdiction." If you read the opinion yesterday, you can see that. And reporters aren't going to understand that. Fuck, the PA Supreme Court doesn't really understand its own Kings Bench jurisdiction (because, as the name suggests, it's really old and therefore confused). No other state has such jurisdiction.

So the Oct and November opinions turned on the application of KB jur, and specifically the statements about how this court won't countenance changes to the election law were actually given as reasons not to apply KB jur. If they meant it to be a general holding, they sure were unclear about it. I don't think they were wrong on the merits, but the cases were fucked up and hard to figure out. They didn't help matters by issuing several concurrences in each one.

So what happened with the election boards is this: they saw that the Court didn't want to intervene with KB jur. So they tried to put the cases into the ordinary court system (the Court of Common Pleas) where it would be adjudicated in normal course. And the dissenters in yesterday's opinion thought that was the way to go.

Instead, what the Court did was (and this is spelled out in the opinion if you care to read it) to 1) exercise KB jur in order to take the case to announce 2) that it still wasn't going to exercise KB jurisdiction and also 3) it didn't want the lower courts dealing with the issue. If that makes no sense, it's because it doesn't. The court tied itself in knots.

One important backdrop is that the PA Supreme Court doesn't want to give Alito any ammunition for going back to the ISL theory. Alito rides circuit for PA.
 
Ramrouser said:
I mean...he's not wrong. It took two Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions and the Governor to finally get officials to stop counting illegal ballots.
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Yes, he is absolutely wrong that anything that happened in PA represents Democrats "trying to rig the US senate election." Just like he has been wrong every single other time - thousands of time - he has accused Democrats or anyone else of trying to "rig" elections against him, or of succeeding in rigging elections against him.
 
JCTarheel82 said:
And which party are the Pennsylvania governor and the majority of the state Supreme Court a part of?
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Same party as the Bucks County Board of Elections. Cheers for the Supreme Court. Shapiro waited until after the 2nd decision to issue his tardy statement, but it least he eventually got it right.
 
rodoheel said:
Yes, he is absolutely wrong that anything that happened in PA represents Democrats "trying to rig the US senate election." Just like he has been wrong every single other time - thousands of time - he has accused Democrats or anyone else of trying to "rig" elections against him, or of succeeding in rigging elections against him.
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Ok got it. So you don't consider Democratic Buck's County election officials continuing to count illegal mail in ballots in defiance of the State Supreme Court's ruling NOT to be an attempt to "rig" an election?
 
Ramrouser said:
Same party as the Bucks County Board of Elections. Cheers for the Supreme Court. Shapiro waited until after the 2nd decision to issue his tardy statement, but it least he eventually got it right.
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Once again, you have no idea what you're talking about but do that thing you do. I've already explained it above.
 
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