Small Group Of Lawyers Made Voter Fraud Fears Mainstream | Four Questions Before Courts That Will Shape The Election
September 9, 2020
INSIDE JOB
|For months now, PRESIDENT TRUMP has been trying to convince the American public that November’s election will be “rigged.” He’s made consistent claims — without evidence, according to Reuters — that mail voting “will open the door to mass cheating.” Reuters explains that what was once a fringe theory within the Republican party that U.S. elections are vulnerable to fraud has now become mainstream thanks in large part to the work of a small network of lawyers who have been peddling this theory for decades. “These lawyers have played an important role, arguing for restrictions on mail-in voting in the closely-watched states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. Four nonprofits run by or linked to this network of lawyers – the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the American Constitutional Rights Union, Judicial Watch and True the Vote – have been involved in at least 61 lawsuits over election rules since 2012, according to a Reuters examination. More than half have been initiated since Trump took office in 2017, including 11 cases concerning absentee or mail-in voting.”
BACK TO BASICS
|“As if voting this year is not confusing enough — it will require far more planning and follow-up for voters to do it safely and ensure their votes count — some major questions are still being fought over in courts with less than two months until Election Day. Both parties are spending tens of millions of dollars on dozens of lawsuits across the country to shape how we vote. Those efforts are particularly focused on mail-voting, and these lawsuits could be the difference between thousands of ballots being accepted or thrown out.” Amber Phillips with The Washington Post explains the majority of these lawsuits relate to four major questions about voting this year: Who gets a ballot mailed to them; Whether the ballot is filled out “correctly” and accepted; How voters send their ballot back to the election office; Whether your ballot will be counted if it arrives after Election Day.
ANOTHER ROUND IN THE ABORTION WARS
|“Last June, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS provided a brief reprieve to abortion providers — joining his liberal colleagues in striking down a Louisiana anti-abortion law. But that reprieve could be very short-lived: A case now before the justices could give them a vehicle to undercut the right to terminate a pregnancy.” Ian Millhiser with Vox suggests that if the Trump administration gets a victory in Food and Drug Administration v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, SCOTUS “could force many patients seeking abortions to undergo unnecessary surgeries, despite the fact that those patients could safely terminate their pregnancy with medication — and that’s assuming that these individuals are able to find a doctor to perform the surgery in the first place.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of The Washington Post reflects on the recent 4th Circuit decision that stated a Virginia school board violated the constitutional rights of a transgender student, GAVIN GRIMM, when it refused to allow him to use the boy’s restroom at his high school. The Ed Board: “We hope the school board, which could still seek further appeal, finally gets the message. ‘The proudest moments of the federal judiciary,’ the court wrote, ‘are when we affirm the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserve the prejudices of the past…How shallow a promise of equal protection that would not protect Grimm from the fantastical fears and unfounded prejudices of his adult community. It is time to move forward.'”