I’m very drained as of late. Having been working with our previous server accomplice and getting ready to go to a brand new server accomplice. The brand new accomplice seems to be extra astute. Additionally working with our promoting companions to get higher advertisements. Obtained a gathering with the VA subsequent week to debate my two years out and in of Lejeune and the water. Going by way of rehab the second time for my again. earlier than they reduce into it. Upcoming operation. Bodily remedy happening additionally. Subscriber standing to Civil Discourse.
Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse has some attention-grabbing phrases immediately. I’m going to spend a while on them.
Good Information Tonight from Georgia and Alabama
Early voting was getting underway, Fulton County Superior Court docket Choose Robert McBurney was gearing as much as take motion in two of the election-related lawsuits in entrance of him. The underside line:
The nice guys gained immediately in Georgia—the individuals who need our elections to be performed pretty and to make sure that when a voter casts a poll, it is going to get counted.
AB: Why that is necessary is that is the beginning of resistance to thwart the outcomes of the 2024 election. Choose McBurney swatted the resistance out of the way in which together with his ruling on the next . . .
- In Adams v. Fulton County, Julie Adams, a member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections (FCBRE), requested the courtroom to substantiate she wasn’t obligated to certify the outcomes of the election in her county.
We’ve mentioned this concern earlier than. The regulation in all fairness clear on this space. Certification shouldn’t be one thing inside the discretion of election officers, who’re known as superintendents below Georgia regulation. As soon as the rely is accomplished, they should certify it.
Choose McBurney confirmed this, writing:
“some things an election superintendent must do, either in a certain way or by a certain time, with no discretion to do otherwise. Certification is one of those things.” Election officers conduct the counting of ballots, however as soon as they’re carried out they, “shall tabulate the figures for the entire county or municipality and sign, announce, and attest the same.”
As Legal professional Joyce Vance states: This is smart. There’s considerable alternative to discover any irregularities or challenges to the method, and they’re assured by Georgia regulation. As an example, a candidate can deliver a problem after the county certifies however earlier than the states does, which is the subsequent step within the course of. The pretense that fraud or abuses might go unaddressed earlier than the election outcomes are remaining is just incorrect.
And that is solely the start . . .
Joyce; Apparently a “Lord of the Rings” fan, Choose McBurney famous in a footnote in his opinion that solely legal professionals might attempt to argue that the place Georgia regulation says “shall” certify, “shall” means one thing apart from it have to be carried out. He wrote: “As only lawyers (and judges) can, we have muddied and mangled the meaning of the word ‘shall’ in our business. To users of common parlance, ‘shall’ connotes instruction or command: You shall not pass! And, generally, even lawyers, legislators, and judges, construe ‘shall’ as ‘a word of command.’” Gandalf has spoken, and a minimum of till Georgia’s appellate courts get their arms on McBurney’s determination, county boards should certify their outcomes as soon as the rely is full.
In fact, there was concern that MAGA supporters in positions of energy may refuse to certify election outcomes, throwing the result of the presidential election subsequent month into doubt. However courts perceive, even when politicians don’t, that shall does imply shall, and we will count on that if some officers refuse to certify, legal professionals for the marketing campaign shall be fast to go to courtroom to drive them to adjust to the regulation.
- Cobb v. Georgia, additionally being heard in Fulton County Superior Court docket, is a problem to 6 guidelines lately adopted by the State Election Board, together with a rule requiring a hand rely of ballots that will not go into impact till halfway by way of the early voting interval.
After a listening to immediately, Choose Robert McBurney, who can also be assigned to this case, concluded that it was too near the election to make a change like this and enjoined the hand rely rule from going into impact for this election.
One thing that you must perceive in regards to the hand rely is that it’s not a guide tally of the particular votes folks forged. Slightly, it’s a rely of the numbers of ballots themselves, to be sure that the variety of paper ballots, to be counted out into stack of fifty, matches the quantity of ballots forged in every precinct.
His determination:
“Today, the status quo is that there is no Hand Count Rule; it does not go into effect until 22 October 2024. Today is also the first day of early voting and only three weeks away from the general election. Should the Hand Count Rule take effect as scheduled, it would do so on the very fortnight of the election. As of today, there are no guidelines or training tools for the implementation of the Hand Count Rule. Nor will there be any forthcoming: the Secretary of State cautioned the SEB [State Election Board] before it passed the Hand Count Rule that passage would be too close in time to the election for his office to provide meaningful training or support … ; after passage and the unsurprising efflorescence of suits such as this one, the Secretary reaffirmed his inability to provide last-minute logistical support for the last-minute rule.”
He defined:
“[T]he public interest is not disserved by pressing pause here. This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public. On paper, the Hand Count Rule — if properly promulgated — appears consistent with the SEB’s mission of ensuring fair, legal, and orderly elections. It is, at base, simply a check of ballot counts, a human eyeball confirmation that the machine counts match reality. But that is not what confronts Georgians today, given the timing of the Rule’s passage. A rule that introduces a new and substantive role on the eve of election for more than 7,500 poll workers who will not have received any formal, cohesive, or consistent training and that allows for our paper ballots — the only tangible proof of who voted for whom — to be handled multiple times by multiple people following an exhausting Election Day all before they are securely transported to the official tabulation center does not contribute to lessening the tension or boosting the confidence of the public for this election. Perhaps for a subsequent election, after the Secretary of State’s Office and the 150+ local election boards have time to prepare, budget, and train — but not for this one.”
AB: This nonetheless doesn’t imply there shall be challenges to this determination. Happening . . .
The brand new rule handed at this late date would have been a nightmare for election officers to implement. Fulton County alone has 400+ precincts. The brand new regulation would have required three folks in every precinct to conduct the rely, so greater than 1200 staff. However these folks wouldn’t have obtained any coaching on conducting the hand rely. As a substitute of the conventional procedures the place, as soon as election days ends, the doorways are locked and ballots are secured for transportation, polling locations would have been required to accommodate members of “the public” who needed to watch the method as they performed the rely. Election staff who had been on the job since as early as 5:00 a.m. must do the rely with none steerage on easy methods to separate themselves from observers for each their security and the safety of the ballots. They might have needed to confront points like the place the sources for hiring safety had been going to come back from and whether or not observers might take images within the extremely polarized surroundings that resulted in upheaval within the lives of Georgia election staff Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss in 2020. It might have been, as we are saying within the South, a scorching mess.
Nevertheless it’s additionally pointless. The variety of voters and ballots forged is reconciled all through the day. There’s a rely when voters present up and register on ballot pad machines. The Poll Marking Gadgets (BMD) machine that marks poll retains a rely. And since the BMD prints out paper votes which might be scanned, there may be additionally a scanner rely. In different phrases, there are periodic checks to ensure the numbers match up.
So why go to a lot bother to require a duplicative rely and create a variety of chaos after the election is definitely underway? The regulation was handed within the face of overwhelming objections from the Georgia Affiliation of Voter Registration and Election Officers (GAVREO), the folks liable for administering Georgia’s election. How did it get handed? The three people on the State Board who voted to undertake it are the identical three who acquired a shout out from Donald Trump when he was in Georgia for his August rally. We mentioned that state of affairs on the time in this submit.
I requested Ms. Silas what she needed folks to know in regards to the election litigation in Georgia. She instructed me she needed folks to know that “election administrators and poll workers are dedicated to ensuring open, fair, transparent elections, and while we respect rules, adopting rules at the last minute that appear to only sow confusion is not a path forward. We thought this rule was a solution looking for a problem … Georgia voters can have confidence they will have safe, fair, transparent, and accurate elections.”
On the finish of the day, there was additionally excellent news, a minimum of partially, out of Alabama. Choose Anna Manasco, a Trump appointee, dominated that Alabama’s Secretary of State needed to cease eradicating folks from the voter roles based mostly on his perception they won’t be residents. It’s the brand new Large Lie being set as much as clarify a Trump loss: “illegal aliens” are registering to vote. However after all, it’s simply one other lie.
Choose Manasco identified these folks had been referred to Alabama’s lawyer normal for felony investigation as a part of the method. That clearly has an influence on an eligible voter, particularly a brand new citizen who needs to ensure they don’t do something unlawful. It might probably step on whether or not they really feel in a position to train their proper to vote. However whereas she mentioned the removals needed to cease between now and the election, she declined to go additional than that, leaving Alabama probably free to recommence the removals after the election.
To date, 2,074 of the three,251 individuals who obtained elimination notices have been decided to be eligible to vote. And that’s simply to this point.
Tuesday was a number of months’ price of litigation all in someday. And there’s extra coming.
AB: Like I mentioned that is solely the start.
