In Alabama if you have a disability and cannot stand for long periods of time you’re allowed to go to the front of the line. Tell a poll worker and go to the front of the line, not sure about your states.
In North Carolina, there is a special disabled section in the parking lot where you don't have to get out of your car. You dial a phone # and a poll worker will come out to you with the ballot. My only fear of doing that is how can I rest assured that my ballot will be placed into the machine?
We also do that in my voting district in VA - and I sign an oath to affirm your vote will be cast as required. I think part of the issue is that many elder or disabled folks don't have the transportation available at the time. Requires coordination and far more time than casting a legal mail-in ballot. It's never going to be a perfect system, but voting today is very fair - and honest.
Mail in ballots are also perfectly legal. And all you do is drop them in any mail box - no postage required in mail-in states. Easy peasy and 100% secure too.
What if you don't own a car or can't drive? I used to go collect ballots from elderly people in a care facility and deliver them to the courthouse, but that was rendered illegal. Now these people, many of whom are visually and mobility impaired, are expected to somehow return their ballots on their own.
I am in an adult care facility - in Washington state - which is 100% mail in ballots. I fill in my ballot and take it downstairs to the secure mailbox and drop it in. No muss, no fuss, no postage required. I can do it in my PJs and slippers if I want.
Why is the mail-in EO even before SCOTUS? Voting is a duty of the states (“states rights” is now arbitrary?), not the president; and it’s a bit too close to elections (Purcell, anyone?).
That is exactly my question! I read very carefully through Joyce's breakdown of the legal issues and procedures and all this stuff about proving actual harm done (rather than anticipated) and proving standing, etc. I'm not a lawyer but I've learned a lot from Joyce and people like Andrew Weissman and others. Based on what I THOUGHT I knew, all of that strikes me as superfluous, when at the heart of the matter, the Constitution is clear that running elections are within the purview of the individual states.
Sadly, (though sadly doesn't begin to express my devastating fear for our democracy should this obscenity be allowed to proceed) your ominous assumption is the only explanation I can come up with, David.
Maybe we can hope that they agreed to hear it just so they can put a stake in its heart, like they did with Birthright Citizenship, but if that were the case, it seems unlikely that they would agree to address it through the shadow docket . UGGGHHH.
David, you are not helping to diminish my sense of dread!!! I thought I was the kind of person who prefers to take gut punches straight on. I learned from battling cancer that it's better to understand the worst case scenario rather than being led down a rosy path that leads to a hungry grizzly bear, but right now I'm longing for some comfort.
FWIW, this coming Thanksgiving will be 5 years since I finished nearly a year of brutal treatment, and so far so good,. I only wish I had as much faith in this Supreme Court as I had in my oncology team.
On the other hand - on this beautiful sunny day - you are looking hopefully forward … while the right wing SCOTUS Six is still stuck in the Nineteenth Century.
I share your sentiments. I, too, have been battling cancer for 3 years (and dreadfully afraid of what future means with all the research being cut, but that's another story...).
I am with you. Something needs to be done on a big scale.
If SCOTUs agrees with the man-child, besides voting blue, something else needs to be done on a large scale. Do we have any class action recourse? Can we file a class action lawsuit against Trump for misuse of our tax dollars (“No taxation without representation”)? Can we establish and submit a national petition to Congress demanding impeachment and removal of the orange traitor? (How could that be organized, if feasible?)
I have no idea if “We the People” have any legal recourse—Like most of us, I depend on Joyce, as well as those on this Substack with legal backgrounds, to explain the legal side, but, clearly, DJT’s behavior gets more outrageous with each passing day.
I am so tired of him! Can we withstand 2 more years?
Once the Dems regains control of this country, the first order of business has got to be court reform.
AOC'S website says "July 10, 2024, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) introduced articles of impeachment against United States Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito." The first impeachment resolution is against Justice Thomas for:
Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.
Refusal to recuse from matters concerning his spouse’s legal interest in cases before the court.
Refusal to recuse from matters involving his spouse’s financial interest in cases before the court.
The second impeachment resolution is against Justice Alito for:
Refusal to recuse from cases in which he had a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party in cases before the court.
Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.
If there was any shred of real justice left in our Democracy, these two would be removed. And IMHO, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett should also be impeached for lying to Congress in their respective confirmation hearings when each of them swore to uphold the Constitution and respect the Court's own prior rulings as precedent, which they have failed over and over again to do.
I feel the same way you do, Jeanne! I SO appreciate your explanation of what is going on in these legal matters, Joyce. Thank you for breaking this situation down so your readers can understand the Republican legislative manipulation of state election rights!
Jeanne, I'm with you completely. It seems for red states and the Roberts 6, for Trumplandia too, the 15, 19th, 26 amendments to our constitution, and other parts of the Constitution that address voting don't exist and can be walked on if those whiny white boys choose to do so. That is just plain wrong!
Then, the US Post Office should have absolutely no say whatsoever as to what they carry and deliver when it comes to ballots or anything else except things that are actually illegal, like guns and elicit drugs. How is it they are even involved in this whole issue? That current Postmaster should be impeached or kicked out or forbidden to have anything to do with the post office. Then, our Republican senators are being groomed to vote in two members of the postal board who have sworn to do whatever their Baby Donnie tells them to do, which of course should be illegal too. We are going to need a lot of work to clean up the corruption and the rising of the revised confederacy and its utter insanity!
That is the WHOLE point! We are not supposed to understand it. We are supposed to 'get it', the SHAFT! Thanks to Joyce, Heather, and a few others we are given an understanding in plain English. Joyce said it all in four words, "Vote the bums out!"
Yes, to anyone who can read it seems like a no-brainer: the states control voting. Full stop. But remember that SCOTUS declared Forced Birth to be legal despite three amendments clearly banning it. And the Constitution clearly states that birthright citizenship exists, but almost half of SCOTUS disagreed.
The prospect of a corrupt SCOTUS’ ruling scares me to no end. My hope is that the court will simply decide not to take this up so closely to an election.
Even if they do, trump et al are never going to let go of it. He will be back at a later time closer to the election when it is more difficult for blue state AGs to mount a challenge. That’s the whole point of Joyce’s essay.
I suspect it's going to come down to Roberts. Barrett will likely side with Roberts, and the other seven votes are pretty much a given. Purcell was the culmination of Roberts' life work. Will his antipathy towards the VRA extend to condoning straight-forward voter suppression?
Why is this a question? The feds and the POTUS have zero say in how the states run elections. The constitution is extremely clear on that point. This whole thing smells like they're trying to distract us from some other behind the scenes attack on the election process.
Really have a bad feeling about this. If it were just the Trump administration there's a good chance that the Court would stand up for the Constitution. With red states involved, this becomes the type of partisan issue that the Court always supports.
Isn't this the Confederacy trying to take over the country, and, if so, should not we call it that? I don't understand cults, but Trump seems to have become a cult leader. Why? Confederate zombies might be the explanation.
How's that? 'Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas join the Trump administration.' Only three, four if you count Florida, of the twelve states joining the Administration are technically southen states. Please explain the comparison to the Confederacy.
The politics in all these states are currently fascist, just like the confederacy even if they were not part of it, so I think the comparison stands. Also KS, MO, and NE were the sites of pitched battles fought over whether they would be admitted to the Union as free or slave states.
And everyone I have ever met from MO considers themselves southerners.
Actually, this is true. Having been from a large urban city in the northeast and living in Florida for almost 40 years, I find many people in the very rural areas to be pleasant, helpful and kind as long as they don't know if your politics are different than theirs.
I don’t know who you met so I do not challenge what you say.
But by their own current actions, southerners continue to build a region of traitors, slavers, and now vicious killers of innocent women due to their heinous forced birth obsession. I have lived in 3 southern states (TX, FL, VA) and traveled often in several more. They embrace their history of being backward, narrow, superstitious, and ignorant. Indeed, they flaunt the flags of the treasonous confederacy and bedeck statues of confederate traitors like lee. I have found their ‘decency’ to be skin deep and only bestowed upon fellow fascists.
One thing’s for sure. No lack of transparency here. We know what Trump and his myrmidons want, and why they want it. They’re terrified. They can feel the hot breath of the Furies on the backs of their necks.
MAGA plans are in the open: steal the elections by doing things in Nov, Dec & Jan that they hope will overwhelm the courts and succeed because the Judicial Branch cannot act, or doesn't want to act swiftly. The importance of organizations like Democracy Docket cannot be underestimated. Don't give money to D folders like Schumer, contribute to Democracy Docket, Civil Discourse, Katie Phang, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, etc!
Thank you for unpacking what is without any doubt a smelly mess! I feel absolutely outraged by the tyrant, a supine gop/fascist majority, the 6 gop operatives that have made the court nothing more than a rubber stamp for corruption and lies, and a do(i)j being run in effect by a mob attorney ( when will the NY Bar act if ever?) for what is essentially a mob enterprise. This situation really does feel like the confederacy is rising again through trump. Of course they got lots of support from other presidents since 1878. And we've never faced the truth about all of that.Thank goodness the UEFA has stood up to another crime boss, Infantino, and told him to go shove his money making plan up you know where, and now his own hold on FIFA looks, well, like he could be booted out! He's as much a criminal as this regime. Turn out. Turn out. Turn out. And perhaps HUGE marches in DC and state capitals is what ix required now. We must pull the plug on this regime. We must show up and show out! No more sitting back and waiting.
It’s too crucial to Trump to retain control and remain in office for him to allow a free election. He will find a way, legal or illegal, to prevent, restrict, or cause chaos in November.
It seems to me that any idea of federal messing at all with elections is unconstitutional just by virtue of its existence, proposed or otherwise. If the scotus fascists let trump get away with this it will be a bridge too far for the blue states: the American republic will be done and secession may well be on the table. Our system is fundamentally grounded in federalism — the sovereignty of states — and elections are the basis of that state power. The very fact that scotus is even hearing a case on this bogus eo is by definition a complete repudiation of our system of constitutional government. I fear there will be no going back from this even if they throw trump out of Court — this time.
Georgia has reduced drop-off locations. In rural counties there may be only one place. I used to live 15 country miles from the county courthouse. No public transportation. It is a challenge to get anywhere.
I've always thought Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas, five total, were considered Southern States? Weren't they all part of the Confederacy?
In any case, I was relieved that Ohio was not on the list. But also, I'm shocked that any state would jump on that slippery slope and willingly cede power, though I guess I shouldn't be, given how often Congress has done exactly that for their big Orange daddy.
I admire and respect you so much, Joyce. I’m glad you’re in our corner.
In Alabama if you have a disability and cannot stand for long periods of time you’re allowed to go to the front of the line. Tell a poll worker and go to the front of the line, not sure about your states.
Washington state has all mail-in voting so disabled voters are not put in the position of debilitating themselves to cast a vote.
Same in Oregon.
Same as California.
Same with Colorado and we like it the way it is. We don't need fixing!
We love universal mail ballots in Washington! So much better than standing in line for hours.
And you can easily refer to the Voters Handbook with candidates statements without delaying others.
You can do the same in GA if 70 or older, or disabled.
In North Carolina, there is a special disabled section in the parking lot where you don't have to get out of your car. You dial a phone # and a poll worker will come out to you with the ballot. My only fear of doing that is how can I rest assured that my ballot will be placed into the machine?
We also do that in my voting district in VA - and I sign an oath to affirm your vote will be cast as required. I think part of the issue is that many elder or disabled folks don't have the transportation available at the time. Requires coordination and far more time than casting a legal mail-in ballot. It's never going to be a perfect system, but voting today is very fair - and honest.
Mail in ballots are also perfectly legal. And all you do is drop them in any mail box - no postage required in mail-in states. Easy peasy and 100% secure too.
You should be able to follow up on your ballot to confirm it was counted.
You can do that here in Arizona.
What if you don't own a car or can't drive? I used to go collect ballots from elderly people in a care facility and deliver them to the courthouse, but that was rendered illegal. Now these people, many of whom are visually and mobility impaired, are expected to somehow return their ballots on their own.
There should be a mechanism by which they can request a mail-in or absentee ballot in those circumstances.
I am in an adult care facility - in Washington state - which is 100% mail in ballots. I fill in my ballot and take it downstairs to the secure mailbox and drop it in. No muss, no fuss, no postage required. I can do it in my PJs and slippers if I want.
Same in Utah, a red state.
Why is the mail-in EO even before SCOTUS? Voting is a duty of the states (“states rights” is now arbitrary?), not the president; and it’s a bit too close to elections (Purcell, anyone?).
That is exactly my question! I read very carefully through Joyce's breakdown of the legal issues and procedures and all this stuff about proving actual harm done (rather than anticipated) and proving standing, etc. I'm not a lawyer but I've learned a lot from Joyce and people like Andrew Weissman and others. Based on what I THOUGHT I knew, all of that strikes me as superfluous, when at the heart of the matter, the Constitution is clear that running elections are within the purview of the individual states.
I just don't get this!
Agreed! And I think it’s more than ominous that SCOTUS is willing to entertain - with a right wing eye to uphold - this obscenity.
Exactly. Four Justices had to agree to hear this. It's likely at least those four have already decide to unblock the order.
Again, foreboding.
Sadly, (though sadly doesn't begin to express my devastating fear for our democracy should this obscenity be allowed to proceed) your ominous assumption is the only explanation I can come up with, David.
Maybe we can hope that they agreed to hear it just so they can put a stake in its heart, like they did with Birthright Citizenship, but if that were the case, it seems unlikely that they would agree to address it through the shadow docket . UGGGHHH.
Perhaps … but remember, upholding the Constitution on birthright citizenship was NOT unanimous. Foreboding.
David, you are not helping to diminish my sense of dread!!! I thought I was the kind of person who prefers to take gut punches straight on. I learned from battling cancer that it's better to understand the worst case scenario rather than being led down a rosy path that leads to a hungry grizzly bear, but right now I'm longing for some comfort.
FWIW, this coming Thanksgiving will be 5 years since I finished nearly a year of brutal treatment, and so far so good,. I only wish I had as much faith in this Supreme Court as I had in my oncology team.
On the other hand - on this beautiful sunny day - you are looking hopefully forward … while the right wing SCOTUS Six is still stuck in the Nineteenth Century.
I share your sentiments. I, too, have been battling cancer for 3 years (and dreadfully afraid of what future means with all the research being cut, but that's another story...).
Jeanne wish you the very best. 50 years since my battle with stomach cancer, I have loved every day! I wish the same for you!
Perhaps we should consider abolition of both the Senate and the Extreme Curia. Neither seems to do anything useful.
Expand the House by enough members to truly represent people.
Jen:
I am with you. Something needs to be done on a big scale.
If SCOTUs agrees with the man-child, besides voting blue, something else needs to be done on a large scale. Do we have any class action recourse? Can we file a class action lawsuit against Trump for misuse of our tax dollars (“No taxation without representation”)? Can we establish and submit a national petition to Congress demanding impeachment and removal of the orange traitor? (How could that be organized, if feasible?)
I have no idea if “We the People” have any legal recourse—Like most of us, I depend on Joyce, as well as those on this Substack with legal backgrounds, to explain the legal side, but, clearly, DJT’s behavior gets more outrageous with each passing day.
I am so tired of him! Can we withstand 2 more years?
Once the Dems regains control of this country, the first order of business has got to be court reform.
AOC'S website says "July 10, 2024, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) introduced articles of impeachment against United States Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito." The first impeachment resolution is against Justice Thomas for:
Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.
Refusal to recuse from matters concerning his spouse’s legal interest in cases before the court.
Refusal to recuse from matters involving his spouse’s financial interest in cases before the court.
The second impeachment resolution is against Justice Alito for:
Refusal to recuse from cases in which he had a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party in cases before the court.
Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.
If there was any shred of real justice left in our Democracy, these two would be removed. And IMHO, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett should also be impeached for lying to Congress in their respective confirmation hearings when each of them swore to uphold the Constitution and respect the Court's own prior rulings as precedent, which they have failed over and over again to do.
Interesting idea - not without merit - Trump’s counter: Abolish both legislative & judicial branches, court duties to be handled by a (tame) DoJ.
I feel the same way you do, Jeanne! I SO appreciate your explanation of what is going on in these legal matters, Joyce. Thank you for breaking this situation down so your readers can understand the Republican legislative manipulation of state election rights!
Laurel, me too!
Jeanne, I'm with you completely. It seems for red states and the Roberts 6, for Trumplandia too, the 15, 19th, 26 amendments to our constitution, and other parts of the Constitution that address voting don't exist and can be walked on if those whiny white boys choose to do so. That is just plain wrong!
Then, the US Post Office should have absolutely no say whatsoever as to what they carry and deliver when it comes to ballots or anything else except things that are actually illegal, like guns and elicit drugs. How is it they are even involved in this whole issue? That current Postmaster should be impeached or kicked out or forbidden to have anything to do with the post office. Then, our Republican senators are being groomed to vote in two members of the postal board who have sworn to do whatever their Baby Donnie tells them to do, which of course should be illegal too. We are going to need a lot of work to clean up the corruption and the rising of the revised confederacy and its utter insanity!
Just another day in paradise …
That is the WHOLE point! We are not supposed to understand it. We are supposed to 'get it', the SHAFT! Thanks to Joyce, Heather, and a few others we are given an understanding in plain English. Joyce said it all in four words, "Vote the bums out!"
Because the cruelty and stupidity are the point with this regime.
Your statement is true, Lauren. They are counting on the oblivious who can be successfully manipulated.
Cult 101
Yes, to anyone who can read it seems like a no-brainer: the states control voting. Full stop. But remember that SCOTUS declared Forced Birth to be legal despite three amendments clearly banning it. And the Constitution clearly states that birthright citizenship exists, but almost half of SCOTUS disagreed.
My thoughts exactly!!
Executive orders aren't law.s
The prospect of a corrupt SCOTUS’ ruling scares me to no end. My hope is that the court will simply decide not to take this up so closely to an election.
Even if they do, trump et al are never going to let go of it. He will be back at a later time closer to the election when it is more difficult for blue state AGs to mount a challenge. That’s the whole point of Joyce’s essay.
I suspect it's going to come down to Roberts. Barrett will likely side with Roberts, and the other seven votes are pretty much a given. Purcell was the culmination of Roberts' life work. Will his antipathy towards the VRA extend to condoning straight-forward voter suppression?
Why is this a question? The feds and the POTUS have zero say in how the states run elections. The constitution is extremely clear on that point. This whole thing smells like they're trying to distract us from some other behind the scenes attack on the election process.
You are right, except that SCOTUS always wants to dd Trump’s bidding. Why?
I'm not sure even SCOTUS gets to just completely disregard the constitution. They twist the words a bit, but this would be more than monumental.
Really have a bad feeling about this. If it were just the Trump administration there's a good chance that the Court would stand up for the Constitution. With red states involved, this becomes the type of partisan issue that the Court always supports.
Isn't this the Confederacy trying to take over the country, and, if so, should not we call it that? I don't understand cults, but Trump seems to have become a cult leader. Why? Confederate zombies might be the explanation.
How's that? 'Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas join the Trump administration.' Only three, four if you count Florida, of the twelve states joining the Administration are technically southen states. Please explain the comparison to the Confederacy.
The politics in all these states are currently fascist, just like the confederacy even if they were not part of it, so I think the comparison stands. Also KS, MO, and NE were the sites of pitched battles fought over whether they would be admitted to the Union as free or slave states.
And everyone I have ever met from MO considers themselves southerners.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Confederate-States-of-America
I met many Southerners, and they were decent people.
Actually, this is true. Having been from a large urban city in the northeast and living in Florida for almost 40 years, I find many people in the very rural areas to be pleasant, helpful and kind as long as they don't know if your politics are different than theirs.
Like I said: shallow and phony.
I don’t know who you met so I do not challenge what you say.
But by their own current actions, southerners continue to build a region of traitors, slavers, and now vicious killers of innocent women due to their heinous forced birth obsession. I have lived in 3 southern states (TX, FL, VA) and traveled often in several more. They embrace their history of being backward, narrow, superstitious, and ignorant. Indeed, they flaunt the flags of the treasonous confederacy and bedeck statues of confederate traitors like lee. I have found their ‘decency’ to be skin deep and only bestowed upon fellow fascists.
Kevin Phillips in his American Theocracy provides an explanation.
One thing’s for sure. No lack of transparency here. We know what Trump and his myrmidons want, and why they want it. They’re terrified. They can feel the hot breath of the Furies on the backs of their necks.
MAGA plans are in the open: steal the elections by doing things in Nov, Dec & Jan that they hope will overwhelm the courts and succeed because the Judicial Branch cannot act, or doesn't want to act swiftly. The importance of organizations like Democracy Docket cannot be underestimated. Don't give money to D folders like Schumer, contribute to Democracy Docket, Civil Discourse, Katie Phang, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, etc!
Thank you for unpacking what is without any doubt a smelly mess! I feel absolutely outraged by the tyrant, a supine gop/fascist majority, the 6 gop operatives that have made the court nothing more than a rubber stamp for corruption and lies, and a do(i)j being run in effect by a mob attorney ( when will the NY Bar act if ever?) for what is essentially a mob enterprise. This situation really does feel like the confederacy is rising again through trump. Of course they got lots of support from other presidents since 1878. And we've never faced the truth about all of that.Thank goodness the UEFA has stood up to another crime boss, Infantino, and told him to go shove his money making plan up you know where, and now his own hold on FIFA looks, well, like he could be booted out! He's as much a criminal as this regime. Turn out. Turn out. Turn out. And perhaps HUGE marches in DC and state capitals is what ix required now. We must pull the plug on this regime. We must show up and show out! No more sitting back and waiting.
It’s too crucial to Trump to retain control and remain in office for him to allow a free election. He will find a way, legal or illegal, to prevent, restrict, or cause chaos in November.
It seems to me that any idea of federal messing at all with elections is unconstitutional just by virtue of its existence, proposed or otherwise. If the scotus fascists let trump get away with this it will be a bridge too far for the blue states: the American republic will be done and secession may well be on the table. Our system is fundamentally grounded in federalism — the sovereignty of states — and elections are the basis of that state power. The very fact that scotus is even hearing a case on this bogus eo is by definition a complete repudiation of our system of constitutional government. I fear there will be no going back from this even if they throw trump out of Court — this time.
I want to point out a third option to many of your followers. Get the absentee ballot. Drop it off in person.
Georgia has reduced drop-off locations. In rural counties there may be only one place. I used to live 15 country miles from the county courthouse. No public transportation. It is a challenge to get anywhere.
The remedy to Republican influence and domination is to vote them out and to refuse to support their supporters. Stay informed. Vote.
I've always thought Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas, five total, were considered Southern States? Weren't they all part of the Confederacy?
In any case, I was relieved that Ohio was not on the list. But also, I'm shocked that any state would jump on that slippery slope and willingly cede power, though I guess I shouldn't be, given how often Congress has done exactly that for their big Orange daddy.