Arguments were heard yesterday (26/03/23) on the mail in ballot case brought about by the GoP in Mississippi and...
it did not go well for the defendants. The Mississippi SoG who was defending against the GoP lawsuit about allowing mail in ballots to be received up to a week after the election was grilled by Gorsuch to the extent I think he went home and cried afterwards.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=jqw7gTYZTXM
It also doesn't help that the Mississippi Soliciter General seems way out of his depth here, even misquoting his states laws several times which seem to antagonize both the HNIC and Gorsuch who took time to call him out on it and make him look quite the fool.
Its odd, I believe the AG had clerked for the Court so you'd think he would have been a little more confident. He seemed very hesitant and unsure in all the places he could have blustered, and stuck to his guns at the worst time (on the subject of recall). There were a lot of places where he hedged instead of taking his own position to its serious conclusion and simply refused or was unable to answer questions. Gorsuch was bad but Barrett's attempt to explore early pre-election day mail recall finality ended up stumping the AG so badly that she withdrew the question. Here's a pro-tip, kids. If you don't have some kind of answer when the Supreme Court asks about your positions then you did not prepare properly and are going to have a Bad Day.
Meanwhile Clement was a masterclass, as usual, and I love the way he handled those stupid cunts trying to mis-represent him and the 2000 election. Most people would have no chance in hell if they treated a sitting Justice the way he did, but he's built up so much cred with the court he can get away with it. It helps that he's such a classy fella. Johnny boy might have gone to the Kennedy school of scratchy voices, but he did pretty well too, and he managed to handle the attempts by the 3 crones to control the discussion very well.
Is anybody else as pissed as I am that Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor keep cutting off attorneys? They'll ramble on for five minutes in a long question more statement than query, then cut off the attorney response five words in with no chance to answer a complex question and it pisses me off. I get that the oral arguments are as much about the justices presenting some last minute advocacy to the others by the parties, but there is a way to do it gracefully. Those three are so stupid and passionate that it becomes truly obnoxious.
With the exception of the usual suspects it does seem like the SCOTUS is not favourably inclined to allow such election shenanigans as mass mail in ballots, post dated ballots and other typical Democratic strategies for winning elections.
......
Over all I think the Dems are going to lose this one and if so it sets a precedent for other states to follow to put massive limits on after election ballots. Not that this will change anything in Blue states, where the Democratic machine is in full power but the swing states may be a lot less "swing" when mail in ballots have several limits placed on them.
I agree. I feel like the legal reasoning will generally flow like this: the statute must preempt something > every word of the statute must have a meaning > the plain meaning of "day" is 1 day not a whole month > the 'consummation' is the synthesis of vote casting, gathering, and finality in the hands of election officials > early voting is thus okay but "day" forecloses a final deadline for ballots to be in the "box", not in transit. That logic gets them there very narrowly while simultaneously allowing Roberts to say that Congress can always change it if Congress wants, they're just reading the statute as written, which allows him to defer and deflect as much of the heat for this decision as possible. I would expect either him to write the opinion himself or hand it off to one of the more 'neutral' 6, like Gorsuch or Barrett, they both have a pretty plain and level writing tone in their written opinions.
I feel that as much as the legal logic is sound, its just as likely that they will decide this way for the sheer practicality of it. In the first instance, they get to deflect back to Congress for writing the law so vaguely, and thus avoid blame. In the second, the various line drawing problems regarding finality, how long is too long, who counts as official, etc would eventually end up in front of them later, creating a huge workload and headache eventually. Ruling that day means day, hard stop, cuts off all those disputes way ahead of time and saves the court's efforts. Finally, the legal logic behind it is pretty easy to understand and defend to normies at the cocktail parties they go to. "Well, day means day" and "the ballots have to stop coming in sometime" are short, sweet, and logically consistent without requiring a full breakdown of preemption and statutory construction.
