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America chooses. In many states in the United States, lines have formed in front of polling stations for weeks. Many Americans want to cast their vote before Election Day, November 3. “Early voting“is the name of the system that nearly 79 million Americans have used, more than ever.
Because in the most competitive American presidential election in generations, which is being complicated by a new wave of corona and the chaos of the postal voting system, literally every vote is at stake, especially in the decisive states, some of which Donald Trump participated. in 2016. he had gained the narrowest possible lead.
In polls, Trump is currently far behind his challenger Joe Biden. But he apparently wants to pull all the levers to stay in power, if necessary, by cracking down on unpopular groups of voters: In many states, his Republicans complain about the “count.”first votes“and timing the mail-in ballots. Apparently they fear a lot of these pre-made ballots could be for Biden.
Several of these lawsuits have already reached the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States, with specific consequences for the election.
The legal situation differs from state to state.
In recent days, the US Supreme Court issued three separate orders for Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin, alternate voter states where the outcome could be close. In Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the court allowed counting periods to extend beyond Election Day. In Wisconsin, on the other hand, it mandated that only vote-by-mail ballots received before midnight Tuesday be counted; therefore, all subsequent ones are not valid.
Why are these, at first glance, contradictory resolutions? This is due, among other things, to the different timing of the lawsuits and the specific legal situation in the respective states, which reveals how opaque the situation can become at the national level. All three decisions were also made without the involvement of Trump-nominated Conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who officially took office Tuesday.
It is already becoming clear how the court could now judge with its new majority.
Every state in the United States, wrote Trump-appointed federal judge Brett Kavanaugh in his statement on Wisconsin, had to announce a “final” tally result on Tuesday’s election night “or as soon as possible thereafter” to dispel the ” alleged irregularities “. It should not be the case that late votes “nullify the results of an election.”
However, past elections have shown that the practice is different: the voting process ends when polling stations close, but scrutiny can take a long time afterward. “There are no results for ‘tipping’ before all valid votes have been counted,” wrote Kavanaugh’s liberal court colleague Elena Kagan, arguing against Wisconsin. On the contrary: nothing is more “suspicious” than stopping the evaluation in the middle simply because it is midnight.
Florida suspense
Many US states have set especially long vote-by-mail deadlines this time around, mostly due to the crown crisis. In California they are “absentee ballot“Postmarked November 3, still valid if they arrive before November 20.
This is nothing new in itself. In the past, numbers were counted well beyond US Election Day, also to record the votes of troops stationed abroad. Twenty years ago, in the punch card drama between George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida, the suspense lasted until mid-December, before the Supreme Court decided count he stopped and declared Bush the winner, thanks to exactly 537 Sun State votes.
One of the Bush attorneys who successfully fought to get the vote counting higher every day in Gore’s favor was a 35-year-old attorney named Brett Kavanaugh.
It is not known whether Trump considered it when he nominated Kavanaugh as Supreme Court justice in 2018. One thing is for sure: It will be up to the conservative justices if he loses the November election.
For weeks, Trump has been spreading conspiracy theories that the electoral system has been rigged by Democrats and that mail-in votes would lead to massive fraud. All this has been unequivocally refuted, but it serves as the basis for subsequent trials of his lawyers in the event of a foreseeable electoral defeat.
Trump’s hope is that the votes cast in person on Election Day are for him. red mirage (red illusion) known phenomenon – and that postal voters’ votes, who are traditionally more in favor of the Democratic candidate – only come later. Hence the attempt to eliminate the laggards.
“Big problems and discrepancies with postal votes everywhere,” Trump tweeted again on Monday. “You should have the final result on November 3.” Twitter marked this statement as “misleading” and made clear: “Voting by mail is safe.”
The parallels in Trump’s and Kavanaugh’s line of thought are striking. Law professor Richard Hasen told the “New York Times” that Kavanaugh exhibits a “Trumpian mindset”: Democrats are likely to have a difficult position in the case of electoral complaints before the Supreme Court.
Trump does not hide his intentions. “The fraud will come before the Supreme Court,” he exclaimed before whipping Barrett hastily so that she could judge on his behalf in time.
Conservatives in all cases
But it is not only the Supreme Court that intervenes. Election disputes are initially a matter for individual states, where they are heard by local courts. And Trump has also equipped these instances with increasingly trusted conservative judges in recent years.
It is a true revolution that has taken place quietly. Trump has appointed 220 federal judges since he moved into the White House, along with three Supreme Court justices and 53 top appellate courts, a number unprecedented in modern American history. Only Democrat Jimmy Carter, who served from 1977 to 1981, had more appointments, and only because in the second half of the 1970s the court system expanded due to the increasing workload.
Trump’s army of judges is young, handpicked, selected for conservative ideology, and appointed for life. Well positioned to shape American society for generations to come, presidential elections or Congressional elections.
The effects of their decisions have been felt for a long time, in the protection of the environment, abortions, immigration issues or the gun law.
This is also demonstrated by the example of Barbara Lagoa, whom Trump had shortlisted to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. The 52-year-old lawyer from Miami, the daughter of Cuban exiles, corresponds to the desired profile: pious Catholic, supporter of “originalism”, an arch-conservative legal conception of the constitution. For a year he has been in federal appeals court in Atlanta, one of 13 American courts that are on the same hierarchical level with the Supreme Court. And because they only handle fewer cases, these federal appellate courts are, in fact, the highest or last instance.
A ruling by the Lagoa court in September caused a stir. Two years ago, Florida citizens voted by a two-thirds majority in a referendum to restore convicted criminals the right to vote after they have served their sentences. That would affect up to 1.4 million former prisoners, many of them black, a traditionally Democratic group, and a huge new bloc in Swing State Florida.
But the Republican majority in state parliament decided that released criminals could only vote once they had paid all fees and penalties in full, an almost insurmountable hurdle for many. The issue landed on Lagoa and his colleagues, who declared the restrictive law constitutional by six to four votes.
Five of the six judges in the majority were appointed by Donald Trump.
