munkle
Diamond Member
- Dec 18, 2012
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The biggest show of judicial corruption in American history.
Trump wins 2/3 of his cases which were actually heard. https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/t...-havent-heard/
Election cases https://election-integrity.info/2020_Election_Cases.htm
https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/11...on-the-merits/
Courts Repeatedly Refused To Consider Trump’s Election Claims On The Merits
Taking Stock of the 2020 Election Case List
Let’s start with some clarity: The list of more than 80 cases includes both the same cases that were appealed through various courts and many that had no direct tie to the president’s legal team or the Republican Party. In reality, there were 28 unique cases filed across the six contested states by President Trump or others on his behalf.
Twelve were filed in Pennsylvania, six in Georgia, and two or three in each of the other states. Of course, there was also the lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against the state of Pennsylvania that had the potential to change the outcome. So let’s call it 29.
To be sure, that is still a lot of cases. Yet to understand why there is still widespread unease with the election, would it not be better to stop demanding conformity and instead dig deeper to see what the courts told us in those cases, and what they did not? A review of them shows that, contrary to a common narrative, few were ever considered on the merits.
Death by Technicalities
First of all, we can recognize that many of the cases produced no useful information relative to election integrity. We learned nothing from a lawsuit dismissed by a state judge in Georgia (Boland v. Raffensperger) on the basis that the plaintiff had sued an “improper party” rather than hearing the merits of why the ballot rejection rate allegedly dropped from 1.53 percent in 2018 to 0.15 percent in the 2020 general election.
Also, did 20,000 people vote who do not live in the state, when Georgia’s electoral votes were allotted by an approximately 12,000 margin to Biden? We never learned the answers to those questions nor even examined the evidence, because Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was not a candidate for office nor the election superintendent who conducted the election, and therefore per state law, was not liable.
Similarly, a Trump lawsuit in Michigan (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Benson) alleging state law was violated by the failure to allow access by observers, and seeking to stop counting, was ruled moot since it was not filed until 4:00 p.m. on Nov. 4, after votes were counted. The judge simultaneously relieved the secretary of state of responsibility for any wrongdoing because she had issued guidance requiring admission of credentialed challengers.
So we are left with the memory of the videos of vote counters clapping as Republican observers were evicted and of covers being placed over windows. The judge on this case also said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson bore no legal responsibility for video monitoring of drop boxes nor of making video from such surveillance available, despite a recently passed law requiring surveillance of all drop boxes installed after Oct. 1.
A lawsuit in Pennsylvania, Metcalfe v. Wolf, claimed “approximately 144,000 to 288,000 completed mail-in and/or absentee ballots” in Pennsylvania may have been illegal based on testimony from a U.S. Postal Service contractor. The contractor said he was hired to haul a truck of what he believed to be this many completed mail-in ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. The complaint also alleged there was “evidence” of ballots that were backdated at a postal facility in Erie.
The judge tossed it since the state’s Election Code required their request to be filed within 20 days of the alleged violation, which was Nov. 23. They filed Dec. 4. We’ll never know if that truck brought in pallets of completed ballots—an amount sufficient to overturn the state’s Electoral College vote.
In Wisconsin, the Trump v. Evers suit alleged that violations of state election law had occurred in Milwaukee and Dane Counties as municipal clerks issued absentee ballots without the required written application, that they illegally completed missing info on ballots, that absentee ballots were wrongly cast by voters claiming “Indefinite Confinement” status (and for which no ID was provided), and that Madison’s “Democracy in the Park” event violated election laws.
A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear the lawsuit, sidestepping a decision on the merits of the claims and instead ruling the case must first wind its way through lower courts—an effective death sentence given the timing....
In a Nov. 5 filing (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Philadelphia County Board of Elections), Republicans alleged that the Philadelphia County Board was “intentionally refusing to allow any representatives and poll watchers for President Trump and the Republican Party … [and] continuing to count ballots, without any observation” by Republican poll watchers. The Commonwealth Court agreed on appeal that observers be allowed within six feet of vote counting while complying with COVID-19 protocols.....
Judicial Blindness: See No Evil
In the same lawsuit (Ward v. Jackson et al.) the judge also rejected a claim of improper signature verification after allowing a review of 100 sample ballots. Plaintiff and defense experts found 6 and 11 percent of signatures, respectively, to be “inconclusive.”
On the same page of his opinion, the judge noted that out of the total 1.9 million mail-in ballots, only approximately 20,000 had been identified as having a signature issue, or 1 percent. There was no explanation as to why poll workers found six times fewer issues with signatures. The math would suggest either a bias to accept, despite signature issues, or that the sample examined was statistically invalid....
He also concluded “the evidence does not show illegal votes”—in a state in which an estimated 419,000 illegally present foreign citizens reside, and which went to Biden by a margin of just more than 10,000 votes out of a total of more than 3.2 million.
Importantly, the judge noted at the outset that “the Plaintiff in an election contest has a high burden of proof and the actions of election officials are presumed to be free from fraud and misconduct.” It’s a fair statement of the law. It’s also an indication of the difficulty in prevailing, even when issues exist. Every case across the nation was evaluated under a similar high hurdle, with the status quo treated as sacrosanct.
....
The Clock Ran Out: January 6
Several lawsuits were resolved not by a weighing of merits, but as a practical consequence of the electoral vote on Jan. 6 that certified Biden as the winner of the presidency.
Trump had filed suit on Dec. 4 in Georgia (Trump v. Raffensperger) alleging violations of state election law and the inclusion of specific ineligible votes: 66,247 underage votes, 2,423 persons not registered, 15,700 who had changed address, 1,043 who illegally listed a P.O. box address as their address, 8,718 who died prior to their votes being cast, 92 absentee ballots counted prior to the date those voters requested a ballot, 217 ballots shown as applied for and sent out and received on the same day, and 2,560 votes from felons with uncompleted sentences. These were significant numbers in an election that was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes.
The suit had also noted that 305,701 had applied for an absentee ballot more than 180 days prior to election, thereby violating state law.
The suit had also noted that 305,701 had applied for an absentee ballot more than 180 days prior to election, thereby violating state law. Importantly, it also took issue with the secretary of state’s Consent Decree with Democrats, which allowed signature matching on envelopes and applications, but not versus registration rolls. And it cited the low 0.34 percent rejection rate of mail-in ballots, a tenth of the rate of prior elections, despite a six-fold increase in number of such ballots cast.
The suit was withdrawn on Jan. 7, with none of the issues resolved, the day after Congress met and the matter was rendered moot.
Another Georgia suit (Still v. Raffensperger) alleged that Coffee County Board had been unable to replicate electronic recount results, and that the error was sufficient to put the outcome of that county in doubt, with a potentially similar issue in others across the state. It noted that Raffensperger had forced an arbitrary Dec. 4 deadline to certify the results despite the county’s letter of the same date saying the results “should not be used.”...
Trump’s counsel accepted the offer of dismissal to get information they had requested, but it came as the timeframe to use it ended on Jan. 6. The suit was withdrawn on Jan. 7.
The Supreme Court Punted
The nation’s highest court showed some early inclination for involvement in the brewing election issues, such as Justice Samuel Alito’s order to separate certain late ballots in Pennsylvania in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar. Yet it soon took a different tone. A petition to expedite a hearing was denied and later the court refused the case.
In December, the court rejected a key lawsuit filed by the state of Texas (Texas v. Pennsylvania), and joined by 18 other state attorneys general, alleging that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin violated the U.S. Constitution by changing election procedures through non-legislative means. The justices ruled that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of the election held by another state.
The court could have held these claims up to the objective light of justice, and either exposed it all as painfully true or wildly false, but it didn’t.
In Kelly v. Pennsylvania, Rep. Mike Kelly claimed that the recently enacted Act 77 to expand mail-in balloting violated the state constitution, as amended in 1967, that “allowed for absentee ballots to be cast in the four (4) exclusive circumstances authorized under Article VII, Section 14.”
He also noted that “the legislature first recognized their constitutional constraints and the need to amend the constitution in order to enact mail-in voting, sought to amend the constitution to lawfully allow for the legislation they intended to pass, and subsequently abandoned their efforts to comply with the constitution and instead enacted Act 77 irrespective of their actual knowledge that they lacked the legal authority to do so unless and until the proposed constitutional amendment was ratified by approval of a majority of the electors …”
A Commonwealth Court judge agreed on Nov. 25 and ordered that any action to certify the election be stopped, pending an evidentiary hearing two days later. However, on Nov. 28, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed that decision, saying the “Petitioners sought to invalidate the ballots of the millions of Pennsylvania voters who utilized the mail-in voting procedures established by Act 77 and count only those ballots that Petitioners deem to be ‘legal votes.’”...
.....
Trump wins 2/3 of his cases which were actually heard. https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/t...-havent-heard/
Election cases https://election-integrity.info/2020_Election_Cases.htm
https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/11...on-the-merits/
Courts Repeatedly Refused To Consider Trump’s Election Claims On The Merits
Taking Stock of the 2020 Election Case List
Let’s start with some clarity: The list of more than 80 cases includes both the same cases that were appealed through various courts and many that had no direct tie to the president’s legal team or the Republican Party. In reality, there were 28 unique cases filed across the six contested states by President Trump or others on his behalf.
Twelve were filed in Pennsylvania, six in Georgia, and two or three in each of the other states. Of course, there was also the lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against the state of Pennsylvania that had the potential to change the outcome. So let’s call it 29.
To be sure, that is still a lot of cases. Yet to understand why there is still widespread unease with the election, would it not be better to stop demanding conformity and instead dig deeper to see what the courts told us in those cases, and what they did not? A review of them shows that, contrary to a common narrative, few were ever considered on the merits.
Death by Technicalities
First of all, we can recognize that many of the cases produced no useful information relative to election integrity. We learned nothing from a lawsuit dismissed by a state judge in Georgia (Boland v. Raffensperger) on the basis that the plaintiff had sued an “improper party” rather than hearing the merits of why the ballot rejection rate allegedly dropped from 1.53 percent in 2018 to 0.15 percent in the 2020 general election.
Also, did 20,000 people vote who do not live in the state, when Georgia’s electoral votes were allotted by an approximately 12,000 margin to Biden? We never learned the answers to those questions nor even examined the evidence, because Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was not a candidate for office nor the election superintendent who conducted the election, and therefore per state law, was not liable.
Similarly, a Trump lawsuit in Michigan (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Benson) alleging state law was violated by the failure to allow access by observers, and seeking to stop counting, was ruled moot since it was not filed until 4:00 p.m. on Nov. 4, after votes were counted. The judge simultaneously relieved the secretary of state of responsibility for any wrongdoing because she had issued guidance requiring admission of credentialed challengers.
So we are left with the memory of the videos of vote counters clapping as Republican observers were evicted and of covers being placed over windows. The judge on this case also said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson bore no legal responsibility for video monitoring of drop boxes nor of making video from such surveillance available, despite a recently passed law requiring surveillance of all drop boxes installed after Oct. 1.
A lawsuit in Pennsylvania, Metcalfe v. Wolf, claimed “approximately 144,000 to 288,000 completed mail-in and/or absentee ballots” in Pennsylvania may have been illegal based on testimony from a U.S. Postal Service contractor. The contractor said he was hired to haul a truck of what he believed to be this many completed mail-in ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. The complaint also alleged there was “evidence” of ballots that were backdated at a postal facility in Erie.
The judge tossed it since the state’s Election Code required their request to be filed within 20 days of the alleged violation, which was Nov. 23. They filed Dec. 4. We’ll never know if that truck brought in pallets of completed ballots—an amount sufficient to overturn the state’s Electoral College vote.
In Wisconsin, the Trump v. Evers suit alleged that violations of state election law had occurred in Milwaukee and Dane Counties as municipal clerks issued absentee ballots without the required written application, that they illegally completed missing info on ballots, that absentee ballots were wrongly cast by voters claiming “Indefinite Confinement” status (and for which no ID was provided), and that Madison’s “Democracy in the Park” event violated election laws.
A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear the lawsuit, sidestepping a decision on the merits of the claims and instead ruling the case must first wind its way through lower courts—an effective death sentence given the timing....
In a Nov. 5 filing (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Philadelphia County Board of Elections), Republicans alleged that the Philadelphia County Board was “intentionally refusing to allow any representatives and poll watchers for President Trump and the Republican Party … [and] continuing to count ballots, without any observation” by Republican poll watchers. The Commonwealth Court agreed on appeal that observers be allowed within six feet of vote counting while complying with COVID-19 protocols.....
Judicial Blindness: See No Evil
In the same lawsuit (Ward v. Jackson et al.) the judge also rejected a claim of improper signature verification after allowing a review of 100 sample ballots. Plaintiff and defense experts found 6 and 11 percent of signatures, respectively, to be “inconclusive.”
On the same page of his opinion, the judge noted that out of the total 1.9 million mail-in ballots, only approximately 20,000 had been identified as having a signature issue, or 1 percent. There was no explanation as to why poll workers found six times fewer issues with signatures. The math would suggest either a bias to accept, despite signature issues, or that the sample examined was statistically invalid....
He also concluded “the evidence does not show illegal votes”—in a state in which an estimated 419,000 illegally present foreign citizens reside, and which went to Biden by a margin of just more than 10,000 votes out of a total of more than 3.2 million.
Importantly, the judge noted at the outset that “the Plaintiff in an election contest has a high burden of proof and the actions of election officials are presumed to be free from fraud and misconduct.” It’s a fair statement of the law. It’s also an indication of the difficulty in prevailing, even when issues exist. Every case across the nation was evaluated under a similar high hurdle, with the status quo treated as sacrosanct.
....
The Clock Ran Out: January 6
Several lawsuits were resolved not by a weighing of merits, but as a practical consequence of the electoral vote on Jan. 6 that certified Biden as the winner of the presidency.
Trump had filed suit on Dec. 4 in Georgia (Trump v. Raffensperger) alleging violations of state election law and the inclusion of specific ineligible votes: 66,247 underage votes, 2,423 persons not registered, 15,700 who had changed address, 1,043 who illegally listed a P.O. box address as their address, 8,718 who died prior to their votes being cast, 92 absentee ballots counted prior to the date those voters requested a ballot, 217 ballots shown as applied for and sent out and received on the same day, and 2,560 votes from felons with uncompleted sentences. These were significant numbers in an election that was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes.
The suit had also noted that 305,701 had applied for an absentee ballot more than 180 days prior to election, thereby violating state law.
The suit had also noted that 305,701 had applied for an absentee ballot more than 180 days prior to election, thereby violating state law. Importantly, it also took issue with the secretary of state’s Consent Decree with Democrats, which allowed signature matching on envelopes and applications, but not versus registration rolls. And it cited the low 0.34 percent rejection rate of mail-in ballots, a tenth of the rate of prior elections, despite a six-fold increase in number of such ballots cast.
The suit was withdrawn on Jan. 7, with none of the issues resolved, the day after Congress met and the matter was rendered moot.
Another Georgia suit (Still v. Raffensperger) alleged that Coffee County Board had been unable to replicate electronic recount results, and that the error was sufficient to put the outcome of that county in doubt, with a potentially similar issue in others across the state. It noted that Raffensperger had forced an arbitrary Dec. 4 deadline to certify the results despite the county’s letter of the same date saying the results “should not be used.”...
Trump’s counsel accepted the offer of dismissal to get information they had requested, but it came as the timeframe to use it ended on Jan. 6. The suit was withdrawn on Jan. 7.
The Supreme Court Punted
The nation’s highest court showed some early inclination for involvement in the brewing election issues, such as Justice Samuel Alito’s order to separate certain late ballots in Pennsylvania in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar. Yet it soon took a different tone. A petition to expedite a hearing was denied and later the court refused the case.
In December, the court rejected a key lawsuit filed by the state of Texas (Texas v. Pennsylvania), and joined by 18 other state attorneys general, alleging that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin violated the U.S. Constitution by changing election procedures through non-legislative means. The justices ruled that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of the election held by another state.
The court could have held these claims up to the objective light of justice, and either exposed it all as painfully true or wildly false, but it didn’t.
In Kelly v. Pennsylvania, Rep. Mike Kelly claimed that the recently enacted Act 77 to expand mail-in balloting violated the state constitution, as amended in 1967, that “allowed for absentee ballots to be cast in the four (4) exclusive circumstances authorized under Article VII, Section 14.”
He also noted that “the legislature first recognized their constitutional constraints and the need to amend the constitution in order to enact mail-in voting, sought to amend the constitution to lawfully allow for the legislation they intended to pass, and subsequently abandoned their efforts to comply with the constitution and instead enacted Act 77 irrespective of their actual knowledge that they lacked the legal authority to do so unless and until the proposed constitutional amendment was ratified by approval of a majority of the electors …”
A Commonwealth Court judge agreed on Nov. 25 and ordered that any action to certify the election be stopped, pending an evidentiary hearing two days later. However, on Nov. 28, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed that decision, saying the “Petitioners sought to invalidate the ballots of the millions of Pennsylvania voters who utilized the mail-in voting procedures established by Act 77 and count only those ballots that Petitioners deem to be ‘legal votes.’”...
.....
