The Situation in PA

[Norman]

Act 77

"No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election."

 

[Norman]

Long article on the matter also as it related on the unruled supreme court case


If you’ve been following the mainstream media, you’ve probably read that Trump intends to file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania to “stop counting votes.” Most likely, this has been presented as an outrageous evil, unjustifiable by any standards of common decency, and grossly unconstitutional. Is that really the case? Or is it more complex than that?

There will be a lawsuit, no doubt; and it will involve a lot of votes being thrown out. The plaintiff (Trump and/or the Republicans) will win, because Pennsylvania’s highest court has almost certainly violated the Constitution of the United States. That’s why, in the weeks ahead, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is going to rule in favor of Trump.

Let’s wind the clock back about a week to explain how we got here.

On October 28, 2020, in Republican Party of Pennsylvania vs. Boockvar, SCOTUS declined “a motion to expedite consideration of a petition for a writ of certiorari”. Let’s explain what that is, and what’s at stake, and why Trump is going to follow up.

1. A writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it. In this case, SCOTUS was being asked to issue a writ against the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the highest court in that state.
2. A petition [for a writ of certiorari] is a request by a litigant in the lower court, to a higher court, asking the higher court to order the lower court to issue the writ. In this case, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had decided against the Republican Party, so the Republican Party petitioned the Supreme Court of the US.
3. Petitions can take a long time to resolve. A motion [to expedite consideration of a petition] is a request, by a litigant who has filed a petition, that the higher court accelerate its process of review. In this case, the Republican Party had filed the motion to expedite.

Translated into common English: In Boockvar, the Republican Party sent a request to the US Supreme Court to review a lower court case, and then asked them to hurry up about it. The US Supreme Court declined the motion to expedite, e.g. it refused to hurry up. But - and this is very important - it did not deny the petition for the writ of certiorari.

Thus the situation as it stands is that there is still a petition before the Supreme Court to review the situation in Pennsylvania, it just refused to do so before the election.

Now that raises the question: What’s the situation in Pennsylvania? Let’s work through that.

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but (in Justice Alito’s words) “unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.” The exact text is 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, which stated: “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.” I agree with Justice Alito: That is unambiguous.


Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was invalidated, that much of the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void. The exact text is: “Sections 1, 2, 3, 3.2, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 of this act are nonseverable. If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”
To again put this into common English, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that said mail-in ballots had to arrive by 8PM on election day to be counted, and then said that if the Court over-ruled that law, the entire law that permitted mail-in ballots was invalid.
In the face of this clear text, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, made the following decrees, summarized here by SCOTUS:

1. Mailed ballots don’t need to be received by a election day. Instead, ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on or before election day and are received within three days thereafter. Note that this is directly contravenes the text above.
2. A mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

In doing so, PAs’ high court expressly acknowledged that “the statutory provision mandating receipt by election day was unambiguous” and conceded the law was “constitutional,” but still re-wrote the law because it thought it needed to do so in the face of a “natural disaster.” It justified its right to do so under the Free and Equal Elections Cause of the PA State Constitution.
Now, if you are a conservative, you are already angry. You despise this method of jurisprudence, which elite Harvard lawyers might call “living Constitutionalism,” and you believe that judges should enforce laws as written by lawmakers. You believe this case never should have gotten to SCOTUS because what the State Supreme Court did was egregious! .
However, if you’re of a more liberal inclination, you’re probably happy with this outcome. You’re happy because it’ll help Biden win, of course; but in general, you’re likely to be fine with a high court establishing a new right if you think it protects oppressed people from majoritarian tyranny.
If you’re a committed progressive, in fact, you likely will want to dismiss the entire case as just another defeat for outdated textualism in the face of living constitutionalism. It’s easy to frame this case as one of reactionary judges clinging to the letter of the law, while progressive justices overturn the letter of the law to reflect its true spirit. This is the view that CNN and MSNBC are promoting.
Had the Pennsylvania Supreme Court simply ruled that Act 77 was unconstitutional under PA’s Free and Equal Elections clause, this would have been a classic “textualism” vs. “living constitutionalism” case. But it’s not.
There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution. Justice Alito writes: “The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
Justice Alito is referring to the following clauses of the US Constitution:

• Art. I, §4, cl. 1, which states “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
• Art. II, §1, cl. 2, which states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Again, translating this into common English, the US Constitution grants state legislators the exclusive right to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding elections, and to direct the appointment of the electors.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court didn’t just say “Act 77 is unconstitutional.” It re-wrote Act 77 itself, by judicial fiat, creating new rules for time, place, and manner, of holding elections. In doing so, the State Supreme Court violated the US Federal Constitution.
And that’s the real case here. The US Supreme Court is going to rule that the State Supreme Court violated the US Constitution, the State Supreme Court’s ruling is going to be overturned, and the votes that arrived after 8 PM on election day will be discarded. On that basis, Trump will win Pennsylvania.

 

[JGalt]

Act 77

"No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election."

On top of the already on progress supreme court case regarding the mail in fraud, it does look like Trump will pull through.

https://www.co.berks.pa.us/Dept/Elections/Pages/Act 77.aspx

It was a Pennsylvania lower court that ruled Pennsylvania ballots could be counted even if they arrived three days after the presidential election. That was in violation of Act 77, which is Pennsylvania law.

To top that off, that idiot Justice Roberts really screwed the pooch this time.

 

[Dogbiscuit]

Long article on the matter also as it related on the unruled supreme court case


If you’ve been following the mainstream media, you’ve probably read that Trump intends to file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania to “stop counting votes.” Most likely, this has been presented as an outrageous evil, unjustifiable by any standards of common decency, and grossly unconstitutional. Is that really the case? Or is it more complex than that?

There will be a lawsuit, no doubt; and it will involve a lot of votes being thrown out. The plaintiff (Trump and/or the Republicans) will win, because Pennsylvania’s highest court has almost certainly violated the Constitution of the United States. That’s why, in the weeks ahead, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is going to rule in favor of Trump.

Let’s wind the clock back about a week to explain how we got here.

On October 28, 2020, in Republican Party of Pennsylvania vs. Boockvar, SCOTUS declined “a motion to expedite consideration of a petition for a writ of certiorari”. Let’s explain what that is, and what’s at stake, and why Trump is going to follow up.

1. A writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it. In this case, SCOTUS was being asked to issue a writ against the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the highest court in that state.
2. A petition [for a writ of certiorari] is a request by a litigant in the lower court, to a higher court, asking the higher court to order the lower court to issue the writ. In this case, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had decided against the Republican Party, so the Republican Party petitioned the Supreme Court of the US.
3. Petitions can take a long time to resolve. A motion [to expedite consideration of a petition] is a request, by a litigant who has filed a petition, that the higher court accelerate its process of review. In this case, the Republican Party had filed the motion to expedite.

Translated into common English: In Boockvar, the Republican Party sent a request to the US Supreme Court to review a lower court case, and then asked them to hurry up about it. The US Supreme Court declined the motion to expedite, e.g. it refused to hurry up. But - and this is very important - it did not deny the petition for the writ of certiorari.

Thus the situation as it stands is that there is still a petition before the Supreme Court to review the situation in Pennsylvania, it just refused to do so before the election.

Now that raises the question: What’s the situation in Pennsylvania? Let’s work through that.

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but (in Justice Alito’s words) “unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.” The exact text is 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, which stated: “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.” I agree with Justice Alito: That is unambiguous.


Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was invalidated, that much of the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void. The exact text is: “Sections 1, 2, 3, 3.2, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 of this act are nonseverable. If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”
To again put this into common English, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that said mail-in ballots had to arrive by 8PM on election day to be counted, and then said that if the Court over-ruled that law, the entire law that permitted mail-in ballots was invalid.
In the face of this clear text, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, made the following decrees, summarized here by SCOTUS:

1. Mailed ballots don’t need to be received by a election day. Instead, ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on or before election day and are received within three days thereafter. Note that this is directly contravenes the text above.
2. A mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

In doing so, PAs’ high court expressly acknowledged that “the statutory provision mandating receipt by election day was unambiguous” and conceded the law was “constitutional,” but still re-wrote the law because it thought it needed to do so in the face of a “natural disaster.” It justified its right to do so under the Free and Equal Elections Cause of the PA State Constitution.
Now, if you are a conservative, you are already angry. You despise this method of jurisprudence, which elite Harvard lawyers might call “living Constitutionalism,” and you believe that judges should enforce laws as written by lawmakers. You believe this case never should have gotten to SCOTUS because what the State Supreme Court did was egregious! .
However, if you’re of a more liberal inclination, you’re probably happy with this outcome. You’re happy because it’ll help Biden win, of course; but in general, you’re likely to be fine with a high court establishing a new right if you think it protects oppressed people from majoritarian tyranny.
If you’re a committed progressive, in fact, you likely will want to dismiss the entire case as just another defeat for outdated textualism in the face of living constitutionalism. It’s easy to frame this case as one of reactionary judges clinging to the letter of the law, while progressive justices overturn the letter of the law to reflect its true spirit. This is the view that CNN and MSNBC are promoting.
Had the Pennsylvania Supreme Court simply ruled that Act 77 was unconstitutional under PA’s Free and Equal Elections clause, this would have been a classic “textualism” vs. “living constitutionalism” case. But it’s not.
There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution. Justice Alito writes: “The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
Justice Alito is referring to the following clauses of the US Constitution:

• Art. I, §4, cl. 1, which states “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
• Art. II, §1, cl. 2, which states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Again, translating this into common English, the US Constitution grants state legislators the exclusive right to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding elections, and to direct the appointment of the electors.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court didn’t just say “Act 77 is unconstitutional.” It re-wrote Act 77 itself, by judicial fiat, creating new rules for time, place, and manner, of holding elections. In doing so, the State Supreme Court violated the US Federal Constitution.
And that’s the real case here. The US Supreme Court is going to rule that the State Supreme Court violated the US Constitution, the State Supreme Court’s ruling is going to be overturned, and the votes that arrived after 8 PM on election day will be discarded. On that basis, Trump will win Pennsylvania.

Its nice to know that PA will be determined fairly. I wonder how long all the legalities, combined with official counting, will take.

 

[Lesh]

Long article on the matter also as it related on the unruled supreme court case


If you’ve been following the mainstream media, you’ve probably read that Trump intends to file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania to “stop counting votes.” Most likely, this has been presented as an outrageous evil, unjustifiable by any standards of common decency, and grossly unconstitutional. Is that really the case? Or is it more complex than that?

There will be a lawsuit, no doubt; and it will involve a lot of votes being thrown out. The plaintiff (Trump and/or the Republicans) will win, because Pennsylvania’s highest court has almost certainly violated the Constitution of the United States. That’s why, in the weeks ahead, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is going to rule in favor of Trump.

Let’s wind the clock back about a week to explain how we got here.

On October 28, 2020, in Republican Party of Pennsylvania vs. Boockvar, SCOTUS declined “a motion to expedite consideration of a petition for a writ of certiorari”. Let’s explain what that is, and what’s at stake, and why Trump is going to follow up.

1. A writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it. In this case, SCOTUS was being asked to issue a writ against the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the highest court in that state.
2. A petition [for a writ of certiorari] is a request by a litigant in the lower court, to a higher court, asking the higher court to order the lower court to issue the writ. In this case, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had decided against the Republican Party, so the Republican Party petitioned the Supreme Court of the US.
3. Petitions can take a long time to resolve. A motion [to expedite consideration of a petition] is a request, by a litigant who has filed a petition, that the higher court accelerate its process of review. In this case, the Republican Party had filed the motion to expedite.

Translated into common English: In Boockvar, the Republican Party sent a request to the US Supreme Court to review a lower court case, and then asked them to hurry up about it. The US Supreme Court declined the motion to expedite, e.g. it refused to hurry up. But - and this is very important - it did not deny the petition for the writ of certiorari.

Thus the situation as it stands is that there is still a petition before the Supreme Court to review the situation in Pennsylvania, it just refused to do so before the election.

Now that raises the question: What’s the situation in Pennsylvania? Let’s work through that.

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but (in Justice Alito’s words) “unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.” The exact text is 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, which stated: “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.” I agree with Justice Alito: That is unambiguous.


Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was invalidated, that much of the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void. The exact text is: “Sections 1, 2, 3, 3.2, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 of this act are nonseverable. If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”
To again put this into common English, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that said mail-in ballots had to arrive by 8PM on election day to be counted, and then said that if the Court over-ruled that law, the entire law that permitted mail-in ballots was invalid.
In the face of this clear text, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, made the following decrees, summarized here by SCOTUS:

1. Mailed ballots don’t need to be received by a election day. Instead, ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on or before election day and are received within three days thereafter. Note that this is directly contravenes the text above.
2. A mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

In doing so, PAs’ high court expressly acknowledged that “the statutory provision mandating receipt by election day was unambiguous” and conceded the law was “constitutional,” but still re-wrote the law because it thought it needed to do so in the face of a “natural disaster.” It justified its right to do so under the Free and Equal Elections Cause of the PA State Constitution.
Now, if you are a conservative, you are already angry. You despise this method of jurisprudence, which elite Harvard lawyers might call “living Constitutionalism,” and you believe that judges should enforce laws as written by lawmakers. You believe this case never should have gotten to SCOTUS because what the State Supreme Court did was egregious! .
However, if you’re of a more liberal inclination, you’re probably happy with this outcome. You’re happy because it’ll help Biden win, of course; but in general, you’re likely to be fine with a high court establishing a new right if you think it protects oppressed people from majoritarian tyranny.
If you’re a committed progressive, in fact, you likely will want to dismiss the entire case as just another defeat for outdated textualism in the face of living constitutionalism. It’s easy to frame this case as one of reactionary judges clinging to the letter of the law, while progressive justices overturn the letter of the law to reflect its true spirit. This is the view that CNN and MSNBC are promoting.
Had the Pennsylvania Supreme Court simply ruled that Act 77 was unconstitutional under PA’s Free and Equal Elections clause, this would have been a classic “textualism” vs. “living constitutionalism” case. But it’s not.
There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution. Justice Alito writes: “The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
Justice Alito is referring to the following clauses of the US Constitution:

• Art. I, §4, cl. 1, which states “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
• Art. II, §1, cl. 2, which states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Again, translating this into common English, the US Constitution grants state legislators the exclusive right to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding elections, and to direct the appointment of the electors.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court didn’t just say “Act 77 is unconstitutional.” It re-wrote Act 77 itself, by judicial fiat, creating new rules for time, place, and manner, of holding elections. In doing so, the State Supreme Court violated the US Federal Constitution.
And that’s the real case here. The US Supreme Court is going to rule that the State Supreme Court violated the US Constitution, the State Supreme Court’s ruling is going to be overturned, and the votes that arrived after 8 PM on election day will be discarded. On that basis, Trump will win Pennsylvania.

A partisan FEDERAL court may well us that argument to overturn the election. We saw it happen in 2000.

But...the Court SHOULD look at the voters intent. Voters made a good faith effort according to the ruling at the time and should not be disenfranchised because of that

 

[Hellokitty]

This isn't the only thing going on. You know all those mail-in ballots that are invalid because of none signatures and other things? Democrats are going door-to door to get the ballot corrected!!! McConnell and republicans better wake the F up because they could loss the senate.

The count all votes will be used to justify altering documents AFTER they have been cast!!! This is why it's taking days to count mail-in ballots they already have, it's not about receiving late ballots, but about correcting the invalid ballots that have already come-in.

 

[konradv]

Long article on the matter also as it related on the unruled supreme court case


If you’ve been following the mainstream media, you’ve probably read that Trump intends to file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania to “stop counting votes.” Most likely, this has been presented as an outrageous evil, unjustifiable by any standards of common decency, and grossly unconstitutional. Is that really the case? Or is it more complex than that?

There will be a lawsuit, no doubt; and it will involve a lot of votes being thrown out. The plaintiff (Trump and/or the Republicans) will win, because Pennsylvania’s highest court has almost certainly violated the Constitution of the United States. That’s why, in the weeks ahead, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is going to rule in favor of Trump.

Let’s wind the clock back about a week to explain how we got here.

On October 28, 2020, in Republican Party of Pennsylvania vs. Boockvar, SCOTUS declined “a motion to expedite consideration of a petition for a writ of certiorari”. Let’s explain what that is, and what’s at stake, and why Trump is going to follow up.

1. A writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it. In this case, SCOTUS was being asked to issue a writ against the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the highest court in that state.
2. A petition [for a writ of certiorari] is a request by a litigant in the lower court, to a higher court, asking the higher court to order the lower court to issue the writ. In this case, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had decided against the Republican Party, so the Republican Party petitioned the Supreme Court of the US.
3. Petitions can take a long time to resolve. A motion [to expedite consideration of a petition] is a request, by a litigant who has filed a petition, that the higher court accelerate its process of review. In this case, the Republican Party had filed the motion to expedite.

Translated into common English: In Boockvar, the Republican Party sent a request to the US Supreme Court to review a lower court case, and then asked them to hurry up about it. The US Supreme Court declined the motion to expedite, e.g. it refused to hurry up. But - and this is very important - it did not deny the petition for the writ of certiorari.

Thus the situation as it stands is that there is still a petition before the Supreme Court to review the situation in Pennsylvania, it just refused to do so before the election.

Now that raises the question: What’s the situation in Pennsylvania? Let’s work through that.

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but (in Justice Alito’s words) “unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.” The exact text is 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, which stated: “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.” I agree with Justice Alito: That is unambiguous.


Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was invalidated, that much of the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void. The exact text is: “Sections 1, 2, 3, 3.2, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 of this act are nonseverable. If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”
To again put this into common English, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that said mail-in ballots had to arrive by 8PM on election day to be counted, and then said that if the Court over-ruled that law, the entire law that permitted mail-in ballots was invalid.
In the face of this clear text, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, made the following decrees, summarized here by SCOTUS:

1. Mailed ballots don’t need to be received by a election day. Instead, ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on or before election day and are received within three days thereafter. Note that this is directly contravenes the text above.
2. A mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

In doing so, PAs’ high court expressly acknowledged that “the statutory provision mandating receipt by election day was unambiguous” and conceded the law was “constitutional,” but still re-wrote the law because it thought it needed to do so in the face of a “natural disaster.” It justified its right to do so under the Free and Equal Elections Cause of the PA State Constitution.
Now, if you are a conservative, you are already angry. You despise this method of jurisprudence, which elite Harvard lawyers might call “living Constitutionalism,” and you believe that judges should enforce laws as written by lawmakers. You believe this case never should have gotten to SCOTUS because what the State Supreme Court did was egregious! .
However, if you’re of a more liberal inclination, you’re probably happy with this outcome. You’re happy because it’ll help Biden win, of course; but in general, you’re likely to be fine with a high court establishing a new right if you think it protects oppressed people from majoritarian tyranny.
If you’re a committed progressive, in fact, you likely will want to dismiss the entire case as just another defeat for outdated textualism in the face of living constitutionalism. It’s easy to frame this case as one of reactionary judges clinging to the letter of the law, while progressive justices overturn the letter of the law to reflect its true spirit. This is the view that CNN and MSNBC are promoting.
Had the Pennsylvania Supreme Court simply ruled that Act 77 was unconstitutional under PA’s Free and Equal Elections clause, this would have been a classic “textualism” vs. “living constitutionalism” case. But it’s not.
There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution. Justice Alito writes: “The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
Justice Alito is referring to the following clauses of the US Constitution:

• Art. I, §4, cl. 1, which states “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
• Art. II, §1, cl. 2, which states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Again, translating this into common English, the US Constitution grants state legislators the exclusive right to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding elections, and to direct the appointment of the electors.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court didn’t just say “Act 77 is unconstitutional.” It re-wrote Act 77 itself, by judicial fiat, creating new rules for time, place, and manner, of holding elections. In doing so, the State Supreme Court violated the US Federal Constitution.
And that’s the real case here. The US Supreme Court is going to rule that the State Supreme Court violated the US Constitution, the State Supreme Court’s ruling is going to be overturned, and the votes that arrived after 8 PM on election day will be discarded. On that basis, Trump will win Pennsylvania.

Give Biden AZ and NV and Trump can have all the PA recounts he desires. A fair count is the last thing he wants. He's been trying to suppress the vote for months and is now reaping the rewards of his failure. The people are speaking and Trump and his allies can't stand it. That's the bottom line. Trump may throw some tantrums and try to drum up support, but in the end agencies like the Secret Service, the FBI and the military, by staying out of it, will do their duty with the only hiccup being that we may have an inauguration without the outgoing president present. I doubt his ego could handle the situation and, like McCain's funeral, he'll be a no-show.

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

Long article on the matter also as it related on the unruled supreme court case


If you’ve been following the mainstream media, you’ve probably read that Trump intends to file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania to “stop counting votes.” Most likely, this has been presented as an outrageous evil, unjustifiable by any standards of common decency, and grossly unconstitutional. Is that really the case? Or is it more complex than that?

There will be a lawsuit, no doubt; and it will involve a lot of votes being thrown out. The plaintiff (Trump and/or the Republicans) will win, because Pennsylvania’s highest court has almost certainly violated the Constitution of the United States. That’s why, in the weeks ahead, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is going to rule in favor of Trump.

Let’s wind the clock back about a week to explain how we got here.

On October 28, 2020, in Republican Party of Pennsylvania vs. Boockvar, SCOTUS declined “a motion to expedite consideration of a petition for a writ of certiorari”. Let’s explain what that is, and what’s at stake, and why Trump is going to follow up.

1. A writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it. In this case, SCOTUS was being asked to issue a writ against the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the highest court in that state.
2. A petition [for a writ of certiorari] is a request by a litigant in the lower court, to a higher court, asking the higher court to order the lower court to issue the writ. In this case, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had decided against the Republican Party, so the Republican Party petitioned the Supreme Court of the US.
3. Petitions can take a long time to resolve. A motion [to expedite consideration of a petition] is a request, by a litigant who has filed a petition, that the higher court accelerate its process of review. In this case, the Republican Party had filed the motion to expedite.

Translated into common English: In Boockvar, the Republican Party sent a request to the US Supreme Court to review a lower court case, and then asked them to hurry up about it. The US Supreme Court declined the motion to expedite, e.g. it refused to hurry up. But - and this is very important - it did not deny the petition for the writ of certiorari.

Thus the situation as it stands is that there is still a petition before the Supreme Court to review the situation in Pennsylvania, it just refused to do so before the election.

Now that raises the question: What’s the situation in Pennsylvania? Let’s work through that.

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but (in Justice Alito’s words) “unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.” The exact text is 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, which stated: “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.” I agree with Justice Alito: That is unambiguous.


Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was invalidated, that much of the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void. The exact text is: “Sections 1, 2, 3, 3.2, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 of this act are nonseverable. If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”
To again put this into common English, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that said mail-in ballots had to arrive by 8PM on election day to be counted, and then said that if the Court over-ruled that law, the entire law that permitted mail-in ballots was invalid.
In the face of this clear text, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, made the following decrees, summarized here by SCOTUS:

1. Mailed ballots don’t need to be received by a election day. Instead, ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on or before election day and are received within three days thereafter. Note that this is directly contravenes the text above.
2. A mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

In doing so, PAs’ high court expressly acknowledged that “the statutory provision mandating receipt by election day was unambiguous” and conceded the law was “constitutional,” but still re-wrote the law because it thought it needed to do so in the face of a “natural disaster.” It justified its right to do so under the Free and Equal Elections Cause of the PA State Constitution.
Now, if you are a conservative, you are already angry. You despise this method of jurisprudence, which elite Harvard lawyers might call “living Constitutionalism,” and you believe that judges should enforce laws as written by lawmakers. You believe this case never should have gotten to SCOTUS because what the State Supreme Court did was egregious! .
However, if you’re of a more liberal inclination, you’re probably happy with this outcome. You’re happy because it’ll help Biden win, of course; but in general, you’re likely to be fine with a high court establishing a new right if you think it protects oppressed people from majoritarian tyranny.
If you’re a committed progressive, in fact, you likely will want to dismiss the entire case as just another defeat for outdated textualism in the face of living constitutionalism. It’s easy to frame this case as one of reactionary judges clinging to the letter of the law, while progressive justices overturn the letter of the law to reflect its true spirit. This is the view that CNN and MSNBC are promoting.
Had the Pennsylvania Supreme Court simply ruled that Act 77 was unconstitutional under PA’s Free and Equal Elections clause, this would have been a classic “textualism” vs. “living constitutionalism” case. But it’s not.
There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution. Justice Alito writes: “The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
Justice Alito is referring to the following clauses of the US Constitution:

• Art. I, §4, cl. 1, which states “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
• Art. II, §1, cl. 2, which states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Again, translating this into common English, the US Constitution grants state legislators the exclusive right to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding elections, and to direct the appointment of the electors.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court didn’t just say “Act 77 is unconstitutional.” It re-wrote Act 77 itself, by judicial fiat, creating new rules for time, place, and manner, of holding elections. In doing so, the State Supreme Court violated the US Federal Constitution.
And that’s the real case here. The US Supreme Court is going to rule that the State Supreme Court violated the US Constitution, the State Supreme Court’s ruling is going to be overturned, and the votes that arrived after 8 PM on election day will be discarded. On that basis, Trump will win Pennsylvania.

Give Biden AZ and NV and Trump can have all the PA recounts he desires. A fair count is the last thing he wants. He's been trying to suppress the vote for months and is now reaping the rewards of his failure. The people are speaking and Trump and his allies can't stand it. That's the bottom line. Trump may throw some tantrums and try to drum up support, but in the end agencies like the Secret Service, the FBI and the military, by staying out of it, will do their duty with the only hiccup being that we may have an inauguration without the outgoing president present. I doubt his ego could handle the situation and, like McCain's funeral, he'll be a no-show.

no, the the Dems are against a fair count

 

[The Original Tree]

No Judge should have allowed extending the time to count votes like this. That is just an invitation for Fraud. 141,000,000 million votes were cast and I estimate about 32 million were fraudulent.

 

[konradv]

No Judge should have allowed extending the time to count votes like this. That is just an invitation for Fraud. 141,000,000 million votes were cast and I estimate about 32 million were fraudulent.

Based on what? There's no problem with the counting being extended. It's weeks before the votes have be certified for the EC.