Interesting article written on April 3rd by Becky Little in history. com on how the union pulled off a Presidential Election During the Civil War.
With many residents unable to to be at the ballot box within their state of residence away fighting in the Civil War, most Northern States enacted or had laws to enable absentee ballots.
In 3 Democratic Party states: Delaware, Kentucky and New Jersey (nominee George McClellan’s residence), they still did not allow soldiers to vote in the field for 1864 election. As such, furloughs were often granted so the affected soldiers could be allowed to go home and vote.
In addition, the parties back in the day each printed their own absentee ballots on distinctive colored paper, so apparently secrecy was not such a big deal.
The precious right of the American citizenship to vote, even if out of state on a given day when an election is scheduled, thankfully remains intact in this latest war against a deadly virus.
Dem’s have been claiming Trump was going to cancel the 2020 election for years.
It won’t happen.
We managed to have our primaries last month and it went off without a hitch. By November this outbreak will be long over and reduced to a few occasional small pockets going active if even that.
This week the Supreme Court, in its decision not to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, ruled that election rules should not be changed (by the courts) in normal times.
There you have it folks.
The five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court have declared that we are living in a normal period.
Why should an election be a problem when things are normal?
The court merely disallowed a one-week extension to get an absentee ballot postmarked. Last I looked, the postal workers still have home delivery daily as normal 6 days a week to homes across America…
I am quoting the majority decision declaring that the election rules could not be changed “in normal times.”
The demand for absentee ballots had overwhelmed the State government. The request that the court turned down was to allow time to process the request and thus allow citizens to vote without running the risk of going to polling places.
With the clear impact of reducing turnout light in an election that will strong influence party control of Wisconsin this was probably the most partisan decision since Bush vs. Gore… not surprising that not one member of the majority had the courage to put his name to it. Ruth Bader Ginzburg had not qualms about signing the dissent.
This thread illustrated how during Civil War elections deadlines were not extended for anything. The same was true WW1 + WW2.
Ginsberg: the same Supreme Court Justice that famously wrote “I dissent” in Bush v. Gore, 2000.
The term “respectively” is how a dissenting justice is supposed to act. Her somewhat harsh departure from the court’s decorum speaks volumes of her left agenda then and now here with Wisconsin.
You might want to tell the President that, since he is enlisting SCOTUS to help him make it harder to vote during an election where social distancing might be in force again.
Fortunately for my state, we have no excuse mail in voting already on the books, so Mr. Trump will have to find another way to suppress the vote in order to snag Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes.
So do you agree with the anonymous majority that these are “normal” times. And do you think anonymity is respectful of the people that that majority is supposed to serve?
Explain exactly how its harder in contrast to how people these days are already practicing social distance waiting in line at their local food stores and pharmacies, often wearing gloves and face coverings ?
Google pictures of Wisconsin voters standing for hours in the rain because SCOTUS pretended times were “ordinary” and because Trump has concocted a preposterous story that mail in votes are prone to rampant fraud.
Even though he himself cast a mail in ballot (and in his case, he technically DID commit voter fraud in doing so).
Let me add that the issue before the court was the larger than usual demand for absentee ballots had meant that all requested ballots could not be provided on time. The issue was a delay to allow late absentee ballots to be returned to enable registered voters to vote from isolation.
There was no justification for forcing citizens to risk their lives to vote… unless your goal was to reduce the number of voters.
The Supreme Court saw right through the shameful scheme. The irony of a State Supreme Court hopeful in Jill Karosfsky blasting the Supreme Court shows the Wisconsin citizens everything they need to know. Results come out April 13th, will not be a surprise if she loses either…
Other governors acted quickly and decisively to move out primaries. This flip flop in Wisconsin was late. No excuses, he needs to own up for his own indecisiveness.
The court did not make its decision based on the actions of the governor, their rational was that these are normal times that do not call for a last minute intervention.
Does the governor’s indecisiveness provide any justification for why the conservative majority on the court, stalwart, decisive, true, constitutional scholars all — not step in to protect the lives of citizens?
The Governor threw a legal Hail Mary and pouted. Having stop gap measures in place protecting his residents just in case the ruling went against him is the only action that is justified here.
You are ignoring the content of the court ruling to come up with a way to shift this onto the Democratic governor. Why won’t you focus on the court’s written decision. You are only embroidering it with new arguments because this partisan ruling is indefensible on the basis of its contents. If you can defend the contents do so. Otherwise this is no more than gaslighting.
