It's pretty clear that the rules regarding absentee mail-in voting were not legally changed. The petitioners will almost assuredly win that part.
The dilemma is what do you do with all the ballots which were cast "illegally" as a result of this ruling? Do you disenfranchise over a million voters because the state effectively deceived them into thinking their mail-in vote would count? As the judge says [paraphrased], Is there greater harm in letting the result stand as-is, or in throwing out over a million votes? And I think this is where the corruption, negligence, and fraud arguments will come into play. The petitioners need to demonstrate that enough of that occurred to potentially alter the result, i.e. the number of bad ballots is greater than the margin of victory.
The judge will have the following options IMO. Keep in mind that this applies to all the races, both state-wide and local.
Let the result stand as-is
Toss out all absentee votes which are illegal - which isn't all of them, but will be a majority. Further you have the problem of not being able to trace a ballot back to a voter to determine if that voter had a legal absentee ballot.
Hold a re-vote. This doesn't seem logistically possible, as new candidates are due to take office in January and there will almost assuredly be appeals spanning weeks.
a) Let the state legislature seat the electors for presidential race b) Use option 1-3 for the remaining races.
An athlete loses their awards if found to have obtained them through illegal means. It doesn't matter if you argue they would have won anyway without cheating. The point is they did cheat and the true outcome without cheating is unknown. I say toss the mail-in ballots and keep the rest. It should be easy to figure which ones were mail-n based on the timestamps of the ballot dumps. The people who claim to be disenfranchised as a result can take it up with their own officials who deceived them into voting with an unconstitutional mail-in ballot.
Your example isn't a true parallel. A better example is that an annual track meet is organized. Athletes compete and one wins. But upon further inspection, the scoring method used was improperly changed for this year. If the traditional scoring was used, the winner changes.
Further, the organizers made the scoring change in an attempt to favor the candidate who won. The athelete may have been aware that he was favored by this change, but competed fairly under the established rules. Should the winner be charged?
Your example assumes that all competitors had the same advantage regardless of scoring method. However, one of the competitors had been told "yeah it's okay to juice." So he loaded up on performance enhancing mail-in ballots because they are legal now. After the race, the governing board clarifies the rules and states that juicing was not legal. Should we let the race results stand? The mail-in ballots were authorized under Act 77 because it made voting easier, not harder.
I was following you until you said "charged", as you're kinda mixing the analogies.
Besides, you're also vague about the way the rules changed. To make a comparable example, the winner won because his best time was submitted by mail but not in person or established ways to authenticate the time.
Thus, of course I would say the winner of the race under improper new rules that allowed mail in times should not be allowed to win.
The idea of the analogy is that the organizer (the government) is at fault, but everyone else competed per the rules.
Here's a more specific example. Let's say it was a triathlon. The bike leg was lengthened because the organizers wanted to fit the course into a certain part of town. The winner won by a few seconds. The 2nd place guy is worse at the bike part than the winner, so you can argue the longer time on the bike part caused him to lose. But you can't know for certain.
How is this even a question? It's not even proper devil's advocacy.
The proper question is do you disenfranchise the multiple millions who voted legally because you feeeeeeeeel badly about the million who didn't? And the answer is no.
Both house of the PA General Assembly (state legislature) are controlled by GOP. One would think they'd vote by party, giving Trump a victory, but you never know.
Honestly I don’t know if they even can. It wouldn’t surprise me if that scenario wouldn’t just wind back to the pa sc as legislators are still suppose to choose the majority vote and you can’t technically determine that.
This is going to be an ugly mess.
It's pretty clear that the rules regarding absentee mail-in voting were not legally changed. The petitioners will almost assuredly win that part.
The dilemma is what do you do with all the ballots which were cast "illegally" as a result of this ruling? Do you disenfranchise over a million voters because the state effectively deceived them into thinking their mail-in vote would count? As the judge says [paraphrased], Is there greater harm in letting the result stand as-is, or in throwing out over a million votes? And I think this is where the corruption, negligence, and fraud arguments will come into play. The petitioners need to demonstrate that enough of that occurred to potentially alter the result, i.e. the number of bad ballots is greater than the margin of victory.
The judge will have the following options IMO. Keep in mind that this applies to all the races, both state-wide and local.
An athlete loses their awards if found to have obtained them through illegal means. It doesn't matter if you argue they would have won anyway without cheating. The point is they did cheat and the true outcome without cheating is unknown. I say toss the mail-in ballots and keep the rest. It should be easy to figure which ones were mail-n based on the timestamps of the ballot dumps. The people who claim to be disenfranchised as a result can take it up with their own officials who deceived them into voting with an unconstitutional mail-in ballot.
Your example isn't a true parallel. A better example is that an annual track meet is organized. Athletes compete and one wins. But upon further inspection, the scoring method used was improperly changed for this year. If the traditional scoring was used, the winner changes.
Further, the organizers made the scoring change in an attempt to favor the candidate who won. The athelete may have been aware that he was favored by this change, but competed fairly under the established rules. Should the winner be charged?
Your example assumes that all competitors had the same advantage regardless of scoring method. However, one of the competitors had been told "yeah it's okay to juice." So he loaded up on performance enhancing mail-in ballots because they are legal now. After the race, the governing board clarifies the rules and states that juicing was not legal. Should we let the race results stand? The mail-in ballots were authorized under Act 77 because it made voting easier, not harder.
I was following you until you said "charged", as you're kinda mixing the analogies.
Besides, you're also vague about the way the rules changed. To make a comparable example, the winner won because his best time was submitted by mail but not in person or established ways to authenticate the time.
Thus, of course I would say the winner of the race under improper new rules that allowed mail in times should not be allowed to win.
Supposed to have been "changed". Phone typo.
The idea of the analogy is that the organizer (the government) is at fault, but everyone else competed per the rules.
Here's a more specific example. Let's say it was a triathlon. The bike leg was lengthened because the organizers wanted to fit the course into a certain part of town. The winner won by a few seconds. The 2nd place guy is worse at the bike part than the winner, so you can argue the longer time on the bike part caused him to lose. But you can't know for certain.
Yes.
Get fucked PA.
Yes. Because otherwise you are disenfranchising everyone else.
This made me laugh. Take my upvote!
How is this even a question? It's not even proper devil's advocacy.
The proper question is do you disenfranchise the multiple millions who voted legally because you feeeeeeeeel badly about the million who didn't? And the answer is no.
In the case of option 4, would state legislature vote for Trump?
Both house of the PA General Assembly (state legislature) are controlled by GOP. One would think they'd vote by party, giving Trump a victory, but you never know.
The GOP isn't well known for their backbones. There's exceptions but it's few and far between.
I’m very worried about this as well.
Honestly I don’t know if they even can. It wouldn’t surprise me if that scenario wouldn’t just wind back to the pa sc as legislators are still suppose to choose the majority vote and you can’t technically determine that.
There is no dilemma, follow the law.
“bUt mUh oPtIcs!”
Probably. Bur what about all the down-ballot races?