I am not persuaded by the may/shall argument in the slightest. Do you really believe they are arguing honestly when they say the revision from may to shall somehow means that shall establishes a floor of what the legislature can do which they can go beyond?? English is my native language so I happen to know that if someone changes something to shall (i.e. must), they are strengthening the language to make sure people know not to violate this clause. May gives permission. Shall is a command.
Furthermore, SCOTUS never ruled on the merits and the PA Supreme Court failed to rule on the merits as well. The only judge in PA that ever ruled on merits (not just on procedural crap like mootness, ripeness, laches, etc) said that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on those merits.
Update: And by the way, check out the Mathews v. Paynter case they cite for their brilliant may/shall argument. It's a laughable comparison. Whereas in that case a clause stipulating a list of what offenses "shall be subject to disciplinary action" was argued to not be an exhaustive or exclusive list, quite clearly the intent of Article VII, section 14 of the PA constitution is to list all of the reasons one can vote absentee. These people are not honest in their arguments.
Right, the claim is the shall strengthens the floor for the absentee voting provisions, a minimal requirement, but doesn't limit extending the absentee voting provisions (including allowing anyone to vote by mail). I don't know if they are arguing honestly (can't read minds), but it does make logical sense. Part of the problem is that Republicans didn't question the new law (that they originally authored and passed) until after the election, although it had been enacted a year earlier. Such a tangled mess...
Third party here. It's clearly not a floor, it's an exception. Otherwise it would contradict the effective in-person voting requirement that's also specified.
A good example would be, imagine if the exception clause didn't exist at all. So there were no clause about absentee voting at all in the constitution. It would be interpreted then as you must offer your vote in person. Not that it's some "floor" and you can add as many exceptions to that as you want.
Also since my guess is you're on the left politically and here for some sort debate (now that reddit and twitter have become far left echo chambers), my question for you is: how do you justify the video that came out of Georgia? They have an electronic record of ballots, they could have easily checked who those ballots went for and allowed bipartisan investigation, including interviews of those involved, yet they didn't do that or at least make any of it known publically or to the Trump campaign. Seems so egregious to me that such a lack of transparency becomes then evidence of guilt. So how do you justify it? Just curious.
I'm not left-leaning, but I admit I'm not as far-right as most people here. I've never used reddit and have very rarely have used my twitter account.
Which article/section of the PA Constitution has the requirement you describe? I want to check it out. TIA.
Are you referring to the GA boxes-under-the-table video? My understanding is that issue was resolved after officials reviewed the unedited video and interviewed the poll workers. I think there may have been some lack of transparency on both sides (which did the R observers leave when they weren't required to do so? Why was the video edited to make it look worse than it was? etc.).
I'm going to stop asking questions here at this point (I can tell I'm annoying some people), but thanks for giving me some pointers for further investigation.
Article VII section 1.3 and section 4. "Where he or she shaller offer to vote" i.e. the place where you must be to "offer" your vote, this implies and has always been interpreted to imply in person. In addition, section 4 is violated by mail in voting, because secrecy of ballot is not preserved under such a method (e.g. no safeguards for who is around you when the ballot is filled out, ballot goes through the mail and scanners can see through who you voted for, etc.). The ammendment for absentee voting is obviously an exception, it's not a floor. This is also true when you look at the context behind when/why it was added as well.
I am surprised you buy that excuse for Georgia. zthe video is egregious. Nothing was "edited", they just didn't show when the boxes were put under the table (look how disorganized the original presentation was, they had obviously just discovered the footage themselves, they didn't selectively edit anything). The fact that other people were supposedly (i havent seen that footage) in the room when the boxes were put under the table many hours earlier doesn't change much. In a busy room those things are likely to go unnoticed or as we saw in other places if you complain no one cares. So that doesn't change anything.
The SoS says he had a team investigate it? You seriously buy that? On the leaked call with Trump they said they didn't know who those votes went for. They just baselessly dissmissed the idea that they all went for Trump. Now, if they did an honest investigation, wouldn't that be absolutely a key component of it? Yet they had no answer. What was Ruby's excuse? Why were they told to stop counting, and then what made them restart? We know the water main break was a lie and not the reason...
And so on. The fact you accept their dismissal of such damning evidence is very telling honestly. It tells me you want to believe it was legit, and so your brain will accept any possible explanation no matter how inadequate or logically flawed.
I don't think it makes logical sense at all. One has to have no historical understanding to believe that the reason they enumerated the list of reasons one could vote absentee in the constitution wasn't precisely to encapsulate every valid reason to vote absentee.
And while I agree with you that Republicans didn't question their own law, the constitutionality of Title 77 is not what most people are concerned about. It's that Title 77 itself was further modified by the PA Supreme Court. That's the big question in this election that SCOTUS cowardly failed to address: Do officials such as Secretaries of State and courts such as the biased PA Supreme Court have the authority to modify elections laws?
I think in some ways you are allowing the your family to distract you. The onus is not upon us to prove fraud occurred.
The onus was upon law enforcement to investigate things like the truck driver shipping ballots from NY to PA or the USPS whistleblowers saying they were ordered to illegally backdate ballots. They failed.
The onus was upon the courts to adjudicate these issues rather than dismissing cases on procedural grounds. They failed.
The onus was on county and state officials to preserve evidence and conduct audits such as signature matches. They failed.
The onus was upon courts and others to order that voting software and other voting machine internals cannot be proprietary and must be auditable. They failed.
What you should be arguing to your family is that we were not allowed to look and therefore the election can't be trusted. Compare virtually any aspect of this to 2000 / Bush v. Gore where multiple recounts and audits were allowed even well after the election. That's the question. Why can't we look???
Do you have reference(s) that provide the historical understanding?
Apparently, the truck driver claim was investigated by election officials. I assume it wasn't investigated by LE because there was no indication that laws had been broken.
Wow, you really still believe these fake "fact checks" from MSM sources? Jesse Morgan disagrees. He said all law enforcement wanted to do when they interviewed him was question his motives etc. Totally uninterested in investigating the alleged crime itself of transporting those ballots across state lines or the missing trailer.
Also, the NYT bombshell about "disavowal" was also completely false. Watch the Project Veritas videos immediately after where the guy says NYT should retract the story and he never disavowed. They even released a full recording of the struggle session the USPS OIG agent put him through. Guess they didn't expect him to be wearing a wire. In fact, this incident alone shows how utterly politically biased the USPS was.
Refer to the Carter-Baker Report of 2005, which states "Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud". This understanding is the reason PA and other states didn't just allow anyone to do it.
One has to have no historical understanding to believe that the reason they enumerated the list of reasons one could vote absentee in the constitution wasn't precisely to encapsulate every valid reason to vote absentee.
Exactly, and I think the easiest way to "see" this is to imagine the constitution WITHOUT the absentee voting clause. Nobody would conclude then that absentee voting is allowed (since the other language, in context, clearly says it MUST be in-person). The absentee voting clause is an EXCEPTION, and by definition an exception isn't a floor to the rules, rather it provides a higher ceiling.
I am not persuaded by the may/shall argument in the slightest. Do you really believe they are arguing honestly when they say the revision from may to shall somehow means that shall establishes a floor of what the legislature can do which they can go beyond?? English is my native language so I happen to know that if someone changes something to shall (i.e. must), they are strengthening the language to make sure people know not to violate this clause. May gives permission. Shall is a command.
Furthermore, SCOTUS never ruled on the merits and the PA Supreme Court failed to rule on the merits as well. The only judge in PA that ever ruled on merits (not just on procedural crap like mootness, ripeness, laches, etc) said that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on those merits.
Update: And by the way, check out the Mathews v. Paynter case they cite for their brilliant may/shall argument. It's a laughable comparison. Whereas in that case a clause stipulating a list of what offenses "shall be subject to disciplinary action" was argued to not be an exhaustive or exclusive list, quite clearly the intent of Article VII, section 14 of the PA constitution is to list all of the reasons one can vote absentee. These people are not honest in their arguments.
Right, the claim is the shall strengthens the floor for the absentee voting provisions, a minimal requirement, but doesn't limit extending the absentee voting provisions (including allowing anyone to vote by mail). I don't know if they are arguing honestly (can't read minds), but it does make logical sense. Part of the problem is that Republicans didn't question the new law (that they originally authored and passed) until after the election, although it had been enacted a year earlier. Such a tangled mess...
Third party here. It's clearly not a floor, it's an exception. Otherwise it would contradict the effective in-person voting requirement that's also specified.
A good example would be, imagine if the exception clause didn't exist at all. So there were no clause about absentee voting at all in the constitution. It would be interpreted then as you must offer your vote in person. Not that it's some "floor" and you can add as many exceptions to that as you want.
Also since my guess is you're on the left politically and here for some sort debate (now that reddit and twitter have become far left echo chambers), my question for you is: how do you justify the video that came out of Georgia? They have an electronic record of ballots, they could have easily checked who those ballots went for and allowed bipartisan investigation, including interviews of those involved, yet they didn't do that or at least make any of it known publically or to the Trump campaign. Seems so egregious to me that such a lack of transparency becomes then evidence of guilt. So how do you justify it? Just curious.
I'm not left-leaning, but I admit I'm not as far-right as most people here. I've never used reddit and have very rarely have used my twitter account.
Which article/section of the PA Constitution has the requirement you describe? I want to check it out. TIA.
Are you referring to the GA boxes-under-the-table video? My understanding is that issue was resolved after officials reviewed the unedited video and interviewed the poll workers. I think there may have been some lack of transparency on both sides (which did the R observers leave when they weren't required to do so? Why was the video edited to make it look worse than it was? etc.).
I'm going to stop asking questions here at this point (I can tell I'm annoying some people), but thanks for giving me some pointers for further investigation.
Article VII section 1.3 and section 4. "Where he or she shaller offer to vote" i.e. the place where you must be to "offer" your vote, this implies and has always been interpreted to imply in person. In addition, section 4 is violated by mail in voting, because secrecy of ballot is not preserved under such a method (e.g. no safeguards for who is around you when the ballot is filled out, ballot goes through the mail and scanners can see through who you voted for, etc.). The ammendment for absentee voting is obviously an exception, it's not a floor. This is also true when you look at the context behind when/why it was added as well.
I am surprised you buy that excuse for Georgia. zthe video is egregious. Nothing was "edited", they just didn't show when the boxes were put under the table (look how disorganized the original presentation was, they had obviously just discovered the footage themselves, they didn't selectively edit anything). The fact that other people were supposedly (i havent seen that footage) in the room when the boxes were put under the table many hours earlier doesn't change much. In a busy room those things are likely to go unnoticed or as we saw in other places if you complain no one cares. So that doesn't change anything.
The SoS says he had a team investigate it? You seriously buy that? On the leaked call with Trump they said they didn't know who those votes went for. They just baselessly dissmissed the idea that they all went for Trump. Now, if they did an honest investigation, wouldn't that be absolutely a key component of it? Yet they had no answer. What was Ruby's excuse? Why were they told to stop counting, and then what made them restart? We know the water main break was a lie and not the reason...
And so on. The fact you accept their dismissal of such damning evidence is very telling honestly. It tells me you want to believe it was legit, and so your brain will accept any possible explanation no matter how inadequate or logically flawed.
I don't think it makes logical sense at all. One has to have no historical understanding to believe that the reason they enumerated the list of reasons one could vote absentee in the constitution wasn't precisely to encapsulate every valid reason to vote absentee.
And while I agree with you that Republicans didn't question their own law, the constitutionality of Title 77 is not what most people are concerned about. It's that Title 77 itself was further modified by the PA Supreme Court. That's the big question in this election that SCOTUS cowardly failed to address: Do officials such as Secretaries of State and courts such as the biased PA Supreme Court have the authority to modify elections laws?
I think in some ways you are allowing the your family to distract you. The onus is not upon us to prove fraud occurred.
The onus was upon law enforcement to investigate things like the truck driver shipping ballots from NY to PA or the USPS whistleblowers saying they were ordered to illegally backdate ballots. They failed.
The onus was upon the courts to adjudicate these issues rather than dismissing cases on procedural grounds. They failed.
The onus was on county and state officials to preserve evidence and conduct audits such as signature matches. They failed.
The onus was upon courts and others to order that voting software and other voting machine internals cannot be proprietary and must be auditable. They failed.
What you should be arguing to your family is that we were not allowed to look and therefore the election can't be trusted. Compare virtually any aspect of this to 2000 / Bush v. Gore where multiple recounts and audits were allowed even well after the election. That's the question. Why can't we look???
Do you have reference(s) that provide the historical understanding?
Apparently, the truck driver claim was investigated by election officials. I assume it wasn't investigated by LE because there was no indication that laws had been broken.
https://factcheck.thedispatch.com/p/fact-check-explaining-the-claims
The postal worked claims about backdated ballots were later disavowed (sorry about the MSM reference).
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/us/a-pennsylvania-postal-worker-withdrew-a-claim-that-ballots-were-backdated-officials-say.html
What happened with Roger Stone's claim that North Korean smuggled ballots into Maine? I can't find any information about that investigation.
Wow, you really still believe these fake "fact checks" from MSM sources? Jesse Morgan disagrees. He said all law enforcement wanted to do when they interviewed him was question his motives etc. Totally uninterested in investigating the alleged crime itself of transporting those ballots across state lines or the missing trailer.
Also, the NYT bombshell about "disavowal" was also completely false. Watch the Project Veritas videos immediately after where the guy says NYT should retract the story and he never disavowed. They even released a full recording of the struggle session the USPS OIG agent put him through. Guess they didn't expect him to be wearing a wire. In fact, this incident alone shows how utterly politically biased the USPS was.
As the a reference for historical understanding, it has been understood for a long time that absentee voting is not intended to be unconditional (and for obvious reasons). Refer to this PA statute for example which enumerates the reasons one can vote absentee: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/LI/consCheck.cfm?txtType=HTM&ttl=25&div=0&chpt=33
Refer to the Carter-Baker Report of 2005, which states "Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud". This understanding is the reason PA and other states didn't just allow anyone to do it.
Third party here. Well said.
Exactly, and I think the easiest way to "see" this is to imagine the constitution WITHOUT the absentee voting clause. Nobody would conclude then that absentee voting is allowed (since the other language, in context, clearly says it MUST be in-person). The absentee voting clause is an EXCEPTION, and by definition an exception isn't a floor to the rules, rather it provides a higher ceiling.