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zataomm  4mo ago (text post)   5357 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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Newsweek reports that we have more volunteers:

Republican lawmakers in three swing states have announced their plan to remove President Joe Biden from their state ballots.

Aaron Bernstine of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Cory McGarr of the Arizona House of Representatives and Charlice Byrd of the Georgia House of Representatives released a joint statement on Thursday announcing their plan to remove Biden from the 2024 general election ballots in those three states.

While their letter says that they plan to or are in the process to "introduce legislation", it's not clear from a quick search if they've done so, or even what that legislation would look like, nor how it would, in their words, "allow ALL candidates to be on the ballot in all states". It's far from obvious that they could get legislation through their respective legislatures within the necessary time period before the general election, or even at all: of the three states, only Georgia has a Republican governor, and it's unlikely Kemp will jump onto this particular grenade. The trio don't even have a particularly coherent theory for why and what disqualifying specific act applies.

So this is grift, and a publicity stunt, and dumber.

On the other hand, unlike Colorado or California, all three are states that matter: there are election models that treat them as swing states, not background temperature and a joke. It's a good thing that a lot of people talking about fucking with ballots hasn't caused problems in recent years, and that there aren't far-more-dangerous attacks that these games make more prominent.

nor how it would, in their words, "allow ALL candidates to be on the ballot in all states"

Presumably some sort of tripwire where the law amounts to "if you deny Trump we deny all Democrats, but if you back down we will too". Of course, this depends on the Democrats both having an overall-unfavourable result from tripping it and being sufficiently pragmatic to back down, which seems unlikely.

It would also depend on their proposed law not getting invalidated or stayed near-instantly, while the Trump disqualification didn't apply. Which isn't a huge possibility band, but it's a lot wider than the chance of their law lasting once past.

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