Donald Trump keeps learning the hard way: A president’s will — no matter the intensity of his rhetoric, the size of his pulpit and reach of his social media megaphone — is not enough to single-handedly remake America’s election system.
The Supreme Court on Monday dealt him a stinging defeat in a years-long crusade, ruling that states may accept mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, so long as they are postmarked by that day.
The coup de grace, delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of Trump’s own appointees, was simple: “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received.”
Trump’s high-court flop caps a year in which the president has attempted to bludgeon into effect his preferred version of American elections: He’s sought to impose strict voter ID requirements, which opponents say would disenfranchise thousands of voters, restrict mail-inballots, which have become some states’ preferred voting method, and punish states that refuse to conform.
At every turn, the courts — and ultimately, the Supreme Court — have stymied his vision. Trump acknowledged the “tremendous loss” at the high court on Truth Social Monday, an apparent effort to reenergize his flailing effort to convince Congress to rewrite the election laws in his favor.
The justices’ decision is another indication that the conservative court — while more likely to side with the Trump administration’s views on a wide array of issues — is not deeply invested in Trump’s project to reshape how Americans cast their ballots.
For Trump, the issue is personal. He has long pushed false claims of election fraud to explain his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, which saw a sharp increase in mail-in ballots as a result of the pandemic. And he has repeatedly expressed bitterness that the Supreme Court, including his three appointees, gave the cold shoulder to lawsuits challenging Biden’s victory.
Trump has repeatedly described the slow process of counting ballots in some states — sometimes stretching days after Election Day — as evidence that the results were being manipulated, despite foreknowledge of states’ counting procedures and repeated assurances from election officials, some of them Trump’s own GOP allies, that nothing was amiss.
Trump has spent the years since his 2020 defeat ginning up support among his own allies for an overhaul of elections. And he quickly embarked on that effort when he returned to power last year, describing it as one of his most critical priorities.
But Trump’s numerous election-related executive orders have been blocked over and over again by courts. Federal judges, including some of his own appointees, have prevented his Justice Department from forcing states to turn over their voter rolls — part of what the president’s critics say presages an effort to purge legitimate voters.
Lower courts have also blocked an effortto force the Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots in states that didn’t share their voter rolls with DOJ; they’ve also blocked efforts to compel states to change voter registration requirements and halted plans to strip election funding from states that don’t accede to the president’s demands.
With each setback, Trump’s language has grown more apocalyptic. On Monday, he said the voting policy changes were necessary to counter “a powerful Communist Movement” in the country that is “more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th.” And he called out five Republican senators by name who he said were opposed to his policies.
The high court’s 5-4 ruling Monday grappled with Trump’s claims that permitting post-Election Day ballots could fuel perceptions of fraud in elections, particularly if late-arriving ballots helped flip the outcome in a key state or race.
Barrett, joined by the court’s three liberals plus Chief Justice John Roberts, called election fraud and the perception of it “serious issues.” But that problem, she said, was a matter for Congress.
“Like other such issues, however, they must be addressed through the democratic process,” Barrett wrote in her majority opinion. “If varied deadlines for ballot receipt similarly call for a national solution, the American people must choose it through their elected representatives.”
Justice Samuel Alito, writing in dissent, countered that slow counting of ballots after Election Day — which can also include ballots that arrive on or before Election Day — has contributed to declining trust in election results.
Alito cited as evidence a study that also had another finding: Election officials can counteract that distrust by explaining to voters beforehand why delays in counting occur. And the same study also noted that the trust gap has been exacerbated by “elite-driven misinformation,” such as years of rhetoric from Trump himself calling into question the validity of votes counted after Election Day.
Nevertheless, Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, predicted the court’s decision will aggravate existing skepticism about the electoral process.
“By allowing States to continue receiving new ballots during these drawn-out processes, today’s decision will only exacerbate voters’ distrust,” Alito wrote.
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/x0n6UeF
via IFTTT
0 Commentaires