ROE, ROE, ROE YOUR VOTE

How scared are the MAGAts about the fact their dog finally caught the car and the illegitmate majority-representing-a-minorty on the Unsupreme Court overturned Roe v Wade?

This scared:

The fundamental idea at the heart of democracy, the bargain we all tacitly agree to, is that decisions are made by elections. One side wins. That side tries, most often with only partial success, to put forward its favored policies. The other side, the opposition, works hard to convince the voters that we ought to reverse course. Then, the voters get to weigh in again, choosing to either keep the ruling party in power or giving the opposition a chance.

Not any more.

Like children crying “No fair!” every time they lose a game, the MAGA Republican Party has decided any outcome democracy produces that it doesn’t like, such as an election won by a Democrat, or a policy decision made by a Democratic administration, is by definition illegitimate.

They keep coming up with new, and sometimes shocking, ways to demonstrate their rejection of the foundational bargain on which the United States is founded..

As has happened in many states since the Illegitimate Six decided to overturn Roe, the decision has pushed the issue of abortion rights to the top of the political agenda in Michigan.

Abortion rights advocates collected 730,000 signatures, far more than necessary, for a ballot initiative that would guarantee abortion rights. But in Michigan, initiatives must be certified by the state’s Board of State Canvassers. The board is composed of two Democrats and two Republicans. If they deadlock, the initiative won’t appear on the ballot.

You’ll recall this almost became an issue in 2020 when the two Republicans initially refused to certify the results of the vote in Wayne County that gave Joe Biden his majority of votes for winning the state’s electoral votes. Since then, the GOP removed the one Republican who voted for certification and provided the 3-1 majority, replacing him with an Ultra-MAGA individual.

That just happened yesterday. The two MAGA Republicans refused to certify the abortion initiative that was submitted for approval.

Were the signatures invalid? No.

Did it violate one of the rules regarding petitions, which include limits on font size and word count? No.

The Republicans struck it from the ballot because of word spacing.

Specifically, in the printed petition, a few words were strung together without spaces. Like this:

DECISIONSABOUTALLMATTERSRELATINGTOPREGNANCY

These two Republicans said, “It’s a mistake, and any sort of mistake on a petition means the whole thing should be nullified. Sorry, libs!”

Wrangling over petition signatures is common; disputes usually center on whether a candidate or an initiative has gathered enough legitimate signatures.

No other citizen’s initiative in any other state, or in Michigan before today, has ever been rejected because of word spacing.

Before you jump out of a window on reading he above, the decision will now go to the Michigan Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 Democratic majority, so this decision is likely to be reversed.

But...

How many of you just read that and saw there are three Republicans on the state Supreme Court and assumed they would go along with the rejection, no matter how absurd the rationale?

Because this is where we are today. “Republican” justice and “Actual” justice.

Wednesday night in Alaska, it was announced that Democrat Mary Peltola just won a special election for the state’s only U.S. House seat. The election was held under a new ranked-choice voting system approved by a majority of Alaskans - a state with a majority of Republican voters - in a 2020 ballot measure.

The way it works is, voters list their choices in order; if no candidate gets 50 percent or more in the first round, candidates at the bottom are eliminated and the voters’second-choice votes are allocated to the remaining candidates.

There is no evidence of any widespread confusion by the voters in Alaska. No one has come forward to say they mistakenly voted for the wrong person (as happened in Miami County in Florida in 200 with the confusing “butterfly ballot”).

What ranked-choice voting can do is create an opportunity for a candidate with cross-partisan appeal to win. That is the kind of candidate Peltola seems to be. She got the most votes in a three-way race against Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III, and won because half of Begich’s supporters Begich either listed Peltola as their second choice or decided not to list any second choice.

It happened because a lot of Alaskan Republicans really dislike Sarah Palin. The kind who keep reelecting moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.

But so far as many MAGA Republicans are concerned, if a system chosen by Alaskans doesn’t produce a Republican victory, that means it’s a scam.

The bitching and moaning about a “flawed system” started with Palin in her “concession” announcement, where she promised that - this time, unlike 20-09 - she wouldn’t be a quitter, but would “step back and reload.” (Surprise surprise, they lose and they bring up a gun and violence reference)

Tom Cotton, the senator who would have served America better if he had been fragged as the disliked officer he was in Iraq and saved the country the trouble of dealing with him, tweeted after the results were announced that, “Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections.”

This is now the standard GOP response: If we lost, it was “rigged.”

It doesn’t stop with elections; the default Republican response to legislation passed by a Democratic Congress or a policy decision made by a Democratic president is to file lawsuits seeking to have the courts, now that they have been stacked with partisan Republican hacks, strike them down.

Republicans are preparing lawsuits against President Biden’s decision to forgive some student loans, in the hope that the right judges, and ultimately the Supreme Court, will find some ridiculous excuse to quash it.

Did anyone notice that, when Trump lost his argument against the search warrant in the local federal district court where Mar-A-Lardo is physically located, he drove up the road an hour to find a district court where he has no physical presence, but one that has a “judge” that he appointed who was approved by Mitch McConnell’s senate AFTER Trump lost the election in 2020? Did anyone notice that - before the DOJ even had time to respond - this “judge” announced she was “preliminarily inclined” to accept Trump’s crazy argument for appointment of a Special Master in a case where there is nothing for an actual Special Master to do, except help Trump delay the inevitable?

We’re headed for chaotic elections in 2024, as GOP election saboteurs attempt to ensure that no matter what the voters say, Republicans will be declared the winner in every race.

Do you think those two Republicans on the Michigan Board of State Canvassers will vote to certify the results of the 2024 election in Wayne County if Democrats win the majority of votes?

Trump demanded this week that he be declared the “rightful winner” of the 2020 election and reinstalled in the White House. There is actually no way to do that that’s in either the Constitution or statutory law.

We have to refocus on the fundamental democratic bargain on which this country is founded and force Republicans to say clearly whether they will hold to it.

Because democracy means that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. If you can’t accept that, you’ve pronounced yourself an enemy of the American system.

Roe, Roe, Roe your vote. Vote like the country depends on it. Because it does.

This could be the last free election ever held in this country, if the MAGA Republicans are able to win. Depend on it.

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