The real contest is for the legitimacy and accuracy of American elections

I recently finished the book A Wild and Precious Life by Edie Windsor with Joshua Lyon. Windsor is famous for being the plaintiff in the case that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. That story is included, and so is the rest of her long life. I recommend the book. Her story is quite entertaining. Lyon was hired by Windsor to write the book and she worked closely with him, providing most of the details and answering his long lists of questions. Alas, she died before she told everything. While most of the book is in her voice Lyon has a section at the end of each chapter relating details he got from other people, including relating an incident from another perspective. Windsor was born in 1929 and came of age in the 1950s. It took her a while to realize she was a lesbian, as was typical of the time. Though she had a series of women lovers she stayed firmly closeted at her job and with much of her family. She eventually fell in love with Thea Spyer and they were together for decades. That job was with IBM. She was an important person in the company at the dawn of the computer age. This was a company that, in the 1950s specifically recruited women. Many years later colleagues of her time there said working with a lesbian would not have been an issue, though at the time she couldn’t risk it not being true. Her activism began in the late 1970s, a few years after the Stonewall riot in 1969 and went into high gear during the AIDS crisis. She was a generous donor and leader in several LGBT organizations. She and her beloved Thea were officially married in Toronto in 2007. Thea died in 2009. Because Thea came from money Windsor was hit with a huge inheritance tax that a male-female couple would not have faced. That prompted her suit against the government. By this time she was very much out to the world and loving every minute of the attention. My performance bell choir recorded videos of us playing three Christmas songs for posting online for our fans. Since there are no concerts scheduled we’re back on hiatus. My church bell choir will play on Sunday, then get ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas, whatever those turn out to be. After two days of not blogging, I’ve got a lot of open browser tabs to work through. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote we’ll likely hit 100,000 new COVID-19 cases a day by next week. He wrote:

There’s no reason to believe it will end there. Because to stop it will require the one thing that Donald Trump won’t deliver: coordinated nationwide action.

Sumner then reviewed what other countries are doing, many doing reasonably well, all of them working valiantly. Only one country has surrendered – the US. Joe Heim, a Washington Post reporter tweeted photos of a memorial of those who have died of COVID-19. The memorial is near RFK Stadium in DC and consists of small white flags. The four pictures give an indication of how huge the field of flags is. Ian Reifowitz of Kos tackles the idea of the nasty guy proclaiming he will protect the health insurance of people with preexisting conditions (of which COVID-19 is now one) as the Supreme Court is about to take up a case which might end the Affordable Care Act. The nasty guy has declared many times he has a much better health care plan, as has the GOP, but no such plan has ever appeared. Wrote Reifowitz:

They will be “totally protected,” Trump claimed. What he either doesn't know, comprehend, or care about is that he can't protect people with preexisting conditions without a larger national healthcare system that either is the ACA—or something so similar that the difference is meaningless—or something even more progressive like Medicare for All. Here's why: if Trump tries to just require the insurance companies to sell policies to people with preexisting conditions at the same price as everyone else, even though those folks will almost certainly need more health care, he'll put them out of business. Putting aside how one feels about such a development, it would cause a tremendous disruption to our healthcare system. The requirement that insurance companies treat people with preexisting conditions the same as everyone else works hand in hand with other elements of Obamacare—or any conceivable national health insurance system.

I’ll let you read the details. Gabe Ortiz of Kos reported that the Department of Homeland Security is again preparing to use its in-house thugs in case of “civil unrest amid a contentious election.” Ortiz quoted CNN. That’s even though a top official said there’s no “specific intelligence that suggests any particular threat of violence.” Alas, we know what those thugs did in Portland and we know who gets to define what “civil unrest” means. Andrew Feinberg tweeted a video of the nasty guy at a campaign rally in Lansing, Michigan saying “Three weeks in, Joe is shot, let's go Kamala, are you ready?” Matt Ortega responded:

Captain's Log, Day 1,376 President of the United States, speaking at a campaign rally, floats the possibility his opponent get assassinated three weeks into their presidency.

Thom Hartmann, progressive talk show host and author, tweeted a thread about voter suppression. Some of what he wrote:

Back in 2004, fully 22 states experienced what has now come to be called “red shift”—where the exit polls are “wrong” but almost always in a way that benefits Republicans. … For example, in the 2016 election, the exit polls showed Hillary Clinton carrying Florida by 47.7 percent to Trump’s 46.4 percent, although the “actual” counted vote had Trump winning by 49.0 percent to 47.8 percent. Trump gained 2.5 percentage points . . . somehow. …

Hartmann had examples from a few more states.

Perhaps even more interesting, in states without a Republican secretary of state, there is virtually no shift at all, either red or blue, and hasn’t been ever. The election results typically comport with the exit polls in blue states. … While there is a clear contest between Trump and Biden, between Republicans and Democrats across the country, the real contest going on right now is for the legitimacy and accuracy of American elections. … Republicans are doing everything they can to keep people from voting, and then, when people do vote, to try to prevent those votes from being counted. … When this election is over, if American democracy survives, our first project has to be to establish a firm, irrevocable right to vote for all American citizens.

In the news today the nasty guy ranted that there should be an answer to who won the election that night. So a prediction (and I so much want to be wrong): After enough time to get the in-person ballots counted the nasty guy will get a willing Supreme Court to order ballot counting everywhere to be stopped, no matter how many ballots haven’t been counted yet. Steve Vladeck, a professor at University of Texas Law, included a tweet from the nasty guy demanding final totals on election night. Vladeck responded:

To be clear: There isn't a *single* state that certifies its results *on* Election Day. When elections are called, it's because of media *projections,* not the "final total." Indeed, federal law gives states at least five *weeks* to certify their results.

Joan McCarter of Kos wrote a post with the title Republicans ask the Supreme Court to hand Trump this election. McCarter discusses several cases before the Court – which states can allow mail-in ballots to be counted for how many days after the election. I get the impression they are being intentionally confusing so a voter doesn’t know when their state deadline is (hint: hand carry your ballot to your city hall tomorrow). McCarter wrote with a remark by me and emphasis by her:

Consider the argument made by Kavanaugh in which he totally embraced Trump's characterization of absentee ballots as fraudulent. Kavanaugh defended Wisconsin's attempts to disqualify ballots cast before Election Day, saying that "most States […] want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after Election Day [sez who?] and potentially flip the results of an election." Right there he is asserting that only in-person votes are valid. That they comprise the election. That's despite the fact that in at least 18 states as well as the District of Columbia all of the ballots cast by the day of the election ARE the election, and they are counted and there is no result in the election until they are all counted. Related to the Pennsylvania case, where Roberts says that the state Supreme Court has the final say, Kavanaugh had another argument that's terrifying elections legal minds. In a footnote in his 18-page diatribe about voting, Kavanaugh asserted an argument from the 2000 Bush v. Gore dissent put forward by William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Thomas that would have given the Supreme Court the brand-new right to overrule state courts on state elections laws. That was an argument too extreme even for the court that decided to select George W. Bush president, halting the ballot counting in Florida. Kavanaugh, however, cites that minority opinion as though it were precedent, even though it was rejected by the majority and even though the court took great pains in 2000 to declare that the case should never be considered as precedent in future elections disputes. Kavanaugh—and Roberts and Barrett—by the way, were all part of the Bush legal team that secured that victory.

In another post McCarter reports the Supremes have already been putting their thumbs on the scales, influencing election cases, through what is known as the “shadow docket.” The shadow docket includes cases that are not handled through normal proceedings. There are no oral arguments. There is no ruling, only an order. The reasoning is not made public unless dissenting justices make them public. They are usually used for such things as adding or overturning a stay in a lower court ruling. And their use in the last four years has exploded. The GOP and the nasty guy tend to win. This is contrary to the transparency we need from our highest court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, frequently a dissenter, has started speaking out about this practice. See my prediction above. And I’ll add: A tyrant, to show his power, wants it obvious that an election was stolen. It is a way of saying I can do this and you can’t stop me. Roy Edroso tweeted:

One week out, Rich Lowry for the eminent conservative publication @NRO makes his case: Vote Trump to say f#%! you to people you don't like.

And Tom Nichols responded:

That's all it was ever about.

Issue One, a crosspartisan political reform group, tweeted:

After being effectively shut down for all but 29 days earlier this year, the @FEC is again without a quorum — and has been for 115 days & counting. It can’t give legal advice or fine lawbreakers.

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker responded:

Just how the wolves like it. More money than ever in American politics and the guard dogs are gone.