Democrats Get Serious About Election Legal Contests

Ben Ginsberg, on September 8, wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post debunking the Republican party’s efforts to delegitimize the forthcoming election. Ginsberg has been a leading member of the GOP election-crushing machine since Bush-Gore in 2000. He wrote, in part:

The president’s rhetoric has put my party in the position of a firefighter who deliberately sets fires to look like a hero putting them out. Republicans need to take a hard look before advocating laws that actually do limit the franchise of otherwise qualified voters.

In 2018, by a 65%-35% margin, Florida voters amended their state constitution to allow ex-felons to vote. The horror of having 1.4 million new, largely left-leaning voters on the rolls prompted Republican “corrective” legislation in 2019, imposing payment of unascertainable fines and fees as an additional requirement.

On Friday, the 11th Circuit, 6-to-4 (5 of the majority are Trump appointees) ratified this chicanery, effectively making it impossible for ex-felons to vote in the coming election.

Ginsberg’s “remedy” of asking Republicans to take a “hard look” at things is just another iteration of Susan Collins “concern.”

I’m glad to see Democrats stepping up their legal game in advance. The 2000 election challenges were too often Democrats’ reaction to Republican aggression.

Democrats should not wait until the election to start challenging Republican disenfranchisement efforts.

One of their first acts should be an emergency application to the US Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus staying application of the 11th Circuit ruling and restoring the right to vote to ex-felons. Remember that in Bush v Gore, the Supreme Court stayed the lower court decision, scheduled briefing, heard oral argument, and rendered its notorious decision in the space of a week.