Incredibly Safe In-Person Voting in the time of Corona

Let me rephrase my response .... and simplify it.

The court didn't rule "That the election should be held" This was never in debate.

The court did rule "That the governor didn't have the authority to move the election"

Hope that clears up any confusion as to what I was getting at in my previous post.

 

The Rep legislator refuses to delay. The lower fed court said its a burden on right to vote and rules to extend acceptance of ballots (as I said a poll tax with their health being the tax). The Rep on the Supreme Court took a coward narrow ruling without a hearing because safety and they don’t do zoom.

 

Complaining about the courts decision is misplaced - That's what I'm getting at. They were charged with deciding on whether or not the governor had the authority to postpone the election - Not if the election should be postponed , even if its obvious that it should have been , that wasn't what they were deciding.

Any vitriol should be directed at the legislature for not doing what should have been done in postponing the election as they have that authority.

What gets me is why the GOP led legislature would go this route as its their demographic - old people who are most at risk and most likely to stay home due to the virus ...
Not only that , once Bernie dropped out and the Dem nominee is decided , its likely fewer Dems turn out and the GOP has better odds in local races.
Their tactics seem strange to me , Seems to me they are shooting themselves in the foot by not putting it off.

That was just a dumb decision all around by the legislature.

 

@Corrosion

I agree with most of what you posted .

Judges kinda have to rule the way they rule , otherwise they’d be granting this governor and future governors a new power ... which could be abused.

in this case , I think some responsibility falls on everyone . Seems like the power to move it was in legislators hands , but couldn’t the governor and the courts have nudged them somehow ?

Ohio managed to do it

I don’t think it’s red/blue ... it’s laziness / incompetence/ personal gain maybe .

maybe they can have a re-do in the summer? Ya know when people aren’t scared to vote .

then again , this is a problem for WI to figure out .

 

That's absolutely correct.

I don't think they can have a re-do .... that ship sailed when they made the decision not to postpone.

Ohio managed it because the governor and legislature were from the same party and their priorities were in alignment.

Yes the power move was in the hands of the legislature , no , the courts nor governor could force them to do anything.
Their best bet was to make an issue of it in hopes that negative feedback from the media & constituents would coerce them to postpone. I believe the GOP in Wisconsin will pay for this in the future.

I still don't see what the GOP had to gain in a reduced turnout .... it's their voters who would more likely stay home in fear of the virus. Seems totally mishandled to me.

 

maybe it’s just my naive hope , but my gut tells me this was more incompetence than partisanship. Part of the reason I believe that is the thinking you outline . I don’t see the benefit . Unless you think this is some long game conspiracy by GOP to not have mail voting in November.

my first guess is the age of the people in charge . Maybe Ohio had some younger people in the state legislature. I thought dewine was republican ? lol .

I clearly don’t know all the facts . But instead of the absurd “it’s perfectly safe in full hazmat gear”... he could have said “it’s not safe”

yeah essentially your idea of using the media to put pressure . maybe he was trying to be looking like a fool .

are these guys playing 4d chess or are they playing checkers ? Hard to know

 

No wonder trump and republicans were trying to limit voting in WI...

 

Ironically, the Republicans might have stifled their own vote.

This is why they should just take a stance to ensure public safety and maximize votes instead of trying to play games to win elections.

Republicans don't need to fear democracy, they just need to align better with the issues people truly care about

 

Shows how little confidence they have in their own party. They know they've dug a deep grave.

 

It makes sense in a way - it was an uncontested primary for Republicans, but you still had a lot of Sanders and Biden folks feeling they wanted to vote in an important primary.

 

Well, they consistently vote against their own well being...so that wouldn't be a surprise.

Still, a completely idiotic move by the gop in WI. They likely enraged just enough Dems to take the risk and get out to vote while simultaneously giving their own a reason not to. They know suppression efforts typically help the gop so they ended up suppressing themselves.

 

That or they were going to get slaughtered and this move actually gave them a chance.

 

The conservative was favored in this race going into election day and was given about a 75-80% chance of winning.

 

Shall we play, "What excuse will trumpy use to explain yet another endorsement loser?" Will it be:

"I never endorsed him. That's fake news."
"They should've used mail in voting like I did."
"It was rigged."
"Mexicans"

 

My point being that had they allowed mail in ballots the outcome could have been worse, we simply don't know how much turnout was impacted on either side.

 

We know that under all the different rule scenarios leading up to and including election day, the conservative was favored to win - whether it was a non-corona election, or a mail-in election, or a delayed election, or all the other different options. There was no scenario where the GOP thought they were going to get slaughtered.

 

Polling for state elections is notoriously unpredictable. If you look at the midterms a lot of surprises came about as the polling was off.

It's very hard to gauge how motivated a group of people are going to be in any particular scenario. There are more factors and polls don't predict behavior very well when the situation is starkly different than historical baselines.

What I mean by that is in the Trump era, no one can predict how Trump's actions relate to the commitment to Democratic voters to turnout and vice versa. The polls don't factor that in very well because there isn't a real historical basis when you have a president like Trump. And that has an impact on a local race for a judge because it's also bundled in with a primary.