{"id":8883,"date":"2012-09-19T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T18:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8883"},"modified":"2012-09-19T11:00:48","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T18:00:48","slug":"this-could-win-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/19\/this-could-win-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"This Could Win the Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past two Sundays, I have posted election projections, in which I have forecast an Obama\/Biden victory as highly likely. However, I have included the caveat that my calculations do not account for Republican prohibition of the voting rights of legitimate Democratic voters.  Unless this Republican election fraud is stopped, their voter suppression could tip the balance in several states.  One such is Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes.  I\u2019m happy to bring good news.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"19Voter-Supression\"The Pennsylvania Supreme Court today vacated<\/a><\/font> a lower-court decision upholding<\/a><\/font> the state\u2019s voter ID law, instructing Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson to rehear the case, looking specifically at whether the state is doing enough to make sure that every eligible Pennsylvania voter has the right ID to cast a ballot. The supreme court, in a 4-2 decision, found a \u201cdisconnect between what the Law prescribes and how it is being implemented<\/strong>,\u201d and noted that \u201cif the Law is enforced in a manner that prevents qualified and eligible electors from voting, the integrity of the upcoming General Election will be impaired<\/strong>.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

Two key sections of the court decision<\/a><\/font>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Overall, we are confronted with an ambitious effort on the part of the General Assembly to bring the new identification procedure into effect within a relatively short timeframe and an implementation process which has by no means been seamless in light of the serious operational constraints faced by the executive branch. Given this state of affairs, we are not satisfied with a mere predictive judgment based primarily on the assurances of government officials.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u2026We will return the matter to the Commonwealth Court to make a present an assessment of the actual availability of the alternate identification cards on a developed record in light of the experience since the time the cards became available. In this regard, the court is to consider whether the procedures being used for deployment of the cards comport with the requirement of liberal access which the General Assembly attached to the issuance of PennDOT identification cards. If they do not, or if the Commonwealth Court is not still convinced in its predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the Commonwealth\u2019s implementation of a voter identification requirement for purposes of the upcoming election, that court is obliged to enter a preliminary injunction.<\/font><\/p>\n

The important takeaway from the ruling is that the supreme court shifted the burden of proof from the plaintiffs<\/strong>, who in lower court had to show that eligible voters would be disenfranchised by the law, to the state, who now has to prove that voters will not be disenfranchised. That\u2019s why lawyers for the plaintiffs, which includes the ACLU and the Advancement Project, are optimistic about the chances of receiving a preliminary injunction when the Commonwealth Court rehears the case, possibly as soon as next week. A decision is mandated by October 2\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The Nation<\/a>><\/p>\n

Photo credit:<\/font> bolgernow<\/a><\/p>\n

Given that Pennsylvania Republicans have openly stated that this law was intended to steer the election to Willard, and given that PennDOT lacks the capacity to process the needed ID in the time allotted, the state\u2019s burden of proof is insurmountable.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past two Sundays, I have posted election projections, in which I have forecast an Obama\/Biden victory as highly likely. However, I have included the caveat that my calculations do not account for Republican prohibition of the voting rights of legitimate Democratic voters.  Unless this Republican election fraud is stopped, their voter suppression could […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}