NC’s Absentee Ballot Extension Is (Probably) DOA in the New, Radical Supreme Court
Everything you need to know for Wednesday, Oct. 28: Don't bother mailing your ballot + We know who the peeing pastor is + Who believes Wendell Davis is the victim?
Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020
6️⃣ days until the election.
3️⃣ days until early voting ends (you can register when you vote at EV sites). Find your EV site here. Find out how long you’ll have to vote early in Wake County here and Durham County here.
8️⃣4️⃣ days until the inauguration.
Today’s Number: 17,000,000
Difference between the number of Americans represented by the 48 senators who opposed Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court and the number of Americans represented by the 52 senators who supported it.
In fact, Republicans have an outsize presence in the Senate for four decades.
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> NC’s Absentee Ballot Extension Doesn’t Have a Prayer
Last night, around the time Amy Coney Barrett was being sworn in as the next Supreme Court justice, the Court ruled 5–3 that Wisconsin could not count absentee ballots received after Election Day. Considering that the Court is set to hear similar cases from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, that was not a banner moment for voting rights.
But the concurring opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh is even more unsettling. It lays out, in no uncertain terms, how the Court’s far-right majority will find a way to hand the election to Donald Trump if it can.
From Slate:
In an 18-page lecture, [Kavanaugh] cast doubt on the legitimacy of many mail ballots and endorsed the most sinister component of Bush v. Gore. America’s new median justice is not a friend to democracy, and we may pay the price for Barrett’s confirmation in just eight days.
Kavanaugh defended Wisconsin’s law by arguing that “most States” have that policy:
Those States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.
He then quoted law professor Richard Plides, who had written in a law review article that the “longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen.” Kavanaugh missed the part where Plides said states should extend their deadlines.
In her dissent, Elena Kagan pointed out that you can’t “flip the results of an election” when the results haven’t been tallied.
From Slate:
There was another, even more startling assertion in Kavanaugh’s concurrence. While referencing an earlier case, Kavanaugh dropped a bombshell in a footnote: He endorsed an argument that was too extreme for even the Bush v. Gore majority that decided the 2000 election, one that would give the Supreme Court the wholly new right to overrule state courts on their own election laws. … Yet Kavanaugh cited [then-Chief Justice William] Rehnquist’s concurrence as if it were precedent. As Rehnquist “persuasively explained in Bush v. Gore,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the text of the Constitution requires federal courts to ensure that state courts do not rewrite state election laws.” It is surreal to read these words. Rehnquist’s concurrence garnered just three votes, so it is not precedent at all. Neither, for that matter, is the majority decision in Bush v. Gore, which warned future courts never to rely on it as precedent.
Kavanaugh worked for George W. Bush during Bush v. Gore. Back then, he argued that late-arriving ballots, even without postmarks, must be counted.
Wonder what changed.
PRIMER EDITORIAL: Pack. The. Court.
WHAT ABOUT US: In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections settled a lawsuit with voting rights advocates by agreeing to extend the ballot deadline to Nov. 12 so long as the ballot was mailed by 5 p.m. on Election Day.
State law, however, says the ballots can only be counted if they come in by Nov. 6. Normally, that’s no big deal. But normally, the Postal Service isn’t a Trumpster fire.
In any event, the NCGOP wants to keep as many absentee ballots as possible from counting, and the Supreme Court is almost definitely going to help. So if yours isn’t already in the mail, vote in person.
From The Washington Post:
“For millions of voters who considered using the U.S. Postal Service to cast their ballot for the Nov. 3 election, it’s time to find a backup plan, election administration and postal experts say. With the presidential election a week away, mail service continues to lag—especially in certain swing states that could decide control of the White House.”
RELATED: How the election could go sideways, in visual form.
LOCAL & STATE
—> Does Anyone Believe Wendell Davis Is the Victim?
In February—just before the election—Durham County manager Wendell Davis accused Commissioner Heidi Carter of racism. Since then, one investigation has cleared Carter of racist intent but said the government was dysfunctional, while another cleared Davis of trying to influence the election because it “was not your intention for [the letter accusing Carter of racism] to be made public as evidenced by your sending it to her personal, not public, email address.”
HOLD UP. Can I tell you how naive that statement is? Would you like to know how that letter became public? One of Davis’s close allies emailed it to me.
On Monday, Davis’s allies in Organizing Against Racism demanded that commissioners address the government’s “dysfunction” and “make a statement that this experience of racial discrimination will be addressed.”
Davis’s allies also accused the board’s white members—Carter, Wendy Jacobs, and Ellen Reckhow—of a “complete lack of ethics and transparency” and “fail[ing] to put into practice the principles of anti-racism that they claim to espouse.”
At the end of the meeting, Carter apologized. Per the N&O:
“Looking back, I recognize that my defensive reaction perpetuated a familiar defensive response by a white person, especially in the midst of ongoing anti-Black violence in this country,” Carter said.
WHAT’S GOING ON: Maybe Davis feels genuinely aggrieved, maybe not. I don’t know. But let’s not ignore the obvious fact that this whole affair is a power play.
Davis’s contract is up next year. He needs three votes to keep his job. On the current board, he doesn’t have them. Getting Carter out would have helped his cause.
The power struggle didn’t end with the election. When the new board gets sworn in, incumbents Jacobs and Carter will oppose renewing Davis’s contract. Incumbent Brenda Howerton is in Davis’s corner. So, too, I’m told, is newcomer Nimasheena Burns. The swing vote is Nida Allam.
Whether intentional or not, this sort of campaign creates a narrative that a vote against Davis is a vote against racial equity, ignoring the more important question of whether Davis is good at his job.
—> We Know Who the Peeing Pastor Is
Remember when I told you about the “well-known” North Carolina pastor who urinated on a lady during a red-eye from Las Vegas to Detroit? The police wouldn’t name him, but Queen City Nerve got the goods:
Daniel Chalmers, co-founder and president of Love Wins Ministries. The Love Wins website lists Chalmers’ home church as Catch the Fire Raleigh-Durham.
He blamed sleeping pills, but …
Upon being taken into custody at the airport, Chalmers said he did not feel good, then “stated he had a couple drinks and he was taking prescribed medicine.” A preliminary breath test turned up a 0.175 blood alcohol content.
Read the police report here.
—> Durham Gun Violence Up 47%
With the DPD reporting 421 “non-domestic firearm assaults” this year through Oct. 3—a 47% increase over last year—the city council is looking to expand the city’s “violence interrupters” program, the N&O reports:
Bull City United is a team of six people—three violence interrupters and three outreach workers—who respond to and try to prevent violence in two target areas south of N.C. 147 (the Durham Freeway). …
The team spots and mediates potentially lethal conflict, identifying “high-risk individuals” who may act out in aggression and trying to persuade them to put down their guns and change their behaviors. They also point individuals to social service programs or connect them to jobs.
Violence interruption has proven successful elsewhere—most notably in North Philly—but neighborhood reps from McDougald Terrace and the Southside told the council they didn’t think the group had been all that effective.
City officials seem inclined toward giving the program more money.
“This conversation has been so uplifting because when you think about our budget, you know, we spent $70 million on policing, and we spend $500,000 on violence interruption,” [council member Pierce] Freelon said. “That disparity is mind boggling to me.”
—> The North Carolina Roundup
Remember last week’s spike in COVID cases? Here come the hospitalizations.
North Carolina voters have surpassed 2016’s early voting totals with a week to go.
The state will not allow international observers access to polling sites.
Tuffy II has died. (I genuinely appreciate that this warranted a NEWS ALERT email from the N&O.)
DaBaby’s neighbors in the small town of Troutman aren’t thrilled with the rap star’s new crib, which includes two-story guard towers and concrete walls.
I missed this last week, but Raleigh’s PR is open for curbside dining.
NATION & WORLD
—> The Brief: 3 Stories to Read Today
There’s a brewing battle in Michigan over what to do when people show up at voting sites with guns. “Michigan, already the site of election-year unease, was thrust into the center of the armed-voter debate after state officials announced a ban on openly carried weapons at polling sites, saying guns could intimidate voters or election workers. Gun rights groups challenged the move in court.” Related: Americans are buying guns at record rates.
President Trump used the presidency to funnel millions to his businesses. “Since his first month in office, Trump has used his power to direct millions from U.S. taxpayers—and from his political supporters—into his own businesses. … In all, he has received at least $8.1 million from these two sources since he took office, those documents and publicly available records show.”
A federal judge rejected the DOJ’s effort to act as Trump’s personal lawyers. “A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Justice Department’s bid to make the U.S. government the defendant in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says President Trump raped her decades ago, paving the way for the case to again proceed.”
—> The Roundup
Trump plans to fire a bunch of intelligence officials and replace them with stooges if he gets re-elected.
Better late than never, Mike Bloomberg is going to drop $15 million in last-minute pro-Biden ads in Ohio and Texas, two states Biden doesn’t need to get to 270 electoral votes.
Landlords found loopholes in the CDC’s eviction moratorium.
American households are saving more and paying down debts during the recession.
A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that Black people raised 11.5% less through online medical GoFundMe campaigns than whites.
Poland’s right-wing courts banned abortion, prompting mass protests and church vandalism in the overwhelmingly Catholic country.
Halloween will be a full moon this year, which seems appropriate.
Sex-cult dude Keith Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison.
The Trump-picked leader of Voice of America declared that he was eliminating the firewall between VOA’s journalism and its political management.
—> Tweet Du Jour
In its list of “science and technology” accomplishments, the White House includes—I shit you not, friends—ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.
It’s good to hear the pandemic is over. I was beginning to get worried.
Thanks for reading!