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October 30, 2024 featured at least two stories of meddling in current elections initiated by Republican operatives and (so far) sanctioned by the judiciary. One case involves early voting in St. Charles County in Missouri and the eleventh circuit court. The other involves voter registration purges in Virginia and the US Supreme Court. Both reflect the fixation of Republicans on suppressing voting via registration processes or merely making the actual voting process as inconvenient as possible. But they also reflect the willingness of courts -- including the highest court in the land -- to ignore the law in support of these efforts.


Meddling in Missouri

The Missouri case involves a motion filed by Travis Heins, a member of the St. Charles County GOP, that sought an emergency injunction to ensure that "no in-person absentee early voting occurs without the presence of challengers / watchers." Heins' rationale is that state law permits (note that word... permits) watchers and challengers to be present anywhere in-person absentee ballots are being prepared and counted. Ergo, the same right should apply to any location where early voting is taking place.

Okay, let's go with that for a second. I'd even agree with it. So what is stopping this? If you can find "volunteers" among the Republican election fraud conspiracy fanatics who want to show up and watch people stand in line for eight hours each day until Election Day, go ahead. Under this interpretation of the law, you're entitled. However, the law PERMITS these challengers / watchers. It doesn't REQUIRE them. That's why we operate each voting location so that TWO election officials sign off on every ballot and why TWO election officials must supervise any handling of machines and final tallies.

A child of ten could read the applicable statute and come to that conclusion and reject Heins' request for an injunction. But the judge who reviewed the request APPROVED it, with this language:

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1. The plaintiff has demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of the case.
2. The Plaintiff will suffer immediate and irreparable harm if the temporary restraining order is not granted.
3. The balance of equities tips in favor of the Plaintiff.
4. The issuance of the temporary restraining order is in the public interest.

ACCEPTED.
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Likelihood of success on the merits? In a petition that doesn't understand the difference between PERMITS and REQUIRES?

Immediate and irreparable harm? How many prior individual votes or elections have been altered by the operation of these challengers / watchers? NONE. How many voters might decide to stay home if multiple days of early voting are eliminated and they have to face trying to vote on Election Day?

Balance of equities? How does a partisan group's interest in posturing as tough guys in front of voters outweigh the rights of THOUSANDS of voters to vote via legal means?

Public interest? ZERO public interest is served by halting early voting simply because one partisan group failed to find volunteers to participate in this charade of "poll watching."

The real intent of this petition would seem at first to be more puzzling after considering local politics.. However, those politics actually suggest more troubling concerns with this attempt. St. Charles County is a heavily Republican leaning county. Missouri is a Republican-dominated state. What possible motivation would Republican party officials in a BRIGHT RED county in a BRIGHT RED state have in suppressing votes in their own county? Trump will win handily in Missouri. Republicans in US races and Missouri State races will win heavily in St. Charles County. However, the Missouri ballot does have one issue that is not so skewed towards Republicans. Amendment 3 is on the ballot (despite months of Republican extra-legal efforts to keep it off the ballot) and would re-establish abortion rights in the state. This issue could very well win in the state and, as a bedroom community of the larger St. Louis metro area, St. Charles County possibly has more voters that would support this one special initiative. Perhaps the Republican party fears enough defections on this one traditional Republican issue that they have assumed suppressing turnout in St. Charles County is crucial to defeating Amendment 3 and preserving Missouri's draconian abortion ban.

Or... Is something else afoot?

Is it possible that a "secret deal" referenced directly by both Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson is somehow involved with this challenge to early voting in Missouri? No outlet has unearthed exactly what Trump or Johnson might be referencing but one theory being circulated involves the rules for selecting a President if the Electoral College is unable to certify 270 votes for either candidate. The Constitution says:

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The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President.
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It's that last sentence in bold that requires parsing word by word to understand this theory.

The majority of votes being referenced isn't a majority of the POPULAR votes for each candidate. Obviously. But it isn't referencing the majority of electoral votes submitted from each State Legislature in their Electoral College delegation either. It is referencing the CERTIFIED Electoral College votes, which is a function performed by the Senate. As already evidenced in 2020, there are numerous elected Senators more than willing to reject Electoral College delegations from multiple states with ZERO evidence of actual election issues in support of their partisan preference.

This "secret deal" between Trump and Johnson is feared because it seems to hint that schemes have been hatched to selectively reject Electoral College delegations from states that might vote for Harris but are controlled by Republicans at the State Legislature, allowing those Republicans to invent bogus rationales for withholding certification of their own state's vote leaving their Electoral College votes uncounted. If the election were won by Harris at a state level that exceeded 270 votes, these Republicans might pick off enough EC votes via these illicit tactics to drag the "certified" total below 270 and throw the final selection into the House. That final House election would be even MORE undemocratic than the original Electoral College process and more undemocratic than normal gerrymandering would normally lead one to conclude. Why?

That final House vote won't reflect the actual Republican / Democratic split of seats based upon the 2024 election. Instead, each state's House delegation gets ONE vote and the majority wins. Even if the Republicans LOSE control of the House via the 2024 election, a one state / one vote contest will still heavily favor Republicans due to all of the sparsely populated states that are dominated by Republicans.

So how would this skirmish over voting in a BRIGHT RED county alter Missouri's likely vote in this nightmare scenario? It wouldn't alter Missouri's contribution at all. However, should this nightmare scenario play out, it WOULD be helpful to the bogus case being made that election anomalies occurred all over the country, casting more doubt that could be cited by those involved in such a scheme that some state results (even if not Missouri) could not be trusted. This could trigger some Senate members to reject electoral slates from some states, take the ACTUAL electoral tally below 270 then throw the final Presidential race into the House. As the 2020 election already demonstrated, the groups wiling to overturn elections are only interested in noise and chaos, not reality. Any confusion they can generate, even in Republican dominated areas, can help achieve their desired results.


Meddling in Virginia

The US Supreme Court accepted a motion on its "rocket docket" involving a case in Virginia involving a mass scrub of voter registration records in the state. The names were identified by comparing jury duty records where individuals (presuming meaning name + address) had marked a checkbox after being solicited for jury duty claiming they were ineligible because they were not citizens. These (name + address) combinations were matched against voter registration records and any matches were slated to be removed from voter rolls. Virginia Governor Youngkin ordered state officials to expedite the data analysis and ultimate purge on August 7, 2024. The action was immediately opposed in court, was litigated and appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court which ruled 6-3 on October 30, 2024 to allow Virginia to execute the purge.

This case merits some analysis to unpack the immediate consequences and longer term implications. Per court filings, there are about 1600 registrations involved with this effort. Elections HAVE been extremely close but in general, the quantity involved here is not great. In the immediate sense, the state's supposed theory is that if these voters checked "non-citizen" on their jury duty form yet registered to vote, at the very least they lied on government forms so therefore, if purged based upon their own lies on government forms, well… Tough luck. If the underlying database matching logic was sound and verified, it would be tough to argue against this rationale.

However, it is exceedingly easy for a lazy / sloppy database coder to perform these matchups between multiple databases incorrectly and find "matches" due to incompletely applied criteria that don't really exist but will result in a name appearing on the output as a match. The possibility of these types of errors and the difficulty some voters might have in re-registering after being incorrectly purged is why the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 explicitly bans such mass purges within 90 days of any federal election. Now note the date upon which the State of Virginia initiated this purge and the date it's Republican Governor approved it. August 7. Exactly 90 days prior to the November 5 election. But note that Virginia Governor Younkin directed state officials to expedite this purge ON August 7. They did not have the data nor had notifications to affected voters already been sent on August 7.

Again, a child of ten could seemingly review the dates of these actions, review the letter of the law ("thou shalt not touch registrations within 90 days of an election") and immediately conclude this purge was illegal under federal law and should have been stopped. Yet the Supreme Court REJECTED the decision of both the original judge and the appeals court who upheld the block on this purge and held in favor of Republican officials in Virginia.

In this case, a total of 1600 registrations are involved. There isn't an allegation that the entries on the list themselves reflect any particular geographic or demographic bias within the state. It isn't statistically likely any federal race in Virginia will be decided by 1600 votes. So why is this Supreme Court decision important?

This decision is important partly because it is yet another giant bat signal flashing in the sky to groups around the country devising new ways to suppress access to the polls that the US Supreme Court will entertain any scheme, regardless of its mechanics and regardless of its timing, to manipulate registration rolls, even if such efforts have a significant chance of disenfranchising legitimate voters. In the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, the rights of political partisans to feel confident that "illegals" aren't voting are higher in priority than the rights of actual citizens who might be blocked from voting by such measures to ACTUALLY vote. Despite ZERO evidence anywhere in the country that incidents of voter fraud exceed HANDFULLS per state.

This decision is more important because it is yet more proof that the US Supreme Court is operating in a new post-precedent world where the rule of law means nothing because words themselves mean nothing to the Supreme Court. The "conservative" justices on the Court will come to any conclusion that suits them based upon the parties in front of them and their own political preferences. That is the very antithesis of "equal protection under the law."


WTH

Okay, let's go with that for a second. I'd even agree with it. So what is stopping this? If you can find "volunteers" among the Republican election fraud conspiracy fanatics who want to show up and watch people stand in line for eight hours each day until Election Day, go ahead. Under this interpretation of the law, you're entitled. However, the law PERMITS these challengers / watchers. It doesn't REQUIRE them. That's why we operate each voting location so that TWO election officials sign off on every ballot and why TWO election officials must supervise any handling of machines and final tallies.

A child of ten could read the applicable statute and come to that conclusion and reject Heins' request for an injunction.

Do you have a link to the order?

I read your post, and I agree that this seems odd. I wasn't able to find the order, but I found a copy of the motion for the injunction. My reading of it is that the GOP was only asking for what you already agree with. The County was apparently refusing to allow watchers. The individual defendant in the case had applied to be a watcher, and was denied - apparently because the County had decided that they weren't required to allow watchers for in-person absentee voting. That decision by the County seems wrong. What Heins actually asked for in his motion was probably legitimate, and should have been granted.

So this may be a case where either the media reports might be misreading the scope of the injunction (it might order the County to allow watchers, not require them) or that the injunction itself is confusingly worded (it might read as though it requires watchers or no voting, even though that's not what plaintiff asked for). The Sec of State has said that the early voting will stay open, so they apparently do not read the order as requiring early voting to be shut down.

https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/court-order-paus...

The order from the court was referenced on the link you referenced above. It's below the PDF of the original motion.

Heins' complaint states he received certification from Kurt Bahr to be a watcher on 10/22, he applied on 10/24 to be a watcher at the county's two early voting locations and was denied a day later. He made a request again on 10/26 which was denied on 10/27. Both denials from Bahr stated that watcher permissions only applied to formal Election Day, and the second denial seemed to tighten Bahr's claim that watcher rights only applied to ballot counting which only happens on election day.

Here's the applicable Missouri law:

https://law.justia.com/codes/missouri/title-ix/cha...

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115.409. Who may be admitted to polling place. — Except election authority personnel, election judges, watchers and challengers appointed pursuant to section 115.105 or 115.107, law enforcement officials at the request of election officials or in the line of duty, minor children under the age of eighteen accompanying an adult who is in the process of voting, international observers who have registered as such with the election authority, persons designated by the election authority to administer a simulated youth election for persons ineligible to vote because of their age, members of the news media who present identification satisfactory to the election judges and who are present only for the purpose of bona fide news coverage except as provided in subdivision (18) of section 115.637, provided that such coverage does not disclose how any voter cast the voter's ballot on any question or candidate or in the case of a primary election on which party ballot they voted or does not interfere with the general conduct of the election as determined by the election judges or election authority, and registered voters who are eligible to vote at the polling place, no person shall be admitted to a polling place.
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This section doesn't define a polling place or distinguish between "day of" voting and early voting in terms of location. Bahr seems to be basing his denials on this section of state law governing watchers / challengers:

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115.105. Challengers, how selected, qualifications — challenges, when made — challenges, how made. — 1. The chair of the county committee of each political party named on the ballot shall have the right to designate a challenger for each polling place, who may be present until all ballots are cast on the day of election, and a challenger for each location at which absentee ballots are counted, who may be present while the ballots are being prepared for counting and counted.
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Note it references "day of election" and it references locations where absentee ballots are counted. By the modern standards of interpretation in the judicial branch of any semblance of proper English grammar, that language does NOT explicitly state the watcher process applies to EARLY VOTING not taking place on election day.

A different section 115.449 covering the COUNTING of ballots states that counting of PAPER ballots doesn't begin until after polls close which would further bolster a contention that the law is not clear on the presence of watchers at locations NOT involved with absentee ballot processing and overal vote COUNTING on election day.

A reasonable person, even someone like me not in favor of this poll watching posturing, would generally conclude the intent of these laws was to permit these watchers anywhere voting is taking place, not just on "the magic day." However, such a conclusion assumes reason and good faith upon the part of other public officials and partisan groups. Maybe Bahr is reading those statutes literally (as one might be normally prone to do with LAWS) and he concluded pre-voting doesn't count.

Curiously, Heins' motion makes this statement:

Missouri State Statute(s) is both clear and distinct, that a Watcher and/or Challenger may be present in a polling location where absentee ballots are being counted or being prepared for counting. Furthermore, the role of a Watcher / Challenger cannot be fulfilled while being denied access to polling locatioins where ballots are being processed. This will only serve to disenfranchise voters and cast doubt on the validity and security of our county elections.

So in his own filing, Heins isn't correctly summarizing the applicable law correctly, either. He is making an argument that inadvertantly agrees with the logic Bahr used to deny him access. Heins reiterates the purpose of Watchers / Challengers as involving the monitoring of ABSENTEE ballot processing and vote COUNTING. Well, ABSENTEE BALLOTS aren't involved in early voting. These ballots are filled out by the voter and submitted into the same machines used on election day. There's no two-tier outer and inner magic envelopes to audit and no chance for the ballot to get lost between the voter's hand and the machine. The voter sticks their own ballot into the machine just like on election day. And no COUNTING of votes is currently taking place, only COLLECTION of ballots directly from the hand of validated voters.


WTH

The order from the court was referenced on the link you referenced above. It's below the PDF of the original motion.

That's what I get for not scrolling all the way to the bottom.

Anyway, Heins may not be correctly summarizing the law, either. But as you allude, it's not crazy to interpret the statute that watchers/challengers should be allowed anywhere where voting takes place, not just on Election Day proper. I think that's also consistent with the general intent of the watcher/monitor regime that Missouri and all the other states have, and it's good public policy that the voting process be open to observers and monitors.

So I don't think this order is "judicially approved election interference." I think that the judge clearly just grabbed the pre-printed "motion approved" form rather than drafting a bespoke order, which created a bit of confusion as to what he was actually enjoining - but I think from the context of the motion, he's granting a temporary injunction forcing the County to allow watchers/challengers to monitor the early voting, if anyone wishes to do so. Which may be right or wrong under a deep dive into the language of the statute, but doesn't seem like an egregious thing to order based on a quick reading and the fact that there's only a few days until the point becomes moot.

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