The Republican Party's astonishing judicial losing streak was increased by at least two Thursday with major rejections in Wisconsin and Georgia.
In Wisconsin, a unanimous 3-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected Donald Trump attorneys' argument that state election officials violated the U.S. Constitution by taking steps to make voting easier during the COVID-19 pandemic. And in Georgia, a Fulton County judge dismissed a Republican lawsuit that had attempted to close absentee ballot drop boxes after normal business hours.
The case in Wisconsin was especially striking in that it was handed down by an all-Republican panel with the opinion written by a Trump appointee, Judge Michael Scudder.
Here's how Politico reported it:
"President Donald Trump's ineffectual bid to persuade the courts to overturn his defeat at the polls last month suffered another defeat on Christmas Eve as a federal appeals court rejected his attempt to challenge President-elect Joe Biden's win by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin.
"A panel unanimously dismissed arguments from Trump's attorneys that the Wisconsin Election Commission violated the U.S. Constitution through steps prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, including easing photo identification requirements and allowing the use of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots."
It turns out that Scudder was not so gentle with his judicial spanking of the president.
"Scudder said the election changes were not significant enough to run afoul of the Constitution's provision that state legislatures determine the manner of selecting presidential electors. He also faulted Trump for challenging those provisions after the election, rather than before," Politico reported.
"The President had a full opportunity before the election to press the very challenges to Wisconsin law underlying his present claims. Having foregone that opportunity, he cannot now — after the election results have been certified as final — seek to bring those challenges," Scudder wrote. "All of this is especially so given that the Commission announced well in advance of the election the guidance he now challenges."
It didn't go any better in Georgia, in a case with implications for the crucial U.S. Senate races. There, Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams' issued a ruling that allows voters to continue using drop boxes 24 hours a day under video surveillance until polls close for the U.S. Senate runoffs Jan. 5. She rejected the case after an online court hearing, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"The decision is the latest defeat for Republicans who have filed a series of lawsuits in the wake of the presidential election seeking to invalidate its results or change election procedures in the runoffs," the newspaper noted. "None of these lawsuits has been successful in federal or state courts in Georgia."
The Journal-Constitution had reported just 15 days earlier that "last spring the State Election Board approved a rule that allows counties to collect ballots at drop boxes and requires those ballots to be monitored by video 24 hours a day. The board adopted the rule as part of a strategy to encourage absentee voting to limit human contact amid the coronavirus pandemic."
Arguing against 24-hour access to monitored drop boxes pretty much meets most people's definition of voter suppression. Not so, claimed attorney Leah Zammit in the failed Republican lawsuit.
"The eyes of the nation are on Georgia, closely watching this process," Zammit had argued. "This case is absolutely not about the expansion or dilution of voter rights. ...This case and this motion is about ensuring that individual counties, 159 within the state of Georgia, do not themselves alter the election rules."
Funny how a statement like that sounds so righteous before a case get tossed unceremoniously by a judge. So it's on to the next defeat as the shameless Republican legal teams seek to find a Kraken in the judicial system.
