The Republican governor of Ohio ignored a court order and announced that he is shutting down tomorrow’s Ohio primary. Will he be arrested? Absolutely not. Will his order stand? Absolutely yes. There will be some cluck-clucking about the rule of law, and some sanctimonious hand-waving about “the emergency”. Democrats in Ohio will be prevented from voting for their chosen candidate.
Since only the Democratic Party primary is contested, the message is clear. We’ll see the same behavior in November. Donald Trump and the Trumpists are not going to allow themselves to be removed from office.
This national chaos is not incompetence. It’s about stopping the election. These traitors will stop at nothing and will continue until they themselves are stopped. That will not happen at the ballot box, at least not in November of this year.
It is clear to me that Donald Trump and Trumpists are doing whatever it takes to maintain power and control. Whatever. It. Takes. The Democrats stand around, make speeches, and do nothing.
These thugs must be stopped. Our elected government is not doing it. We are watching the collapse of American democracy.
The worst part about it is the last minute nature. Other states have postponed theirs, but are still well within the calendar to elect delegates to the convention. The DPH head, a Democrat, has sided with the Governor. Ohio’s primary will be in June. This isn’t about keeping anyone in power and the actual election will still have to go forward. What we are learning is why there should be a mail option, and why in-person voting should not require crowds and lines. Whenever I’ve voted there have never been more than a handful of people present at a given time, including both poll workers and voters.
The COVID-19 pandemic will not be over in June.
You’ve ignored the most important aspect of this: closing the polls shows complete contempt for the Court, whether or not that contempt is prosecuted.
This is about choosing between continuation of representative democracy versus taking risks. The data we have strongly suggests that the pandemic will still be with us in November. We will not have a vaccine by then. This precedent says that the Governor of Ohio and those who support him value representative democracy less than the benefits of waving these voodoo chickens at this virus.
While I agree that social distancing is the only tool we have, that tool will NOT reduce the number of people infected. It’s primary and intended effect is to SLOW the rate of those infections — the entire point of these measures is to distribute the peak of the COVID-19 infections over several months. Specifically, the months of April, May, June, July, August, September, and probably more.
There will be as much or more risk to the public in those months as there is today.
Hypothetically speaking, if the pandemic that is delaying primaries is still raging in June (and all the experts say it will rage until well into the fall), how do the Democrats choose a nominee in the absence of these primary votes?
I wish that our legal and political system made it harder to cancel an election than to vote remotely. It does not, and I do not see that changing between now and November 20.
Your contention that this isn’t about keeping anyone in power is just whistling past the graveyard. We are watching the GOP cancel the 2020 election.
I agree with you that ignoring the court is troubling to say the least, but primaries have always been more flexible than general elections. I do think the worst will be behind us by June.
@I do think the worst will be behind us by June:
There is absolutely no data to support that optimism. The needed steps we are taking now (after effectively destroying the ability of the federal government to respond in a timely manner) to “flatten the curve” make that even less likely.
The pandemic will still be with us in June. Neither Ohio nor any other state will be any better able to conduct an in-person election in June than they are right now.
If we care about representative democracy, then we need to do more than hope and pray. Optimism is appropriate only while it is accompanied by concrete ACTION — action taken right NOW.
All of today’s primaries should have been postponed and voters provided with mail-in ballots. Holding the primary today is insane and dangerous. They should have been postponed last week.
States should be making preparations for a mail-in vote in November.
I agree that some sort of remote voting should have been in place for today’s primaries and for the November election. Nevertheless, it wasn’t done. Ohio law has to be changed in order to schedule the primary in June.
The court ordered the Ohio governor to go ahead with the election, and he ignored the order. We are seeing a road-map for how the GOP will stop the Blue Wave in November.
That’s what will happen unless we find a way to force a change — right now.
Which is more difficult, costly and effective: providing mail-in ballots for every person in the state or monitoring any and all primary locations to: A) allow no more than, say, 10 voters at a time and; 2) forbid anyone with a temperature/cough from entering (give those people a mail in ballot and send them home). I say the latter is better. Wouldn’t be hard to post a sign to that affect and let people sit in their cars, isolated, while they wait their turn to vote…
Thing is, in MA I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than ten voters at a time in a polling place anyway, except ironically when Lowell set up central early voting stations. We must have a much higher ratio of polling locations and/or voting booths per voter than any other state.
This is a queuing problem. It isn’t that hard to solve. For example, supermarkets do the following:
1. At each polling place, position a podium at the entrance. Allow the first ten voters inside.
2. For each voter that arrives while the polling place is full, add their name to a list. For each voter with a suitable cell-phone, take a callback number that will send a text to that phone when the person’s name is next on the list. Hand the voter a ticket with sequential number, just like the little ticket machine at the deli counter in a grocery store.
3. Maintain a lit display at the exterior door to the polling place with a very large and very visible display of the numbers being served. Repeat that display as necessary inside.
4. When a voters number comes up, send a text to the cellphone associated with that number.
5. As each person leaves the polling place, call the next number from the list.
Meanwhile, hand sanitizer should be provided at each voting booth. Poll workers should wear food-service gloves at all times.
This is a solvable problem if a solution is desired.
Everything you said, plus one more thing: in person voting to occur over the course of, at least, two weeks, if not a month. Open up the window for voting.
I’m much more in favor of in-person voting and allowing absentee/mail-in ballots only for those out-of-country, the infirm and/or those in some form of confinement. Making the actual effort to show up and be counted means more and, contra North Carolina circa 2018, minimizing a paper trail lessens the probability of shenanigans
Many states, like FL, have robust voting by mail traditions. Over 1 million votes were cast before polls opened today. You might want to re-consider imposing a one size fits all policy. November is a different question.
Does anyone have the actual text of Judge Frye’s order? I’ve found a number of useful articles about the Ohio mess, but nothing that includes the court documents or the precise statutory authority the health board relied on. Depending on what the language of the order said, it may not be accurate to accuse the Ohio authorities of violating a court order. (For example, if it simply denied the plaintiffs’ application for relief, while that would leave the election scheduled for the following day, it’s not clear why that would interfere with the state Health Director’s authority to declare an emergency and order actions to protect the public safety consistent with her statutory authority.) And we do know that later that same night, the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed an action seeking a judicial order that the election go forward as scheduled.
This is a huge mess, obviously, but the assumption of lawlessness and deliberate interference with elections strikes me as premature. Many officials have been less than prescient in their response to the sars-covid-19 situation, but the public health risks of an in-person election, in an environment where it’s unusual for anyone to be able to be sure they haven’t been exposed to the virus, and where guidance from medical authorities has been to stay the hell away from even small-ish gatherings of other people, are now sufficiently obvious that I’m not sure why we’d assume an attempt to delay an in-person election by a few weeks was being made in bad faith. Yes, even one that could have been handled better if everyone involved had realized they were looking at a real and desperately serious public health threat a week or two sooner.
It is hard to find the specifics. I did find the docket for the higher court ruling allowing the election to be canceled.
So far, this is the most detailed reporting I’ve been able to find (emphasis mine):
Thanks for looking! I see you had no better luck than I did: that’s what I’d found (though I did find the docket for the case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
The thing is, this doesn’t resolve the question of what precisely Judge Frye’s ruling did (and thus, whether or not DeWine acted in violation of a court order). Nor does it address the question of whether or not he was acting in good faith to prevent what he reasonably believed to be a looming public health calamity. All it tells us is that there were other, more orderly ways the situation might have been addressed, and that the Wisconsin authorities didn’t act on them until it was too late for anything but a last-minute scramble.
Lack of competence, or failure of foresight, aren’t the same thing as bad faith, and working out a way that you can take a given action without violating a court order, once you’ve asked a court to bless that action and it has declined to do so, doesn’t become a violation of the court order merely because it allows you to reach the same result. I’m not arguing that DeWine is necessarily both pure of motive here and in compliance with all applicable court orders, just that based on what we seem to know so far, both are at least as possible as the contrary. Which, in turn, make it awfully early to assume the worst on either point.
Indeed, I wish our media would be more rigorous about reporting actual facts.
Call me cynical, I guess. I still think this is a trial run for what will happen in November. I’m not alleging that Mr. DeWine explicitly communicated with the White House and said “Here’s what I’m going to do for you, what will you do for me?”.
I mean instead that the overall theme that is pervasive in everything the GOP does is to suppress Democratic votes. It appears that this is another example of “legal corruption”, like our Parole Department scandal, such that the officials involved act legally to obtain the result they seek.
I think that if GOP officials in Ohio truly wanted these elections to happen, they would have and could have taken steps weeks or months ago to ensure that.
The difference is primaries have always been on a more flexible schedule, often with Governors and Secretaries of State given a fair amount of latitude. Presidential primaries just have to happen sometime before the conventions. Even here in MA after long advertising this year’s state primary as September 15th, Galvin moved it up to the 1st. The November election OTOH can only be changed by act of Congress as would changing the date for electors to meet. Congress also sets the date of it’s first convening. The Constitution also mandates the end of a presidential term on 1/20 with no Congressional override.
So tell me what happens after:
1. Mr. Trump and the Trumpists declare that it is “too dangerous” for an election to proceed as scheduled, and demand that it be “postponed” until a date “to be determined later”.
2. Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump’s appointees at the CDC and various other federal agencies related to public health issue decrees that state that the election would, in fact, be an “unacceptable hazard” if it were to go ahead (just as the Ohio authorities did Monday night at Mr. DeWine’s private urging)
3. GOP governors of states with GOP legislators agree to “postpone” the election, and November 2 passes with no election in the red states.
4. The same states either pass legislation or simply order their electors to either vote for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence without an election, or to not vote at all. The Constitution says that each state may determine how its electors shall vote — it provides no guidance or limits on what that means.
5. Mitch McConnell and the GOP Senate Majority publicly announce that they are “working hand-in-hand” with “the White House” to schedule elections “as soon as such elections will not be a public health hazard”. They make it clear that the Senate will oppose ANY action by the House to in any way “interfere” with the handling of the situation by “the President”.
The Democrats already presented a compelling case for removal, and were ignored. Mr. Mueller has already shown the strong likelihood that Mr. Trump and his campaign were colluding with the Russians to fix the 2016 election. His report has been ignored and he has been personally trashed by the GOP and the DoJ. Michael Flynn is on his way to being pardoned before he is even sentenced. Ignored by the media in its rush to inflame hysteria about Covid-19 was the news earlier this week that the DoJ has dropped the indictments against Concord Consulting and Concord Management, the two Russian-backed firms that coordinated the cyberattacks on the 2016 election. DoJ prosecutors now claim that the case must be dropped in order to “preserve national security interests and prevent Russia from weaponizing delicate American law enforcement information,”
What is your picture of what happens after above five steps happen? Why would the apparatus of the federal government be any more effective against those than the abject paralysis it has already demonstrated?
Citing the Constitution and the law is a complete waste of time when the players for Mr. Trump, the current administration, and the GOP have already demonstrated their utter and complete contempt for all such niceties.
Does Nancy Pelosi have a police force? How are all those things you mention enforced? When Donald Trump and his cabinet respond with the same raised middle finger that answered the dozens of subpoenas that have already been issued, what comes next?
Once the clock is run out and election day happens without an election, what comes next?
I don’t think you’ve ever admitted that these guys are dead serious and are playing for keeps. They are using loaded guns with lethal ammunition and are eager to use them. You keep citing the Constitution and the law without admitting these thugs absolutely do not care about either.
Until I see somebody do something more than spit in the wind, I will not not believe that this Trumpist takeover will be stopped.
This is why I call this a conspiracy theory, because a conspiracy among several actors is precisely what it would take to pull off what you are suggesting. There are way too many moving parts for this to be likely. Technically you are right that states can pass laws appointing electors by means other than popular election, but do you think the American people will take that lying down? If there is no election and no President-elect or VP-elect qualifies by the time 1/20 rolls around say hello to acting President Nancy Pelosi. House action is absolutely required to reschedule the election. If the election is scheduled for November and red states don’t act, the resulting Congress will be even more Dem than it is now and each chamber only needs a majority to achieve quorum. McConnell himself being up for re-election cannot return to the Senate unless elected to do so. KY has a Dem Governor who I’m sure will hold elections so even if he personally is elected he would have no power having been stripped of his majority. Keep in mind though I’m basically humoring you with these contingency plans. There is no way we will not have a general election this year in all of the states, though all states ought to be preparing procedural contingencies such as voting by mail.
Who enforces all these rules, though? I understand your arguments. I’m saying that with these thugs, they are meaningless unless backed up by force — I see no authorities in place to apply that force.
What police will make this stick? What prosecutors or judges? Who will physically remove people who won’t go?
Nancy Pelosi has no police. A huge part of why the Congress has been so impotent is that Mr. Barr and the DoJ is now, first and foremost, a complete tool of Mr. Trump. Mr. Barr is complicit with the rest of the cabinet. Of COURSE that’s a conspiracy — a criminal conspiracy at that.
You haven’t said who enforces any of this and how.
It is enforced by people refusing to go along, and maybe ultimately by people taking to the streets if need be. Are you seriously suggesting the other side will put tanks in the streets or something to maintain power?
@It is enforced by people refusing to go along:
I’m not trying to be dense, I just can’t picture what you’re saying.
So far as I can tell, the people in the states we’re talking about enthusiastically support EVERYTHING their Beloved Leader tells them to support. There has been absolutely ZERO evidence of anybody anywhere turning out to demand that these restrictions be removed.
When I’ve offered commentary in published pieces in the NYTimes and WaPo suggesting that the November elections should proceed, the feedback I get is people telling me that I have my head in the sand, that “life and death is more important than politics”.
I fear you misread the hysteria of the public and the intensity of that hysteria.
Even if people DO “take to the streets”, what are you suggesting will happen as a result? We’ve seen massive demonstrations after various national events — those demonstrations are ignored.
It appears to me that the lessons learned by federal and state governments during the Vietnam era are that when massive demonstrations happen, authorities simply watch — at most, move them to “free speech zone” as was done at the Democratic Convention in Boston. Meanwhile, I think Republican officials will stand in front of microphones with phalanx of stern-faced men and women and intone solemnly that they will not allow the rule of law to be subverted by mobs in the street.
I just don’t understand what you have in mind when you say people refuse to go along. Suppose you wake up on on November 3rd and find that half of the states did not open the polls and have no results to report.
Suppose you resolve to “not go along”. What do you do next? What behavior does your resolve change? Do you refuse to go to work? Do you refuse to accept a paycheck? I doubt that you can stop your employer from withholding your taxes.
I just don’t see how “refuse to go along” translates into tangible behavior that any Republican official will pay any attention to at all.
If half the states don’t hold elections (a possibility I contend is non-existent) they have essentially forfeited their federal representation, and I can’t imagine any state wanting to do that. You seem to forget this country and many states are made up o more than just Republicans. Anyone who violates the law regarding elections can’t exactly invoke the rule of law, plus the courts won’t like it either.
This says it better than I could.
@This says it better than I could:
From your link (emphasis mine):
Unlike the author that piece, I do not view Mr. Grassley or Mr. Pompeo as any better than Mr. Trump. If anything, I think they might be slightly worse, because they are likely to be more effective at imposing their authoritarian vision efficiently and with the full cooperation of the rest of the GOP.
I think we’re entering uncharted territory, and I think it is a grave error to make the kind of assumptions you make about what happens. As a historian, you surely know that the nature of America between its founding and 2020 is a dramatic outlier from the rest of the world’s nations and from the rest of the world’s empires.
The Roman Empire was a representative democracy from its founding in 509 BCE until Julius Caesar seized power in 37 AD. The Western Roman Empire collapsed in CE 476. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire persisted until it was overthrown by the Ottoman Turks in CE 1453.
I have no doubt that our society will survive this year. I think it is a mistake to assume that the Donald Trump and the Trumpist GOP will not try to exploit the upheaval of this pandemic as an opportunity to seize power.
I think we should be talking about what we do now, rather than waiting until the power grab is underway.
As a historian I know that we held elections during wars (including Civil), pandemics, and economic downturns, so it seems to me when it comes to the United States history is very much on my side.
@Christopher:
I hope you’re right. I suppose there’s not much either of us can do anyway.
National vote by mail. Now.