{"id":13462,"date":"2020-06-24T10:35:12","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T17:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=13462"},"modified":"2020-07-10T17:18:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T00:18:23","slug":"gop-lawsuit-challenging-ca-vote-by-mail-likely-to-be-dismissed-as-moot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=13462","title":{"rendered":"GOP Lawsuit Challenging CA Vote-By-Mail Likely to be Dismissed as Moot"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent article<\/a>, we described the GOP’s legal challenge to the Executive Order<\/a> issued by California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom — directing CA election officials to timely submit vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots to every active registered CA voter for the November general election — as “dubious”, at best. <\/p>\n

We noted that the GOP plaintiffs lacked standing<\/a> to sue in federal court because Republicans cannot show they suffered a legally cognizable injury. We also noted that the GOP’s core legal challenge — that the Elections Clause to the U.S. Constitution only permits state legislatures, not Governors, to set the time and manner of conducting federal elections — was at odds with settled Supreme Court case law and that legislative approval for the Governor’s pandemic-related emergency Executive Order can be found within the provisions of the CA Emergency Services Act.<\/p>\n

Last week AB-860 was passed by the state legislature (even with support from Republicans<\/a>) to codify Newsom’s Executive Order by specifically providing that VBM ballots be timely sent to every<\/i> active registered voter in the state, even if the voter did not request one. It was signed into law<\/a> this week by the Governor, rendering the GOP’s core legal argument moot.<\/p>\n

The new law will not only mandate a dismissal of the GOP legal filing but also eliminate the need for the court to grant the Motion to Intervene [PDF]<\/a> that was recently filed by several voting rights organizations opposing the challenge by a number of Republican groups, including the California Republican Party.<\/p>\n

CA Common Cause, League of Women Voters of CA and the Community Coalition seek to be added as Party Defendants in order to counter the GOP’s effort to compel in-person voting — a GOP effort that, if successful, would dangerously and unnecessarily expose the state’s electorate to the risk of contracting a deadly virus, COVID-19. The portion of those organizations’ motion, which demolishes the GOP’s VBM “voter fraud” lies, however, warrants verbatim coverage…<\/p>\n

[Republicans’] allegations echo long-debunked claims that associate mail-in ballots with voter fraud. In reality, mail vote fraud is virtually non-existent. Millions of Americans vote by mail — one in four voters did so in the last two federal elections. Yet an exhaustive investigation found only 491 instances of mail vote fraud committed between 2000 and 2012, a period in which billions of votes were cast.<\/div>\n

UPDATE 7\/10\/20<\/i><\/b>: After U.S. District Court Judge Morrison England, Jr. dismissed the GOP’s frivolous legal challenge following a Republican filing of a voluntary Notice of Dismissal, GOP Chairwoman Rona McDaniel falsely<\/a> proclaimed that the Republican Party “scored a major victory against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s illegal executive order.” She attempted to bolster this falsehood with another lie — that, before the GOP filed its legal challenge to VBM in CA, “Democrats planned to automatically send ballots to inactive voters, including people who have moved or died.”<\/p>\n

As we observed<\/a> in a 6\/5\/20 update to an article that had covered the “dubious” GOP legal challenge, the Office of CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla stated<\/a> that, pursuant to the Executive Order which Padilla and Gov. Newsom issued, VBM ballots would only be mailed to “active” registered voters.<\/p>\n

“Only active registered voters will be mailed a vote-by-mail ballot. That is and has been the practice in California,” Padilla’s spokesman Sam Mahood said. Under California’s Elections Code<\/a>, Mahood added, “‘voters with an inactive voter registration status do not receive elections materials.’ That includes vote-by-mail ballots.”<\/p>\n

The only change<\/i> to CA Election Law as it existed at the time the Executive Order was issued was the elimination of the requirement that voters first request<\/i> a VBM ballot before one would be mailed to an
\nactive” registered voter. Thus, at best Rona and the GOP had erected a straw man; erroneously claiming that the Executive Order required submission of VBM ballots to “inactive” voters.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/center>Ernest A. Canning is a retired attorney, author, and Vietnam Veteran (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968). He previously served as a Senior Advisor to Veterans For Bernie<\/a>.<\/span> Canning has been a member of the California state bar since 1977. In addition to a juris doctor, he has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science. Follow him on twitter: @cann4ing<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent article, we described the GOP’s legal challenge to the Executive Order issued by California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom — directing CA election officials to timely submit vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots to every active registered CA voter for the November general election — as “dubious”, at best. We noted that the GOP plaintiffs lacked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,528,969,28,750,300,126,127,348],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california","category-darrell-issa","category-election-2020","category-election-reform","category-gavin-newsom","category-republicans","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-the-constitution","category-vote-by-mail","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13462"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=13462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}