They Wouldn't Be Flailing This Hard If They Thought They Were Winning

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:00 Clip: Thank you.

0:00:02 Jenessa: They're losing. They are trying to take away your vote by method A and B and C, and and they are almost universally losing.

0:00:16 Jenessa: The place, Kansas, we have a very silly one. Non-profits who send out mail ballot applications to registered voters, if that is pre-filled with the individual's information, like they have decided that is illegal now in Kansas, uh,

0:00:37 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments, this is episode 1308, I'm Thomas, that over there is Election Watch, pew pew pew pew, Election Watcher, Jenessa, how you doing?

0:00:47 Jenessa: I'm doing pretty good. I got my voice back, so that's nice.

0:00:50 Thomas: That's good.

0:00:50 Jenessa: I think I have it back. We'll find out by the end of the recording.

0:00:55 Thomas: Yeah, Matt barely made it through the last one too because he was sick. Wait a minute, were you guys hanging out together? Is this how I find out you were hanging out without me?

0:00:58 Jenessa: Ugh. No, it's spreading. It's everywhere now. That time of year.

0:01:08 Thomas: Yeah, speaking of spreading, how's the election theft going?

0:01:13 Jenessa: It's, you know what? Things are actually going pretty good.

0:01:16 Thomas: Panic.

0:01:17 Jenessa: Yeah. Okay. So the panic is bad. Everybody's Panicking, um, so that's not great. Are looking pretty good, and that's mostly what I want to talk about today. I have for you cases from, I didn't hit at all 50 states, but close. A ton of cases are going under the radar, largely because it's, yeah, the good guys won and the election's gonna just go the way you expected it to go. Uh, tons of people putting in a ton of effort to make sure you can vote and that that goes smoothly, and really want to give some people some credit here. We got a couple of losses in some states that are not great, but like, mostly things are looking really good. A lot of legal attacks are being fended off off, uh, successfully.

0:01:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:04 Thomas: Yeah, and you're talking mainly from the law perspective and not like looking good as in, you know, polls. But polls are also looking good.

0:02:08 Jenessa: Yeah. The numbers are also looking real good. Yeah. Uh, barring some catastrophe, I think we're in really good shape right now.

0:02:16 Thomas: Yeah. I'm just so nervous it's going to be exactly whatever we need minus 0.1. You know what I mean? Like, it's just going to be like, Well, we got to like 50 senators. But it'd be amazing if we could get to all we need is a majority that wants to get rid of the filibuster. And I say all we need. That's a tall ask.

0:02:28 Jenessa: Oh God. Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:42 Thomas: Know, Talrico wants to get rid of the filibuster. That's good. Good.

0:02:47 Jenessa: Hadn't heard that.

0:02:48 Thomas: It's it's too, I feel too paranoid to do like a counting your your chickens thing. I don't want to get my hopes up, but it's like, what we need to know, how many of them actually will get rid of the filibuster because That's What, I mean, I guess, I guess that also doesn't matter until Trump's gone really, but, um, because we're not, we're not in a veto proof majority, but so legally though, I'm really excited to hear this news. Uh, uh, counting down. How, how, how, how soon is this whole election thing? You know, any idea?

0:02:57 Jenessa: Right. Sure.

0:03:11 Jenessa: Voting starts in New York in two days. On Saturday, October 24th, so we've got about a week and a half. It's it's coming up fast. Tuesday November 3rd.

0:03:13 Thomas: Wow. Holy crap. I'm not ready. I'm not ready for this. Okay. When do we wait? So when's the heart attack? Like, when do you have it now?

0:03:21 Jenessa: Yep. Yep. Right now, apparently. You know, I would say I'm waiting for heart attack until after because I think the polls look good enough. What I'm really worried about is like certification stuff. I'm not really worried about it, that's the stuff that makes me anxious because I just don't have clear, like, who's going to do what and when and how are we going to, of blah blah.

0:03:36 Thomas: Okay.

0:03:52 Thomas: Cause the weird, like parliamentary rule, whatever.

0:03:55 Jenessa: Um, the idea that they're gonna like not seat people is really not realistic, like, don't waste energy on that, but certifying at the states, like, some people could cause headaches. I don't think anybody's gonna successfully stop a duly elected person from getting seated, but they could make some headaches for us, which is really annoying, um, that's the stuff that'll stress me out on the legal end, is wondering how we're gonna fix things.

0:03:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:04:21 Thomas: All right, well, I'm excited to hear some updates and some wins, and I guess a few losses, but mainly wins. Uh, let's get to it. Why don't we take our first break? Sports Show, patreon.com/law. Hope everyone enjoyed the Book Club and the Law'd Awful Movies. Oh, that's what I have to get out of movies, patreon.com/law. We'll take a break and be right back.

0:04:42 Thomas: All right. So all 50 States go. No, do we, you have 30 seconds per state.

0:04:45 Jenessa: Almost. Yeah, kind of. So, okay, I'll start us off with some of the losses just to get these out of the way. Not like nothing is a total loss yet. All of this is at preliminary injunction stages or, well, This person dismissed, but they're obviously going to appeal to the the circuit. So don't consider any of this like a done deal. But in terms of will we get an injunction quick enough for the election, these ones are not looking good. So in Wisconsin, we have the League of Women Voters v. Wisconsin Elections Commission. They have a state law that prohibits voting in person by a provisional ballot if your absentee hasn't arrived yet. Yeah, I

0:05:03 Thomas: What a weird specific thing to have a lot about.

0:05:36 Jenessa: It's almost like you're like relying on mail delays to try to ruin things for people, um, like, that's how we do it in New York, is you vote absentee, and if you look at the tracker and go, oh crap, it's not there, you can go vote in person by provisional, and if we don't get your absentee in time, we'll count that, and if we do get your absentee, we'll count the absentee.

0:05:59 Thomas: This is so funny because, Because just released a Where There's Woke on Rogan spewing the same election lie for years, the same exact one. And it started with Elon Musk saying that, you know, in California, it's illegal to show your ID when you vote, which is stupid On so many levels. Check out Where There's Woke, but says, in, by the way, in several different episodes, the exact same way, the exact same segment, they just, like, do the same propaganda over and over, because that's that's what it takes to be the the most wealthy and successful podcaster, by the way, so I don't know, we're doing it all wrong here, you can just lie the same way over and over, and and then that, that's how you do podcasting, but whatever that aside, um, he says, like, like, why? Why would you even have that law? We don't. Why

0:06:12 Jenessa: My God, it's so stupid. Right.

0:06:45 Jenessa: Yeah.

0:06:45 Thomas: Would you even have that law? The only reason you would have that is to cheat. And what's funny is what you just said is like what I had the same reaction. I was realizing, like, yeah, why would you have that law? Like, the only reason to have it is to make it harder to vote. Right. Isn't there is there any like real reason you would have that?

0:07:02 Jenessa: Not really. I mean, I guess it's a little bit of a extra administrative work to be like, are we gonna count this provisional ballot or not, like get over it, that's your whole job is to do this.

0:07:11 Thomas: Oh, boo hoo. Who cares? And, You know, that's not what they, whoever made that up, that's not their, they're not, hey, we're, we got like five percent too much work, we need a law passed about it, nobody's, that's not what it is. It's funny that, like, their propaganda is a lie, and then it's, they get, ours is like, no, that law does exist and there is no reason to do it other than to make it harder to vote. So just, just to make it clear, in terms of the facts

0:07:21 Jenessa: So No.

0:07:41 Jenessa: It's ridiculous, it's nonsensical. Plenty of other states do it this way and it does not cause an issue. So, yeah, you could, on election day, be like, oh crap, my ballot hasn't arrived yet, and they're not gonna let you vote provisional, and a trial court declined to issue a temporary restraining order on this. That's probably gonna be in effect in Wisconsin during this election, which sucks, that's not great. So, ew to Wisconsin, sorry if you live there.

0:08:10 Thomas: Not related to this, just like, you, Jenessa's just throwing that in. Yeah, yeah.

0:08:13 Jenessa: It's so cold that No thanks, from my end. North Carolina, okay, if you live in North Carolina, you need to be thinking about this. If you mailed in your ballot the day that they started sending out ballots, they created a new rule, that this is common in most states, the ballot goes inside one envelope, that envelope goes in another envelope, because you basically have a secrecy envelope and then you have, like, the mailer, they made a new rule that if this, if that, like, internal envelope isn't also perfectly sealed, then we'll reject your ballot. Obviously, if your regular envelope was opened, it's rejected, because we don't know if somebody tampered with it or whatever. This is causing a way higher rejection rate.

0:09:02 Jenessa: Now, we're still talking about a 2% higher rejection rate. So I don't think this is going to swing swing an election in North Carolina, especially because they have to notify you if they reject your ballot and they have to give you an opportunity to cure. That window is shrinking by the day, right? A federal judge refused to issue an injunction against this brand new rule. He's like Purcell principle, super dumb and annoying. That whole thing that makes no sense. Like the Purcell principle should say, get rid of this rule because it's brand new right before for an election, keep the status quo.

0:09:28 Thomas: Sure, yeah.

0:09:41 Thomas: Yeah, it's amazing how they're doing that, it's the the Supreme Court's doing that, well, Purcell rule, so even though it got changed too close to an election, we can't fix it too close to an election.

0:09:52 Jenessa: What? That's not, It would make sense a little bit if you were talking about a rule that's been in place forever, but this is brand new, like, whatever. So I don't see an appeal on the docket. I'm not sure, we'll see what happens. For people in North Carolina, track your ballot. If you see a rejection, you need to start the cure process process immediately. If you haven't sent it out yet, be real careful, follow the rules, they passed a whole bunch of new rules about what you have to do, and if it's new to you, like, other states have been doing this forever, but if it's new to you, you might just do what you always do, and it could cause problems. So pay attention, North Carolina is a place where literally every seat could flip. Yeah, it's it's kind of a big deal. Jersey, uh, League of Women Voters v. Ocean County Board of Elections.

0:09:52 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:10:42 Thomas: Hey, shout out to the League of Women Voters, by the way, can

0:10:45 Jenessa: Hell yes, like, sign up, donate, they are incredible, they're suing everywhere.

0:10:52 Thomas: I join the League of Women Voters

0:10:55 Jenessa: I've, I've been to meetings, there's men there all the time.

0:10:58 Thomas: Sweet.

0:10:58 Jenessa: It's, they're, they're really, really fantastic organizations. And I think I spend, like, between my county, state, and federal, my, like, total is like 60 bucks a year to be a member, and then you get to go to meetings and vote on things, um, this one, this county board of elections just, like, pick down a list of all, not Republicans, people they want to investigate, like, real close to the election, and you're kind of not supposed to be doing that, any one individual, if you got a tip, sure, but, like, a giant list of people, there's a 90-day quiet period from the uh National Voter Registration Act that you can't be doing mass purges ahead of an election.

0:11:01 Thomas: Nice. Yeah. God.

0:11:42 Jenessa: That being said, this is only going to affect 39 residents of Bayhead, New Jersey. So it's not the end of the world for winning elections. Obviously, for any one of those individuals, this is crucial that their right to vote is being challenged. And that's really messed up. Court denied a temporary restraining order. They are going to allow that investigation to keep going. Residents of Bayhead, if any of the 39 of you are listening, get a lawyer.

0:12:08 Thomas: But just goes to show, like, the bullshit going on here, because that sometimes it's like, oh well, that's not going to affect the election, and then you're also like, yeah, okay, why are they doing it, though, it's like they're so dedicated to disenfranchisement or they're dedicated to the story of voting, there being something wrong with voting, it's like, it's really just disgusting.

0:12:11 Jenessa: Oh, Yeah, just Yes. Right. Think the more local and low level you get, the more likely you're encountering a true believer who's like We gotta We Gotta fix this problem, and there's no problem. Everybody take a breath. The place, Kansas, we have a very silly one, um, is, again, it's probably not going to be the end of the world. Non-profits who send out mail ballot applications to registered voters, if that is pre-filled with the individual's information, like, "Hey, here's your application, mail it back and you're good," uh, they have decided that is illegal now in Kansas. Uh, this is Schwab, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the 10th Circuit is allowing that ban to go forward. I don't see them getting to the Supreme Court before the election, so

0:12:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true.

0:13:13 Thomas: Cool.

0:13:14 Jenessa: Whatever, I guess. Like, that's, so we can send you the absentee application blank, but if I fill it out for you to make it super easy, now I'm like committing a crime. Everybody in Kansas who was going to apply for a mail ballot probably, probably already has, so it's not gonna like devastate this election, just annoying. Moving into better news, New Hampshire, we have mixed news. The Coalition for Open Democracy filed a lawsuit, they used to allow student ID, uh, New Hampshire requires an ID, but student ID was fine, it's got your photo, on your name, like, it should be good enough, right? They made a new law that actually, you can't, uh, on the list of ID we will accept, student ID is not one of them anymore. Then the state Secretary of State who runs the elections said, uh, to all the poll workers, you cannot look at a student ID, it's not evidence of identity, it's nothing, it's useless.

0:14:11 Jenessa: So, trial court and First Circuit, they've given a partial injunction, they are not going to get rid of the law in an injunction just yet, like the suit's still proceeding. They might get rid of it completely eventually. But for now, the law that takes student ID off the ID list, that's okay. The instruction that when somebody shows up without ID and poll workers are trying to use secondary evidence to verify, yeah, they can go look at a student ID.

0:14:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:43 Jenessa: Ridiculous, they're allowed to look at 10 other things, why would that not be on the list? Uh, of course the State of New Hampshire has appealed this to the Supreme Court to reconsider, um, guess that that one's gonna have to be an emergency, they better decide that quick. If the Supreme Court doesn't decide on it soon, it's just going to become moot for this election, at least. So if you live in New Hampshire, you used to be able to use your student ID, and now your student ID can be, It can be evidence of your identity if you can't prove your ID otherwise. So you can avoid it, don't use your student ID in New Hampshire. It's not going to be the best method anymore.

0:15:23 Thomas: I can, but when I was a college student, I didn't have a driver's license yet for a little while. A little while. So I had no idea that was, I didn't have any other kind of ID. So that would have been my only ID for that year. Uh, so I wasn't able to steal an election. I tried, wasn't able to steal an entire election and it's because of good laws like common sense laws like this that a criminal like me was kept from stealing the election. Wow.

0:15:28 Jenessa: Yeah. Would You do What A shame Of Course do You know, I, in looking at this, uh, I found out New Hampshire, 11% of registered voters are students, like, they have a huge, huge population of people.

0:15:59 Thomas: That's A lot, so no wonder, I mean, that makes this make a little more sense. Again, where you're like, oh, okay, just finding every way, as a fascist, that you can chip around the edges, make it harder, murder, it's just, man, they are, they are gunning, why is it so important? Hey, everybody, I know I say this all the time, why is it, why they do, they go to such lengths, like we're talking like percentage points of percentage points, they're going to such lengths to try to take away your vote, it's almost like your vote does something that the fascists don't like, so weird. Yeah.

0:16:32 Jenessa: Be weird if they were putting in all this energy and it just didn't matter anyway.

0:16:35 Thomas: Like just for the fun of it, you know Right, having said that, I do think some of the fascists do it just for the fun of it, I should, I stand corrected, some of them love just a good old-fashioned fascism.

0:16:36 Jenessa: Just come on. That's, yeah, you know, you're not wrong, uh That's true. So positive stuff coming out of Alabama, uh, Alabama NAACP v. Marshall, there's a law, and they just, again, they're all trying to pass laws at the last second because they're gonna lose. They wanted to ban people from helping somebody else fill out an absentee ballot. It, I mean, what, and why? Um, the trial court and the 11th Circuit have upheld this violates Section 208 of the Voter Rights Act because people with disabilities, uh, might need a little help with the injunction. Right now, that law will not be enforced against voters who are blind, otherwise disabled, or illiterate, they're all covered under the Voting Rights Act. Um, the Alabama Supreme Court has now heard certified questions on the scope and definition of terms of the law, so we're in a weird place of, like, going through the federal and also the state court about this.

So essentially, as they're getting ready to appeal to the Supreme Court, they're asking the Alabama Supreme Court to tell us, under Alabama law, what do these words mean in this vague law, so that way when you get to the Supreme Court, they don't have to say, well, who knows what Alabama law means, well, we know, we got the answer. So the Alabama Supreme Court heard arguments on, like, what is even the scope of this law, we're waiting to hear back.

0:17:11 Thomas: My god. Nice.

0:18:14 Jenessa: And the overall case is going to keep going forward to see if maybe this law should be illegal as to everybody, but at least for this election, um, you can still help a person who is illiterate or has a disability to fill out their ballot, because of course you can, ridiculous.

0:18:32 Jenessa: Alaska, we got another League of Women Voters one, so this covers, I believe it was nine states, including Alaska, when the DOJ has managed to get a hold of unredacted state voter data, they want that destroyed. You should never have had access to it, we don't know how you got got access to it, delete it. And that has survived a motion to dismiss in Alaska, still going forward. So that'll be good.

0:19:01 Thomas: Really practically gonna do much, but

0:19:03 Jenessa: In terms of this issue where the DOJ is, oh, sure, probably not for this election, no. It's part of this overall issue of the DOJ trying to decide they know who's eligible And they need to cut it out. So moving to Arizona, Arizona, the Republican National Committee v. Me Familia Vota, Arizona passes a law that says, uh, if we suspect you are a non-citizen, we can kick you off the voter rolls, and we don't care about that 90-day quiet period, we're just going to do it. They also want to require citizenship proof on the registration form, like documentary, what are you supposed to do, attach your passport to the application? Whatever, um, it's at the Supreme Court now, well, it's been appealed to the Supreme Court, we'll see what happens. Uh, the trial court and the Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction on this, so, uh, no, the 90-day quiet period still

0:19:05 Thomas: Like this election, I mean, sorry Yeah To

0:20:03 Jenessa: Applies, you cannot do a mass purge of the voter rolls, and this idea that, oh, well, it's technically individuals, like, no, they're not getting like a random individual report and responding to it, they're using probably AI systems based on the description to just comb through the list and come up with people they think might not be citizens and kick them all off, that's a mass purge. That one is on hold, old injunction for now. They're trying to get it unenjoined at the Supreme Court. I don't see the Supreme Court intervening in the next couple of days to let Arizona do this. Then for the long term, will they win to get rid of this? That'll be a more interesting question about putting citizenship proof on there.

0:20:52 Jenessa: They will probably get away with, I bet. But 90, but purging within the 90 days is just pretty clear cut, you can't be doing that. So for Arizona, at least for this election, not a concern. California. So, you know, there have been tons of lawsuits where the DOJ is trying to get a hold of these unredacted voter rolls. Fun fact I learned, California is like the only state that is super duper private about the voter rolls. You have to pay for it, and like candidates can pay for it because obviously they gotta go door knock and like get signatures, but you have to like sign an affidavit where you say why you want these voter rolls, and like, under penalty of perjury, that's why I'm not going to use it for any other reason.

0:21:36 Thomas: Steal an Election, I mean, oh shit, damn it, uh, unless

0:21:36 Jenessa: Yeah So California has the clearest cut case of if the Trump administration gets a hold of this, they should not have gotten a hold of this. And they did. So what the hell?

0:21:52 Thomas: Donald Trump himself signs it out, like, on the little sheet.

0:21:57 Jenessa: I'm a candidate. Now, one way or another, they got something that is probably the California unredacted voter rolls. Who knows how up to date it is or if it's accurate at all. The judge who initially blocked the lawsuit by the DOJ to try to get the voter rolls, that same judge is now assigned to the case where the Trump administration is trying to kick 20,000 people off the voter rolls because, do you remember the whistleblower we talked about who was like, yeah, so they're using like supplemental magic and like a bunch of private databases, and like, they have no idea what they're doing. It's almost certainly that, that they combed through that list versus their list and came up with 20,000 people who are not citizens.

0:22:19 Thomas: Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh,

0:22:48 Jenessa: So far, California has already verified 25% of that list were born in the US. They're not even immigrants, let alone not yet citizens. They're the most citizen you can be.

0:22:57 Thomas: My God. Absolute ass pieces of shit. God, this is so infuriating.

0:23:08 Jenessa: Know. Like to say say 20,000. And then it's like, well, so far we already know 5,000 are natural born citizens. Where did you even get this from? Like, they're totally just making stuff up. The same judge who blocked them last time is assigned to this case. They're not getting anywhere.

0:23:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I imagine that judge has got to have some questions about like, wait, where did you get this? Didn't I say no?

0:23:27 Jenessa: Oh my God. Just, yeah, you would think,

0:23:30 Thomas: This is like me with the kids all the time. Wait, why do you have a treat right now? Didn't I say no to that? What the hell? What what happened? Why are you back in front of my, why are you back in my court, Remy?

0:23:31 Jenessa: Right?

0:23:42 Jenessa: One of my favorite videos of all time, there's just a kid running around at a party and the mom says, what do you have? And he screams, a knife. And she just yells no and is like chasing this child across a party Basically where we're at at this point.

0:23:53 Thomas: Oh my God. Oh boy. At least my kids only just want sugar. What's a knife going to do? They can't eat a knife.

0:24:00 Jenessa: Yeah, They're not looking for Uh, Well, that's good. At least heading over to DC, this is where all the big lawsuits against the administration are being filed. The DSCC, it's like the Democratic Senators Committee of Committees, something like that. They are bringing a lawsuit. These are all like recently filed. We don't have good updates on this yet.

0:24:29 Thomas: Oh, right. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

0:24:32 Jenessa: There we go. That sounds right. They are suing to stop Trump from threatening election officials with prosecution pressure to remove people from the Voter rolls, etc. I know we shouldn't even have to be doing this, but here we are.

0:24:42 Thomas: That's it. Jesus Christ. Yep. It's another, "Your honor, I can't even believe I have to say this." Oh,

0:24:53 Jenessa: Uh, DNC got an injunction to stop Trump from running those taxpayer-funded political ads. The, what is this,

0:25:00 Thomas: Yeah, and Then he was gonna do it anyway, and then he's not, yeah, so is he actually gonna

0:25:05 Jenessa: Then he did again, and then it was like, "Oh, no, no, this is paid for by a PAC but it, like, super isn't. I think it's like the same ad, just showed up with a label on the back that said a pack paid for it, but, like, we know it didn't, because you already ran it. Yeah.

0:25:20 Thomas: There used to be laws about this kind of thing, like that was the kind of thing you'd get in trouble for.

0:25:25 Jenessa: Somebody better be keeping a tally, because I just, like, I can't, I don't even have the attention span to keep this all in my mind, it's written down now. NAACP suing to stop those poll monitors from, or from the administration, going to the poll sites, uh, they are trying to get records related to what on earth is Harmeet Dhillon talking about when she says she's sending monitors, like,

0:25:46 Thomas: To Be fair, you could get those records anytime. That's a, "Your honor, what the hell is Harmeet Dhillon talking about, just, that's my motion." A motion for what the hell is she talking about.

0:25:56 Jenessa: Yeah, she's a little hard to follow, let's put it that way. Cause versus Department of Justice, they are filing the larger complaint to just stop all of this attempt to collect voter data. Uh, so like each state has litigation, if they're refusing, they're fighting it in their courts. Uh, here we are in the DC Circuit with Common Cause saying all of this is illegal, like we shouldn't have to fight this on a state-by-state basis.

0:26:25 Thomas: But We can't have injunctions anymore, right, isn't

0:26:25 Jenessa: Uh, So this would be telling the DOJ to stop doing

0:26:32 Thomas: It's just, I see you're targeting like the asshole doing it, and saying, okay, gotcha, that makes sense and I said injunction, I meant universal injunction, yes, obviously, there's still such a thing as injunction, yeah,

0:26:36 Jenessa: Right. Just stop doing this one practice, um, Yeah, I think that doesn't right I think that doesn't apply when it's like that whole ruling is so hard to understand, I think it's fine here, it's really stupid, so that's why I can't understand it. Democracy Forward Foundation v. ICE, uh, mainly this is at this point a FOIA violation, they've been trying to get records of, is ICE going to try to go to the polls, like that's obviously illegal, but are you planning it anyway, hello, and they just haven't answered a FOIA. So, uh, this organization is fighting that one. So most of this is all pending in DC right now. On over to Florida, we got two big cases. Uh, Rochford v. Caster, so the candidate for 2024, I think it was just some local race, he lost by 57,

0:26:47 Thomas: No, that makes sense really stupid

0:27:36 Jenessa: 000 votes, and he would like to argue that's because of fraud, those were fake ballots. Bullets. Yeah, For real, um, so, no to that, uh, the case was dismissed, that dismissal was upheld by the First District, so we're in Florida state court, uh, no, that didn't happen, dismissed, um, it's hard to lose a motion to dismiss when the dispute is about the facts, but, uh, there we are. Then we've got NAACP, the, I'm gonna say Byrd, B-Y-R-D, so probably Byrd, uh, the Secretary of State, uh, runs elections down there, so they are suing to stop a brand new student ID ban, everybody's trying this apparently, that one is still pending, we don't have information yet, but, but the lawsuit is, jeez, I think it was like only a couple of days ago the NAACP filed this. So they are going to try to fix that issue.

0:27:42 Thomas: Well, Well, done, fraudsters, sure.

0:28:35 Jenessa: Georgia. Now this one's interesting, the Fulton County Republican Party versus the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Why? Fulton County Republican Party and the Fulton County Democratic Party get to nominate who's going to go on the Board of Commissioners, and the Republican Party nominated two people who are like full-blown election deniers, not just like statements they've made, like one of them refused to certify an election before, uh, The one woman has like filed a whole bunch of, she's challenged like it was some crazy number, like she's challenged 20,000 voters' eligibility or something ridiculous like that, um, so she's clearly doing like mass challenges. We have to seat them is the rule, you nominate someone and we have no discretion, we have to just put them on the board, or is there a reason why we have a vote as a board to seat or not seat new members.

So the lower court and the appeals court, were in Georgia state court, they ordered them to appoint these two people to the board, they have refused to do it still, so there's also a request for contempt, uh, against them. While this is going, the Georgia Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on it, so we're waiting to hear back from them.

0:29:03 Thomas: Yeah,

0:29:59 Jenessa: One of the judges said out loud during the, uh, oral arguments, "It does seem to me that you, you probably have the better of the legal argument." So at least one vote for that, almost certainly. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting legal question if we weren't in the middle of like a fascist hellscape, I'd be curious to hear. There's a decent chance the Georgia Supreme Court will intervene and say, no, you have discretionary powers, they have you vote on it for a reason.

0:30:31 Thomas: Yeah, also just in general we need a new rule, people who don't want a thing to exist don't get to be in charge of that thing, just in general, Like if, if you've got a thing, like, "Oh, election, election commission, we hate elections and they all shouldn't happen," okay, then that's not the job for you, let's just find it, find it, find a different job.

0:30:39 Jenessa: That would make some sense.

0:30:49 Jenessa: Why do you want this job I mean, they want the job to ruin it, right, and like that's not a criteria for employment.

0:30:52 Thomas: Exactly Especially when it's like this, okay, is a thing that this is a thing a law was passed to do, you know, if it's like you're running the Department of Education, I want to not have a Department of Education, okay, well then that's not the job for you. We, the law is we have one of those.

0:31:07 Jenessa: Are you here, challenge the law. All right, another Georgia, RNC v. Hancock, um, the state court of appeals upheld, Gwinnett County has a policy that says, uh, you can hand deliver your mail-in ballot to any early voting site, even if that site doesn't literally have a ballot drop box, like, like, yeah, we're here collecting ballots, give us the ballot. The Republican National Committee tried to say that's illegal, and the court said, no, why do you care what this one county is doing, get out of my courthouse.

0:31:46 Thomas: It's almost like votes matter that you're trying trying to steal.

0:31:49 Jenessa: So maybe. So yeah, if you live in Gwinnett County, you can continue to deliver your mail-in ballot to a ballot drop box. Louisiana. We're back to League of Women Voters. League of Women Voters v. Landry, a lower court judge ruled a lawsuit challenging the state's proof of citizenship requirements could go forward. So of course, it's immediately being appealed to the Fifth Circuit, and they're maybe not the most reliable circuit. So we'll see what happens there. They have a proof of citizenship requirement, and League of Women and Voters would like to ask the question of whether that violates a due process, they had on their due process equal protection and the National Voter Registration Act, and I'm not clear why the VRA claim got dismissed, but the due process and equal protection stood up. So...

0:32:47 Jenessa: Interesting. Maryland legal and Voters v. Customs and Immigration Service, um, you probably heard about this because it was just so outrageous. They tried to make it illegal for non-profits to show up at naturalization ceremonies and help people register to vote.

0:33:02 Thomas: Oh, come on.

0:33:03 Jenessa: Is it who's at the naturalization ceremony? The people who became a citizen. Partisan, obviously, the people who can legally vote. And they wanted to say non-profits can't. They have this like idea in their head that there's like non-profits and like NGOs. I don't know why that word has become like such an like buzzword for... Yeah.

0:33:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:23 Thomas: Scare word for them. Yeah.

0:33:24 Jenessa: I don't even know why that, um, they're like on some mission to steal elections and like... They're, the League of Women Voters is, is a nonpartisan nonprofit. They literally just like help people register and get to the polls and know information.

0:33:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. But they're women.

0:33:41 Jenessa: Clearly that's enough.

0:33:42 Thomas: It's in the name. Yeah.

0:33:44 Jenessa: Yeah. Have a final ruling in their favor. They absolutely can go do this. Obviously they can go do this. So that is helpful.

0:33:52 Thomas: Cool. Boy, what a waste of time and resources all this is.

0:33:57 Jenessa: I know, just all this money just going down the drain and like judges being woken up in the middle of the night to do an injunction, like, so annoying. Montana has a House bill they just passed, and it's not gonna work, a bill that requires students, like, college students, to declare their intention to remain in the state after graduation if they want to register to vote in the state, to that, uh, like, I I intend to remain while I'm here, like, the biggest argument was like that's not a requirement you put on anybody else, any other students who live in this state, so how is that okay?

And they just got a preliminary injunction, Montana Public Interest Research Group v. Jacobson. So at least for this election, that is not going to be a requirement for students in Montana. And I will predict right now that's going to fall apart completely, completely. How can you be like, no, you have to register in your home state? That's Montana saying, like, that New Jersey has to accept the registration. Why couldn't New Jersey just be like, you clearly don't intend to remain here, like, we can't be getting into this competition. Missouri's on this list, but we already covered the redistricting lawsuit. Lawsuit, Nebraska, they

0:34:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:20 Jenessa: Have a law that allows eligible U.S. citizens living abroad to vote in Nebraska, and the Nebraska Supreme Court has left that law in place. That's RNC v. Evnen, um, this is really common, like, I mean, every state has this, if you live overseas, overseas, you're still entitled to vote until you, like, give up your citizenship, become a citizen of another country, whatever. You're a citizen, like, you don't have to tell us the exact day you're coming back. You're allowed to vote. How many people does this even affect? Like, relax.

0:35:44 Thomas: Yeah. Boy, yeah. They are so desperate. Just everything at the margin. And I think that's the important part. Like for every one of these, we're like, oh, how many people could this be? How many people could this be? Well, I don't know. By the time we get through a whole effing episode of this, like maybe, you know, they need every little drop they can get.

0:36:16 Thomas: It's going to, it's going to make some difference. All of this together makes some kind of difference.

0:36:00 Jenessa: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. Yeah, we should not dismiss any of this as, like, as always, for for whatever voter it happens to, even if it's one person, it's completely unacceptable. It's gross, but will it swing elections? We don't have anything nation, the only nationwide election is the president, so, like, we don't want to summon them up across all the states, but within these individual states, yeah, like the New Hampshire one, I think, is probably the most risky. Um, That was the one about student ID.

0:36:25 Thomas: Harmless. Yeah. Which one was that again? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Because of the high percentage. Yeah.

0:36:56 Jenessa: Like, that's where, in terms of actually affecting the election, the ones that would have been really bad, I think, are pretty much always going in our favor. Um, the North Carolina one's going to be rough too, especially because there were a bunch in North Carolina that were going to be really, really close. So if you reject 2% of the mail-in ballots, that's really not great.

0:37:19 Thomas: I wanted to ask about that. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to slow you down with stats, but did that mean a two percentage point increase, or a two, because, like you said, two percent increase in the rejection rate? It's kind of important.

0:37:22 Jenessa: Mm-hmm.

0:37:31 Jenessa: Oh, right. Yeah, let me clarify. It is literally in the areas where they're having the worst problems, so, like, this is not statewide, but in certain counties, like heavily Democratic counties, up to 2% of mail-in ballots are being rejected for this issue.

0:37:49 Thomas: Yeah. No. That's not good.

0:37:50 Jenessa: Which means when you put it together with other reasons that ballots get rejected, there's a couple places where it went as high as seven to eight percent.

0:37:50 Thomas: Yeah. That's quite a few Yeah.

0:38:00 Jenessa: That's a lot.

0:38:02 Thomas: That's numbers.

0:38:03 Jenessa: Know, these people all have an opportunity to cure, so hopefully that won't be the final tally.

0:38:09 Thomas: They'll get many of them. I mean, many people are like, oh, I thought I'd voted, uh, you know. They're busy, they don't, don't have time to do all this shit.

0:38:13 Jenessa: They ignore the you Like, government agencies, will, they don't send you emails, they don't call you, they do paper mail because it's more secure that way, like if you get a phone call and you're like, they're like, this is the IRS, you owe us money, like, that is a scam, that's not a thing that happens. It makes sense that, like, you get the, a thing about, oh, you got to cure your ballot, but, like, it's either on the ballot tracking system, which, if you're the kind of person who's tracking your ballot, you will see it and you'll be on top of it.

0:38:47 Thomas: You're, you're Jenessa.

0:38:49 Jenessa: But yeah, or

0:38:51 Thomas: You're literally on this podcast right now. Hi, weird.

0:38:53 Jenessa: It's that, or you are gonna get a postcard in the mail. Mean, I read those, but, but again, I am, me. So yeah, I actually check each piece of mail because I'm just a ball of anxiety, worried about what it is. Uh, and it's almost always garbage. So we'll see.

0:39:06 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I do a thing where I just, I get my mail next to my recycling bin and I just, it's just, I just transfer, I had a joke about this 20 years ago on f this podcast where I was like, my new part-time job is I just am, like, like a garbage man, like there's a box that someone puts garbage in that I have to move to a garbage can for some reason, and it's, in my new job, I don't know how I got it or why, and It's only gotten worse from there.

0:39:43 Jenessa: Oh, god. Yeah, I'm gonna go out of alphabetical order because I want to do Texas last. Uh, Virginia.

0:39:49 Thomas: Dare you. Right.

0:39:52 Jenessa: They, uh, have a lawsuit trying to keep federal agents away from polls, so, like, again, reminder that would be illegal anyway, but they're trying to find out, like, what are your plans so so that we can tell you no. This is the County Board of Arlington County, Virginia, suing, I can't remember if it's DOJ or ICE. So that one's still just pending right now. All of these ones about, like, is ICE up to? What is the DOJ up to with trying to purge voter rolls? These are, it's relatively new developments. And so it's new filings. We knew to anticipate this, but you needed standing, you needed like real concerns, so you either had to have a concrete concern or file a FOIA, and then they don't answer it, which is its own concern.

0:40:40 Thomas: What?

0:40:40 Jenessa: Standing causing problems for everybody here, unfortunately, the last one I got for you here, League of Women Voters v. Howden, once again shout out to League of Women Voters this is what happened in Texas. Okay. I can't get a clear answer on, maybe we never will, intentionality behind this.

0:41:01 Jenessa: Somebody somewhere at some agency forgot to transfer a whole bunch of registration applications they had over to the counties. So like you go to the DMV or whatever, and you, you know, get your license or whatever paperwork you're there to do. And they ask you, do you want to register to vote? And you say yes and they're like great here's your application and then they just like sat on 600,000 registrations, yeah.

0:41:29 Thomas: Geez.

0:41:29 Jenessa: Some of these date back as old as October of 2025, like it's been a year of just not transferring it, and so then they did, like, a week ago, give the counties across Texas 600,000 registrations and be like, go process this right before the election.

0:41:52 Thomas: Now. Was this targeted in any way that would affect Democrats more than Republicans?

0:41:56 Jenessa: Doesn't look like it from any reporting I've seen, it's just they sat on it, which is what makes me lean towards incompetence more, because it's Texas, like that could be just as many Republicans as Democrats. Um, I, I haven't seen, like, oh, it was targeted at one county, then we would know for sure. Like, oh, so you were forwarding them to all the other counties and not Austin.

0:42:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:42:20 Jenessa: Austin's not a county, I'm pretty sure, but you know what I mean.

0:42:25 Jenessa: Don't come at me, Texas people. So they did send it, which is great, but it's just a resource I don't know if you've ever been to a county board of elections. There's like three people in there, yeah.

0:42:38 Thomas: What do you think? Yeah.

0:42:40 Jenessa: Like, it's it's the two commissioners and, like, an administrative assistant. Know, during the election, obviously there's like a ton of people who work there, but in terms of full-time employees, like, how many people are really working there, not many. And now we have to process a bigger pile of registration applications than we've ever had before, right before the election, while we're doing a hundred other things. By the way, it's, it's the resources, that's the real problem here. There is a lawsuit, League of Women Voters, trying to get a preliminary injunction that would specifically require these all get processed before the election, whatever barrier, whatever boundary, come hell or high water, you have to get this done.

That, it would not be acceptable to say, well, we were so resource limited, your application that you correctly filed ago, we just didn't get around to it. Like, absolutely not. You have to, you know, at least let people provisionally vote and then process after. It's not their fault that it's late. It's not late, that one just got filed. We are waiting to hear. I, it'll be interesting for how they craft the relief exactly, because, like, resource limitations are a real thing, like, you can't just overcome that by snapping your fingers, figuring out, like, the relief will look like this, that'll be interesting. I suspect they will win overall, from the perspective that, like, any voter who got disenfranchised by this

0:43:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:44:13 Jenessa: Would have a case.

0:44:13 Thomas: You have a right to vote,

0:44:14 Jenessa: Exactly. Yeah, you would think, you know, thing that's just always stuck in my craw. Got this whole idea of fundamental rights. And when you have a fundamental right, we apply strict scrutiny to those. And then for some reason with voting, it just seems to not matter.

0:44:14 Thomas: Right?

0:44:32 Thomas: Oh yeah. Cause isn't that the whole thing where you don't have a right to vote in the constitution or whatever? Like it's like officially.

0:44:38 Jenessa: Yeah, it's true. Technically, it doesn't officially say, like, you have a right to bear arms and a right to freedom of speech and a right to vote. But it's like, it's obviously in there, though. Mean, John Roberts said in Allen v. Milligan that you have a fundamental right to vote. So we would think everybody would be in agreement on that. What a fundamental right means is, under, or substantive due process, you have to apply strict scrutiny. If they pass these laws that are like, well, we'll accept your hunting license and we'll accept your expired driver's license, but we won't accept student ID, explain to me how there's a compelling state interest, that's fine, election security, that is narrowly tailored to be fulfilled by that. Bat, How is that narrowly tailored? What universe?

0:44:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Well, it's really narrow in that it's just hunting licenses.

0:45:34 Jenessa: Like, this should be getting applied so much more often to say, like, this new law is practically arbitrary, like, it should barely pass rational basis and you should be applying strict scrutiny to this, like, why? That we're always leaning on due process and equal protection, because if you can get a protected class for equal protection, yeah, strict scrutiny is great. We should just have it under substantive due process. It should just be there. I don't know. I can't get a good answer. And I've been working in election law for years. I've never seen an explainer on why they're not always applying strict scrutiny. I don't know. If somebody has an answer for me, I'd love to hear it.

0:45:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:18 Thomas: Fascism noises.

0:46:19 Jenessa: Yeah, I, what the hell, it's really annoying, super frustrating, but I hope this is uplifting in that they're losing, they are trying to take away your vote by method A and B and C and D, and they are almost universally losing.

0:46:22 Thomas: Yeah, it's so frustrating.

0:46:32 Thomas: Yeah. But goddamn, are they trying? Holy moly.

0:46:40 Jenessa: That's for sure, so there's a lot of flailing going on. I also find the flailing, um, to be very, very uplifting in that you wouldn't do this if you thought you were going to win, so Yeah, it's overall, I think a lot of really good news in here and, um, be on the lookout, even if you live in a state that doesn't require ID, you might want to bring it just in case something weird happens. Uh, don't forget about provisional ballots. If something is going wrong, you should be allowed loud to swear, "I am eligible to vote. Give me a provisional."

0:46:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:47:13 Thomas: Should definitely be allowed to swear if something goes wrong. Jeez, what kind of laws we got here? Draconian.

0:47:15 Jenessa: I will be swearing my entire way through this. You know, obviously, if you walked in and you were like, I'm 15, they're not going to let you fill out a provisional and swear that you're 18. But if there's just like, oh, you're not here on the voter rolls. I wonder why. Like, matter what you do, do not leave without voting. Demand a provisional ballot. Vote.

0:47:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yep.

0:47:39 Jenessa: It's going to be okay. We're coming out the other end of this.

0:47:41 Thomas: That's Been your message for a long time, and it's really important. Provisional ballot, do not ever leave without voting or

0:47:48 Jenessa: Never. If you're online and the polls close, stay on that damn line. They have to help you.

0:47:54 Thomas: In line for West Coast people it's all right it's just it's different, I'm just translating, it's not more right or less right I'm just, yeah, just remembering every time you say "if you're online" I think you mean like I've gone with my AOL CD-ROM and gotten online because it's AOL online might be actually yeah it's a very New New York thing

0:47:56 Jenessa: In line. Yes. I feel like this came up before. Yeah. Yeah. You saw people talking about this recently. I think it might be, it's not like New York exclusive. It's very, it might be, right? It's not just East Coast.

0:48:22 Thomas: Yeah, it's well, as in, do it's, I just said that as a shorthand, it's definitely a New York thing, like for sure, I didn't know if it was, I was hedging because, you know, all you over on the East Coast, you got states on top of each other, you know, you're so close, I don't know, you're all online together, I have no idea yeah, oh

0:48:25 Jenessa: I think it's more specific than just the East Coast versus the West Coast.

0:48:40 Jenessa: That's true. Yeah. But if you look at those linguistic maps, sometimes things are like like, really a hot spot for, like, this one area of, yep.

0:48:50 Thomas: Like pop or whatever, like soda pop, and all those ones, yeah, oh, no, what it's a green, yeah, what is it, duck duck duck duck gray duck, that's it, uh that's a good one and We got corrections, or not corrections, but hopefully a bunch of people wrote in to say that salute thing is a very long-standing thing that already existed in yeah, the military yeah yeah, no idea, it makes me feel better, so I'm like, why would we have this I don't know, for voting, like Jesus Christ, it was like how many tanks do they have and like what kind of aircraft, like what the hell

0:48:58 Jenessa: My god, yes, that one's delightful. Uh, yeah.

0:49:14 Jenessa: It was a military thing. I didn't even even know yeah I honestly it's I don't know if it's like more or less concerning that it's like, oh no, no, no, we got this from the military when they're in an active war zone, this is what you use so

0:49:37 Thomas: Yeah no that's a good point I think voting people just wanted to be extra, they're like, all right, let's, let's just, it's belt and suspenders, let's get the most, most rigorous form of this thing.

0:49:49 Jenessa: Guess Yeah, I still think risk is very low that you're going to encounter like an armed presence at the polling place, uh, I think the last time I did this math, the total number of ICE agents and the total number of polling places, if they were willing to send literally one alone to a polling place, they could still only cover 25% of polling places so like we don't have like an army that's gonna have a whole troop show up at an individual polling place. Like in order to do that, you have to pull resources from somewhere else.

0:49:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:22 Thomas: That's nice. Yeah. You'd have to stop deporting citizens for a second.

0:50:25 Jenessa: Uh, yeah. You'd have to have any competence at all, you know,

0:50:28 Thomas: Thanks for the big breakdown. We'll obviously keep an eye on it. And, uh, boy, that's coming up soon. Everybody. I you're what, what's your plan to vote? Tell me right now, or you already are early voting.

0:50:33 Jenessa: Yeah. I'm going to early vote and I think I can walk to my early voting polling place. So I'm going to have a nice fall walk through the leaves over to my polling place.

0:50:48 Thomas: Nice. And we're in California. So it's by mail.

0:50:51 Jenessa: It's already done, all right.

0:50:52 Thomas: Yeah. Well, it's not, I wouldn't go that far, please. Uh, I have a, I have ADHD and Lydia's busy, so you know, it will get done though. It will get done.

0:50:55 Jenessa: All. Right. Get. That. Shit.

0:51:02 Thomas: Will Do it's True. All

0:51:02 Jenessa: Done. The deadline's coming up. Yeah. Everybody, make a plan, when, where, what day, because then you are way more likely to do it or discover a problem.

0:51:13 Thomas: Right. Thanks, as always, Jenessa.

0:51:15 Jenessa: Ya, I'm

0:51:19 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments, produced by Thomas and Lydia Smith, with editing help from Peter Baird. The intro is by Thomas Smith. This outro is by Matt Cameron. Support the show at patreon.com/law. Contact us through Patreon or openarguments@gmail.com. Make sure to follow our blue sky, at OpenArgs. But most of all, please share the show. Thanks for listening.

0:51:52 Thomas: What's a knife going to do? They can't eat a knife. Well well done fraudsters