#VicePresident #KamalaHarris is working around the #mainstream #media and it’s #brilliant

Harris has had surprisingly #indepth #conversations with former #shockjock Stern, “#CallHerDaddy” #podcast #host #AlexCooper, late-night staple #StephenColbert, and #WhoopiGoldberg and the #ladies of “#TheView,” covering topics like #policy, the #threat to #democracy posed by her #opponent, her #political and #personal #background and more.

thebaltimorebanner.com/opinion…

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Baltimore Banner: Baltimore news coverage, including politics, business, entertainment, food, and events. In-depth investigation and thoughtful opinion on the Baltimore Region

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"Bush v. Gore" was supposed to be a one-off
because it saw the Supreme Court step out of its usual lane to overturn a state court decision on state election administration,
which is generally left up to the states.

But last year,
in "Moore v. Harper",
🔸the Supreme Court opened the door to similar interventions
whenever it decides a state court has “transgress[ed] the ordinary bounds of judicial review” at the expense of state legislative power.

With voting underway for 2024, this vague and untested standard provides a new opening for the court to meddle in state election matters.

“The size of this loophole is unknown at this point,” warns Jessica Marsden, an attorney at Protect Democracy.
“But there are cases percolating up that will raise this issue and test the size.”

As Marsden explained during a Supreme Court preview hosted by the Center for American Progress,
➡️ such cases could affect “either how voting happens in November or even which ballots get counted.”

In the critical battleground of #Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to ❇️count mail-in ballots that, while valid, do not conform to every rule, such as missing a handwritten date on the envelope.

If the state Supreme Court allows such ballots to be counted, under the new rationale of "Moore v. Harper", the US Supreme Court could find justification to intervene
and ❌toss out tens of thousands of ballots in the most contested state in the nation.

Marsden also pointed to #Nevada, another battleground, where the Republican National Committee has tried to roll back a policy of ❇️accepting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.
“If Nevada were the decisive state and they hadn’t resolved this issue ahead of the election,” Marsden said,
“I don’t know that I’m optimistic that in that situation that the Supreme Court would decline to reach in and decide.”

Still, Marsden sounded a note of cautious optimism about the slim chances of another Bush v. Gore. “It’s actually very hard to tee up an issue for the Supreme Court that would be outcome determinative,” she said.

Indeed, the best way for the Harris campaign to keep the Supreme Court out of the race is to 👍win by enough that their interventions would be futile.

It may be hard to create the conditions where the court’s Republican-appointed justices are in a position to decide
—but the Trump campaign and its allies are certainly trying.

Four years ago, the courts acted as a bulwark against Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, including the Supreme Court, which rebuffed his challenges.
And for good reason: the cases were extremely weak.

“The challenges to the election outcome last time were last ditch efforts by a few #fringe actors like John Eastman,”
says Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability, a progressive group pushing Supreme Court reform.

Trump’s rag-tag team was clearly going to lose, and even allies like Bill Barr, his own attorney general, jumped ship.

🔥But this time, Aronson notes, there is a “more serious cohort of lawyers and funders behind these challenges.”

💥Barr, for example, is on the board of a group involved in voter suppression lawsuits,
including one of the challenges to Pennsylvania mail ballots.

👉Attorneys in the funding orbit of #Leonard #Leo, the dark money patriarch of the conservative judicial movement who helped select and confirm the GOP-appointed justices,
are behind uits to ♦️purge voter rolls and ♦️change voting rules.

⚠️And the Republican National Committee itself is strategically litigating around the country to make it harder to vote and to invite courts to throw out ballots.

When the Supreme Court allowed Arizona’s requirement that new voters show proof of citizenship,
they handed a win to the RNC and a law firm backed by Leo.

The people and groups behind the legal attacks on the 2024 election are in the #mainstream of the conservative movement,
which could induce the justices to take up the opportunities those lawyers will bring to the courts

motherjones.com/politics/2024/…

Are you ready for another Bush v. Gore? The Supreme Court is.

Trump could win it all, thanks to just five votes.

^{Mother Jones}