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Legal experts: "Shameful" Supreme Court put US one vote away from "the end of democracy" (www.salon.com)

submitted 6 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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"Unlikely Trump will ever be tried for the crimes he committed," says ex-Judge J. Michael Luttig

It’s not a hard question, or at least it hasn’t been before: Does the United States have a king – one empowered to do as they please without even the pretext of being governed by a law higher than their own word – or does it have a president? Since Donald Trump began claiming he enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, two courts have issued rulings striking down this purported right, recognizing that one can have a democracy or a dictatorship, but not both.

“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power – the recognition and implementation of election results,” states the unanimous opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, issued this past February, upholding a lower court’s take on the question. “Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and have their votes cast.”

You can’t well keep a republic if it’s effectively legal to overthrow it. But at oral arguments last week, conservative justices on the Supreme Court – which took up the case rather than cosign the February ruling – appeared desperate to make the simple appear complex. Justice Samuel Alito, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, argued that accountability was what would actually lead to lawlessness.

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[-] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 months ago

The hypothesis behind ranked choice is that enough people would vote for a third sane option that we don't have only choices between red and blue shitheads.

If you have a lot of people ranking like: Blue -> Red -> Con Man

And "moderates" ranking like: Red -> Con Man -> Blue

Presumably the number of people who prefer basic red over a con man would mean the con man cannot take office. Not even if a large group of Trumpanzees vote: Con Man -> Red -> Blue

Then, given that possibility, the assumption is that we would have viable third party candidates. If people could take third party candidates seriously, they are more likely to be incentivized to vote when they hate the favored top two.

IDK about the presidency because of EC bullshit, but I am pretty certain it would work like that for state and local elections.

[-] OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago

You could definitely still use ranked choice voting in conjunction with the electoral college.

I'd still much rather get rid of the electoral college tho

this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024

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