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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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[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

So guyC gets cut and most of his votes go to guy B

That holds when you have a 58% "moderate-left" swing.

It doesn't hold when you've got a 52% "far-right" swing.

Starting with guyA having 52% means he would have won outright

Right. And that's the problem Ranked Choice Voting can't solve. When you have a poll of far right voters who control the election, you're still going to get far-right candidates.

The question is why states like Florida and Texas and South Dakota and West Virginia are so chronically overwhelmed with far-right voters. And the answer we've seen - time and time again going back to the end of Reconstruction - is that states don't want minority groups or young people or poor people to participate in elections. So they disenfranchise these groups, by hook or crook.

And absent a fix for this systematic disenfranchisement, you're just shifting around deck chairs on the Titanic.

[-] Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

I see what you're saying... Yes I agree, the election system itself needs to be corrected so everyone has equal opportunity to vote

this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024

576 points (97.5% liked)

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