In North Carolina's Supreme Court race, Democrat Allison Riggs beat Republican Jefferson Griffin by 625 votes. Griffin demanded a recount, and Riggs expanded her lead to 734 votes.
So it's over? Riggs won? By no means:
Griffin has also filed election protests against 60,000 ballots in all 100 counties that could extend the race indefinitely. Among the ballots he challenged were those cast by Riggs’ own parents.... He is also challenging a state law that allows people who live overseas but have never resided in the state to cast a ballot if their parents are registered to vote here.... Then just 15 minutes before the State Board of Elections hearing on November 26, Griffin filed a motion seeking to disqualify one of the three Democratic board members.
Welcome to the world Donald Trump built. Never admit defeat no matter what.
The hell of it is that this race won't even affect control of the court. If Riggs wins, it will still have a 5-2 Republican majority. It's all even more pointless than it seems.
Cannot decide the greater evil - Gerrymandering or Citizens United. Both fully sanctioned by SCOUS
¿Porqué no los dos? There’s a reason why no other democracy allows unlimited private spending in elections and - outside of English speaking democracies - few elect their legislature from single member districts.
That's easy: citizens united. The rich are proving they can buy elections, but a good gerrymander can be wiped out in one election.
I'm surprised the R's don't re-district every two years since the Texans showed them they can get away with it.
Gerrymandering is responsible for what is going on here in NC but it can’t be blamed for Citizens United which is quickly turning us into a plutocracy of the crazies. That was the Supreme Court whose members are approved by the ungerrymandered Senate. The worst members — Alito, Roberts and Thomas — were appointed by the Bushes (normal Republicans!) and then gave us Citizens United.
The real blame goes back to the normal Republicans deliberately joining forces with rightwing Christian evangelicals and Catholics whom they planned to control. Instead those “Christians” pushed the party further and further to the right. Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society packed our courts with right wing pluto and theocrats. The election of the bomb thrower Newt made the craziness openly mainstream Republican policy. The bat shit crazy, vicious conspiracy theory that the Clintons had murdered their close friend Vince Foster was investigated by Republican led committees in the House and Senate and by Brett Kavanaugh for Ken Starr. Memos from that investigation showed that Kavanaugh had made a point of letting his colleagues know that he didn’t really believe Foster had been murdered but there were political points to be won. They have paid off handsomely.
The media either ignored many of these things like Leo’s maneuvering and normalized those they couldn’t. There has been far more outrage and hand wringing over the response of many ordinary Americans to the killing of the healthcare executive from top journalists than there ever was about the Republicans’ insane Vince Foster investigations. As a result Americans gradually were numbed to just how extreme Republicans were becoming.
A predictable extension of NC’s 2016 effort to neuter the authority of the incoming dem governor
This is not really the world that Trump built. Republicans have been working toward this since the end of the Johnson administration. The party switched its attitude to racial equality - or a lot of race-baiting politicians switched parties - and they have been using race and religion and other forms of bigotry to win national elections since. The right-wing media have greatly grown in power for partisan advantage and monetary gain. The Southern states were one-party (Democrat) through the Jim Crow era, and basically the same people are trying to take charge again. The economic revival of the South and influx of non-Southerners has made some states like North Carolina competitive.
Trump deliberately jumped on this bandwagon - he supplies little that is new except emphasis on racist xenophobia. I doubt if even he expected to win in 2016, but practically everyone underestimated the capacity of Americans for bigotry and partisanship - Trump tells many people what they want to hear. Of course his real policies are fairly standard Republican, so he has the big-money support as Republicans have always had.
Indeed, I recall 20 years ago when a Republican (egged on by talk radio) sued to overturn a Democrat's win in a local race... on the grounds that he hadn't resided in the district long enough, the boundary having recently been redrawn around the winner's neighborhood.
And the states who abandoned the party who passed the ERA
Are the same states who abandoned Lincoln after the Emancipation Proclamation
Like the Dixie bumper sticker
“Civil War
Yankees-1 Rebels- 0
First Half “
That guy's pupil distance, though...
Today the NC Supreme Court’s “Republican majority issued a temporary stay that will prevent the State Board of Elections from certifying Riggs as the winner.”
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article298115113.html
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article298115113.html
This is just a temporary problem. After 2 years of a trifecta, the GOP will have firmly in place sufficient laws that if a Dem can even win, no way they’ll be certified.
One Man One Vote- the 2nd most powerful tool of our Democracy. Gerrymandering is the first.
Republicans are pieces of shit. Film at 11.
How long is a term, when are the next seats up for re-election, and when might the next redistricting be slated to take place?
It’s a state Supreme Court justice and they’re elected statewide so redistricting doesn’t apply. Their terms are 8 years. No idea when the next election is since I don’t live there anymore but since it’s already 5-2, it’ll be a long time before power changes hands on it.
Assuming Riggs overcomes all the bullshit, the next one up is the other Democrat in 2026. But then 2028 is when three Republican terms are up. In the best case scenario that's when the court could switch hands.
I should have been more explicit - Congressional and state redistricting which would no doubt be challenged up through the state Supreme Court.
The water we're sitting in. It's fine. It's a little bit warmer than 10 minutes ago, and a whole lot warmer than 20 minutes ago, but it's fine.
It's pointless to worry about it.
It's not pointless to HIM and his cursus honorum.
"It's all even more pointless than it seems."
Not pointless.
The point is making governance by Democrats completely illegitimate. The point is establishing one-party rule.
It's a test case to see how much they can get away with, you never know until you get pushed back.