Thursday, October 14, 2021

Thank G*d For The Courts

A judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that alleged fraud in Georgia’s most populous county during the 2020 election. The suit sought a review of some 147,000 absentee ballots in search of illegitimate votes.

The lawsuit was originally filed in December and said there was evidence of fraudulent ballots and improper ballot counting in Fulton County. It was filed by nine Georgia voters and spearheaded by Garland Favorito, a longtime critic of Georgia’s election systems.

Henry County Superior Court Chief Judge Brian Amero’s order dismissing the case says the Georgia voters who brought the lawsuit “failed to allege a particularized injury” and therefore lacked the standing to claim that their state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process had been violated.

“All citizens of Georgia have a right to know whether or not counterfeit ballots were injected into the Fulton Co. election results, how many were injected, where they came from and how we can prevent it from happening again in future elections,” Favorito wrote in an email. “It is not adequate for any organizations to secretly tell us there are no counterfeit ballots and refuse to let the public inspect them.”

That last paragraph is the very definition of a conspiracy theory.  "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."  But it's not evidence of presence, either.  It does come down to an issue of trust (doesn't everything?); but I trust the courts more than I do crazies who are going to claim "evidence" of "counterfeit ballots" which, conveniently, they can't show me.  That's Mike Lindell-level evidence, and more of that we don't need.

The highlighted paragraph is important because of this:

Greene described it as "absolutely devastating news" during an appearance on Real America's Voice with host Steve Bannon.

"The case has been dismissed for lack of standing!" she exclaimed. "They're saying the plaintiffs have not established that they have received injury."

"If wide-open borders, a complete invasion at our border, the catastrophe in Afghanistan, arming the Taliban nation with $85 billion worth of our military equipment, abandoning Americans," Greene said, complaining about President Joe Biden. "If that's not injury, what is injury? And that is the direct results of election fraud. Everybody knows it!"

T'he issue of "particularized injury" escapes her understanding altogether.  If you really want to politicize the courts, follow the MTG standard of "justice." Throw the court doors open so any disagreement is subject to judicial review and you will have politicized the courts completely. And rendered them worthless.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers “ was a plan to destroy the law, not save it. (And yes, this is my fundamental problem with the Texas abortion law: the putative plaintiffs have no particularized injuries. Except they just don’t like abortions. That’s not enough.)

So Greene’s argument is: in order to save the government, legal system and all, we must destroy it. Let's just say there's a reason she's spouting this nonsense on a podcast, and not on the floor of the House of Representatives. 

I guess we can blame Georgia for this:

Judge Brian Amero wrote in an order Wednesday that the plaintiffs, including Garland Favorito of the group VoterGA, lacked standing and also failed to allege a particularized injury in their lawsuit that claimed fake ballots were counted in Fulton's totals.

The dismissal is the latest in almost a year of unsuccessful lawsuits that have failed to overturn or alter election results in Georgia after President Joe Biden narrowly defeated former President Donald Trump by about 12,000 votes. Multiple investigations by state and local officials have also found little evidence to support conspiracies and claims about how the votes were counted, though isolated instances of misconduct have been reported and referred to appropriate authorities.

Amero granted the motion to dismiss filed by Fulton's three Democratic election board members and also dismissed the two Republican members, who did not object to an inspection of the thrice-counted ballots.

The swift decision by Amero comes hours after the Secretary of State's office filed a brief detailing investigations into the core claims of the suit.

"Based upon interviews with the foregoing witnesses, as well as other witnesses who were interviewed during the course of the investigation, and in the inspection of approximately 1,000 absentee ballots and ballot images, the Secretary's investigators have been unable to substantiate the allegations that fraudulent or counterfeit ballots were counted," the filing read.

Just because you don't like the outcome, doesn't mean you get a "do-over."

"We know already that the election results in at least five of the swing states were irredeemably compromised," Ellis said. "We already have sufficient evidence for these states to decertify their electoral results. So, what this means is that the state legislatures would pass a resolution through both chambers that essentially say that the secretary of state's certification that was sent to Congress was based on false or faulty information."

When does this "evidence" make it to five state courts for evaluation and ruling?  And where in state, federal, or constitutional law does it say an election that was "irredeemably compromised" is just reset and done over?  I know the principle of fraud in contracts; one remedy is that, under certain circumstances, the fraud undoes the contract. That principle has no application in election law.  The states can pass resolutions until the cows come home; it won't make any difference to the election of 2020.

I know we're all doomed because Trump and minions, but there are even federal laws regarding the reporting and certifying of votes counts, and criminal sanctions for interfering with those acts.  I don't care how many people Trump "puts in place" in various states, we are not entering "Invasion of Body Snatchers: Electoral Count" territory.

Thank G*d for the courts. 

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