Summary
Transcript
Now, as a matter of practice, Mississippi does extend canvassing days after election. We don’t dispute that. But that’s not required by law. And if the Speaker of the House caught up Mississippi on Wednesday after election, they said, who did you appoint or who did you nominate to be your electors? Mississippi could do it. But under the current regime, they would have to tell the Speaker to wait five days before we can give you an answer. That is modifying and inconsistent with the original public meaning of the election day. The act of counting the ballots is different and separate, and that can happen five days, five weeks.
Bush v. Gore, it can happen, what, in December after the election. So is your position that recounts and ballot counting and, you know, ballot, looking at hanging chads and all the rest of that after election day, is that preempted by three U.S.C. section one? No, Your Honor. Because what if the Speaker of the House called the Secretary of State in Florida and said, who are your electors? Bush or Gore? They would say they wouldn’t be able to give them the answer, but they would still be calculating it. And we describe this in our reply brief.
If you get everyone in a room and they cast a vote and they put it in a box, that decision is made inside that box. You don’t know the results yet, but that decision is in that box. You, as it stands now, you have to wait five more days for decisions to come into that box and you can’t make that decision. So the complexities and the difficulties in certifying and calculating the election can slow down the process. But that is not when an election occurs. An election occurs when a voter expresses their choice, they make it known and communicate it to election officials by a given time.
And the given time is on or before election day. That’s what reconciles the absentee voting and early voting because they can do it before, but they can extend it after. Russell Nobel from Judicial Watch again, I’m going to do some drive-bys on a couple of things that have been brought up to the court. RNC versus DNC. That is a case about the federal primary. It does not apply to USC seven, three USC one or two USC one. I’m not saying the court needs ignored, but in that context, the Supreme Court was not looking at how the term election or election day was applied in those statutes.
It has very little relevance to the actual text of the statute in question here. No more so than a state election would be relevant to the election day statutes. We don’t need a textual conflict. We have a textual conflict. Three USC one requires them to appoint electors by election day. They are fundamentally unable to. It is inconsistent for that purpose, but there’s a myriad of other reasons why it’s inconsistent. But that is a clear direct conflict to the extent the court still believes such is necessary. We asked the court rule in our favor and remain this back to the Southern District of Mississippi so we can have remedial proceedings and decide what issues remain.
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