The encouraging news about democracy continues!
So this time around, this absolute dipshit of a lawsuit against my state, California, has been stayed on account of it not being based on anything but racist brainworms. On Monday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear a challenge to our voting process.
The three-judge panel ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the DOJ’s request that the Ninth Circuit tell Judge David Carter that he better order California and LA County to segregate all the ballots — like 20,000 of them! — from “likely non-citizens” (not likely non-citizens). Here’s what the good old Los Angeles Times had to say about it:
In an unsigned order — joined by Judge Mark J. Bennett, one of the Trump appointees, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — the court granted a request from Los Angeles County to dismiss the appeal, writing that the Trump administration “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” its request for a temporary restraining order barring the ballots from being counted before filing its unusual appeal.
Those same two judges added that they had plenty of other grounds to deny it on though, too, so it’s not like they were just using that as an excuse.
Let’s see what that other Trump-appointed judge had to say. Surely he had a reasoned basis for not rejecting this appeal outright, given that there have been so many decades of similar attempts to nail “non-citizen voters” that have just ended up with right-wingers falling flat on their faces.
Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, the other Trump appointee, dissented — arguing the Trump administration was well within its legal rights to intervene, and the appellate court did have jurisdiction to grant its request and bar the state “from accepting and processing ballots likely cast by aliens until their citizenship could be verified.”
Oh.
“The question — does the federal government have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections?” he added. “Under both federal law and the Constitution, the answer must be ‘yes.’”
Ooooookay, buddy. Sure.
Bumatay’s name rang a bell, so I looked him up, and oh yeah! He got nominated abruptly by the Trump administration under a cloud of controversy back in 2018. I can’t believe I remembered that!
“Instead of working with our office to identify consensus nominees for the Ninth Circuit, the White House continues to try to pack the courts with partisan judges who will blindly support the president’s agenda, instead of acting as an independent check on this administration,” said Kamala Harris’s spokeswoman Lily Adams at the time.
Welp! Anyway, it wasn’t enough this time around. The lawsuit stemmed from our California Secretary of State, Dr. Shirley Weber, not complying with a bullshit demand from the fully brainwormed federal government to set aside a bunch of ballots. Those assholes wanted to seize at least 20,000 of them, for uh, umm, Reasons!! But now the hearing will continue under Judge David Carter — today apparently! — and that guy is always hilariously mean to Trump.
PREVIOUSLY!
The New York Times calls this an “incremental setback” for the Trump administration, but what do they know? They aren’t here!
Meanwhile, Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner Chad Bianco is now begging for money to foot the bill for his own anti-democratic bullshit. This QAnon-brained Threeper motherfucker was trying to do the same type of election interference using debunked conspiracy theories, but with ballots from the 2025 redistricting election.
He ended up snatching up hundreds of thousands of ballots! Then our state AG smacked him the fuck down and the California Supreme Court quickly followed. Now he’s threatening to sue for damages, like the gigantic pissbaby he is.
Bianco maintains the investigation was legitimate and argues the county should cover the associated legal costs.
The Riverside County Board of Supervisors previously denied additional funding for the investigation earlier this year.
On social media yesterday, Supervisor Jose Medina pushed back against the sheriff’s request, writing, “Accountability begins with those entrusted to enforce our laws, and taxpayers should not be left paying the price when that authority is exceeded.”
Hahaha! I love it when rotten people fail and the voters win!
These little creeps aren’t just trying this “non-citizen voter” shit in California, though. They’re trying to instill doubt in the electoral process in Alaska, using all the Dan Sullivans who ran for office there as their excuse, but everybody already knows that you are legally required to change your name to Dan Sullivan in order to live in Alaska, so it isn’t going how they hoped there, either.
And now they’re running crying to Washington state to try the same thing, according to the Washington Post. It’s great how their numbers of “suspected illegal voters” keep dwindling as reality continues to intrude:
“We have identified over 400 non-citizens who are registered to vote and have voted in multiple elections,” acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington Neil Floyd said in a news release, describing it as the “tip of the iceberg.”
Sure you have, sweetie. Sure you have. You’re not even a real US Attorney for the Western District of Washington!
At this rate, I think I am starting to feel a little hope for democracy, and I’m pretty sure the last time I felt hope it didn’t go super well for me, but I don’t remember, because I can’t remember the last time I felt that way. It’s this feeling of lightness, as though the world isn’t crushing me with every breath.
Probably just gas though.
Seems Net&Yahoo may be losing his election, oh that would be fine.
For anyone who appreciates a good judicial clownhammering, I highly recommend Judge Bennett's concurring opinion, which starts on page 18 of the PDF. Bennett reiterates that the court lacks jurisdiction to decide the appeal, but notes that even if jurisdiction existed, the government's case is dog shit on the merits, and then proceeds to slap the trumpanzee dissenter around for awhile. Bennett even tells us in a footnote that there's lots more reasons why the government's case is bereft of substantive merit, but time constraints prohibited him from addressing anything other than the most painfully and obviously dispositive reasons.