The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: mystery-ak on November 05, 2020, 03:32:01 pm
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Jonathan Turley: The three states to watch as election challenges mount
By Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor — 11/05/20 10:00 AM EST
Legal analysis in a presidential election is often like doing a medical evaluation of a patient in full cardiac arrest while riding a moving roller coaster. For a country on the edge about rioting and claims of unfolding “coups,†this is hardly an ideal condition for dispassionate legal analysis.
For those of us who covered the elections of 2000 and 2016, we tend to quickly isolate those controversies that can actually alter outcomes as opposed to less impactful controversies in various states. It is a type of legal triage: Irregularities in states like New York or Louisiana are cast aside because they will not be “determinative.†Instead, we focus on those “patients†whose status can be changed through judicial review.
We started Election Day with an unusually high level of litigation, including cases that made it to the Supreme Court. More than 300 lawsuits have been filed in dozens of states. Many of these are “placeholder†challenges, to reserve a way to attack results if a given state proves to be a key contest. Three states are now emerging as candidates for challenges: Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The case law favors those states in defending their local determinations, but valid challenges already were working through the courts.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/524577-the-three-states-to-watch-as-election-challenges-mount