Attorney General Todd Blanche has declined to pledge DOJ’s independence from the White House and would not rule out similar suits in other states
Donald Trump says he ordered the Department of Justice to sue the state of Alaska in an effort to block the results of a U.S. Senate election from being certified, unless the incumbent Republican wins.
Government attorneys filed a lawsuit Friday arguing that the presence of Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the ballot would confuse voters who support the sitting senator, Daniel S. Sullivan, in the unusual matchup of two candidates with the same name up against a Democratic candidate.
“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters Friday. “They have two Dan Sullivans.”
Trump’s admission of an extraordinary intervention in the nation’s elections follows the president’s threats to overhaul election administration and assert federal control before critical midterm elections with the balance of power in Congress, and fate of his final years in office, at stake.
I dunno. I think you want to make efforts to get at what the voters actually want, and that means making some allowances for voters being, y’know, fallible humans.
Have a look at the “butterfly ballot” used in Florida in the in 2000 presidential election:
Now, it’s pretty clear to me, looking at that, that the top hole is a vote for George W Bush, the hole below that is a vote for Pat Buchanan, and the hole below that is a vote for Al Gore. But it’s also obvious to me how a voter could think that the second hole is for Gore, as the listing on the left side of the ballot has Gore listed just below Bush. I wouldn’t make that mistake here, but it’s plausible to me that people would. And indeed, people did. Buchanan got a LOT more votes than his polling would lead you to expect; and while this was still a small number of overall voters, it was more voters than the margin in multiple counties, including Miami-Dade. And Florida had enough electors, and the national election was close enough, that how Florida went decided how the whole country went. That is, these few people (less than 2000) making this mistake may have been a deciding factor in the national election of George W. Bush.
So while, yes, it’s the vote they cast, and if they can’t handle something as simple as voting then maybe that’s on them… it’s not like it doesn’t matter. We should want the outcome of the election to reflect the will of the voters, and so it makes sense to make some effort to make it easy for them to vote for the person they actually want.
Elections aren’t usually close enough for this kind of thing to matter. But it sucks when it does.