A small victory for the rule of law in Delaware, of all places
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Delaware’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled that recently passed laws allowing universal vote by mail and same-day registration are unconstitutional, marking a win for state Republicans who had rallied against the legislation.
The court found that the two moves conflict with the registration and absentee voter categories outlined in the First State’s constitution. It upheld a prior ruling by the state’s vice chancellor, which rejected the vote-by-mail law, while overturning his upholding of the Election Day registration law.
The bills were passed in the final days of the state’s recent General Assembly, which ended in June. Democrats had previously tried to amend the state's constitution but had not managed to secure the two-thirds support needed.
The constitution allows absentee voting in certain situations, such as an inability to go to the polls due to public services, occupation or disability. The Democratic attorney general had argued that mail-in voting was not absentee voting. Meanwhile, Delaware's constitution says that registration cannot end less than 10 days before the election.
So, the majority just rammed through a new law, the constitution be damned. Amazingly, it didn’t work.
The court found that the vote-by-mail statute "impermissibly expands the categories of absentee voters" and that the registration statute, which allows registration all the way until Election Day, contradicts the limits placed on the registration.
Republicans expressed satisfaction at the ruling. Jane Brady, state GOP chair and former attorney general, told Fox News Digital that she was "very pleased that the court upheld the language of the constitution."
Delaware AG Kathy Jennings, meanwhile, took aim at Republicans, accusing them of "showing us the lengths they’ll go to stop the people from voting."
Any lengths, like following the constitution. Oh, have you ever seen such villainy!
The Senate Republican leadership noted that Republicans in the General Assembly had argued that the bills violated the constitution — a view shared by the Supreme Court.
"The sponsors and Democrats ignored our concerns, dismissed expert legal testimony, and passed both pieces of legislation anyway," Senate Republican Leader Gerald Hocker and Republican Whip Brian Pettyjohn said in a statement. "Today, however, the rule of law prevailed."
UPDATE: Actually we have seen such villainy, only worse, right here in Connecticut: our “windfall profit tax”. That was the original name back in 1981, when the Democrats first came up with the idea of “punishing” oil companies for the high price of their product. Despite the universal opinion of legal experts from the full spectrum of political allegiances that the bill’s bar against the pass-through of that tax to consumers would be struck down, the legislature passed it anyway; they knew the tax would simply raise the price paid by their constituents, but they also knew that their low-information voters would applaud the idea of punishing wicked oil companies, as indeed they did.
The pass-through prohibition was tossed out immediately by the first federal court to hear the issue. Still, the tax remains: initially 2% in 1981, it’s been increased over time as the Democrats’ profligacy expanded, and it’s now 8.81%. It will undoubtedly go higher after the election, when the Democrats are returned to Hartford to resume their ways.
A brief history of this cynical sleight of hand can be found here.
