The Old "Election Day Isn't Election Day" Gambit

 Couple days ago I started a post with these words:

Elections

The Constitution says that they are in the hands of the States.

The States, from the outset, have delegated down, down, down to the Counties.

To get it done, the Counties have delegated down and created voting precincts - about 200,000 of them.

Since 1788 that's how we have voted.

During that time, we have had an unbroken and uncontested (ultimately, after the dust settled) transition of power across the matrix of elective governance that always has been, and continues to be, The United States of America.

As time has passed, better ways of marking ballots and counting ballots have come and gone.

Over time some states have opted to use Franklin's US Mail to transport the votes to the Counties.

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I thought about adding some other, additional words, but I didn't.

I thought that the ones I used did the job quite well.

But then "War Room host Steve Bannon and MAGA lawyer Mike Davis lost it on Monday as a Supreme Court ruling, they say "totally screwed" them landed live on air. "Election Day does not mean Election Day according to Justice Amy Coney Barrett," Davis reacted. "But it seems like Justice Barrett, our esteemed law professor — I've called her other names before — just totally screwed us on what Election Day means," he added. (From a story by David Edwards)

So here are the words I didn't write.

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And the mail opened the ballot to a lot more people.

And the State/County/Precincts that used mail for voting all established counting rules.

You know, things like postmarks, when the ballots needed to be received, how long after election day the ballots would be received and counted.

Normal stuff that helped the States manage their elections, uniquely and individually, as directed by the Constitution.

Over the years some States even established rules about who could vote. 

Things like random poll tests involving saying how many beans were in a jar, or things like paying a poll fee; there were many others, but the intent can clearly be derived from those two.

They were tests and fees - all justified at the time as ‘reasonable’ measures to preserve the god-given purity of the polling place

And those rules always stood.

Until the States changed them. 

The Constitution says that THE STATES each and individually administer the elections of the United States of America. 

Any way they want.

And they always have.

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The War Room's "election day" construct, viewed from the apparent Constitutional reality of things, is easily seen for what it is: a hallucinatory gambit designed to stir up all the morons gathered in donnie's Barnum Tent, generating the white-hot certainty of christian nationalism.

But sorry guys.

Election Day means whatever the States say it means, uniquely and individually.

Not what you trump up in the War Room.

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This is sort of an aimless post, but it has been fun writing it.