Tag Archives: democratic backsliding

Trump and Cheseboro filings in the Georgia conspiracy case

chicanery, election law and constitutional law, Supreme Court,

As expected, President-elect Donald Trump has filed a motion in the Georgia Court of Appeals to dismiss the conspiracy prosecution against him in Georgia on the basis that “a sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal.”  (The argument behind that claim isn’t only from the Trump v. United States SCOTUS case this past summer: the claim is well beyond what the Supreme Court decided.)

At least as interesting to me, in many ways, is the filing of Kenneth Cheseboro, in the Fulton County trial court, on the same day.  Cheseboro pled guilty in October 2023 to one conspiracy count of filing a false document, based on the filing of a fraudulent certificate of electoral votes with a Georgia federal court.  In September 2024, the Fulton County court declared that count unconstitutional with respect to John Eastman and Shawn Still as applied to these facts: the judge said that the state law couldn’t be used to prosecute false filings in a federal court.  That decision is now, I believe, up on appeal.  But in the meantime, Cheseboro has argued that a guilty plea to a charge that has been invalidated must itself be invalidated.

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“Will NC Republicans have the votes to override Cooper’s veto of powers-stripping bill?”

political parties, The Voting Wars

The story above was about how well the North Carolina elections process works.  Jury’s still out on the state’s democracy process, though.

This News & Observer piece reviews the legislation tacked on to a Helene relief bill, stripping state executive officials’ powers in Democratic hands that might check the Republican-supermajority legislature.  The legislation was passed largely on party lines, vetoed by the Governor, and now needs every Republican legislator in the state House and Senate in order to override the veto.  The Republican Senate has already moved to override.  But that “largely on party lines” statement is really important: three Republican members of the House voted no as the bill was on its way to passage, and there are a lot of eyes on them as the House sets up an override vote for next week.

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“Arizona Republicans Set Up a Ballot Measure to Squash Future Ballot Measures”

direct democracy

Bolts Magazine: One more Republican legislative attack on ballot measures. The Arizona legislature seeks to make the process more difficult through a constitutional amendment imposing strict geographic requirements. These measures are highly problematic because ballot initiatives are one of the few options that voters have to circumvent gridlock, polarization, and political entrenchment.

What triggered this one? An initiative to protect abortion access in Arizona that has gathered more signatures than it needs to make the November ballot.

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