Interesting read:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...navirus-408631

“Remember, this is a president who claimed that there was a massive fraud in an election he won,” says Levitt. “We have had peaceful transitions of power because We, the People, have believed that it is possible that more people who disagree with us actually cast ballots—that the possibility exists that we might be in a minority. And if that is not even a conceptual possibility, that’s a real danger to democracy and to the election process. If you cannot conceive that you might be in the minority, there’s no possibility of achieving change through voting nor of achieving legitimacy through voting.”

With respect to voting in the general election, there’s another “it depends”: It depends whether the case is consequential based on what it is arguing in theory, or whether it’s likely to work in practice. There are some cases asking for a fairly mammoth reconfiguration of local election practices, both to restrict access and to improve access—different cases in different places. Each is unlikely to succeed. Courts don’t like micromanaging all the aspects of an election. There are discrete elements that courts will address, but they don’t like putting themselves in charge of an election administration. And getting this close to an election, we’re just running out of time to make very big changes to the process. Those cases would be enormously consequential if they yielded an outcome, but it’s extremely unlikely they’re going to.

Honestly, there aren’t many ways that the courts have accepted to clamp down on present procedures. The main claim for clamping down on present procedures, is “these procedures cause fraud”—lots of screaming, all caps. Whatever the efficacy of that position in the court of public opinion, the courts that are actually courts demand evidence. So I don’t know that there’s much utility in using the courts to restrict voting if we’re starting from the status quo.

The rhetoric the president has used implies that if he doesn’t win, it’s been stolen by “fill in the blank.” That is profoundly dangerous. And I don’t want to minimize the danger of that at all. We have had peaceful transitions of power because We, the People, have believed that it is possible that more people who disagree with us actually cast ballots—that the possibility exists that we might be in a minority. And if that is not even a conceptual possibility, that’s a real danger to democracy and to the election process. If you cannot conceive that you might be in the minority, there’s no possibility of achieving change through voting nor of achieving legitimacy through voting. So that is scary.