BREAKING: Opponents of TN Amendment 1 file lawsuit to have vote invalidated
UPDATE, 4:55p: Tennessee Right to Life is saying that Amendment 1 still has enough votes, even if this far-fetched lawsuit goes anywhere.
9:37a: This is insane logic, but who knows if it will work, what with the crazy liberal judges out there. From the Associated Press, last night:
Opponents of Amendment 1 are asking a federal judge to void the vote that amended the Tennessee Constitution to make it easier for lawmakers to restrict abortions.
In a lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court, plaintiffs claim that the state ignored the plain language of the constitution, which says it can be amended by “a majority of all the citizens in the state voting for governor, voting in … favor” of the amendment.
The plaintiffs want the judge to order the state to count only those Amendment 1 votes where the voters also cast ballots for governor. If that is impossible, they want the vote voided.
Plaintiffs say the state allowed some voters to game the system by voting for the amendment and skipping the governor’s race.
Your thoughts?
[HT: Susie]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I think it’s crap and should be thrown out (the lawsuit) – it essentially though is like the challenge to Health Care Reform that the supremes just took up – where people are more concerned about specific verbiage, regardless of overall intent.
The thing is, the vote for amendment 1 only counted if you voted for the govenor, so the lawsuit makes no sense. I, as a Tennessee voter, was told that if I didn’t vote for govenor but only voted for amendment 1, that my amendment 1 vote wouldn’t count.
This is good news.
1) This means that people will continue talking about the issue. It will not fade quietly from view until the legislature considers the need for some safety regulations.
2) People in Tennnessee and around the nation can see how much the abortion industry is opposed to the will of the people.
3) We win, even if we lose. If liberal court frustrates the referendum vote of a duly passed constitutional amendment, then this could be front-page news across all the media.
The pro-life governor won handily . . .do they really think that pro-life people would go to the polls in numbers enough to pass the amendment and then NOT vote for governor at the same time? Really? Probably would end up working to increase the percentage in favor of the amendment rather than against it as they intend. I guess they are hoping that a liberal judge will humor them and that the ballots can’t be recounted for some technical reason, but even there, why in the world would it be ‘not possible’? I have a feeling it will be dismissed or even end up blowing up in their face, but we’ll see.
Meghan –
Don’t underestimate the power of bad judges to put their will above intent.
Again, the new challenge taken up by the Supreme Court against Health Care Reform is a good comparison. When the law was written, there’s language all throughout the law about states or the feds setting up exchanges, and language all over about subsidies for Americans – but in one section, there was language about subsidies and those in sites setup by the states (but doesn’t mention feds).
So even though people who were involved have clarified intent, and the intent was clear through the process, crazy judges have stepped out and send this all the way to the supremes. In this case, it was conservative judges imposing their will above previous legal precedence.
“The thing is, the vote for amendment 1 only counted if you voted for the govenor,”
Really? That’s interesting. Just yesterday I stumbled across a Youtube video encouraging people to not vote for Governor because in their reading of the constitution it would require less votes to pass the less people voted for governor. Interstingly enough, it doesn’t seem to be from an original Yeson1 channel. I’m really started to wonder who is behind this video…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnIgn-WXls
Yes on TN 1 knew that constitutional amendments can only be passed with gubernatorial elections after coming through the legislature the same year. That is why it took them 14 years after Sundquist to bring it to a vote. Anyone who read the TN constitution knew this. No real surprise from the pro-aborts on this. The real surprise was from the pro-life side not using the constitution to assert the rights of the pre-born and outlawing abortion all together. The pre-born bear the image of God and deserve the equal protection under the law that the TN Constitution had.
Okay, I looked at the person’s channel and it seems that they posted a few other videos in favour of Amendment 1, which is more work than someone trying to scam people would probably go through. For what it’s worth, I personally agree with the interpretation of the amending formula presented in the video, but I’m not a lawyer, so my interpretation should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
I thought the pro-abortion narrative was that we only won because not enough people came out to vote. Now they’re telling us that we only won because too many people came out to vote?
Here are the facts. Abortion is legal by federal law and no state constitution or state law can ban abortion. The TN State Constitution can only be amendment by following the protocol in the constitution and there are several hurdle to get a constitutional amendment passed and they are not easy. It is meant to be hard. First it had to pass by a simple majority (in the General Assembly-which is two years in length) and then come back and pass by a super majority in the General Assembly. Then we had to wait until it was on the ballot in a year in which we had a gubernatorial race. Then we had to pass by 50% plus on of those who cast a vote in the Governor’s race. That is the only way an amendment can be passed. There were four amendments on the ballot and they all passed. The Governor had no competition in this race. The Dems did not put up a credible candidate so his competition was someone named Charlie Brown who was a construction worker with no backing. However, some are not fans of the incumbent for several reasons. Regardless of why and how some opted out of voting for the governor but that does not matter. The rules are the rules. If they prevail that would mean all four amendments would have to face another vote. This is sour grapes. The abortion industry spent 4MM dollars in this race and lost handily. They are fighting for their life (pardon the pun). Abortion revenue in TN was big bucks for them and if they have to clean up their clinics and be held to higher standards and have reasonable regulations, they will lose money. For them it is all about the profits. They have no shame
Who knows how a judge will respond to this challenge, but like has been said, it is not unexpected. To claim that since some who voted yes on the amendment and did not vote for the governor as grounds to throw out the vote is silly at best. Besides, the amendment passed by more than 72,000 votes which is far more than the 31,000 who skipped the governor’s race.
A thought just occurred to me:
The abortion industry is fighting the wrong enemy. They believe that “pro-lifers” are their enemy. And “Republicans.” And “Christians.” They believe that they can overcome these seemingly small groups of activists by advertising campaigns and lawsuits and elections.
They do not know their real enemy.
The American people have turned their back on the abortion industry. For a variety of reasons…. but the net result is that American voters no longer support or care about the abortion clinics. They are closing fast, and no one misses them.
As pro-lifers, we would like to believe that America is returning to a culture of life.
But it could be that the abortion industry has shot itself in the foot — with their reputation for dirty facilities, their toleration of Gosnell & Karpen & Carhart, their lack of concern for the women they kill, their greed and their fraud, their vicious and angry mobs, their extreme political vision that reduces the concerns of all women down to easy abortion…. too many reasons to count.
Del –
I agree with a lot of that post.
Abortion has become a NIMBY type issue – it is clear from polls and votes that people want at least some level of abortion – but it is also clear that the general public doesn’t like a lot of the clinics, and doesn’t like abortion used as birth control.
It will be interesting to see if a byproduct of these new ambulatory surgery laws is the elimination of that stigma. What I mean is, in 10 years, if abortion is done in nice shiny large clinics that look more like your local medical facility and less like the local meat market – how will that change the perception in the public eye? Not sure – we’ll maybe see.
Hmm, having read the relevant section of the Tennessee constitution again several times and then thought about it for a while. I seem to have changed my mind. The wording is “a majority of all the citizens in the state voting for governor” not “a number equal to a majority of citizens voting for governor”. So it does sound like you need to vote for a gubernatorial candidate in order to have your vote count on constitutional amendments. This is an incredibly stupid system, as it effectively disenfranchises those who legitimately have no preference between the candidates for that office but do care about one or more of the amendments. However the constitution is the constitution. Perhaps the amending ought to be amended, though.
Ex-GOP says:
It will be interesting to see if a byproduct of these new ambulatory surgery laws is the elimination of that stigma. What I mean is, in 10 years, if abortion is done in nice shiny large clinics that look more like your local medical facility and less like the local meat market – how will that change the perception in the public eye? Not sure – we’ll maybe see.
This is Planned Parenthood’s strategy. They are building very large facilities in large cities. They mean to use economies of scale to keep their clinics as clean as a hospital. They expect to be spiffy enough to merit a woman’s driving 500 miles to have her child killed there.
They are banking that Obama’s court appointments and the inertia of the American people will protect their cash cow for three or more decades.
It is fortunate for pro-lifers that the abortion industry is so icky. But this is not yet a winner for life. We need to draw the culture toward a positive appreciate of life…. and to not rely upon their revulsion from the icky.
When I step into the booth and fill out my ballot, I sometimes leave a candidate section blank.
I do not insist that I did not vote. I insist that I voted for “none of the above.”
I see no reason why I must select from the list of gubernatorial candidates in order to express my decision on a particular referendum.
If I don’t answer one of the referendum questions, does it follow that they must therefore discount my vote for the governor?
I hope the court reaches this conclusion: If a voter submits a ballot with candidates and referenda listed upon it, then the voter has duly voted as he wills for all of the positions and questions on that ballot.
Del,
That is a good point. ‘None of the the above’, even if not listed explicitly on the ballot, could be inferred by the court as a vote. None-the-less, the published numbers themselves certainly don’t give much hope to this lawsuit succeeding. They probably are pinning their hopes on getting an activist judge.
“I see no reason why I must select from the list of gubernatorial candidates in order to express my decision on a particular referendum.”
There is no good reason, it’s just what the Tennessee constitution appears to say. That is, unless the courts accept the interpretation wherein “none of the above” votes count as votes for governor. Personally, I hope that the courts do, but we’ll have to wait and see.
“If I don’t answer one of the referendum questions, does it follow that they must therefore discount my vote for the governor?”
Of course not, but nothing in the state’s constitution says a candidate for governor must win a majority or plurality of those voting for an referendums on the ballot.
“I hope the court reaches this conclusion: If a voter submits a ballot with candidates and referenda listed upon it, then the voter has duly voted as he wills for all of the positions and questions on that ballot.”
I hope for that as well.
“They probably are pinning their hopes on getting an activist judge.”
Sadly, that means they may have a pretty good shot. Aren’t pretty much all of the judges activist these days?
I’m a stickler for the law. I expect our ‘enemies’ to follow it, I expect ‘us’ to follow it. I expect if someone *doesn’t* follow it there should be immediate and appropriate consequences. If we complain that we got trounced by a ‘technicality’ of the law, then we have zero right to try to force lawful compliance from our political adversaries. And we all know that the push to actually get clinics lawfully regulated and ENFORCED is a huge one. If we could actually get regulations enforced against abortion clinics in the same way they are enforced against tattoo parlors or plastic surgery clinics there would BE no abortion clinics. From the brief excerpt of the constitution provided above it seems fairly clear that the winning majority must come from among voters for governor. Does that mean that you can count ‘none of the above’ votes (which is a VERY good point) as long as the person participated in the election wherein a governor *was* voted upon, or only if an affirmative vote for a specific candidate was record? I’d say that’s a question for a legal team/judge to decide if it hasn’t previously been determined. But you know perfectly well our side would be doing the exact same thing if there were possible irregularities concerning voter eligibility on an amendment that, say, enshrined abortion on demand at taxpayer expense for all 9 months. No doubt we would use every legal means necessary to explore every possible technicality. We should not only except but assume our opponents will properly do the same. They should, election laws should be followed to the letter. If you don’t like the law or the wording of the law, chance the law, don’t complain when someone points it out.