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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I am very good. How are you? Wait, I have a question for you after.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm feeling very textual today.
N. Rodgers: Well, I'm feeling very Miriam Webster. I need you to give me a definition for something.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're on the same side of the spectrum on this one. Listeners, we didn't plan this, but we're doing an episode today. This is another in the news. Which I guess we should probably just get over thinking that these are unusual because in American politics and government so it happens.
N. Rodgers: It's the fire hose that keeps giving.
J. Aughenbaugh: My God.
N. Rodgers: It's not even a trickle. It's not even a faucet. It's a fire hose.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like a dog that's trying to go ahead and take a drink of water coming out of a hose.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: They may be thirsty, but at some point in time, they get tired.
N. Rodgers: They're like, heck with it. I'm not this thirsty. But in the news. Aughie we talk on a fairly regular basis off audio. Aughie calls me and he goes, hey, Nia. What's the meaning of election day? I could hear the quotes in his voice when he said election day, and I said, the day we vote, except and he goes, is it the day we vote? Is it the week we vote? Is it mailing in? Is it ahead of time? I was like what are you talking about? He said, Supreme Court and I was like, no because I have fear in my heart that the Supreme Court is slowly just going to hand the entire federal government to Donald Trump.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, let's just put it this way.
N. Rodgers: They're hearing a case.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court announced some cases that they're going to hear in the subsequent months.
N. Rodgers: Can you mention first the one that they said no to?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The Supreme Court announced its orders list. They announced the orders.
N. Rodgers: I want a cheeseburger with extra fries.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or in my case, can I have a second.
N. Rodgers: A chocolate milkshake.
J. Aughenbaugh: Can I have a second cup of coffee? Boy, that pie behind the counter looks really good.
N. Rodgers: That's right. Because if there's pie in Aughie vicinity, he is going to eat it. Even if it's rhubarb pie, even if it's some pie, but everybody else goes. He's going to go. I don't know. I'll give it a try.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'll give it a try because you just filled up my mug of some steaming black coffee. Thank you very much. On Monday, of this week, the Supreme Court first, denied former Kentucky court clerk, Kim Davis' challenge to the court's Obergefell v Hodges ruling. She specifically asked the Supreme Court to overturn its precedent, which declared that same sex couples have a right to marry per the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment so that got denied.
N. Rodgers: Would everybody went? Well, not everybody.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not everyone.
N. Rodgers: A lot of people on both sides of the political aisle were like, dude, if you want to marry whoever you want to marry and get divorced from whoever you want to get divorced from, who are we to stop you. That is generally, I think, most people's thinking at this point. As long as it involves two adults who are capable of making that decision, go on with your bad selves and do whatever it is you want to do. You know what I mean? I think most people have moved to that point. I think culturally, we're kind of there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, even a significant percentage of Republican feel that way, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Because they're more or less like, It's a contract. Basically, what you're doing is signing a contract because that's what marriage is. Take out the church part of it and it really is signing a contract in front of the government that says, we agree to have a reasonably decent fight when we stop being together or whatever. She said negatively. But anyway, until DFT stuff is for the church, the contract is just it's the thing to join our lives.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, well, let's not forget Nia, too that you got the church part. But you got the whole romance part. As far as the 50 states are concerned, whether or not you have any romantic, feelings for the person is irrelevant. As far as the state is concerned, you're signing a contract. That marriage license is a contract. You can have a lot of love.
N. Rodgers: I love you like a friend, but you and I could go down to the courthouse tomorrow and get married. The Commonwealth of Virginia could not care less about that. They just are like, pay your taxes as a pair, do whatever it is you're going to do as a pair, and see you. There doesn't have to be a romantic relationship. It's nice when there is. It's nice when marriages are based in love, but they don't have to be based in love. Lots of marriages are arranged by parents, people who've never met each other, and they make it work. But anyway, and Kim Davis is from Kentucky. She's the one Kentucky who said, I won't sign certificates of marriage because she's a state employee. When you get married, your efficient can sign, and that's all fabulous and wonderful, but they have to then file it with the state because you're not married until whatever state you're living in gets paperwork and however much money the fees are to change your status.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was a clerk for a county court in Kentucky. After the Supreme Court's Obergefell ruling, she refused based on religious objections to issue the marriage licenses. Because pretty much in every 50 state, it's a license and the lower courts ruled and the Supreme Court previously denied her challenges on the grounds that she is a state official, and per the state action doctrine, state officials, state institutions have to comply with the Equal Protection Clause. She once again brought the challenge. There wasn't even [OVERLAPPING].
N. Rodgers: Because if you could overturn Obergefell, then no one would be able to marry a same sex couple.
J. Aughenbaugh: They could. Again, it would be up to the individual 50 states to decide whether or not same sex marriage is a policy that they want to have.
N. Rodgers: She's trying to take it away at the federal level and then make it a states rights or state decision?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because she's basically arguing that there is not a fundamental privacy right for same sex couples to get married in the United States but beyond that [OVERLAPPING].
N. Rodgers: But they said never mind, we're not listening.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Supreme Court, as part of their order list this past Monday, also said that they were going to hear the case of Watson versus the Republican National Committee. This case is a challenge to the State of Mississippi's state law, which count mail in ballots that are received after Election Day. Mississippi, like 29 other states and the District of Columbia will count your ballot if you mail it in as long as it's postmarked by election day.
N. Rodgers: Got you, so you can walk into election day in your post office, put in your ballot, and as long as they stamp it that day, whenever the state gets your ballot, they will consider you to have voted.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Legally voted. The case is potentially huge, Nia. Because in part, it's asking the justices to determine the meaning of election day, which was thus my question to Nia when I called her on the phone and said, hey, Nia. How would do you define election day.
N. Rodgers: He said it, and by the way, in case you're wondering, I knew it was a trap. I just didn't know what trap it was. What's that guy in Star Wars? It's a trap. I knew it was. My immediate question to Aughie was, oh, my gosh, that affects early voting, and he goes, no we're not there yet. We're just talking now about mail in voting. What he did was, of course, leave me with the if this goes in one way, then it could conceivably affect also early voting. Because if they determine that election day is one day, it will have a huge effect. But also, aren't there states where everybody votes by mail, like Washington. Doesn't Washington state do that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, not everybody. You got the option. In some states, it has been in practice or in use much longer. There is, the culture where a whole bunch of people, in a state like Washington, there are some people in the state of Washington who haven't been to an actual ballot location.
N. Rodgers: Polling place.
J. Aughenbaugh: A polling place, okay, for well over a decade.
N. Rodgers: I don't know but they would even know how to find it. Because they just mail their stuff in. I know that happens in some of the far flung states, like rural folks do that sometimes because there's not enough people in their area to have a polling place.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the reason why I thought that we needed to discuss this Nia, was that this Supreme Court term potentially is going to have a huge impact on voting in elections in the United States. We're going to get into the weeds of the Watson case in just a moment. But there are two other cases that the Supreme Court has already heard oral arguments about in regards to voting in elections. One, who can sue to challenge a state's mail in ballot rules. In that case arose in Illinois, where a member of the House of Representatives who won wanted to challenge the counting of some of the ballots that the state received and actually recorded. Because he argued his margin of victory would have been much larger.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say, if you won, what are you a sore winner?
J. Aughenbaugh: But the question that he was posing was, who has the right to sue to challenge the state's counting of mailed in ballots?
N. Rodgers: Is it only losers or can winners also do it? Traditionally, it's losers. Traditionally, losers say, it's really close and I want to recount.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the lower courts ruled against him saying he didn't have standing because he couldn't show injury. But his argument was, well.
N. Rodgers: I could have been even more victorious.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, but also too, in some states if your margin of victory. But Nia, we're making light of this. But you actually mentioned something really important. In some states, if your margin of victory is within a certain percentage.
N. Rodgers: Pushes an automatic recount.
J. Aughenbaugh: It pushes an automatic recount. If it is a slightly higher difference, your opponent then has the legal right to challenge and pay for it. Which would mean that the winner would have to go ahead and pay for a whole bunch of lawyers to go ahead and monitor the recount. His point was, we need to have some sort of shall we say, legal standard as to who can go ahead and challenge.
N. Rodgers: Because he doesn't want to pay to have all that done out of his war chest [OVERLAPPING] grew up every two years. They need the money.
J. Aughenbaugh: What a lot of Americans don't understand is, okay, future donors, might not go ahead and give money if they think that the candidate is a potential or likely loser in a future election.
N. Rodgers: Or even if it's close enough, they have to pay.
J. Aughenbaugh: For most of us Americans, we don't have such available money to donate. But many people who donate to campaigns want to pick winners so they can have access. Well, if they think that you barely held onto your seat, they might be less likely to go ahead and give you money for future elections.
J. Aughenbaugh: There is a potential injury because that's what we're talking about here is standing. Have you been injured, right? This elected officials point was, of course, I am potentially injured because I'm going to have to pay a whole bunch of money to go ahead and monitor a recount, or to go ahead and monitor how they actually counted their ballots. His point was, I may even have to do so even though I won the previous election because they've established now the practice of accepting all of these ballots that came in late. That's one case.
N. Rodgers: The ballots in this particular instance, could be counted if they are received up to 14 days later. The other thing that you show injury is, we may not know who won for a great deal of time. That's a long time. 14 days is a long time to not be sure whether you're going to have a job, keep a job, get a job.
J. Aughenbaugh: That actually came up in that case, his lawyer went ahead and said, "Are we discounting the emotional distress and uncertainty until you actually know when the state announces who won that election?" The other case, and we talked about this in our summer of SCOTUS preview of this term is the Callais case from the state of Louisiana, which is the battle over the Louisiana Congressional District map that could effectively got Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. All right? That's the section Nia, that requires that state legislative maps not minimize minority votes.
N. Rodgers: Take race into account when creating districts so that you don't disenfranchise people based on their race.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. But let's get to the Watson case.
N. Rodgers: Now is going to make me crabby. I'm just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and after the oral arguments, I'm thinking that there's a very good likelihood, Nia, you're going to be crabby. Back to the Watson case. Mississippi has a five-day grace period. Let's say an election day is November 6. According to the state of Mississippi, if your ballot is postmarked November 6, they will still count it if they receive it by November 11th. This is very similar, as I pointed out to 29 states and the District of Columbia, which allow election officials to count ballots that have been mailed by election day but arrive a few days later. For listeners, you may not know this, many of these grace period provisions went into effect during what recent public health crisis in the United States?
N. Rodgers: COVID-19 outbreak.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. All right?
N. Rodgers: They didn't want you standing in line on the polls coughing on each other and doing whatever. Please mail that in. Please don't physically show up. That's a potential health risk.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, as we discussed before that election on this podcast, I went ahead and pointed out that a whole bunch of states were ill-equipped for all this mail-in voting, and they didn't even have rules in place as to when they would stop counting. What many states had to do after that first election when COVID-19 hit was to pass laws that clearly allowed election officials to count ballots that were received after election day as long as they were postmarked by election day.
N. Rodgers: For X number of days.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you're one of those people who's, I postmarked it in Guam and it didn't get to whoever, well, actually in Guam, they would count on Guam. But I, rural Alaska, I postmarked it and it didn't get to somebody for a month. That's too long. That's why they put in a 5-day, or a 14-day, or a 10-day limit and say, "After that, even if we receive ballots, we will not consider them because they didn't make the cutoff window. Because you can only drag out elections for so long before, why bother to have an election? They taking ballots for a month.
J. Aughenbaugh: At some point in time-
N. Rodgers: People want to know.
J. Aughenbaugh: The voters want to know. When there's too long of a delay in announcing who actually won specific elections, then even people who are not conspiracy-minded begin to wonder what is going on here.
N. Rodgers: I wonder that the next day because I'm very conspiracy-minded. But Aughie's, you know, we're not going to know this for a couple of days. He sets me up every time with elections where he pats my hand and says, "This could take a few days. Be prepared for that." And I'm, no, it's all lies, lies and cheating. And he's, it's really not. It's just math. It's just doing math.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, Nia wants to know who won elections before she goes to bed.
N. Rodgers: That's right.
J. Aughenbaugh: On election day.
N. Rodgers: I want to know. I'll give you two hours. Polls close at 7:00, I want to go to bed at 9:00, I'm going to give you two hours. Then I want to know.
J. Aughenbaugh: She is a huge fan girl of Steve Kornacki. She wants to know from Steve, -
N. Rodgers: I want him to call it.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think you even refer to him by his first name as though you're-.
N. Rodgers: I did?
J. Aughenbaugh: On a first name basis. He wants to know from Steve who has won a particular election in some rural district in Wyoming, so she can go to bed knowing.
N. Rodgers: So I can go to bed knowing. Wyoming's voting is safe.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Steve wants to know that, too, because Steve never gets to go to bed. He looks wrecked. When I get up in the morning and I look at him, he looks all wrecked and he's been up all night drinking coffee talking about numbers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I'm actually concerned about his health and safety going into his 40s and 50s.
N. Rodgers: I hope he takes Ubers home.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not entirely sure that a human heart can take the kind of stress that he seems to reflect on election night.
N. Rodgers: The kind of stress and the level of coffee, although you've survived on extreme levels of coffee for years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because I basically removed blood from my system, Nia, and I've now replaced it with a coffee-based plasma system.
N. Rodgers: We need you to donate blood. That'd be nice if I had any.
J. Aughenbaugh: Back to the Watson case. In 2024, we'll get back to the president because let's face it, American politics today, at some point in time, you're going to have to bring it back to Trump because he's already commented. But anyways, in 2024, the Republican National Committee along with the Mississippi Republican Party and a few individual voters challenged Mississippi's mail-in ballot rules. They argued, and this is where we get back to the title of this episode. They argued that Congress had intended that voting take place on a single election day, and that allowing ballots to arrive days later and still be counted undermined election integrity and the public's trust in the vote. That should appeal to you, Nia. They're parroting your concerns, right?
N. Rodgers: Yeah, but my fear is that the slippery slope of this will be then early voting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hold on. Hold on.
N. Rodgers: Which we will get to in another case because I'm sure there'll be one.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, no, no, no. We'll discuss implications in just a moment. How did the challengers fare? Well, the federal trial court judge, upheld the Mississippi law, saying that the state met federal requirements that elections for elections because mail-in ballots had to be postmarked by election day. Interestingly enough, a three judge panel for the Fifth Circuit, which is usually the most conservative federal appeals court-
N. Rodgers: That's someone in New Orleans, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Sided with the challengers. The appeals court struck down Mississippi's grace period. What the appeals court held was that under federal law, ballots must be cast by voters and received by state officials on election day. The court said it was clear that a ballot was, "Cast," when the government received it.
N. Rodgers: They're not saying you couldn't mail it in ahead of time.
J. Aughenbaugh: The time. What they're saying is-
N. Rodgers: They're saying that as of 7:00 PM or whenever your polls close, but in your state on election day, we will take no more ballots.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: So it's not about being postmarked, it has to be there prior to the day of election.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. Mississippi asserted that the appeals court ruling, I love this, "Defies the federal election day statutes plain text."
N. Rodgers: Which is that states determine the time, place, and manner.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Aughie's favorite phrase, other than Commerce Clause.
J. Aughenbaugh: And then they have another quote. Lawyers also argued that invalidating the law would, "Have profound and destabilizing nationwide ramifications because it would scrap election laws in most states and would invite breakneck litigation and threatened electoral chaos."
N. Rodgers: I agree with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because what Mississippi's pointing out is, if the court takes the case this term, which it did, they're not going to have oral arguments until February. Why? How do we know this? Because the Supreme Court also this week announced its January hearing schedule and this case ain't on it. So that means at the earliest the court would hear it in February. And if there's any kind of division on the court, they probably won't issue the ruling until-.
N. Rodgers: May, June.
J. Aughenbaugh: May or June. Then that case-
N. Rodgers: The next election, by the way, is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2026.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: It would give states very little time to fix if there's something they need to have fixed.
J. Aughenbaugh: The challengers went ahead and pointed out that, hey, yes, a ruling so close to the 2026 midterms would be problematic. On the other hand, don't we already have chaos because a whole bunch of Americans don't trust the current election system where you may not know for six, seven days afterwards.
N. Rodgers: It's not unreasonable arguments on both sides. Although, what I find interesting about all of it is that, well, I find a lot of it interesting, but I also think it's interesting that Donald Trump is so against mail-in ballots. He thinks that they go against Republicans, but I hate to point this out to him. I know a lot of Republicans who mail-in their ballots. My mom doesn't go to the polling place anymore. She mails in her ballot. It's not a-
J. Aughenbaugh: According to the research, Nia, the party that uses mail-in ballots the most so far are Democrats. Democratic voters use mail-in ballots more. The margin of difference has been shrinking. Trump's point, is that mail-in ballots is what caused him to lose the 2020 presidential election. Now, almost every study that I have read has said there is no merit to that claim. All right?
N. Rodgers: That's a person who doesn't ever take responsibility. Somebody always did something. Sorry, personal comments.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, no, no, no. Nevertheless, that is the basis of his claim. All those mailed-in ballots, which again, a lot of the states went to these grace periods after the first election in COVID-19. The second federal election in COVID-19 was the 2020 presidential election. In Trump's mind, how could I have lost to Joe Biden, if not for this rather significant change in the counting of ballots?
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, I mean, you and I can go ahead and break that all down for Trump and his supporters. But nevertheless, that is his logic. He is vehemently opposed to one mail in ballots, but two, these grace periods. They're typically five days. Because Trump, like many of us, Can hint.
N. Rodgers: I don't share a huge number of traits with Donald Trump, but incredible Impatience is one of them. If he and I ever met, we could talk probably for hours about the things that we are impatient about. I get that. I get that he's like me. He wants to know before he goes to bed. He goes to bed later than I do. But he wants to know before he goes to bed, he wants Steve to be able to count everything and mark it off and say you either won or you lost. For him, the struggle of waiting several days to find out if he won or lost is very difficult. I understand that. I actually I don't think that like I said, I share a huge number of traits with Donald Trump, but I think that is one of them that we share. I'm not sure that he's looking beyond himself, to the fact that in many Republican controlled areas, ballots go to Republican vote in ballots go to Republicans, and as you said, that is becoming a more and more equalized.
J. Aughenbaugh: Part of the problem here is, according to scholars, and this is pretty widely accepted conclusion. The Republicans were at a deficit. Simply because they didn't openly embrace mail in voting voting by mail. Right as quickly as Democrats did. But Nia, to your point, Mail in voting could really turn the tide and actually benefit the Republican Party is in rural Republican areas. Again, so to your point, the President is being shortsighted, because if he was really concerned about the Republican Party being competitive in the future, the Republican Party would openly embrace voting by mail, Because there are a whole bunch of voters in rural areas, and listeners in the United States right now, rural voters are overwhelmingly Republican,
N. Rodgers: It's probably 80/20. it's some probably huge split. Rural folks tend to be conservative. They tend to be Republican.
J. Aughenbaugh: This could be a benefit to the Republican Party.
N. Rodgers: Now, the implications okay so long as the post office continues to deliver mail to and from people's individual homes, even in the rural areas.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of course, one of the great ironies you just mentioned the United States Postal Service, The United States Postal Service has been cutting back in rural areas because it's not cost efficient,
N. Rodgers: The Republican party should be careful about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is one of those situations where the person that Trump picked to run the United States Postal Service DeJoy, I think it was his name. Actually, came up with a plan, that was largely accepted by the board of governors for the Postal Service to cut services that were no longer cost efficient. A lot of services to rural areas are not cost efficient. If there are going to be delays in terms of voting by mail it would impact, okay, a whole bunch of potential Republican voters. Again, the president is being shortsighted here. The larger implication of the Watson case, Nia, is what you pointed to earlier in the episode. Which is, what if the Supreme Court takes the case agrees with the challengers that election day means, the votes have to be received by one day. Now, if they agree with the challengers, then by logic, early voting.
N. Rodgers: Would also not be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because again, you have people who are in some states voting as early as two months before the election. By the way, early voting definitely right now benefits the Democratic Party. Democratic Party supporters, use, early voting much more than Republican voters. But nevertheless, You couple this case with the Bos versus Illinois case, and then the Louisiana versus Calla case. The United States Supreme Court this term, beyond all the Trump cases. Beyond transgendered athletes being able or not being able to participate in sporting events.
N. Rodgers: Beyond beyond birthright citizenship, I mean.
J. Aughenbaugh: Beyond all those cases, this term listeners is setting up as one of the more significant Supreme Court terms. In regards to voting in elections in the United States,.
N. Rodgers: In the actual linchpins of democracy.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Yes.
N. Rodgers: They are being faced with some really interesting and hard cases. Kiss. The natural thing here to be is to say, no, if it doesn't happen on November 3 of next year, it's not happening. That's going to hurt. But I think this is me making a prediction. I don't usually make predictions. I usually Aggie makes predictions, but I'm going to make a prediction. That is that early voting currently is leans Democrat, the more the party shift in their base of who is what? Democrats used to be working people who couldn't get off of work, like you had to go show up at your job. More and more Democrats are becoming.
J. Aughenbaugh: The wealthy educated elites.
N. Rodgers: Well. Who will have the ability to go on voter on election day and vote. More Republicans are falling into the category of people who are working jobs where that may not be possible. If they're not careful, the Republican Party will legislate themselves out of office.
N. Rodgers: Again, I mean, I like to spread the blame. I still go back to the fact that many states were wholly unprepared for COVID 19. They scrambled to process that first election. They saw the problems that they had, then they went ahead and instituted these grace periods, and encouraged more voters to do mail in voting. But then again, bureaucrats at all levels of government need to understand you need to educate the public. If you're going to have a five day grace period, you need to go ahead and educate the public that you may not know who won a closely divided election until Day 6, Day 7, after the election. Voter registration offices or voter registers offices in a whole bunch of states there's no effort made, no money made to educate the public,. Guys. We've allowed you this grace period. If we give you, Nia, I'm going to use.
N. Rodgers: If we give you a grace period, then you won't know the election. If we don't give you a grace period, then you have these other.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I'm going to use cults. I'm going to use a comparison to close this episode. You've heard me discuss this off recording. It's like when students come to me and say, Professor Augenbach, can you push back the due date for this paper? My first reaction is always. If I push back the due date, that means I won't start grading these papers.
N. Rodgers: Until after X number of days that you wanted grace.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which means you may not know the grade on your paper before you take the final exam. Do you understand, the repercussion? A lot of students, then you complain to me. They're well, I didn't know what my paper grade was before I started studying for the exam. I'm but I told you guys, If you push this back, there are repercussions, Because I can't start grading until I get the papers.
N. Rodgers: Regrade your paper. You're probably going to get an A. That's not how that works.
J. Aughenbaugh: It wasn't Good and minority report when they were, investigating crimes. It doesn't work for college professors, and it doesn't work for voting, You got to wait until you get the ballots. If you get the grace period.
N. Rodgers: I mean, hello, how many polls have been completely wrong? We can't just guess.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Are there elections?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It would have been president instead of Roosevelt. I mean, hello.
J. Aughenbaugh: Truman.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sorry, Truman. Truman.
N. Rodgers: I mean, we can't can't just rely on what we think might probably happen. That's not how elections work. We have to see who shows up and who actually votes and how they vote. Nevertheless, I can't believe I'm going to say these words out loud, Aggie, but I'm actually I understand why they say, I don't want to have a long grace period. I would think that you you could allow a couple of days, maybe. But I get why they're saying Boss is saying, 14 days is too long.
J. Aughenbaugh: You want to wait. I mean. Again, there's a lot of moving parts with voting. We've discussed this in previous podcast episodes, If you're going to have so much voting by mail, then we need a postal service that is not cutting essential services,
N. Rodgers: That's faster. It's faster. One of the things they've done is slow everything down. That's one of the ways they're saving money. Except that this is a terrible thing to slow down on. I think Kornack and I can both agree on that.
J. Aughenbaugh: For both of you all, physical and mental health,
N. Rodgers: This needs to be faster.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because listeners, the number of election days where I've had, text from Nia.
N. Rodgers: Do you think they're going to do anything? I'm like I have no idea. He's like what? What am I a mind reader? You're a good friend.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's Nia, you knowing not to go ahead and text me when, the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing or the Yankees are doing a playoff game. Don't text Aggie, 'Cause the response you're going to get from Aggie is, What do you want?
N. Rodgers: I don't care. I don't care about anything except this. Oh. Well, it'll be interesting. It's going to be an interesting term. We're going to have a lot of interesting cases. You and I are going to be spending a lot of time with Ascot this term. Really taking on some interesting stuff. They're trying.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, and again, with what we know about John Roberts, I bet right now.
N. Rodgers: We have his job?
J. Aughenbaugh: I bet right now he's just chemists Did we have to take a third voting in an election case? didn't we bite off enough with the first two, Why are we taking this one? I'm telling you right now, If I had to venture a guess the four justices who voted to take this case, Thomas Alito GorsGorsuch. Probably Cai Barrett. Either of those two, But the Liberals wouldn't want to touch this one with a ten foot pole. I bet John Roberts.
N. Rodgers: John Roberts was like. No.
J. Aughenbaugh: Don't we already have enough on our plate because of the dude who works in the Oval office? Really? Don't we already have enough, Then you throw in some state laws in regards to, transgendered athletes. We already have enough on Ab, guys.
N. Rodgers: Birthright citizenship, which we thought we settled 200 years ago, but apparently, we haven't. It's going to be an interesting term for them. They are living in interesting times.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aggie.
You've been listening to Civil Discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.