In one of the most refreshing and enlightened exercises of judicial integrity I’ve seen in a while, Judge Donald W. Molloy set a hearing date for the Montana Democratic Party’s (and 2 named Plaintiffs’) motion for preliminary injunctive relief - next Tuesday, October 14 at 9 am in the Missoula Federal District Courthouse. This order denied the plaintiffs' motion for a TRO, which was moot by the time the ruling came out due to the MT Republicans' withdrawal of the 6,000 challenges (and before that by SoS's action in directing counties to not send notices to challenged voters).
Judge Molloy left no literary tool unused in his scalding assessment of the voter challenges filed just 39 days before the November 4 federal elections.
Starting with this quote from Aristotle:
If liberty and equality, as is thought by
some, are chiefly to be found in democracy,
they will be best attained when all persons
alike share in the government to the utmost.
then a quote from Herbert Kohl, footnoted to p. 85 of Bill Moyers’ “Moyers on Democracy”:
If we do not provide time for the
consideration of people and events in depth,
we may end up training another generation of
television adults who know what kind of toilet
paper to buy, who know how to argue and
humiliate others, but who are thoroughly
incapable of discussing, much less dealing
with, the major social and economic problems
that are tearing America apart.
The Honorable Judge Molloy states:
"Ostensibly justified by their concern for the integrity of the electoral system, the individual defendants have apparently filed false affidavits with the express intent to disenfranchise voters in counties that have historically tipped toward the Democratic party.
***
Some of the challenged voters have provided sworn testimony demonstrating that Eaton’s concern for integrity is of a limited scope, and does not extend to the affidavits he filed requesting the cancellation of their voter registration. According to the record, Eaton plans to file more challenges across the state of Montana before election day. His public expressions of concern for the integrity of the democratic process and for the rights of his fellow Montanans notwithstanding, these challenges do not appear directed at the state-wide voting population, but rather at select counties that likely contain concentrations of Democratic voters.
***
Determined to prevent the Hobbesian nightmare sure to ensue if voters’ mailing addresses do not match their residential addresses, Eaton employed an auditor to pore over the United States Postal Service’s change of address registry, and to compare the names in it to the names on voter rolls in some Montana counties. A self-described guardian of the integrity of a political system designed to guarantee the right of the people to govern themselves, Eaton targeted counties with young and likely Democratic voters, who might have changed their mailing addresses without changing their voter registration information. The challenge theory must be that such voters might compromise the democratic process by going off to college or serving in the military overseas, and forwarding their mail to their new location or to a family member – both examples of voters Eaton challenged.
In his zeal to protect what he sees as Montana’s fragile democracy from these transient hordes, Eaton ignored the very law that answers his challenges. How can one so concerned with the integrity of the State’s democratic process be adept at invoking the law to keep people from voting, without realizing that the same law renders his claim meritless if not frivolous?"
Read the order at:
http://www.leftinthewest.com/upload/Order%20Denying%20TRO.PDFWho says federal court opinions are boring? Heh.
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