8th Circuit of Hell in a Handbasket

I don't use the word evil, but it's getting really hard to come up with an adjective for people who file lawsuits to make it so votes sent by Election Day can be discounted. 

This has already happened in a couple of other states, and a Minnesota case — filed by two Minnesota legislators — was just decided by the 8th Circuit, with the outcome that ballots postmarked by Election Day but received after that date must be segregated so they can be challenged.

Here's the make-up of the 8th Circuit, thanks to Tyler Blackmon's handy Wikipedia-fu:

(Click to enlarge, showing 10 Republican-appointed judges, 1 Democratic-appointed judge... four appointed by Trump.)

I feel as though this case was fairly decided, don't you? One of the commenters on Blackmon's tweet pointed out that the Trump judges all filled spots that had been open while Obama was still president, but were held up by Mitch McConnell.

As background, it's important to know that Minnesota had settled its procedure for mailing in absentee ballots during this unprecedented pandemic back in the summer. The state Republican Party was not challenging it. But what do you know! These two legislators took it upon themselves, or whatever, who knows who's behind them, to challenge it anyway.

And now — five days before Election Day, and well within the amount of time that it could take a ballot to arrive these days, given Louis DeJoy's postal service — that decision has been thrown into doubt, so a voter will not know for sure that their ballot will count.

Everyone and their sibling is putting out the word that if you have a ballot and haven't sent it in yet, you should drop it off by hand at this point. But there are people who mailed them today or yesterday whose ballots will not arrive in time, we all know there are. It's already too late for them.

This is so wrong, so anti-democratic. But we all knew that already. They know they can't win if the majority has a say.

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Update: The 8th Circuit vote was 2–1, with the Obama-appointed judge in the minority (of course, and writing a dissent). One of the two affirmative votes was from a Trump judge, Leonard Grasz, and one was from a Bush judge. Grasz was rated not qualified by the American Bar Association when he was appointed back in 2017 because of he was biased and gratuitously rude. Sounds about par for the Republican course!