The MAGAs don’t care how you vote on the proposed constitutional amendments on reproductive rights and same-sex marriage, because if their side loses, they’ll just find a judge to help them invalidate your vote – and the votes of millions of others in Virginia.
“We would seek to be in court as soon as possible to ask the court to overturn the result, similar to how it happened with the redistricting amendment,” said Josh Hetzler, who serves as the legislative counsel to the Family Foundation of Virginia, which, for the moment, is trying to work the GOTV approach to defeating Amendments #1 and #2.
But if the other side is better at getting out the vote, which is likely, given how the midterm congressional elections at the top of the ballot are trending, well, no worry.
The MAGAs already got a guy – the judge in Tazewell County who was the go-to robed one in the battle to overturn the will of the voters in the spring on the redistricting amendment.
Jack S. Hurley Jr. was appointed to his judgeship by the disgraced Republican ex-governor Bob McDonnell in 2012, after running for a seat in the House of Delegates in 1999 – as the Republican nominee – and losing by 11 points.
Losing there no doubt worked out for him – instead of being one vote of 100, Hurley gets a gavel that can cancel out the votes of literally millions.
There’s a case pending in Hurley’s court challenging procedural matters around the reproductive rights amendment, which we can expect to get revived sometime around Nov. 4 or so.
The MAGAs tried another suit in Campbell County, brought by Charla Bansley, a Bedford County supervisor, adjunct professor at Liberty University, former communications director at Liberty Counsel and former state director at Concerned Women for America, another evangelical political outfit.
This Charla Bansley: she’s out there.
Bansley was represented by Liberty Counsel, an evangelical outfit classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.
Liberty Counsel: also out there.
Though the suit was dismissed, Bansley signaled what the endgame was.
“We lost the first round yesterday. But God still has a plan!” Bansley wrote on her socials after the setback in court over the summer.
That plan, per her message: “Next stop – Virginia Supreme Court.”
That’s all Hurley is good for himself – whichever way he goes with his ruling, the legal matter over the amendments would go to the Virginia Supreme Court.
You remember the Virginia Supreme Court – the one that invalidated the votes of 3 million Virginians who voted in our April 21 referendum on redistricting.
There are four MAGA activist judges on our Supreme Court just itching for another chance to rewrite Virginia law by judicial fiat.
The governor and the General Assembly could have taken care of the issue with the MAGA judicial activists back in the spring, but anyway, here we are.
ICYMI
Share
Chris Graham
