A district court has stayed the elimination of straight-ticket Voting in Texas. I smell something rotten in Gilberto Hinojosa's Democratic Denmark. And, per and/or contra Kuff, who says the Fifth Circuit will almost certainly overrule this stay, but hopes in a Sam Gamgee way that maybe we're too close for election day for this to happen? Bullshit. Fifth Circuit will boot this thing on its ass, and rightly so. 

The idea that individual ballot selection will cause unhealthy undue delays in the light of coronavirus? Fifth Circuit, which has already tossed a 26th-Amendment based suit against restricting voting by mail to senior citizens and the sick, can use that as one angle to overrule Marina Garcia Marmolejo. The 5th can also refer to Strangebbott expanding early voting by a week, and the Texas Supreme Court's "don't ask, don't tell" ruling on asking for a mail ballot. Given that the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans was added as plaintiff after the previous suit failed (and, with a name like that, sounds like a made-up group), the 5th can also, per that failed lawsuit, point toward Texas law and arguably claim it lacks standing as an already protected class. And, that "Texas Alliance" is actually part of an AFL-CIO national alliance. Shock me.

Marmolejo raised rhetorically, then trashed, most of the above arguments in her order.

Also via a Kuff post? Given that Marmolejo tossed the original suit at the end of June, when COVID was already known to be serious, upholding this smells like bullshit. The cases she cites as precedent also seem like bullshit. United States vs Marengo County Commission was about redistricting. So was Kirksey vs Board of Supervisors of Hinds County. I expect the 5th Circuit to trash these graspings at straws.

Yes, the GOP used the straight ticket to get to power, then worried and decided to end it. And? Dems in the old days used it to hold on to power.