What are your reasons for voting for Hillary?

[Virginiá]

In order of most to least important:

1. Finish the the decimation of the conservative federal judiciary from the top -> down. If a Republican is elected this year, the Supreme Court may very well remain with a conservative majority for many more years, especially if Kennedy retires at the beginning of the term to allow Trump to pick his successor. Kennedy is getting very old, after all. So at this point I don't care who the Democrat is, given the current composition of the Democratic party. Getting bad campaign finance decisions rolled back and voting rights protected again is my number one issue right now.

2. Prevent a Republican federal trifecta from setting back liberal causes god knows how long.

3. Sanders is too much of an activist-type for me, and I think once the attacks were to really start, he wouldn't fare so well in the GE. His no-PAC fundraising scheme really did it for me - It's crazy to go against Republicans without it. I want CU overturned, but I think for now it might not be wise / possible to try and take the high road to win. I' don't think he would be great for the party long-term, either. Not everyone is as liberal as him, yet he hasn't seemed like he has factored them into his campaign.

That's the most noteworthy reasons I have. I do want a woman president, but the issues really matter more than that, imo. I know that it's unlikely (so far) Democrats will be able to take back all of Congress while basically any Democrat holds the White House (as the president's party always has trouble making gains during such a time), but we can work on that later. The federal judiciary can not just be shaped at a whim.

(as for the courts - many times, there are some fundamental differences in how conservative and liberal judges interpret the law/constitution, and I have completely lost faith in conservatives after the evisceration of election laws/voting rights under the Roberts court)

[Virginiá]

Yes. This is exactly why Hillary should not be elected president. A left leaning, activist court will set the country back for a couple of generations. Having justices who interpret what the Constitution says, not what they want it to say, that is actually quite an important issue.

I didn't say activist. How do you define that? Not all judges interpret the Constitution the same, and that is why there are different wings of the court that diverge on numerous issues. I don't believe in the textualist view, maybe you do, but you should also accept that there different opinions on a lot of this.

[Virginiá]

Yes. This is exactly why Hillary should not be elected president. A left leaning, activist court will set the country back for a couple of generations. Having justices who interpret what the Constitution says, not what they want it to say, that is actually quite an important issue.

I didn't say activist. How do you define that? Not all judges interpret the Constitution the same, and that is why there are different wings of the court that diverge on numerous issues. I don't believe in the textualist view, maybe you do, but you should also accept that there different opinions on a lot of this.

Interpreting the Constitution is not the issue; I understand that there will be differences of opinion regarding how to apply what the Constitution says. Where I draw the line (and where I believe the Constitution draws the line) is at the point where Justices start getting into the minutiae of an issue. The politics of a person on the Court should be of secondary importance; the primary concern should be having people that will not try to impose their politics from the bench, as that goes beyond what the Court was designed to do, and will just lead to problems down the road.

That's a fair point, and also one I would argue is central to Shelby v Holder, where the Roberts court conservative majority gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. They said that the 40 year old formula was out of date and thus unconstitutional, despite there being nothing about expiration dates for voting rights protections with that formula in anything. They said it wasn't applicable anymore, and guess what, right after they gutted it, all those states they said weren't relevant to it anymore immediately began passing voting restrictions. Their reasoning was wrong, and the rationale for their reasoning was wrong, and I haven't seen so much as an apology so far for the egregious harm they have caused to fair elections since 2010.

I don't necessarily want bench legislators as you stated but I'm sick of the Roberts court and conservative judges in general in regards to voting rights and campaign finance regulations. I want them gone. If liberal judges end up having their own problems, we can talk about replacing them whenever that time comes, but things need to change right now.