Ishan v. KaiserDave

[Sestak]

As a third party in this case, I would like to ask that this case be dismissed as quickly as possible. By petitioner's own citation, "Whenever the governor and their designee if applicable should be unable to perform this duty, the speaker of the General Court...shall administer the election." The Governor and his appointed designee have both failed to open the election for not one but two successive weekends; such failure surely qualifies as an inability to perform duty. Thus it falls to Speaker ReaganClinton, who has opened the election this weekend.

Petitioner intends to have this ongoing election invalidated while giving no actual ground to support such an action. It is a compelling interest that our elections be saddled with as little public doubt as possible while voting is ongoing; therefore I ask this Court for immediate dismissal.

J.K. Sestak, former President of the Republic

[Sestak]

ISHAN, Petitioner

v.

KAISER DAVE, Governor of Lincoln

Brief of Respondent in opposition to granting of writ of certiorari and/or immediate enjoinment


I concur with the amicus brief of the former President (lmao), and ask that the case be dismissed. The vacancy has, as petitioner himself notes, existed since 26 February. The mandated date for the special election to begin was Friday 4 March. Not only was this date missed but a potential rerun one week later, Friday 11 March, was also missed. Given these circumstances, it seems evident that Respondent and his representative were unable to administer the election. As, again, Petitioner himself noted, the right of administration then falls to Speaker ReaganClinton.

Respondent has also since issued the following executive order; it has indicated that Respondent fully believes ReaganClinton has the authority to run the election; this further indicates that the situation was inability to open the election on time, and not "unwillingness" in an effort to prevent the election from occurring. In addition, to further remove doubt as to ReaganClinton's authority, he has now been designated as Respondent's official "person of their choosing" to administer elections.

Finally, a note on election timing: While elections that are completely missed are sometimes run exactly a week or two weeks after their original schedule, this is not a legal requirement, nor is it even universal. Election booths opening hours after their original schedule due to the administrator being unavailable for that time is a quite common occurrence. This election was opened while an election held exactly one week late would have still been ongoing; there is absolutely no reason that it should be considered any less legitimate than an election exactly one or two weeks late.

In conlusion, Respondent does not dispute that they failed to open the election voting booth on time. However, there already exists a constitutional remedy for such failure in the form of fallback officials to administer the election. As one of those such officials has carried out the constitutional remedy there is no further reason for this court to intervene. I ask again for immediate dismissal.

J. K. Sestak, counsel for respondent.

[Sestak]

Brief of Respondent in response to the Southern Attorney General

The standard proposed by amicus is wholly unrealistic and would retroactively invalidate tens of elections held over the last several years. One of these elections, amusingly, is his own recent election to the Senate, which was opened approximately one hour late. If his argument is that this was within a few hours so it's acceptable, then this still invalidates the even larger number of elections held exactly one week late. If these are also fine, then it makes no sense to declare that elections held within hours of the scheduled time are legitimate and those held exactly a week late are legitimate, but those that miss being exactly a week late by a few hours are not.

The standard of asking for 1 week notice is even more absurd. The Lincoln Consitution does not even necessarily provide one week between a vacancy and in some cases mandates that the election occur as soon as 48 hours and 1 minute after a vacancy. In addition, once again, this standard automatically invalidates the large number of elections held one week too late since it is impossible to give notice of such an election a week in advance; doing so would require giving notice before the initial election had even been missed.

Finally, the ridiculous request to PM every voter in Lincoln is a clear indication that amicus does not take their positions or this case remotely seriously. We reiterate our request for summary dismissal.