The Virginia Supreme Court sent Democrats into conniptions with a ruling on Friday striking down as unconstitutional a ballot measure that would have all but guaranteed their party another four seats in the U.S. Congress.
Democrats’ desperation to force through their illegal power-grab in the wake of the 4-3 decision now has them considering truly extreme options, including lowering the retirement age for justices on the Old Dominion’s high court, purging its current lineup, and stacking it with liberals.
‘Baby steps.’
While their comrades plot alternative ways of disenfranchising millions of Republican voters in Virginia, Democratic state officials are trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to revive their gerrymandering initiative.
The Democrats behind the likely doomed petition are, however, having difficulties with spelling and differentiating between disparate courts.
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, House Speaker Don Scott, and President Pro Tempore of the Virginia Senate Louise Lucas filed a joint motion late on Friday asking the Old Dominion’s Supreme Court to delay its order invalidating the gerrymander referendum and the corresponding constitutional amendment proposed on the ballot while they appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) highlighted a glaring spelling error in the court filing, which was submitted by state Solicitor General Tillman Breckenridge. Near the top, Virginia House of Delegates was spelled “Virgnia House of Delegates.”
RELATED: Democrats propose purging Virginia Supreme Court so they can force through illegal power-grab
Mike Kropf-Pool/Getty Images
Miyares wrote, “If you are going to appeal to SCOTUS maybe don’t misspell Virginia?”
Other keen observers — including Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon — pointed out that in the document, “senator” was spelled “sentator.”
Miyares continued: “This is a motion that has zero chance to succeed and is [a] Hail Mary to save face after wasting $70 million in political money and $10 million in taxpayer money on an illegal, unconstitutional gerrymandering amendment. This motion will be declared dead on arrival.”
Democratic Virginia officials — evidently willing to test Miyares’ theory that their motion “will be declared dead on arrival” — filed an emergency application on Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting a stay of the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision that they claimed was “deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.”
The emergency application not only contained the Democratic officials’ previous embarrassing spelling mistakes but a brand-new error on the first page, referring to an “emergency application to the Supreme Court of Virginia,” rather than the Supreme Court of the United States.
“Good News: Dems managed to spell Virginia correctly,” Miyares wrote on Tuesday. “Bad News: They sent their emergency application to SCOTUS to the wrong court. Baby steps.”
U.S. Supreme Court
Miyares’ quip aside, the Virginia Democrats managed to get their mistitled petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Even still, Edward Whelan, a legal scholar and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, discovered other possible problems. “Very weird that cover page states ‘On Emergency Application to the Supreme Court of Virginia,'” noted Whelan. “That’s the styling for a petition for a writ of certiorari, but it makes no sense to say that the emergency application is ‘to’ the Supreme Court of Virginia.”
But the greater blunder, suggested Whelan, is that the Democratic petitioners do not appear to be asking for the right relief.
“Even if the Supreme Court were to grant Virginia’s emergency application for a stay (it won’t), that would still leave in place the lower-court injunction that the state supreme court affirmed,” wrote Whelan.
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