Election dry law: How will the measure be applied in the main cities? - Other Cities - Colombia

The Association of Bars of Colombia (Asobares) asked the Constitutional court to review how the Prohibition Law will be applied for the next elections.

David Contreras, member of the national board of directors of Asobares, said that they are working in Congress with several groups regarding the beginning of the dry law for the ordinary elections, a measure that is from six in the afternoon on Saturday, until six in the morning on Monday.

“With a view to the March elections, the first presidential round in May and a possible second round in June, it is more important that the Constitutional Court rule quickly on the revision of this Law approved in Congress, where the law is limited dry at the time of the day on election day,” said Contreras.

A weekend is everything in our activity. The operation of the establishments has a concentration on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays

The spokesman added that “said decision would greatly help multiple economic activities and their workforce, which would see an infinitely lesser impact than the damage it has caused since the 1980s.”

For her part, Adriana Plata, president of Asobares, said: “A weekend is everything in our activity. The operation of the establishments has a concentration on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays which, with 12 days of work, the costs of the whole month must be paid. Each weekend that advances has a specific destination, where the generality is that one is destined for payroll, the second for rent payments, the third for the payment of suppliers and services and the fourth, the profitability of the company and provision for taxes.”

Due to the foregoing, the representatives of the union asked the Constitutional Court that, given the situation they experienced with the pandemic and that there are several days of elections, “it would be a great boost for the procedure and decision to be carried out in the Court so that the limitation of the dry law adjusts solely and exclusively to the time and day of the electoral appointment”.

Supreme Court Sides With GOP in Alabama Election Map Case

Washington — 

The Supreme Court on Monday put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power. The high court order boosts Republican chances to hold six of the state’s seven seats in the House of Representatives.

The court’s action, by a 5-4 vote, means the upcoming elections will be conducted under a map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature that contains one majority-Black district, represented by a Black Democrat, in a state in which more than a quarter of the population is Black.

A three-judge lower court, including two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, had ruled that the state had likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters by not creating a second district in which they made up a majority, or close to it.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, part of the conservative majority, said the lower court acted too close to the 2022 election cycle.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined his three more liberal colleagues in dissent.

The justices will at some later date decide whether the map produced by the state violates the landmark voting rights law, a case that could call into question “decades of this Court’s precedent about Section 2 of the VRA,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent.

That decision presumably will govern elections in 2024 through the end of the decade in Alabama and could affect minority political representation elsewhere in the country, too.

Alabama lawmakers redrew the state’s congressional districts following the results of the 2020 census. Several groups of voters sued, arguing that the new maps diluted the voting power of Black residents.

In a unanimous ruling in late January, the three judges said that the groups were likely to succeed in showing that the state had violated the Voting Rights Act. As a result, the panel ordered lawmakers to redraw the districts so Black voters would be a majority, or close to it, in two districts, not one. The ruling ran more than 200 pages.

The panel wrote that “we do not regard the question … as a close one.”

Alabama asked the Supreme Court to put the ruling on hold while it appeals, and the justices agreed. The state argued that it drew the new map guided by race-neutral principles and that the new map is similar to past maps.

More than a dozen mostly Republican-led states had filed a brief urging the justices to side with Alabama and allow it to use the maps it originally drew.

Deuel Ross, a lawyer for Alabamians who sued, called the state’s congressional districts “a textbook case of a Voting Rights Act violation” and said the high court’s decision to intervene is disheartening.

The facts are clear, Ross, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Alabama’s current congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act,” he said. “The litigation will continue, and we are confident that Black Alabamians will eventually have the congressional map they deserve — one that fairly represents all voters.”

Roberts, who typically votes against consideration of race, wrote that he shares some of Alabama’s concerns, but still would have let the redrawn districts govern the 2022 election and have future elections governed by the ultimate outcome in the case.

Kavanaugh, writing to explain his vote, stressed that the court has repeatedly declined in the past to change the rules close to an election.

“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled. Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others. It is one thing for a State on its own to toy with its election laws close to a State’s elections. But it is quite another thing for a federal court to swoop in and re-do a State’s election laws in the period close to an election,” he wrote in an opinion Alito joined.

Taking issue with Kavanaugh, Kagan noted that the lower court ruled months before any votes will be cast.

She criticized the conservatives for using the emergency application process known as the shadow docket “to signal or make changes in the law, without anything approaching full briefing and argument.”

Trump Is 'Wrong' to Say Election Could Have Been Overturned

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday directly rebutted Donald Trump’s false claims that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply “wrong.”

In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump’s intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that he could have done something to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

“President Trump is wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

While Pence in the past has defended his actions on January 6 and has said that he and Trump will likely never see “eye to eye” on what happened that day, the remarks Friday marked his most forceful rebuttal of Trump to date. And they come as Pence has been laying the groundwork for a potential run for president in 2024, which could put him in direct competition with his former boss, who has also been teasing a comeback run.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally, Jan. 15, 2022, in Florence, Ariz.

In a statement Tuesday, Trump said the committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol should instead look into “why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval.” And on Sunday, he blasted Pence, falsely declaring that “he could have overturned the Election!”

Vice presidents play only a ceremonial role in the counting of Electoral College votes, and any attempt to interfere in the count would have represented a profound break from precedent and democratic norms.

Pence, in his remarks Friday, described January 6, 2021, as “a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.”

Pence was inside the building, presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify the presidential election, when a mob of Trump’s supporters violently smashed inside, assaulting police officers and hunting down lawmakers. Pence, who had released a statement earlier that day to make clear he had no authority to overturn the will of the voters, was rushed to safety as some rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”

Pence framed his actions that day as in line with his duty as a constitutional conservative.

“The American people must know that we will always keep our oath to the Constitution, even when it would be politically expedient to do otherwise,” he told the group Friday. He noted that, under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, “elections are conducted at the state level, not by Congress” and that “the only role of Congress with respect to the Electoral College is to open and count votes submitted and certified by the states. No more, no less.”

“Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” he added. “Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”

Pence also acknowledged the lingering anger among many in Trump’s base. But he said: “The truth is, there’s more at stake than our party or political fortunes. Men and women, if we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections — we’ll lose our country.”