Reassurance Thread: MANY CASES
Good Friday Evening, All.
I'm not going to have time to go through everything in more than minimal detail, but I thought a Friday Evening update might help everyone.

There has been a lot of movement in the last few hours, all good.

I am NOT going to go into detail on any one of these cases, and I am NOT going to do specific screenshots, but I can give you impressions on several cases. For specifics, see
@marceelias @bradheath and many others; for the decisions in question, see https://www.democracydocket.com/cases 

Seriously, consider signing up for @DemocracyDocket's newsletter and helping out if you can - they've done just an outstanding job all election cycle.

Also, another good news ruling (AZ) just came in; I'll be back to doing the thread in about 5 minutes, after I skim that one.

Ok - needed less time than I thought. The AZ decision was only 9 pages.

(Yes, a close read would take much longer, but I knew what I was looking for with each filing and could go through them that quickly.)

Here's where we are:
1: The Minnesota Supreme Court has dismissed an elections contest brought under state law. IIRC, this was filed as an original action there under provisions that permit that to happen with certain elections.

There were three claims; 2 of the 3 were dismissed for laches; the 3rd for - wait for it - failure to sue the correct defendants.

Michigan denied permission to appeal in a case - not laches exactly, but the petitioners waited so long to serve process that the case was moot before it could be addressed in court.

BIG DEAL DECISION - the Nevada case that some of you were worried about (the one with the hearing yesterday and the "Biden Bus" allegations) has been dismissed. The written ruling in this case is long and at least seems to be carefully drafted (remember, I've not read closely).

The judge made explicit findings that, as far as I could tell on the first read, none of the Republican experts were credible and that none of the fact witnesses were credible, including the one who testified to the bus incident.

For the nonlawyers:
This is important because it is a massive blow to the Republican hopes for an appeal. A trial judge hears the testimony and looks at the witnesses; appeals courts don't. Appeals courts know this.

As a result, appeals courts are very reluctant to overturn a trial court's findings of fact or credibility determinations. They might look at how the court applies the law skeptically, but a factual determination genreally has to be "clearly erroneous" to be reversed.

My first take on the decision that was issued is that it is Very Bad for any Republican hopes to prevail at Nevada's Supreme Court.

ARIZONA - Also big. This was the one that came in as I was starting the thread. This was the case where the judge, in what I thought (and still think) was an overly generous decision, allowed review of samples of signatures and duplicate ballots.

The court found:
1: That the evidence does not show fraud or misconduct;
2: That the evidence does not show illegal votes; and
3: That the evidence does not show that the count was incorrect.

The challenge has been dismissed.

The factual findings here weren't as extensive as those in NV, but the judge did review for the record the findings of the signature experts and the results of the duplicate ballot review.

All signatures were inspected to forensic standards by experts (one from each side). The defense expert actually found more signatures to be inconclusive than the plaintiff's expert; neither found any to be suspicious.

All inconclusives were apparently also viewed by the court.

And the court found that the duplication errors were errors, that there wasn't a pattern of favoritism on either side, that the accuracy rate was nearly 99.5%, and that the errors could not affect the outcome.

This will also be a very hard case for the Republicans to successfully appeal. Little here for an appeals court to look at that isn't rooted in a factual determination.

Oh, and the 11th Circuit just Medusa'd the Georgia tentacle back to the trial court because, shocker of shockers, you can't appeal a TRO decision that you won.

I may look at that one in more detail, probably tomorrow.

Almost forgot -
The Wisconsin Supreme Court booted another original action. The 3 most conservative members wanted to look at that one, no surprise. That one's noteworthy because there's a Hagedorn (the swing vote) concurrence.

The concurrence makes it very clear that Hagedorn is Very Not On Board undoing the election. So my already-low level of concern over the still-pending state case there is as near-zero as it gets.

The only hint of shadow tonight comes from the just-filed Trump challenge in Georgia state court. I don't know enough about GA elections law to be a reliable and competent commentator on that case, so I'll be watching that one with the rest of you.

For clarity: that's not me saying that I'm worried or that you should be. I just don't know enough about that one to give an opinion.

Anyway - that should wrap up tonight. I'd expect White House rage tweeting tonight/tomorrow morning.

Appeals probably will be filed shortly in NV and AZ, but that's just going through the motions at this point.

Enjoy your night and your weekend.

POSTSCRIPT:
It looks like there's Trumpian yammering about a big victory in Michigan. It also looks like the win is that some Dominion machines get inspected.

When you're losing case after case and the big win is very limited discovery in one case, you ain't having a great day.

My new bottle of Glenfiddich 15 isn't new anymore. https://twitter.com/troycoverdale/status/1335018274417995777?s=20

Post-Postscript -
I've got no confirmation on the MI thing; that's literally their best case for tonight.