Horowitz: Florida judge creates constitutional right to ballot-harvesting while virtue-signaling over Ukraine

You don’t have a right to breathe without gagging your mouth, but you do have a right to access mail-in ballots from private third parties indiscriminately mailed to your home. Put another way, government has to accommodate your convenience preferences for voting but can take action against your body and create apartheid for those who don’t engage in medical experiments. That is the worldview of Florida federal Judge Mark Walker.

SB 90, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis last May, prohibited unsolicited mailing of ballots, drop boxes, ballot-harvesting by third parties, and the use of private money in the administration of elections.

In a racist, political screed that was more political than what is typically debated even in the political branches of government, Judge Walker of the Northern District of Florida declared much of SB 90 unconstitutional, thereby concocting a right to ballot harvesting, drop-off boxes without surveillance, and other government hand-holding of voters through the use of private organizations with a political agenda.

"For the past 20 years, the majority in the Florida Legislature has attacked the voting rights of its Black constituents," Walker wrote, thinking his unelected position is worth more than a democratically elected legislature.

Mind you, he could never cite any proof of intentional discrimination against any particular group. “Skilled and well-respected judges from multiple courts examined the provisions discussed above, and they all found that the Florida Legislature did not enact them with the intent to discriminate based on race,” conceded Walker. But then he ruled that because he believes it has “discriminatory effect,” “this Court cannot ignore other relevant evidence of intent just because it does not fit neatly under a particular factor.”

This is very politically convenient for him. Yet the fact that minorities tend to vote Democrat doesn’t vest Democrats with greater power or extra rights to mandate more voting procedures and conveniences any more than rural white voters could demand more conveniences in voting in more spread-out polling locations in the country because providing such service helps the Republican Party.

One could conjure up a disparate impact theory to attack any election law on the assumption that these administrative procedures will help or hurt one particular group based on their habits, culture, and location. But that doesn’t mean the law is discriminatory. For example, if Republicans succeed in gaming out early voting on Saturdays at rural gun clubs the same way Democrats have succeed in past get-out-the-vote efforts on Sunday with black churches, does that mean the state must provide early voting on Saturday?

Ironically, as Walker accuses the governor of discriminating against Latino as well as black voters on some provisions, he does concede that it’s not quite as bad. Why? “Latino Floridians are not particularly affiliated with either party,” he notes. Clearly, he is reading the polls showing DeSantis with a strong approval rating among those voters. Thus, the entirety of constitutional rights, according to Walker, hinges upon the voting preferences of voters. If black voters began to swing away from the Democrats as much as Latinos, I’m sure he would suddenly be fine with banning ballot-harvesting and drop boxes.

The judge’s opinion was rife with political rhetoric, citation of op-eds, and even a footnote virtue-signaling over how amazingly democratic Ukrainians are fighting for the right to vote. “The current war in Ukraine, in which the Ukrainian people are fighting and dying to maintain the freedoms we take for granted—namely, the right to have a voice and not to be ruled by a despot—provides a poignant reminder of both the value and fragility of democracy,” wrote Walker in the first footnote of the 288-page polemic.

In many respects he is not wrong. The voting model created by the Soros-backed voter fraud industry has actually made our elections very similar to those in Ukraine. When was the last time they had fair elections in Ukraine?

Walker has a history of acting as a super-legislature over voting issues and even had to recuse himself in one case because his wife served as the attorney representing the plaintiffs in one of the cases.

The entire premise of his opinion was built upon the fact that anyone who is not white is incapable of voting unless the government essentially allows voter fraud organizations to serve the vote up on a platter. At a time when negative inalienable rights are being terminated – you know, like the right to breathe or to access public accommodation without being subjected to medical experimentation – Walker is creating affirmative “rights” to active government assistance, of course, through the conduit of left-wing organizations.

Walker also mandated that the state submit any voter law changes to his highness for the next 10 years. Perhaps he will mandate internet voting one day. Or maybe he will render all votes of non-white voters for the Democrat Party even if they don’t vote, because, you know, that’s how they really want to vote but they are just incapable of articulating or acting upon it without the assistance of Walker’s allied street organizers.

Walker says that the ban on private groups acting like election judges is somehow tantamount to blocking people from handing out water at the polls. Yet other judges like Walker have turned down lawsuits from people forced to wear masks in order to vote. Rape victims and those with disabilities were told they couldn’t vote in many states without harming their breathing, yet if you don’t allow street agitators to offer solicitations of public ballots or a drop box outside an official election office, you are violating the Constitution and harming those with disabilities. Your rights don’t come from God; they come from government and can be added or deleted at the whims of tyrants like Walker.

We could dismiss this judge as one lone kook, but this is the prevailing ideology among the entire leftist political movement, and it’s most evident in legal circles. These people not only reject fundamental rights, but they have inverted constitutional rights completely upside down in order to enshrine their behaviors, political goals, and values as the new rights. You don’t have freedom from government, but you have a right to affirmative benefits they deem auspicious to their cause.

DeSantis perfectly summed up the screed disguised as a legal opinion. “There’s an old saying in law,” said Mr. DeSantis. “If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have neither, you pound the table. Well, this is the judicial equivalent of pounding the table.” The governor believes that the decision will be overturned by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The question remains whether the damage will be done for the upcoming elections this cycle.

During the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, James Madison assuaged the concerns of his Virginia colleagues leery of a new federal government by noting that Congress wouldn’t interfere in election laws and procedures. "It was found necessary to leave the regulation of [federal elections], in the first place, to the state governments, as being best acquainted with the situation of the people," stated the Founding Father. Imagine if he had been told that one day a single man from the unelected branch of the federal government could mandate ballot-harvesting by one party’s organizations.