Sweeping Little x's Under the Carpet: Overturning a Pennsylvania Election.

The news gets worse and worse. 

Republicans in Pennsylvania are refusing to swear in a Democrat who won a seat in the Senate. 

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pennsylvania-republicans-jim-brewster-state-senate-210000041.html 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/05/pennsylvania-senate-fetterman-brewster/

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/spl/john-fetterman-pennsylvania-senate-removed-republicans-jim-brewster-20210105.html

At issue would seem to be the legitimacy of some of the mail-in ballots - apparently a bunch of them didn't have hand drawn dates on the envelopes. 

Apparently, under Pennsylvania law, that matters.  

If these ballots could be disqualified, then there would be just enough of them to overturn the results of the election. So that is just what Republican Senators are trying to do. Overturn the results of the election. Funny how that just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it? 

They would argue that they're just upholding the rule of law - rules are rules after all, and we wouldn't want anyone taking office by breaking the rules now, would we? That would be cheating. Technically, they would be right. So why do I find their argument so incredibly unconvincing? 

The short answer is I find that an incredibly stupid reason to disenfranchise someone. 

When I vote, I put a little 'x' on a little piece of paper, which represents my little say in who ought to run my little country. I consider that little 'x' a very big right, a fundamental, unalterable Right, that ought to be protected and not discounted on some flimsy bureaucratic pretext. If they told me they would not count my little 'x' because the paper had been folded incorrectly, or I used the wrong pencil, or my middle-name didn't appear on the register, or I didn't renew my license plate stickers on time, or took thirty seconds too long, or broke wind in the booth or whatever. . . my reaction would not be "Whoops! My bad." I would fight tooth and nail to make sure my little 'x' got counted. 

You see, I don't think voting should be a Kafkaesque process. It should not depend on successfully navigating an arcane administrative maze. It should not be cancelled by some procedural booby-trap. The Powers-That-Be ought to facilitate voting, not prevent it.  It should never be conditional on fine-print. It should not be comparable to a Chinese puzzle, a riddle, or a cryptic crossword. 

I take a dim view of my rights being contingent on arbitrary procedures. 

The important thing about the Pennsylvania ballots is that people voted, not that somebody somewhere forgot where to put some pencil markings. (And if we're going to indulge conspiracy theories, have any Republicans been caught carrying erasers lately?). This is a technicality being used to disenfranchise people and Overturn the Results of an Election. This is a Bad Thing. 

Just this morning, Andrew Coyne wrote in the Globe and Mail wrote "If the Republicans will not accept defeat in [November's] election, what reason is there to suppose they will accept it in any?" 

As we can see, we have no reason at all.