Daily Archives: 21 October 2020

A State Appellate Court

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One in Michigan got one right. The Michigan Court of Appeals has reversed a State Court of Claims decision that would have counted ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to two weeks later.

The appellate court held that

[D]esigning adjustments to our election integrity laws is the responsibility of our elected policy makers, not the judiciary….

The court also held that

the state constitution requires all votes to be turned in by 8 pm of Election Day to be counted, and could not be changed by a judicial order.
“The Constitution is not suspended or transformed even in times of a pandemic, and judges do not somehow become authorized in a pandemic to rewrite statutes or to displace the decisions made by the policymaking branches of government,” Judge Mark Boonstra in one of the opinions.

Political decisions must be made by the political branches of government and not by the judicial branch.

Imagine that.

Here, for good or ill, the political branches have made their decision: only votes received by the end of Election Day—and not by the end of the day itself—can be counted. Full stop.

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

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Electric vehicles need charging stations, and there’s currently broad confusion over the role electric utilities, or anyone else, should have in building out and operating networks of them.

There are other considerations that need addressing, though before networks of chargers can operate at useful efficiencies.

Before any of this can work, though, a couple of other problems must be worked through. The number of miles that can be driven on a battery charge must be drastically improved. This one is improving, but it’s not yet adequate.

Too, the range available from a charge—even when it reaches the range available from a tank of gasoline or diesel fuel—must be achievable in just a couple of minutes—the time it takes to fill a gasoline or diesel tank.

Absent both of these, intercity travel, much less cross country travel, will be badly disrupted and made strongly inconvenient by a diktat mandating electric vehicles.

Beyond that, the ancillary costs of travel will rise. Lodging costs will go up as time spent at the recharging station will prevent many trips from being completed in a single day. Dining costs will rise as additional meals will need to be taken, or extra brown bag meals prepared for the extended time frame. Shipping costs will rise as truckers, with their heavier duty battery packs, will need to spend even more time at charging stations, increasing shipping times.

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden wants a network of 500,000 charging stations built out, which compares with the present 160,000 gasoline filling stations. However, a charging station in every pot won’t, by itself, solve any of this.