Here is my big 2024 question: How is it that Republicans are preparing for another presidential election when so many of them, including their presumptive nominee, have yet to move on from the last one?

The answer: Well, you just combine those things, obviously. The Republican National Committee did this last week, launching a scripted call that alleged (without evidence, as always) “massive fraud” in 2020, even as co-chair Lara Trump continued to insist that the GOP was “past that.” I’m not really even sure how to respond, honestly — not to the lying (about the election and the GOP’s fixation on it), and not to the sheer logical fallacy of attempting to woo voters by hinting that fraud stole their votes last time and might do it again this time, too.

Which is, at some point, the only possible reaction. You can’t shame the shameless, and fact-checks don’t really reach the people who need their facts checked, and those two things are why so many of us spent so many of the Trump years spiraling slowly into madness. Your brain wants to impose order and logic on the world, and the world has not been ordered or logical since at least 2015. So instead, we stew. And then, every once in a while, logic scores a win.

An Arizona appeals court on Tuesday declined to grant a new trial to Abe Hamadeh, a Republican seeking to overturn his 2022 loss in the state attorney general race while also running for Congress, the Arizona Mirror reported. (Abe Hamadeh gets more done before 9 a.m. than most people do all day!)

                    Far too busy to find actual evidence! (Photo via the Arizona Mirror)

In a 2-1 decision, the three-judge panel rejected Hamadeh’s plea, noting that what he described as “newly discovered evidence” did not appear to differ from the non-evidence presented in his last trial, which was dismissed after a judge determined the “proof” did not even slightly prove “that something was done illegally or correctly.” That case came after Hamadeh’s first legal challenge, which was thrown out because he filed it too early, and before the third lawsuit, which was filed after a statewide recount once again affirmed his loss and then dismissed after a judge once again determined there was no evidence or legal basis to proceed.

And enough is enough, Chief Judge David Gass wrote for the majority.

“Hamadeh speculates on what ‘may be’ rather than ‘what is’ and then seeks an opportunity to look for new evidence,” he wrote. “A virtual firestorm of challenges followed the 2022 general election. Those flames have subsided. The winners were announced and took their oaths of office more than 15 months ago. This case, one of the last embers still glowing, does not burn hot enough to warrant relief.”

The case could continue if Hamadeh elects to escalate his appeal to the state Supreme Court, which, let’s be real, he probably will. On Wednesday, though, he settled for reviving the same allegations in a fundraising email (for his congressional campaign, where he claimed that 9,000 provisional ballots had gone uncounted (in his attorney general bid). He did not, of course, provide evidence.

“After the disastrous election we have witnessed an all out effort to ensure my case would never be litigated,” he wrote. “They STONEWALLED this case from the beginning by withholding provisional ballots, delaying recount results and trying to run out the clock and STEAL the election.”

                                   *UNLESS YOU WANT TO VOTE FOR A POLITICIAN WHOSE NOMINATING CONVENTION WAS TOO LATE IN WHICH CASE NEVER MIND (Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

A legitimate lawsuit looms in Alabama, where state Attorney General Wes Allen on Thursday refused to consider placing President Joe Biden on the ballot unless the Democratic National Committee reschedules its convention to comply with a “no exceptions” statutory deadline for which officials provided exceptions in 2004, 2012 and 2020, the Alabama Reflector reported.

Allen drew this particular line in the sand Tuesday in a letter informing the state Democratic Party that the convention, scheduled for Aug. 19, was four days past the state’s “statutory deadline for political parties to provide a certificate of nomination for President and Vice President.” If the DNC can’t submit that by Aug. 15, his office will be “unable to certify the names of the Democratic Party’s candidates for President and Vice President for ballot preparation for the 2024 general election,” he continued.

Allen later framed his obstinance as a righteous cause in accordance with his oath to “uphold and defend” Alabama’s laws, including the ones that provide “no exceptions.” He takes all of that “very seriously,” as opposed to the many exceptions provided to other politicians in other years, which he does not appear to take very seriously at all.

An attorney for the Biden campaign opted for diplomacy Wednesday, suggesting in a letter that the Democratic Party could provisionally certify Biden and Harris prior to the state’s deadline, theoretically clearing the way for Allen to include their names without carving out a specific exception.

“This proposal avoids the constitutional problems that would arise if your office were to interpret [the statute’s] certification deadline to preclude President Biden and Vice President Harris from appearing on the Alabama general election ballot,” wrote Birmingham attorney Barry Ragsdale, adding that the plan would also ensure that Alabamans can “exercise their fundamental constitutional right to meaningfully participate in the presidential election.”

              Folks… (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Allen was not impressed. That idea sounds an awful lot like an exception, which he already told you is not an option under this particular statute even though Alabama has provided many exceptions to this particular statute in other years. He took an oath! He already explained all of this!

“On January 16, 2023, I took an oath to uphold Alabama law and that is what I am going to do,” he said Thursday. “My office will accept all certifications that comply with Alabama [law]. That statute does not provide for ‘provisional certifications’ or any other exceptions.”

Ragsdale appeared to anticipate this response (with the possible exception of the extremely snarky quotation marks), noting (not threatening!) in his letter that the courts would be likely to interpret state law “in a manner that ensures constitutionally protected associational rights are not violated.”

Not that the courts are weighing in on this, you understand. But if they had to, that would probably not go well for Alabama, is what Ragsdale is saying.

“Here, a court would have little difficulty finding that strict application of the 82-day deadline imposes a severe restriction on President Biden and Vice President Harris’s access to the ballot,” Ragsdale wrote.“If strictly enforced, the deadline would prevent one of the two major party presidential candidates from appearing on the general election ballot—an unjust and unconstitutional result.”

                                             “MY VETO PENS ARE OVER THAT WAY, IN MY OFFICE.” (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin did what he could to restrict changes to the state’s election system by vetoing a stack of Democratic bills that would have strengthened voting rights protections, expanded acceptable forms of voter ID and broadened an existing ban on guns at polling places, among other things. Some of those bills created “administrative burdens” or “additional complexities,” according to Youngkin, a Republican. But he seemed to simply dislike others, like a proposal that would have clarified how and when municipalities can use ranked choice voting, the Virginia Mercury reported.

Local governments can use ranked choice voting under current state law, but only in city council and county board races. The bill aimed to guide that process by streamlining the language and creating state standards for tabulation software and voting equipment, according to state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, the Democrat who sponsored it.

“It’s recognizing that ranked choice voting is here,” VanValkenburg said. “And that a lot of localities have the choice of using ranked choice voting.”

But it’s still a new system for Virginia, Youngkin said — and it shouldn’t be codified in state law until certain unspecified “legitimate questions” are answered.

“Concerns have been raised about its use in general elections where some voters have found it confusing,” Youngkin said in his veto. “A heightened risk of mistakenly erroneous ballot submissions raises concerns about disenfranchisement and an increased lack of voter confidence in election results.”

Generally, those kinds of “concerns” come from Republicans, either because they genuinely believe that ranking multiple candidates is a confusing concept or because they dislike the power shift inherent to a system that encourages participation among people of color and women, both as voters and candidates. Either way, it’s difficult to believe that Youngkin — a ranked choice voting success story — is genuinely concerned, VanValkenburg said. More likely, it’s politics.

“I think there are Democrats in the General Assembly who don’t like ranked choice voting,” he said. “But that’s not what this bill was.”