Can you host a party at a public polling place during voting hours? We are a group on a college campus im Ohio. we are completely nonpartisan and are looking to host a “party at the polls” on an off campus polling location where our students vote. It is at an apartment complex and we were denied permission by them. Are polling places considered public places during voting hours or is there any loop hole to get around this?
They are not considered public places in the way you mean, and in fact, the Ohio revised code specifically prohibits the kind of behavior you're referencing. Bottom line, any kind of party at the polling place itself is out of the question due to the possibility of limiting access or intimidating potential voters.
Yes, this is legal, unless Richardson, TX has a specific local law making it illegal. In the US, discrimination is legal, unless it discriminates against one or more specific enumerated classes. Under federal law, and as far as I am aware, Texas law, students are NOT a protected class. As such discrimination against them is legal, unless Richardson, TX or its incorporating county have a specific law or regulation prohibiting it. Incidentally, age is generally not a protected class, and when it is a protected class, it is generally only illegal to discriminate against people above a specified age, not below. Note that discrimination happens all the time, over a variety of factors, that many people don't even consider discrimination. For example, many colleges and universities discriminate on the basis of GPAs for acceptance to various programs; this is legal. In the past, many colleges and universities discriminated against potential students on the basis of sex or race, which is now illegal.
I'm based in England, but I'm sure the principle is similar in Canada. The night club or concert venue is private property. When someone owns or rents private property one of the main things they are buying is the right to control who is present on that property, and generally they can use reasonable force to remove people who are not authorised. Security guards generally act as agents for a property owner, tenant or similar.
Before the election, can a lawsuit prevent the amendment question from being put on the ballot? No. Generally speaking, the constitutionality of an otherwise procedurally proper ballot initiative is not ruled upon until after it has passed (eliminating the need to rule unnecessarily on the constitutionality of failed initiatives). Of course, if someone tried to put it in the ballot when the existing law conditions for putting it on the ballot were not met (e.g. because a deadline for doing so wasn't met) that could be challenged in court by a party with standing to do so. If passed into the constitution, would a court still have the ability to rule the restrictions unconstitutional? Probably not. The constitution as newly adopted doesn't sound like it would forbid doing that. This seems to be the whole point of the constitutional amendment in the first place and it the amendment to the constition is approved, that requirement is gone.
Yes, you can register in Connecticut. Connecticut previously limited voting eligibility to &quot;permanent&quot; residents, but it later changed that to limit it to people with at least year's worth of residency, and then six months' of residency. Under current law, though, a voter need only be a &quot;bona fide&quot; resident of &quot;some town&quot; in Connecticut. This means you need only to have legitimately moved into the city with some actual intent to stay, even if not forever. The deadline is tomorrow, so register now.
How is banning such events constitutional with the freedom of assembly? The rights created by the First Amendment are not absolute. They are subject to reasonable restrictions as to time, place and manner, especially if those restrictions are content neutral. Restrictions narrowly tailored to protect against genuine threats public health and safety fall within the exception of the First Amendment even if they are not strictly content neutral, that is commonly described by the rubric that you don't have a right to falsely cry "fire" in a crowded theater (causing a riot that could harm people). For example, suppose that a rope bridge over a deep gorge can only support the weight of ten people, and three dozen people want to hold a protest there. A regulation that prohibited more than ten people from engaging in the protest would be constitutional. Even then, however, a lack of content neutrality (e.g., restricting punishment to false statements likely to incite a riot) can't also be a lack of ideological neutrality (e.g. restricting punishment to anti-Catholic but not anti-Jewish statements likely to incite a riot). If it were a political protest/gathering would this change? Generally speaking political protest/gatherings are still subject to content neutral regulations of time, place or manner, and those narrowly tailored to protect genuine threats public health and safety. So, for example, if there is a genuine COVID-19 risk that public health officials are trying to address, and the regulation of gatherings is not viewpoint or content based, it would be upheld as constitutional in the face of a First Amendment freedom of assembly limitation. But, if the regulation applied, for example, only to Republican and not Democratic party protests or gatherings, which is a viewpoint or content based restriction, it would not survive a First Amendment freedom of assembly challenge.
You don't vote directly for candidates. You vote for an Elector in the Electoral College. If the candidate that the Elector has pledged that they will vote for dies before the Elector meets at the Electoral College, they can vote any candidate of their choice. This happened in 1912, when the Vice-Presidential candidate James Sherman died one week before the election.
No In accordance with Article II Clause 3, once the votes are counted (and any deadlock resolved) the President has been chosen. At that point, the election is final.