Editor’s note: A previous version of this article had mistakenly labeled President Donald Trump as “future President-elect” in February of 2016. Several instances of potentially misleading language have been updated for clarity. The statement has been corrected, and the Daily regrets this error.

Contrary to the Republican Party’s stance in 2016, both Iowa senators support filling the current vacant Supreme Court seat prior to the upcoming November election. Accountability and ambiguity are on the minds of Iowans.

In February 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who at the time was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led the efforts to block former President Barack Obama’s nominee — opting instead to save the open seat so the future-President-elect could be the one to nominate a replacement once they took office. 

The Iowa senator stated Monday he will not oppose filling the current vacancy previously held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prior to the upcoming election — possibly eliminating the possibility of Joe Biden choosing the nominee. 

Sen. Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection this November, stated shortly after Ginsburg disclosed her battle with cancer in July she would also support hearings if it were to be a “lame-duck session.”

Grassley responded to the slew of hypocrisy accusations being made against him by Iowans. According to the Des Moines Register, he stated “[…] they can’t accuse me of being hypocritical, because I’m not chairman now,” in a Wednesday conference call.

His explanation was more candidly stated in a tweet made Monday evening:

“With a divided [government] in 2016 there was ambiguity about what the American [people] wanted for the direction of the Supreme Court [and] voters expanded republican majority in [the] 2018 election after [two] Trump SCOTUS confirmations. There’s no ambiguity now [with a] republican senate and president.”

Murphy Burke, Iowa press secretary for NextGen America, said she saw the Supreme Court seat was going to be a battle fought before the election. After putting out a form for young voters all around the nation to contact their senators, Burke said NextGen Iowa wanted to get crafty with their outreach methods. 

“Over the weekend, Grassley’s preference to talk about pigeons instead of the fate of this country sort of made us realize that we should use a tactic to both reach him that may get his attention and […] hopefully bring more attention to young people who are following the funny story, and to also draw attention to the stakes of this election [and] the stakes of this Supreme Court battle,” she said.  

Grassley — who, at 87 years old, is assumed to manage his own Twitter account — tweeted multiple times Saturday and Monday — the day of the announcement — about a dead pigeon he had found in his yard. He did not address the announcement until later.

NextGen Iowa is planning to send Grassley a message via pigeon.

“We thought that’d be a good, symbolic move to contact Grassley with sort of a follow-up to these messages young people have already been sending,” Burke said.  

Once word about the pigeongram stunt reached the ears of irony-loving young voters, Burke said around 300 people contacted their senators through NextGen within the first 24 hours.

“We now have more Iowans joining in every day to contact Grassley and Ernst to try to persuade them,” Burke said. “We’ll end up sending it when Trump announces who the nominee is to let Grassley know that he should vote no on that nominee.”

There are now less than 40 days until the election, and less than five months until Trump finishes his current term. Pressure is building over whether a position that is held for life can be adequately filled in such a short period of time. 

The president of Iowa State’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, Chuck Klapatauskas, said Grassley’s approval of preelection hearings is “warranted,” due to his belief that there has been evidence of hypocrisy from both parties when it comes to filling Supreme Court seats. 

He presented Obama’s attempt to install Merrick Garland prior to the 2016 election as an example.

“I think with the upcoming election, it’s pretty imperative that we have an odd amount of Supreme Court justices in case there would be a crucial case. I think that it’s not out of the ordinary and that it’s warranted to elect a Supreme Court justice based on their merits,” Klapatauskas said.

Klapatauskas said he can see both sides of how this issue will affect Ernst’s campaign for reelection, as the Supreme Court decision could play the lead to Conservatives yet rile up those who don’t see it as favorable.

Sehba Faheem, president of College Democrats, agrees the situation has lit a fire within voters, and believes installing a justice sooner rather than after the election won’t speak well for Ernst’s campaign.

Faheem said that all politics aside, she agrees a justice should be replaced immediately after one dies. However, given the precedent set by the Senate in 2016, she would hope the Senate would wait until after the election.

“I hope that the Supreme Court is balanced overall,” Faheem said. “If the Supreme Court was significantly to one side or the other of the aisle, and all of our decisions for the next 40 plus years will be determined by that ideology, that’s not representative of the United States. The United States has a myriad of ideologies, and that should be showcased in the bodies making our laws because they are here to represent us.”

Klapatauskas said at the end of the day, what he wants is for the new justice to be “someone very qualified.”

“I hope that it’s someone that is very intelligent of the law, and rules on cases that benefit all Americans. Not Conservatives or Liberals, but all Americans as a whole,” Klapatauskas said.

Faheem said in a predictions poll held at a College Democrats meeting at the beginning of the semester, members were asked whether they believe a new justice will be installed before or after the election. There were 60.8 percent of College Democrat members who said before and 39.2 percent who said after. 

“I’m not completely convinced [Mitch McConnell] can get away with this,” said Dirk Deam, teaching professor in political science when asked the same question.  

“[The Republican Senate] are so hell-bent on getting what they want, they sometimes forget to do the things you have to do in the Senate to get things passed,” Deam said. “It’s possible that they could run into some trouble, it’s not likely, but it’s possible.” 

He said the issue goes beyond the Iowa senators going back on the precedent, and believes a dwindling popularity of the Republican Party may influence them in “abusing the Senate.” 

“Senators do not represent parties, they represent states,” Deam said. “When you’re representing a state under the Constitution, you’re supposed to represent all the people in your state, not just Republican voters. So this attitude of winner-take-all is completely inappropriate to the Senate.”

Deam explained how the Constitution doesn’t mention political parties at all. He said, therefore, there is no reason for senators to vote specifically because of their party other than internal influence. 

“This business of packing the court with people who want what they want and don’t care about anybody else, and doing so in a way to make sure that their policies are held in perpetuity without appeal is really going to undermine the authority of the court,” Deam said.