[EL] ELB News and Commentary 2/11/17

[Rick Hasen]

Did New Alabama Senator Luther Strange Run Interference for AL Governor While AG?<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91044>
Posted on February 10, 2017 9:06 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91044> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
That’s the suggestion in this NYT piece:<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/politics/luther-strange-senate-jeff-sessions-alabama.html?ref=politics>
Mr. Strange proved a central, if quiet, figure in the fallout, and the Legislature suspended its inquiry at his request when he said his office was doing “related work.”
On Thursday, Mr. Strange noted that he had never said specifically that Mr. Bentley was a target of his office, and the governor, who will name Mr. Strange’s successor as attorney general, denied any impropriety in his selection.
Although many Republicans in Alabama cheered Mr. Strange’s appointment, his action in connection with the governor’s scandal led to some skepticism in Montgomery ahead of a special election for the Senate seat that Mr. Bentley’s office said would be held in 2018.
“It’s grimly problematic that the attorney general who blocked the impeachment investigation and who has not gone forward with the Bentley criminal investigation is rewarded with the U.S. Senate<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/senate/index.html?inline=nyt-org> appointment,” said the state auditor, Jim Zeigler, a Republican who is a frequent critic of the governor. “There will be a challenger to Luther Strange in the special Senate election, and this will be an issue. His manipulation against any Bentley investigation will be an issue.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Judges hear arguments over restricting NC governor’s powers”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91042>
Posted on February 10, 2017 9:03 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91042> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
AP:<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article131928649.html>
North Carolina’s new Democratic governor and the entrenched Republican-led legislature battled in court on two fronts Friday over efforts to restrict the chief executive’s ability to alter the state’s recent conservative direction.
A panel of three state trial court judges spent three hours listening to arguments over whether to continue blocking a law requiring Senate confirmation of Gov. Roy Cooper’s Cabinet secretaries.
The judges did not say when they would decide whether to continue blocking the law. Any order would be in effect until after a full hearing next month.
Meanwhile, a revamped state elections board met for the first time Friday, hours after an appeals court temporarily reinstated a law stripping Cooper of his oversight of elections. Cooper’s attorneys are asking the state Supreme Court to step in and again block that law.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Ex-NH GOP chair calls Trump’s voter fraud bluff with $1,000 bet”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91040>
Posted on February 10, 2017 7:08 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91040> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
The Hill:<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/319058-ex-nh-gop-chair-calls-trumps-vote-fraud-bluff-with-1000-bet>
Fergus Cullen, New Hampshire’s former GOP chair, on Friday hit President Donald Trump<http://thehill.com/people/donald-trump> over false voter fraud claims he said were the reason New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte<http://thehill.com/people/kelly-ayotte> lost her seat in November.
“I will pay $1000 to 1st person proving even 1 outofstate person took bus from MA 2 any NH polling place last ElectionDay #mapoli #nhpolitics,” Cullen tweeted Friday evening.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>
“Trump’s voter fraud claims are absurd, another analysis shows”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91038>
Posted on February 10, 2017 6:59 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91038> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Vice News reports.<https://news.vice.com/story/trumps-voter-fraud-claims-are-absurd-yet-another-analysis-shows>
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Voting Advocates Announce a Settlement of ‘Exact Match’ Lawsuit in Georgia”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91036>
Posted on February 10, 2017 12:06 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91036> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Release:<http://www.projectvote.org/press-releases/voting-advocates-announce-settlement-exact-match-lawsuit-georgia/>
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Project Vote, Campaign Legal Center, Voting Rights Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center, along with the New York City office of Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP and Atlanta-based firm of Caplan Cobb LLP, acting as pro bono counsel, announced a settlement<http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/Settlement-Agreement-NAACP-v.-Kemp-2.9.17-1.pdf> today in a lawsuit filed on behalf Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta, the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda and the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, which challenged Georgia’s exact-match voter registration verification scheme. The suit alleged Georgia’s “exact match” system violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and deprived eligible Georgians of their fundamental right to vote under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and resulted in Georgia restoring more than 42,000 previously purged voters to the rolls.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, NVRA (motor voter)<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=33>


President Trump Falsely Claims “Thousands” of Illegal Voters Bussed in from Mass. to NH, Costing Him and Ayotte the State<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91033>
Posted on February 10, 2017 11:55 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91033> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Politico:<http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-voter-fraud-senators-meeting-234909>
On Thursday, during a meeting with 10 senators that was billed as a listening session about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, the president went off on a familiar tangent, suggesting again that he was a victim of widespread voter fraud despite the fact that he won the presidential election…..
The president claimed that he and Ayotte both would have been victorious in the Granite State if not for the “thousands” people who were “brought in on buses” from neighboring Massachusetts to “illegally” vote in New Hampshire.
According to one participant who described the meeting, “an uncomfortable silence” momentarily overtook the room….
Thursday’s meeting was an attempt to foster bipartisan support for Gorsuch…
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


Judge Gorsuch Refused to Make Public His Remarks About Trump Comments on Judiciary Being “Disheartening”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91031>
Posted on February 10, 2017 11:21 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91031> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Sen. Schumer<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/opinion/sunday/charles-schumer-judge-gorsuch-we-wont-be-fooled-again.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region> NYT oped:
Judge Gorsuch’s behind-closed-doors admission that he felt “disheartened” by President Trump’s attacks on judges could well be akin to Judge Roberts’s “balls and strikes.” Judge Gorsuch told it to me in private; when Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and I asked him to say it in public, he refused. Clearly he wanted this to be seen as a marker of his independence, because his handlers immediately told us, “You can tell this to the press.” A truly independent judge would have the fortitude to condemn the president’s remarks, not just express disapproval, and to do it publicly. The White House’s assertion that Judge Gorsuch’s private remarks were not aimed at Mr. Trump only raises concerns about his independence.

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Posted in Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


78 House Democrats Send Letter to President Trump Asking Him to Investigate “Voter Suppression”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91029>
Posted on February 10, 2017 9:54 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91029> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Letter. <http://kilmer.house.gov/news/press-releases/kilmer-sewell-cummings-and-75-colleagues-call-on-president-trump-to-investigate-voter-suppression-in-presidential-election_>
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Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Veterans living in U.S. territories are crowd-funding a legal pitch for voting rights”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91027>
Posted on February 10, 2017 9:38 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91027> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
McClatchy:<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article131566044.html>
A group of military veterans living in Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are crowd-funding their appeal to challenge federal voting laws that deny U.S. citizens living in the territories the ability to vote in presidential elections.
Americans in the U.S. territories follow the same federal laws, pay billions in taxes and have some of the highest rates of enlistment in the U.S. military, but they say their equal protection rights are being violated based on where they live. People born in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are all U.S. citizens.
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Posted in voting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>


“Two Weeks After Donald Trump’s Promised Voter Fraud Probe — Crickets”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91025>
Posted on February 10, 2017 9:36 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=91025> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
S.V. Date<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-voter-fraud-probe_us_589ce834e4b03df370d4be34?> for HuffPo:
Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and voting rights expert, said the order’s disappearance is not terribly unexpected. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this falls by the wayside for a whole lot longer,” he said.
Levitt wrote a 2007 report<https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/truth-about-voter-fraud> titled “The Truth About Voter Fraud” when he worked at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. It found that the amount of actual in-person voter fraud was so small as to not present a significant threat of altering elections.
“It would be one thing if they did an actual study,” Levitt said. “There’s nothing like the tone of the proposal set up in the tweets. I’m enormously skeptical of any quote-unquote investigation that announces its conclusions ahead of the actual investigation.”
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>



--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
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