[EL] ELB News and Commentary 7/5/17

Tue Jul 4 20:23:48 PDT 2017

Kobach Relies on “Bipartisan” Nature of Election Commission for Legitimacy, But It is Hardly Bipartisan<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93553>
Posted on July 4, 2017 5:31 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93553> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Speaking<http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/03/politics/kris-kobach-letter-voter-fraud-commission-information/index.html> to Anderson Cooper at CNN, Kobach defended the Faux Commission by stating:
“First of all, the commission is not to prove or disprove what the President speculated about in January,” Kobach said. “The purpose of the commission is to find facts and put them on the table. Importantly, it’s a bipartisan commission.”
(My emphasis.)
Kobach and his allies<https://twitter.com/TheRepLawyer/status/878022109611474944> are desperate to claim that the Commission is bipartisan in order to give it a veneer of legitimacy and respectability (something it is not getting as 44 states deny <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93551> all or part of what the commission is asking for in terms of protected voter data).
But of course it is not bipartisan like other commissions. As I explained<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/01/trump_s_voting_fraud_investigation_is_a_great_idea.html> in January, setting out markers for what a fair commission should look like:
First, members of the commission should be bipartisan and well-respected on all sides. This was the model of the Carter-Ford commission<http://web1.millercenter.org/commissions/comm_2001.pdf> that investigated problems with the 2000 election, the Carter-Baker Commission<https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/AssetManager/Exhibit%20M.PDF> that investigated problems with the 2004 election, and the Presidential Commission on Election Administration<https://www.supportthevoter.gov/> that was led by leading Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer and leading Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg and that investigated problems with long lines and election administration after the 2012 election.
That’s not the case with this commission.  Here’s how things are different.

  1.  The leader, Pence, is a Republican who is running for office in 2020, with a direct stake in the outcome. There’s no Democratic co-chair, much less a Democrat running for office in 2020.
  2.  Other members of the Commission include some of the most notorious people<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/06/donald_trump_s_voter_fraud_commission_is_itself_an_enormous_fraud.html> claiming voter suppression is rampant on the Republican side, including vice chair Kobach (who is currently running for governor and could be in Hatch Act trouble<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93527>, and who was recently fined for misleading a court on voting info)<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kris-kobach-sanctions_us_5957b65be4b05c37bb7eaa19>, von Spakovsky<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93444>, and Blackwell.
  3.  A Republican commissioner (McCormick) from the United States Election Assistance Commission is on the Pence-Kobach) Commission, as is a Republican SOS from Indiana (Lawson). Another apparent Republican (Borunda) just quit without explanation.<http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-borunda-resigns-trump-20170703-story.html>
  4.  Of the two Democratic commissioners, SOS Gardner (NH) is not considered a Democrat. That leaves only SOS Dunlap of Maine, who has claimed he is on the commission to keep it honest. (I think he should resign<http://www.pressherald.com/2017/05/24/commentary-dunlap-badly-mistaken-in-agreeing-to-serve-on-trump-voter-fraud-panel/>.)
  5.  There are also two other Democrats (Rhodes, a local county clerk from a small West Virginia county, and Dunn, a former Arkansas Representative). Neither has any reputation for working in the election law field.
  6.  So that’s 6 Republicans (Pence, Kobach, Lawson, Blackwell, McCormick, von Spakovsky) (it was 7 until Borunda resigned) and 4 Democrats (Gardner, Dunlap, Wood, and Dunn).  Not even an even number.
Kind of a Hannity and Colmes model of bipartisanship. If, as Kobach says, it is “important” for this to be a truly bipartisan commission, this fails the test.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D93553&title=Kobach%20Relies%20on%20%E2%80%9CBipartisan%E2%80%9D%20Nature%20of%20Election%20Commission%20for%20Legitimacy%2C%20But%20It%20is%20Hardly%20Bipartisan>
Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“Forty-four states have refused to give certain voter information to Trump commission”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93551>
Posted on July 4, 2017 5:07 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93551> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CNN:<http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/03/politics/kris-kobach-letter-voter-fraud-commission-information/index.html>
Forty-four states have refused to provide certain types of voter information to the Trump administration’s election integrity commission, according to a CNN inquiry to all 50 states.
State leaders and voting boards across the country have responded to the letter with varying degrees of cooperation — from altogether rejecting the request to expressing eagerness to supply information that is public.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D93551&title=%E2%80%9CForty-four%20states%20have%20refused%20to%20give%20certain%20voter%20information%20to%20Trump%20commission%E2%80%9D>
Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“Georgia voters, Colorado nonprofit sue to overturn special election results in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93549>
Posted on July 4, 2017 3:03 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93549> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Colorado Politics:<https://coloradopolitics.com/161852-2/>
A group of Georgia voters and a Colorado-based watchdog organization filed a lawsuit late Monday asking a judge to overturn the results of last month’s 6th Congressional District special election and scrap the state’s voting system, Colorado Politics has learned.
The complaint<https://www.scribd.com/document/352858024/Curling-v-Kemp-2-Complaint-With-Verification-and-Exhibits>, filed in Fulton County Superior Court, alleges that state and local election officials ignored warnings for months that Georgia’s centralized election system — already known for potential security flaws and lacking a paper trail to verify results — had been compromised and left unprotected from intruders since at least last summer, casting doubt on Republican Karen Handel’s 3.8-point win over Democrat Jon Ossoff in the most expensive House race in the nation’s history….
Critics, however, contend the judge concluded nothing of the sort, ruling only that the plaintiffs hadn’t demonstrated the machines “had widely malfunctioned or skewed results.” A sophisticated hacker, computer security experts say, could erase tracks, requiring an equally sophisticated investigation to uncover evidence of an intrusion. That’s why, plaintiffs told Colorado Politics, they’re also asking the court to order a forensic analysis of the state’s voting system and its components.
Polling places in Georgia use Diebold AccuVote TS touchscreen voting machines first purchased in 2002 and run on a modified version of Windows last updated by Microsoft 14 years ago, King told the Brennan Center for Justice two years ago as part of a study on voting security<https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/Americas_Voting_Machines_At_Risk.pdf>. (The company changed its name to Premier Election Solutions about a decade ago, and most of its assets were later purchased by Dominion Voting Systems.) The election center King operates at Kennesaw State has been responsible for overseeing and securing the state’s electronic election equipment and infrastructure since the state installed the system.
“It’s quite clear that the center at Kennesaw State has very lax security procedures,” said Barbara Simons, chairwoman of the nonpartisan Verified Voting advocacy organization. “But even if they have perfect security, those machines should not be used. They’re paperless machines — you cannot check the results, and the voter cannot verify that the voter’s selections has been accurately recorded inside the machine’s memory.”
Although the nonprofit isn’t involved in the Georgia litigation, it has been working nationwide to eliminate paperless voting. Every single study of the machines Georgia uses, she added, “has shown them to be insecure. Georgia should have stopped using these machines a long time ago.”
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D93549&title=%E2%80%9CGeorgia%20voters%2C%20Colorado%20nonprofit%20sue%20to%20overturn%20special%20election%20results%20in%20Georgia%E2%80%99s%206th%20Congressional%20District%E2%80%9D>
Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“Why one of the largest counties in Texas is going back to paper ballots”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93547>
Posted on July 4, 2017 2:50 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93547> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Texas Tribune:<https://www.texastribune.org/2017/07/04/why-one-largest-counties-Texas-going-back-paper-ballots/>
Yet despite the hassle — and the significant cost — Phillips, Denton County’s elections administrator, is looking forward to this fall, when he will implement the county’s newest voting plan: a complete return to the paper ballot.
The unusual move sets Denton, the ninth-largest county in Texas and one of the fastest-growing, apart from the state’s other biggest counties, which all use some form of electronic voting, according to data collected by the Secretary of State’s office. Both Bexar and Harris Counties, for example, have had all electronic voting systems in place for 15 years.
Denton has been using a hybrid voting system that employs both electronic and paper ballots for about a decade. But county officials recently approved spending just shy of $9 million to buy new voting equipment from Austin-based Hart InterCivic that will return to an entirely paper-based system in time for this year’s November elections. Even disabled voters, who will cast their votes on touch-screen machines, will have their ballots printed out and tallied through a print scanner.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D93547&title=%E2%80%9CWhy%20one%20of%20the%20largest%20counties%20in%20Texas%20is%20going%20back%20to%20paper%20ballots%E2%80%9D>
Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, 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
949.824.0495 - fax
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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