[EL] ELB News and Commentary 7/8/17

Fri Jul 7 20:53:37 PDT 2017

Trump’s Lawyers Again Arguing Against Taking Seriously What He Said as a Candidate, This Time About Sexual Harassment<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93682>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:49 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93682> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
First <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/the_9th_circuit_s_alex_kozinski_defends_trump_s_travel_ban_on_first_amendment.html> it was that anti-Muslim statements were irrelevant to the travel ban.
Now<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/07/07/trump-urges-dismissal-of-apprentice-contestants-lawsuit/?utm_term=.a4f04c65d196>, it is that Trump statements about Trump sexual harassment accusers cannot be defamatory because they were made in a campaign:
During the campaign, Trump said the women who accused against him of inappropriately touching them were putting forward “made-up stories and lies” and “telling totally false stories.” Kasowitz argued those statements and others could not be considered defamatory but instead were “nothing more than heated campaign rhetoric designed to persuade the public audience that Mr. Trump should be elected president irrespective of what the media and his opponents had claimed over his 18-month campaign.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Law on Foreign Campaign Money Narrow, FEC Analysis Says”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93680>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:44 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93680> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Bloomberg BNA:<http://news.bna.com/mpdm/MPDMWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115830077&vname=mpebulallissues&jd=0000015d1e35d303ad5d5ebffab20002&split=0>
The Federal Election Commission may be severely constrained in what it can or will do to combat foreign influence in U.S. elections, a new analysis posted on the agency’s website suggests<https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/>.
The commissioners have recently grappled with the foreign influence issue and are set to discuss it again in a July 13 meeting, according to the agenda<https://www.fec.gov/updates/july-13-2017-open-meeting/>.
Analyzing the current state of campaign finance laws and FEC precedents, the agency’s new “outreach” article says the law bars only a specific, narrow type of spending—money provided directly to a candidate, political party, or other group calling for votes for or against a candidate.
Reports of spending by Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election have focused not on such direct campaign spending but instead on efforts to hack the computers of the Democratic Party and others, as well as efforts to generate election-related propaganda on the internet. Whether such efforts are subject to the legal prohibitions on foreign campaign money is a major question to be addressed by the FEC and others, including special counsel Robert Mueller, now examining Russian influence in the last election.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, federal election commission<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

“Even Some Republicans Balk at Trump’s Voter Data Request. Why the Uproar?”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93677>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:34 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93677> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT reports.<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/us/politics/voter-fraud-commission.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront>
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Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“A Court Is Considering A Request To Halt The Trump Election Commission’s Request For State Voter Lists”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93675>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:27 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93675> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Chris Geidner:<https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/court-considers-request-to-halt-trump-election-commissions?utm_term=.fvWe8pQGM#.xbwYJe1Dp>
A federal court on Friday heard arguments in a lawsuit alleging that the president’s “election integrity” commission has violated federal privacy laws in its request for voter information from the states.
US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly held more than an hour of arguments over the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s request that the commission be halted from collecting the information while the lawsuit is heard. She did not rule from the bench, but told the parties that she would try to issue a written ruling as soon as possible.
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Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission Is Facing A Tough Data Challenge”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93673>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:25 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93673> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
FiveThirtyEight reports.<https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-voter-fraud-commission-is-facing-a-tough-data-challenge/?ex_cid=story-twitter>
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

True the Vote Having a Facebook Live Event With Guy Making Unsubstantiated Claim of Millions of Illegal Votes<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93671>
Posted on July 7, 2017 4:19 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93671> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
I think lots of folks <https://www.facebook.com/TrueTheVote/photos/pb.146736258721743.-2207520000.1499469419./1603627873032567/?type=3&theater> should participate in this July 11 Facebook event.
Read a bit on the lack of good social science behind the study of the other speaker Jim Agresti, courtesy of Politifact<http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/jun/22/ainsley-earhardt/following-trump-voter-fraud-allegations-claim-57-m/>.

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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

“Trump’s Voter Fraud Probe Contradicts Itself On What Information Will Be Released”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93669>
Posted on July 7, 2017 3:30 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93669> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
HuffPo reports.<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kris-kobach-sensitive-voter-information_us_595fb351e4b0d5b458ea08c1?section=us_politics>
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D93669&title=%E2%80%9CTrump%E2%80%99s%20Voter%20Fraud%20Probe%20Contradicts%20Itself%20On%20What%20Information%20Will%20Be%20Released%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Trump voter panel head Kris Kobach ‘conspicuously absent’ from annual secretaries of state meeting”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93667>
Posted on July 7, 2017 3:07 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93667> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Mic reports.<https://mic.com/articles/181705/trump-voter-panel-head-kris-kobach-conspicuously-absent-from-annual-secretaries-of-state-meeting?utm_campaign=ckatz+twitter&utm_content=buffer489dd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com#.hHEUdQRQ4>

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Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“Texas Redistricting Back in Court”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93665>
Posted on July 7, 2017 2:27 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93665> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Michael Li:<https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/texas-redistricting-back-court>
On July 10, a three-judge panel in Texas begins a week-long trial over the state’s congressional and state house plans. Here’s what you need to know.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

“Is Trump’s voting commission really about election integrity?”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93663>
Posted on July 7, 2017 12:47 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93663> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Great lineup on TError! Hyperlink reference not valid.<http://is%20trump%27s%20voting%20commission%20really%20about%20election%20integrity/?> Berman, Ho, Levitt, Muller.
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Kobach’s ‘Election Integrity’ Commission Is Founded on a Big Lie to the American Public”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93661>
Posted on July 7, 2017 12:45 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93661> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Danielle Lang and Samir Sheth blog.<https://takecareblog.com/blog/kobach-s-election-integrity-commission-is-founded-on-a-big-lie-to-the-american-public>
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Seattle’s campaign-voucher system is good for democracy”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93659>
Posted on July 7, 2017 9:48 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93659> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Josh Douglas Seattle Times oped.<http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/seattles-campaign-voucher-system-is-good-for-democracy/>
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

Interview with Me on WHYY Radio Times on Pence-Kobach Commission<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93657>
Posted on July 7, 2017 9:21 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93657> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Listen here<https://soundcloud.com/whyy-public-media/trumps-first-g20-summit-voter-fraud-commission>, beginning around the 32-minute mark.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D93657&title=Interview%20with%20Me%20on%20WHYY%20Radio%20Times%20on%20Pence-Kobach%20Commission>
Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

New and Enhanced Resources on Election Litigation at the Federal Judicial Center<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93655>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:34 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93655> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Don’t miss the sidebar<https://www.fjc.gov/content/overview-6> with much more content.
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Is the Kobach Commission Violating the Law?”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93653>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:16 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93653> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Eliza Newlin Carney<http://prospect.org/article/kobach-commission-violating-law> with the rundown.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

Pema Levy with Today’s Must Read: Adams, Popper, and Coates on Their Voter Purge Crusade<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93650>
Posted on July 7, 2017 8:15 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93650> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Mother Jones:<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/07/these-three-lawyers-are-quietly-purging-voter-rolls-across-the-country/>
At the time Noxubee County got its letter, the ACRU’s legal work was led by J. Christian Adams, a former staff attorney in the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Adams joined the department in 2005, when high-ranking official Bradley Schlozman was found by the department’s inspector general to be illegally<https://oig.justice.gov/special/s0901/final.pdf> using political ideology to fill the Civil Rights Division with conservative lawyers. Adams, a conservative attorney from South Carolina, was “exhibit A” of Schlozman’s hiring practices, a former department official who participated in Adams’ job interview later said<http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/conservative-civil-rights-commission-asks-congress-for-permission-to-sue-doj>.
Adams’ early cases at the ACRU were assisted by Christopher Coates, Adams’ former boss at the Justice Department. Previously an attorney for the ACLU, Coates appears to have undergone an ideological conversion while at the Justice Department; one colleague suggested<http://prospect.org/article/battle-voting-rights-0> this might have been spurred in part by the promotion of a black attorney to a job he wanted. In 2007, with Bush in office, he rose to Voting Section chief. Like Adams, Robert Popperjoined the Voting Section in 2005 and later became Coates’ deputy. When he left the department in 2013, he joined the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, an early player in spearheading voter purge cases.
In the Voting Section, all three men were at the center of contentious debates over the direction of voting rights enforcement. In 2005, Adams and Coates made history when they brought the first Voting Rights Act case alleging black discrimination against whites—and won. The case<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/us/politics/11voting.html> targeted the head of the local Democratic Party in Noxubee County. Coates told the US Commission on Civil Rights that the criticism of the case<https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2013/s1303.pdf> within the department demonstrated internal hostility to “race-neutral enforcement of the VRA.”
In 2008, Coates and Popper assigned Adams to prosecute a case against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members who were spotted outside a polling location in Philadelphia on Election Day, one of them carrying a nightstick. When the Obama administration took over, the department’s new leadership threw out most of the charges Adams recommended. The case became a cause célèbre of the right. Adams resigned in protest of the Obama administration’s handling of the case, and Coates faced criticism from higher-ups over his work on it. According to a subsequent report<https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2013/s1303.pdf> by the department’s inspector general, when Eric Holder became attorney general in 2009, he was told<https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2013/s1303.pdf> that Coates wanted to pursue more “reverse-discrimination” cases and that Coates did not believe “in the traditional way in which things had been done in the Civil Rights Division.”
As a private citizen, Adams worked with Judicial Watch to file lawsuits aimed at trimming voter rolls, before joining the ACRU in 2013. In 2015, he became president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, another conservative nonprofit law firm whose work has overlapped with the ACRU’s, where he sent letters similar to the Noxubee County one to 141 counties in 21 states in 2015. In 2011, he published Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, an exposé of alleged racism against white people in the Civil Rights Division. He became a frequent commentator on Fox News and a blogger at the right-wing PJ Media, where he recently railed<https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2017/06/22/mr-president-meet-avner-shapiro-saboteur-from-the-doj-swamp/> against the “Deep State leftists” of the “DOJ Swamp.”
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Posted in NVRA (motor voter)<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=33>, 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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