[EL] ELB News and Commentary 6/20/17

Mon Jun 19 20:05:01 PDT 2017

Time to Say the Election Administrator’s Prayer About #GAO6 Election: Lord, Let This Election Not Be Close<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93232>
Posted on June 19, 2017 7:56 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93232> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
No doubt, there’s a lot riding on the special election between Ossoff and Handel to replace Secretary of HHS Tom Price. Not only is it seen as a harbinger of 2018; some see the fate of Trumpcare<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/georgia-special-election-trumpcare_us_59483bb8e4b0cddbb008d82e?4r5&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009> resting on the results.
Meanwhile, the latest polls are extremely close. <https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/876933963738214400>
Add into that concerns over the election security of Georgia’s voter registration system (read this Kim Zetter piece and be very afraid<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/14/will-the-georgia-special-election-get-hacked-215255>), and an electronic voting system with no paper trail, making a recount not much of a recount.
Add in all the talk of voter fraud and voter suppression going around these days.
All of it is a recipe for crazy conspiracy theories and claims of foul play and chicanery should the election be very close.
It may get very, very ugly.
That’s why the Election Administrator’s prayer<http://politicaldictionary.com/words/election-administrators-prayer/> may be the best chance to avoid disaster.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

WI Partisan Gerrymandering Case News/Analysis Roundup<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93225>
Posted on June 19, 2017 7:39 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93225> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
In addition to my piece in The Atlantic (Justice Kennedy’s Beauty Pageant<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/justice-kennedys-beauty-pageant/530790/?utm_source=twb>) on the Supreme Court’s decision to hear Gill v. Whitford, here’s more coverage/analysis:
Adam Liptak<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/us/politics/justices-to-hear-major-challenge-to-partisan-gerrymandering.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront>-NYT
Bob Barnes<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-to-hear-potentially-landmark-case-on-partisan-gerrymandering/2017/06/19/d525237e-5435-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html?utm_term=.49c6d387d8d4>-WaPo
David Savage<http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-court-gerrymander-wisconsin-20170619-story.html>-LAT
AP<http://www.wbal.com/article/246549/3/the-latest-supreme-court-to-review-partisan-redistricting>
Greg Stohr<https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-19/partisan-gerrymandering-will-get-u-s-supreme-court-scrutiny>-Bloomberg
Pete Williams<http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-consider-case-partisan-gerrymandering-n774061>-NBC
Patrick Marley<http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/19/u-s-supreme-court-hear-wisconsins-redistricting-case/374052001/>-Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Rich Wolf<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/19/supreme-court-to-tackle-partisan-election-maps/102683460/>-USA Today
Ariane de Vogue and Daniella Diaz<http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/19/politics/supreme-court-partisan-gerrymandering/index.html>-CNN
Marcia Coyle<http://www.nationallawjournal.com/supremecourtbrief/id=1202790526438?kw=The%20Next%20Big%20Political%20Case%20at%20the%20Supreme%20Court:%20Six%20Key%20Questions&et=editorial&bu=National%20Law%20Journal&cn=20170619&src=EMC-Email&pt=Supreme%20Court%20Brief>-NLJ
Sam Levine<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/supreme-court-gerrymandering-case_us_59442033e4b01eab7a2d7ccd>-HuffPost
Brent Kendall<https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-to-consider-limits-on-partisan-drawing-of-election-maps-1497881169?shareToken=st0884cb925720486886e6e208d2522a2a&reflink=article_email_share>-WSJ
Trevor Potter-<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/campaign/338422-opinion-gerrymandering-hurts-whether-youre-a-democrat-or>The Hill (opinion)
Josh Douglas<http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/19/opinions/wisconsin-gerrymandering-scotus-douglas-opinion/index.html>-CNN Opinion
Ian Millhiser<https://thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-takes-on-gerrymandering-56f545f8ca02>-Think Progress
More to come.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

“A pro-Trump group is using Obama’s voice out of context in radio ad for Georgia’s special election”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93223>
Posted on June 19, 2017 2:06 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93223> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CNN:<http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/18/politics/kfile-obama-georgia-ad/index.html>
An outside group that supports President Donald Trump is running a radio ad in Atlanta ahead of Georgia’s special election Tuesday that takes the voice of former President Barack Obama out of context to make the argument that Democrats take black voters for granted.
Great America Alliance, a pro-Trump non-profit group that previously ran ads attacking former FBI director James Comey during his testimony, is running an ad that quotes Obama narrating his autobiographical book “Dreams From My Father.” The ad, however, does not mention that in the selected passage, Obama is actually quoting someone else who is speaking about the black community and Chicago politics before the early 1980s….
Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to President Obama, told CNN’s KFile: “This spot is a fraudulent use of President Obama’s voice. It is a shameful, indefensible tactic that should never be heard on the public airwaves. Deceptively using President Obama’s voice to suggest people sit out of the democratic process is a form of voter suppression and it not only signals weakness, it runs counter to our American values.”
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Georgia special election tweets traced to one source”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93221>
Posted on June 19, 2017 11:59 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93221> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Politico:<http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/19/georgia-special-election-2017-anti-dem-tweets-239689>
With Georgia’s special House election going down to the wire, it’s no shock that Twitter is saturated with Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel. But what is surprising is just how much of the traffic traces to a single, identifiable source.
Accounts related to one entrepreneurial Trump supporter, Robert Shelton, a.k.a. @RobertsRooms<https://twitter.com/robertsrooms>, have flooded hashtags about the GA-06 election with anti-Ossoff and pro-Handel messaging….
Shelton, via Twitter, confirmed his network is working to promote Handel, but said it is a strictly personal project. He did not respond to questions about whether, or how much, he paid Twitter users to put out his messages.
“The only affiliation we or I have with Karen’s campaign is that I live in District 06 and prefer her to Jon,” Shelton wrote. The Handel campaign emphasized they have no ties.
“We have not contracted with Robert and he has no affiliation with this campaign,” said Kate Constantini, campaign spokeswoman for Handel.
Shelton said he has worked for other campaigns after the 2016 presidential election, including<https://twitter.com/RobertsRooms/status/851525411989327872> the New York City mayoral campaign of Michel Faulkner, who pivoted to run for NYC Comptroller in late May.
Shelton pitches his social media marketing to “America 1st” political candidates. In one promo, he boasts of having “Social Media WARRIORS In EVERY TOWN Across EVERY STATE” with a network to 5 million Twitter followers, and lists “in-house meme creation” among his services. One post indicates<https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/188807646/1494712841/1500x500> that he pays “retweeters.”
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, social media and social protests<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=58>

“Tax credits for small donors in politics should be part of tax reform”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93219>
Posted on June 19, 2017 10:41 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93219> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Larry Norden and John Pudner<https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/19/make-tax-credits-for-small-donors-part-of-tax-reform-column/102751036/> oped for USA Today.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

Bloomingburg: “Can Hasidic Village Survive Vote Fraud Scandal?”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93217>
Posted on June 19, 2017 10:40 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93217> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
The latest<http://forward.com/news/national/374455/can-hasidic-village-survive-vote-fraud-scandal/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_TopSpot_Image&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily+-+M-Th%3A+automated+public+test+2017-06-19&utm_term=The+Forward+Today+Monday-Friday+-+20%25+May+2017> on Bloomingburg<http://electionlawblog.org/?s=bloomingburg&x=16&y=12> from The Forward:
Not least among the oddness is the saga of Rabiner, an early Hasidic pioneer in Bloomingburg.
A Hasidic man who moved to Bloomingburg in 2014, Rabiner won reelection to the village board in March and hasn’t been seen since.
Locals say he’s been around town. But Rabiner hasn’t shown up to a board meeting, or even been to the village office to pick up his checks….
At the time, Rabiner had been a village trustee for two years. He won an reelection officially uncontested in March, though Roemer ran a write-in campaign against him. The Times Herald-Record, an upstate paper that has covered the Bloomingburg saga closely, reported<http://www.recordonline.com/news/20170309/residents-angry-after-bloomingburg-planning-board-meeting-canceled> that Rabiner’s repeated absences were an issue at a village board meeting held days after Lamm’s guilty plea.
“It upsets me that he doesn’t come to the village meetings,” Mayor Russell Wood said, according to the paper. Wood said he had asked Rabiner to resign.
Rabiner did not respond to a message left on his phone.

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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Book Explores How Lobbyists Fill a Void in Congress”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93215>
Posted on June 19, 2017 10:35 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93215> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Roll Call:<http://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/book-explores-lobbyists-fill-void-congress>
If you bemoan lobbyists or the revolving door that spins between government service and K Street, blame Congress.
The shift on Capitol Hill to centralize much of the major policymaking in leadership offices, as opposed to committees, along with a reduction in legislative staff and their salaries has helped propel the revolving door in recent years, says Timothy LaPira, a James Madison University professor.
All that has increased demand for plugged-in K Street insiders, even as President Donald Trump has pledged to drain the swamp but has done little to do so.
“There’s a vacuum in Congress right now for that expertise, and we see not only lobbyists but particularly revolving-door lobbyists filling that vacuum,” said LaPira, who is out with a new book this month that offers fresh data on the lobbying industry. “And you’re going to get a less than ideal product.”
LaPira, one of the few academics to study K Street, and co-author Herschel Thomas of the University of Texas at Arlington have packed their book “Revolving Door Lobbying” <http://revolvingdoorlobbying.org/> with years of research on the connections between federal government service, both on the Hill and the executive branch, and lucrative careers downtown.
I just got a copy of this book and hope to write more about it soon.
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Posted in lobbying<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=28>

“A Republican contractor’s database of nearly every voter was left exposed on the Internet for 12 days, researcher says”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93213>
Posted on June 19, 2017 10:31 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93213> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/19/a-republican-national-committee-database-of-nearly-every-voter-was-left-exposed-on-the-internet-for-12-days-researcher-says/?utm_term=.a2e34c3f8736>
A Republican contractor’s database of nearly every registered American voter was left vulnerable to theft on a public server for 12 days this month, according to a cybersecurity researcher who found and downloaded the trove of data.
The lapse in security was striking for putting at risk the identities, voting histories and views of voters across the political spectrum, with data drawn from a wide range of sources including social media, public government records and proprietary polling by political groups.
Chris Vickery, a risk analyst at cybersecurity firm UpGuard, said he found a spreadsheet of nearly 200 million Americans on a server run by Amazon’s cloud hosting business that was left without a password or any other protection. Anyone with Internet access who found the server could also have downloaded the entire file.
 The server contained data from Deep Root Analytics, a contractor to the Republican National Committee, which used Amazon Web Services for server storage.  Vickery said he came up on the server’s address as he scanned the Internet for unsecured databases.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Justice Kennedy’s Beauty Pageant”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93210>
Posted on June 19, 2017 9:00 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=93210> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
I have written this piece<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/justice-kennedys-beauty-pageant/530790/> for The Atlantic on today’s decision to hear the Wisconsin partisan gerrymandering claim. It begins:
The partisan gerrymandering beauty pageant is returning to the Supreme Court next fall for a limited engagement for an audience of one: Justice Anthony Kennedy. Whether or not Kennedy sees something he likes will go a long way toward determining whether courts will pay a role in reining in some of the most partisan activity in American politics.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

--
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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