[EL] ELB News and Commentary 5/19/17

Thu May 18 20:51:49 PDT 2017

Russia Made Expenditures on Ads to Influence 2016 Presidential Election<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92618>
Posted on May 18, 2017 6:20 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92618> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
TIME:<http://time.com/magazine/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam>
Congressional investigators are looking at how Russia helped stories like these spread to specific audiences. Counterintelligence officials, meanwhile, have picked up evidence that Russia tried to target particular influencers during the election season who they reasoned would help spread the damaging stories. These officials have seen evidence of Russia using its algorithmic techniques to target the social media accounts of particular reporters, senior intelligence officials tell TIME. “It’s not necessarily the journal or the newspaper or the TV show,” says the senior intelligence official. “It’s the specific reporter that they find who might be a little bit slanted toward believing things, and they’ll hit him” with a flood of fake news stories.
Russia plays in every social media space. The intelligence officials have found that Moscow’s agents bought ads on Facebook to target specific populations with propaganda. “They buy the ads, where it says sponsored by–they do that just as much as anybody else does,” says the senior intelligence official. (A Facebook official says the company has no evidence of that occurring.) The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, has said he is looking into why, for example, four of the top five Google search results the day the U.S. released a report on the 2016 operation were links to Russia’s TV propaganda arm, RT. (Google says it saw no meddling in this case.) Researchers at the University of Southern California, meanwhile, found that nearly 20% of political tweets in 2016 between Sept. 16 and Oct. 21 were generated by bots of unknown origin; investigators are trying to figure out how many were Russian.
As they dig into the viralizing of such stories, congressional investigations are probing not just Russia’s role but whether Moscow had help from the Trump campaign. Sources familiar with the investigations say they are probing two Trump-linked organizations: Cambridge Analytica, a data-analytics company hired by the campaign that is partly owned by deep-pocketed Trump backer Robert Mercer; and Breitbart News, the right-wing website formerly run by Trump’s top political adviser Stephen Bannon.
When, in Plutocrats United<https://www.amazon.com/Plutocrats-United-Campaign-Distortion-Elections/dp/0300212453/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495156443&sr=8-1&keywords=plutocrats+united> I argued against foreign money in elections, some called my concerns xenophobic. The concerns about foreign influence in our elections are greater than ever, given how easy it is to hide the sources of political money these days.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

First Meeting of Kobach Fraudulent Fraud Squad in July<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92614>
Posted on May 18, 2017 2:57 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92614> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
AP:<http://www.myfoxspokane.com/kobach-says-he-wont-pre-judge-voter-fraud-panels-findings/>
During an interview with The Associated Press, Kobach said he has no “preconceived conclusions” about whether the commission even will make policy recommendations. He said it will also examine allegations about election laws suppressing turnout – as critics charge Kansas’ laws do.
“There are all kinds of assumptions you might come to this issue with, but I’d like to test those assumptions and see if the facts bear them out,” Kobach said.
But Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, which has battled Kobach in federal court over a 2013 state law requiring new voters to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship when registering, said the group believes the commission’s work has a “pre-ordained” outcome.
A federal judge recently ordered Kobach to turn over to the ACLU a document he took into a meeting with Trump in November in New Jersey. An AP photograph showed it was a paper outlining homeland security issues, including potential changes in federal voting laws.
“He already has policy recommendations. They’re the Kansas experiment,” Ho said of Kobach. “It seems like this commission is just a fig leaf of a process.”
UPDATE: Here<https://twitter.com/APCentralRegion/status/865330237290270720> is video where Kobach stresses that there will be a vote of the “bipartisan” commission. So far, two Democrats (of 7 members).
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Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“House May Be Forced to Vote Again on GOP’s Obamacare Repeal Bill”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92612>
Posted on May 18, 2017 1:53 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92612> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Bloomberg:<https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-18/house-may-be-forced-to-vote-again-on-gop-s-obamacare-repeal-bill>
According to several aides and other procedural experts, if Republicans send the bill to the Senate now and the CBO later concludes it doesn’t save at least $2 billion, it would doom the bill and Republicans would have to start their repeal effort all over with a new budget resolution. Congressional rules would likely prevent Republicans from fixing the bill after it’s in the Senate, the aides said.
If Republican leaders hold onto the bill until the CBO report is released, then Ryan and his team could still redo it if necessary. That would require at least one more House vote of some sort.
That vote could be cloaked in some kind of arcane procedural move, but it would still be depicted as a proxy for yet another vote on the same bill — and reluctant Republicans will once again be forced to decide whether to back it. Only this time, they would also be saddled with the CBO’s latest findings about the bill’s costs and impacts.
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Posted in legislation and legislatures<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>

“Donald Trump voter fraud commission ignores real problem”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92609>
Posted on May 18, 2017 7:46 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92609> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Josh Douglas <https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/05/18/trump-voter-fraud-commission-gets-it-wrong-column/101713614/> in USA Today:
Improving the voting process is a goal worthy of a presidential commission on voting. Trying to bolster the credibility of already-debunked theories of voter fraud is not.
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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“North Carolina Republicans Are Already Working on a New Voter Suppression Bill”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92607>
Posted on May 18, 2017 7:43 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92607> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate:<http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/16/north_carolina_republicans_working_on_a_new_voter_suppression_bill.html>
On Monday, the Supreme Court dealt a death blow<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/05/north_carolina_s_voter_suppression_law_was_apparently_too_racist_for_the.html> to North Carolina’s notorious voter suppression law<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/inside-the-republican-creation-of-the-north-carolina-voting-bill-dubbed-the-monster-law/2016/09/01/79162398-6adf-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html?utm_term=.43c871f49f7a>, refusing to review a lower court’s decision<http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/29/fourth_circuit_strikes_down_north_carolina_voting_restrictions.html> to block the measure for “target[ing] African Americans with almost surgical precision.” Republicans in the General Assembly, however, responded immediately<http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article150554992.html> with plans to introduce a new voter ID bill that mirrors the old, unlawful one. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who opposes voter ID laws, estimates that GOP legislators will pass the bill within ten days<http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article150768282.html>. Due to a gerrymander that has been found to be unconstitutionally racist<https://thinkprogress.org/north-carolina-republicans-ordered-to-redraw-racially-gerrymandered-districts-8b65a35d96e2>, Republicans dominate the state legislature and will likely override Cooper’s inevitable veto.
As I’ve noted<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92540>, a new restrictive voting law could well open up the state to being put back under federal preclearance.

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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

Michael Malbin Reviews Mutch, La Raja and Schaffner, and Hasen Books on Campaign Finance after Citizens United<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92605>
Posted on May 18, 2017 7:23 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92605> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Thoughtful Michael Malbin book review essay<http://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3072&context=tlr> in Tulsa Law Review‘s book review issue.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

Goldfeder and Perez on Trump and the 25th Amendment<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92603>
Posted on May 18, 2017 7:21 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92603> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
I missed this last month<http://www.stroock.com/siteFiles/Publications/NYLJ25Amendment.pdf>—it is well worth reading for those attracted to the 25th Amendment potential for removing the President from office.
As I wrote on twitter, today’s 25th Amendment talk is last July’s brokered Republican convention talk.
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

--
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
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http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
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