[EL] ELB News and Commentary 4/11/18

Wed Apr 11 09:29:45 PDT 2018

Georgia: “Missing hyphens will make it hard for some people to vote in U.S. election”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98639>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:23 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98639> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Reuters:<https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/missing-hyphens-will-make-it-hard-for-some-people-to-vote-in-us-election/ar-AAvLJgF>

The tiniest discrepancy on a registration form places them on a “pending” voter list. A Reuters analysis of Georgia’s pending voter list, obtained through a public records request, found that black voters landed on the list at a far higher rate than white voters even though a majority of Georgia’s voters are white.

Both voting rights activists and Georgia’s state government say the reason for this is that blacks more frequently fill out paper forms than whites, who are more likely to do them online. Paper forms are more prone to human error, both sides agree. But they disagree on whether the errors are made by those filling out the forms or officials processing the forms.

Republicans say the aim of the “exact match” law is to prevent voter fraud. Voting rights groups, however, object to the tiniest, inadvertent error creating an obstacle to a person’s fundamental right to vote.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>

“Stormy Weather for Campaign-Finance Laws”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98637>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:19 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98637> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Brad Smith WSJ oped<https://www.wsj.com/articles/stormy-weather-for-campaign-finance-laws-1523398987>, with the subhead: “Hush money looks like a personal expense. Treating it as a political one would create a bad precedent.”
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Trump lawyer’s payment to Stormy Daniels ‘illegal’ under these conditions: expert”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98634>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:16 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98634> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NY Post reports.<https://nypost.com/2018/04/10/trump-lawyers-payment-to-stormy-daniels-illegal-under-these-conditions-expert/>
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Maine’s Fitful Experiment With a New Way of Voting”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98632>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:11 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98632> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Atlantic reports.<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/ranked-choice-voting-maine/557669/>
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Posted in alternative voting systems<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=63>

“Facebook Fallout Deals Blow to Mercers’ Political Clout”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98630>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:08 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98630> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/us/politics/mercer-family-cambridge-analytica.html>

Last month, a friend of the wealthy conservative donor Rebekah Mercer arrived at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters. His task: Find out what — if anything — could repair relations between Facebook, the world’s biggest social media company, and Cambridge Analytica, the voter-profiling firm co-founded by her father and used by the Trump campaign.

The revelation last month that Cambridge Analytica improperly acquired the private Facebook data of millions of users<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html> has set off government inquiries in Washington and London, plunging Facebook into crisis. But it has also battered the nascent political network overseen by Ms. Mercer, 44, and financed by her father, Robert Mercer, 71, a hard-line conservative billionaire.

Ms. Mercer’s standing in Mr. Trump’s circle had already declined following the departure last year of Stephen K. Bannon, her family’s former adviser and President Trump’s former chief strategist, according to Republicans with close ties to the president’s political operation. A pro-Trump advocacy group controlled by Ms. Mercer has gone silent following strategic disputes between her and other top donors. Plans to wage a civil war against the Republican establishment<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/politics/steve-bannon-robert-rebekah-mercer-alliance.html> in the 2018 midterms have been derailed.

And last month, after reports on Cambridge in The New York Times, The Observer of London and The Guardian, Facebook banned the company from its platform, a major blow to any political or commercial targeting firm. Not a single American candidate or “super PAC” committee has reported payments to the company since the 2016 campaign, according to federal records.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“High profile cases may pull Neil Gorsuch in different directions”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98628>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:06 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98628> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Steve Mazie<https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2018/04/year-bench> for The Economist.
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Posted in Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

“Meet the wealthy donors pouring millions into the 2018 elections”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98626>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:05 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98626> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo reports.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/superpac-donors-2018/?utm_term=.6d5966d4127e>
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Alabama elections chief calls losing the right to vote a ‘minor disability’”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98624>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:03 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98624> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Kira Lerner<https://thinkprogress.org/alabama-elections-chief-voting-minor-disability-27f8540abb81/> for Think Progress.
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Posted in felon voting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=66>

“Are Algorithms the New Campaign Donation?”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98622>
Posted on April 11, 2018 9:02 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98622> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jacob Metcalf<https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-suggests-algorithms-are-the-new-campaign-donation.html> for Slate.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“‘We’ve been disenfranchised’: Republicans in San Juan County say redrawn voter districts unfairly favor Navajos”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98620>
Posted on April 10, 2018 9:28 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98620> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Salt Lake Tribune:<https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/04/08/weve-been-disenfranchised-republicans-in-san-juan-county-say-redrawn-voter-districts-unfairly-favor-navajos/?utm_source=Atlas+Clips+-+Political&utm_campaign=3f08b99155-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_04_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ee77c6e4bd-3f08b99155-313135013>

“I feel like we’ve been disenfranchised,” said Robert Turk, 57.

It was the shared sentiment Thursday at the first GOP convention in San Juan County since a federal judge redrew the boundaries<https://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/12/22/federal-judge-adopts-new-voting-district-boundaries-in-san-juan-county/> to give Navajos, who tend to affiliate as Democrats, a significant majority of voters in two of three commission districts and three of five school board seats. The decision was meant to reverse the historic political domination by whites over American Indians.

But it has roiled Monticello and Blanding, the two larger towns here that each has more than 75 percent Anglo populations, where American flags wave from almost every porch, pickup trucks sit in most driveways and pretty much anyone who’s not a tourist wears cowboy boots. The districts, they said, are now unfairly based on race and party.

And federal Judge Robert Shelby, they said, is to blame.

“You mean King Shelby?” asked longtime Blanding resident Al Clarke. “The way these districts came about is just totalitarian.”

“He’s skewed everything in favor of the Democrats,” added Zeb Dalton, 39, still wearing his tan cowboy hat hours after he’d finished work for the day at his cattle ranch….

It was underscored, too, by some racial tension among residents concerned that American Indians living on the Navajo Nation don’t pay property taxes. Lynn Laws, 69, of Blanding, worries about having “two nontaxpaying commissioners telling us how to use our tax money.”

Others suggested Navajo commissioners wouldn’t show up for meetings, wouldn’t allocate funding to white towns, wouldn’t understand how to govern the county.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

Twitter Announces Support for Honest Ads Act—Though It Won’t Help With Much of the Problems with Twitter<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98618>
Posted on April 10, 2018 9:12 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98618> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/880132255011586048/rlZKfFFe_bigger.jpg]<https://twitter.com/Policy>
<https://twitter.com/Policy>
Twitter Public Policy<https://twitter.com/Policy>
✔@Policy<https://twitter.com/Policy>

<https://twitter.com/Policy/status/983734917015199744>

Twitter is pleased to support the Honest Ads Act. Back in the fall we indicated we supported proposals to increase transparency in political ads.
8:54 AM - Apr 10, 2018<https://twitter.com/Policy/status/983734917015199744>
·         <https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=983734917015199744>
470<https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=983734917015199744>
·         <https://twitter.com/Policy/status/983734917015199744>
243 people are talking about this<https://twitter.com/Policy/status/983734917015199744>
Twitter Ads info and privacy<https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175256>

As with troubling foreign content on Facebook<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98577>, Twitter’s issues likely won’t be covered by the honest ads act either, because the use of bots etc. to amplify messages would not count as electioneering communications under the act and remain unregulated.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Federal complaint alleges Rick Scott’s PAC illegally skirted fundraising restrictions”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98616>
Posted on April 10, 2018 7:36 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98616> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Tampa Bay Times:<http://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/04/10/federal-complaint-alleges-rick-scotts-pac-illegally-skirted-fundraising-restrictions/>

Less than 24 hours after Rick Scott announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate, he faces a Federal Election Commission complaint accusing him of breaking election laws by raising and spending unlimited campaign donations to prepare for his senate campaign.

Gov. Scott a year ago launched his New Republican PAC, which described its mission as re-branding and re-inventing the Republican Party to help Donald Trump’s agenda, as well as appealing to young and Hispanic voters.

The Democratic leaning group End Citizens United alleges in its new FEC complaint that Scott’s New Republican PAC was merely a means for Scott to skirt federal restrictions on unlimited donations and corporate donations while he put the pieces in place to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. Prospective candidates exploring possible campaigns are supposed to create “testing the waters” committees that must abide by contribution limits of $2,700 per individual.

“(T)he very same day that Scott declared his federal candidacy, the Committee revamped its website, suddenly transforming itself from a committee dedicated to supporting President Trump to one dedicated to supporting Scott. This timing cannot be mere coincidence; instead, Scott and the Committee plainly prearranged this transition,” the complaint states. “Thus it appears as if Scott consented to the Committee spending funds on behalf of his candidacy, triggering candidacy for Scott on a date earlier than the one he declared. But regardless of when he triggered candidacy, it appears as if he has been using the Committee to improperly pay for expenses associated with his exploratory activities and his candidacy for Senate.”
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

“White House stands behind Trump voter fraud claims”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98614>
Posted on April 9, 2018 8:31 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98614> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Hill:<http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/382332-white-house-stands-behind-trump-voter-fraud-claims>

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday defended President Trump<http://thehill.com/people/donald-trump>’s claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election and argued the administration has no evidence to back up the claims because states have refused to cooperate with a federal review.

“The president still strongly feels there was a large amount of voter fraud and attempted to do a thorough review of it. A lot of the states didn’t want to cooperate and participate,” Sanders said.

WaPo: It doesn’t matter how Trump ‘feels’ about voter fraud. He’s wrong<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/04/09/it-doesnt-matter-how-trump-feels-about-voter-fraud-hes-wrong/?utm_term=.de61f794f04c>.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

--
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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