[EL] ELB News and Commentary 12/7/18

[Rick Hasen]

“North Carolina Republican Owes $34,310 for Disputed Absentee Ballot and Turnout Work, Records Show”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102695>
Posted on December 7, 2018 8:44 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102695> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/us/politics/north-carolina-absentee-ballots-fec-payment.html>

The congressional campaign of Mark Harris disclosed late Thursday night that it owed more than $34,000 in connection with an absentee ballot and voter turnout operation that has prompted fears of election fraud and called the North Carolina Republican’s narrow victory into question.

In a filing with the Federal Election Commission, Mr. Harris’s campaign listed an obligation of $34,310 for “reimbursement payment for Bladen absentee, early voting poll workers; reimbursement door to door.” The disclosure form said the campaign owed the money to Red Dome Group, the Charlotte-area consulting firm that Mr. Harris hired for his campaign.

Red Dome, in turn, contracted with L. McCrae Dowless Jr., a Bladen County political operative who has been accused of collecting absentee ballots from voters in a potentially illegal effort to tip the election toward the Republican nominee.

The postelection F.E.C. filing did not detail precisely how Red Dome spent the money, including how much of it was paid to Mr. Dowless or anyone he recruited for his operation, which witnesses said involved canvassers collecting absentee ballots in apparent violation of state law. But the line item was at least one indication of the Harris campaign’s aggressive political focus on Bladen County, which has a population of about 33,000 people and represents a fraction of the sprawling Ninth District.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“Democrat Dan McCready withdraws his concession in North Carolina congressional race roiled by accusations of fraud”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102693>
Posted on December 7, 2018 8:39 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102693> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo reports.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrat-dan-mccready-withdraws-his-concession-in-north-carolina-congressional-race-roiled-by-accusations-of-fraud/2018/12/06/79b6d4c8-f958-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html?utm_term=.7ed377725f26>
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“Supreme Court discussing partisan gerrymandering behind closed doors Friday”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102691>
Posted on December 7, 2018 8:32 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102691> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ariane de Vogue<https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/gerrymandering-supreme-court/index.html> for CNN.
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Posted in redistricting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


“Disputed House race puts spotlight on ‘ballot harvesting’”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102689>
Posted on December 7, 2018 8:30 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102689> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP reports.<https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/north-carolina-race-shines-light-on-ballot-harvesting/>
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>, election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


“‘Contagion’: After Midterms, GOP Steps Up National Effort To Limit Voting Rights”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102687>
Posted on December 7, 2018 8:28 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102687> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

TPM:<https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/after-midterms-gop-steps-up-national-effort-to-limit-voting-rights>

In the aftermath of the elections, Republican lawmakers across the country — and they are nearly all Republican — have moved to undermine those voter-approved allot measures, or to impose new restrictions on the franchise.

The boldest version of this has played out in Wisconsin, where the GOP-controlled legislature followed the example North Carolina set in 2016 and used the lame duck legislative session<https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/wisconsin-assembly-passes-bill-curb-evers-power> to grant themselves additional powers at the expense of the new incoming Democratic governor and pass a grab-bag of policy priorities. One is a two-week limit on early voting.

Similar machinations are underway in Michigan, where the Republican-held legislature is using the lame-duck session to fiddle with two voter-approved constitutional amendments<https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/michigan-gop-targets-ballot-measures-voting-rights> to expand voting access and prevent partisan gerrymandering.

In Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, measures are being floated to the press, grinding their way through the legislature, or being mishandled in ways that would restrict access to the ballot or otherwise make voting more difficult.
Not coincidentally, these large, populous, varying-degrees-of-purple states will be essential in determining the outcome of the 2020 elections.

“It’s a contagion,” Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California Irvine who runs the Election Law Blog, told TPM. “What’s so shocking about it is that it’s spreading. It’s not just that one legislature is out of control, it’s that it’s a changing of the norms towards using maximal political power even in the face of a political rejection.”

“The old move was voters sent us a message, we lost, we’ll compromise,” Hasen continued. “And now it’s voters sent us a message, they don’t like us, we’re going to hold on to whatever power we can still hold onto—including through manipulation of the rules related to elections.”
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“‘I Don’t Vote’ — But He Did. Here’s How Alleged Election Fraud Works In North Carolina.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102683>
Posted on December 6, 2018 4:20 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102683> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

BuzzFeed reports.<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/otilliasteadman/election-fraud-alleged-north-carolina-investigation>
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


Kobach: “Trump ally who served on voter integrity panel expresses concern about fraud in North Carolina”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102681>
Posted on December 6, 2018 4:15 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102681> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo<https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trump-ally-who-served-on-voter-integrity-panel-expresses-concern-about-fraud-in-north-carolina/2018/12/06/98d13d3c-f974-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html?utm_term=.ce4301c06e47>:

Kris Kobach, an ally of President Trump who served on a voter integrity panel, expressed worry Thursday that Republican fraud might have tainted a North Carolina congressional election, becoming one of the most prominent members of the GOP to publicly express alarm about the race.

“Based on what I have read, I am very concerned that voter fraud did occur,” Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. He said it was unclear whether the alleged wrongdoing was broad enough to change the outcome of the election.

Kobach’s comments contrasted with many other Republican elected officials, including Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who have opted not to comment on the allegations roiling North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“House Democrats seek voting rights fixes. Senate GOP says it’s already dead”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102679>
Posted on December 6, 2018 3:33 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102679> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

McClatchy reports.<https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article222729680.html>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Absentee Ballot Fraud and Vote Buying Indictments in Canton, Miss.<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102677>
Posted on December 6, 2018 2:35 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102677> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Details. <http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2018/12/more-canton-corruption.html>
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“Documents Point to Illegal Campaign Coordination Between Trump and NRA”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102675>
Posted on December 6, 2018 12:44 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102675> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Trace<https://www.thetrace.org/2018/12/trump-nra-campaign-coordination/>:

Reporting by The Trace shows that the NRA and the Trump campaign employed the same operation — at times, the exact same people — to craft and execute their advertising strategies for the 2016 presidential election. The investigation, which involved a review of more than 1,000 pages of Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission documents, found multiple instances in which National Media, through its affiliates Red Eagle and AMAG, executed ad buys for Trump and the NRA that seemed coordinated to enhance each other.

Individuals working for National Media or its affiliated companies either signed or were named in FCC documents, demonstrating that they had knowledge of both the NRA and the Trump campaign’s advertising plans.

Experts say the arrangement appears to violate campaign finance laws.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where illegal coordination seems more obvious,” said Ann Ravel, a former chair of the FEC who reviewed the records. “It is so blatant that it doesn’t even seem sloppy. Everyone involved probably just thinks there aren’t going to be any consequences.”
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>


“Republican officials had early warnings of voting irregularities in North Carolina”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102673>
Posted on December 6, 2018 11:30 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102673> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republican-officials-had-early-warnings-of-voting-irregularities-in-north-carolina/2018/12/06/b3e5c6d4-f8bf-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html?utm_term=.b7536331b0a8>

When GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger lost his primary by a narrow margin in May, he suspected something was amiss.

The congressman turned to a group of friends and family who had gathered with him on election night at a steakhouse near Charlotte and blamed the “ballot stuffers in Bladen,” according to three people at the gathering.

Pittenger’s concern stemmed from the vote tallies in rural Bladen County, where his challenger, a pastor from the Charlotte suburbs named Mark Harris, had won 437 absentee mail-in votes. Pittenger, a three-term incumbent, had received just 17.

In the days immediately after the race, aides to Pittenger told the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party and a regional political director for the National Republican Congressional Committee that they believed fraud had occurred, according to people familiar with their discussions.

GOP officials did little to scrutinize the results, instead turning their attention to Harris’s general-election campaign against a well-funded Democratic opponent, the people said.

Their accounts provide the first indication that state and national Republican officials received early warnings about voting irregularities in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, now the subject of multiple criminal probes….

Since reports of irregularities in the 9th District emerged last month, GOP leaders in the state — including Dallas Woodhouse, the state GOP executive director — initially played down concerns that laws were broken. They repeatedly cast the situation in political terms, asserting that any voting irregularities were not widespread enough to change the outcome of the election.

In recent days, amid mounting allegations of a ballot-harvesting operation, state Republicans have shifted their rhetoric. Woodhouse told The Post on Thursday that if the state elections board can “show a substantial likelihood” that possible fraud could have changed the outcome of November’s vote, “then we fully would support a new election.”

In an interview this week, Woodhouse initially said he did not recall fielding complaints from Pittenger aides of possible fraud after the primary. But he called back a few moments later to say that he did remember hearing of anomalies — and took “a cursory look at the end of that race at the vote totals.”

He recalled concluding that Harris had won the overall vote with a strong showing from evangelical voters, but he said: “We did not look real specifically at absentee ballots.”
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“After Citizens United, a Vicious Cycle of Corruption”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102670>
Posted on December 6, 2018 11:13 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102670> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Tom Edsall NYT column:<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/opinion/citizens-united-corruption-pacs.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage>

Since 2010, when the case was decided, independent expenditures and other forms of outside spending have grown exponentially, according to OpenSecrets<https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/>. In 2010, independent expenditures totaled $203.9 million; in 2016, it was $1.48 billion. In this nonpresidential year, with final reports still to come, independent expenditures totaled at least $1.18 billion.

The surge in outside spending unconstrained by contribution limits is a central element of current campaign finance practice.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>


When You’ve Lost Dallas Woodhouse…#NC09<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102668>
Posted on December 6, 2018 9:45 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102668> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CNN: North Carolina GOP director open to new election in disputed House race<https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/06/politics/north-carolina-republicans-new-election/index.html?no-st=1544117824>

The executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party says he supports a new election if allegations of fraud in the 9th Congressional District race are proven true and it impacted the outcome of the race.

Dallas Woodhouse claimed to CNN’s Drew Griffin he was so upset after watching CNN’s coverage of the controversy<http://www.cnn.com/2018/12/05/politics/north-carolina-house-race-election-fraud/index.html> last night, he vomited.

“This has shaken us to the core,” he said.

“We are not ready to call for a new election yet,” Woodhouse added. “I think we have to let the board of elections come show their hand if they can show that this conceivably could have flipped the race in that neighborhood, we will absolutely support a new election.”

Update:
View image on Twitter<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht/status/1070738654593724418/photo/1>
[View image on Twitter]<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht/status/1070738654593724418/photo/1>
[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/946413338740838400/v_u7XMpL_bigger.jpg]<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht>
<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht>
Andy Specht<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht>
✔@AndySpecht<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht>

<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht/status/1070738654593724418>


Is @DallasWoodhouse<https://twitter.com/DallasWoodhouse> "open" to a new #NC9<https://twitter.com/hashtag/NC9?src=hash> election?

I asked him about @jimsciutto<https://twitter.com/jimsciutto>'s tweet.

“We won't oppose if the non-partisan Board of Election investigators determine the outcome of the race was changed or there is a substantial likelihood it could have been." He also said:
<https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1070738654593724418>
8<https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1070738654593724418>
9:56 AM - Dec 6, 2018<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht/status/1070738654593724418>
<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht>
See Andy Specht's other Tweets<https://twitter.com/AndySpecht>

Twitter Ads info and privacy<https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175256>
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


--
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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