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

Wed Jul 18 09:28:43 PDT 2018

“Democrats worry about disenfranchisement. Republicans worry about voter fraud.”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100157>
Posted on July 18, 2018 9:12 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100157> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo reports.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/17/democrats-worry-about-disenfranchisement-republicans-worry-about-voter-fraud/?utm_term=.902ff8a97dcc>

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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Was Georgia’s Election System Hacked in 2016? Robert Mueller’s latest indictments raise new questions about the integrity of Georgia’s voting infrastructure. Why is the state stonewalling?”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100155>
Posted on July 18, 2018 9:10 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100155> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Kim Zetter<https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-indictments-georgia-voting-infrastructure-219018> for Politico.
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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, voting technology<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>

“Indicted Russian Company Uses Trump’s Supreme Court Pick as Get Out of Jail Free Card”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100153>
Posted on July 18, 2018 9:06 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100153> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Every Voice:<https://everyvoice.org/featured/russia-kavanaugh>

A Russian company indicted earlier this year as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into foreign interference in our elections is using a decision written by none other than Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to try to dismiss the case.

As the Washington Post reported this morning<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/indicted-russian-firm-says-it-was-backing-free-political-speech-not-disrupting-2016-election/2018/07/16/598eea3c-893c-11e8-8aea-86e88ae760d8_story.html?utm_term=.55febecf8285>, the company–Concord Management and Consulting—was one of the 16 people or entities indicted by a federal grand jury in February at as part of the special counsel’s investigation. On Monday, the company argued, “that it had broken no federal laws, that it was merely supporting free political speech and that the fraud charge against it should be thrown out.”

In its motion to dismiss, Concord specifically cited Judge Kavanaugh’s Bluman v. FEC decision regarding the ban on foreign spending on our elections…

As Campaign Legal Center and Demos wrote in their review of Kavanaugh’s record<https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/CLC%20Demos%20Kavanaugh%20Brief%207-12-18%209pm.pdf>, “His interpretation means that the law likely would have covered only a small fraction of the campaign activity attributed to Russian operatives in the 2016 elections.”

Another leading election law expert, Professor Rick Hasen, agrees with this analysis of Kavanaugh ’s Bluman decision. “I believe that a Justice Kavanaugh could well vote with a new SCOTUS majority to hold that laws effectively limiting foreign influence in our elections violate the First Amendment,” he wrote earlier this month<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=99897>.

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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

“The Biggest Spender of Political Ads on Facebook? President Trump”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100151>
Posted on July 18, 2018 9:04 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100151> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/technology/political-ads-facebook-trump.html?emc=edit_th_180718&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=364778290718>

It’s official: President Trump is the single biggest political advertiser on Facebook.

Mr. Trump and his political action committee spent $274,000 on ads on the social network since early May, outpacing the second-biggest spender, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care. Planned Parenthood spent just over $188,000 on Facebook ads over the same period.

The ads bought by Mr. Trump and his PAC were also seen the most by Facebook’s users, having been viewed by at least 37 million people since May. That compared with 24 million people who saw the second-most viewed group of political ads, which were also from Planned Parenthood.

These findings were laid out in a new study by a group of researchers from New York University, who used Facebook’s own data to arrive at the results. Facebook in May began an archive of political ads, which is a publicly searchable database that catalogs the ads and identifies which groups or individuals paid for them. Facebook hopes the database will include any ad that has political content and that was aimed at Americans. The researchers conducted their study<https://github.com/online-pol-ads/FBPoliticalAds/blob/master/docs/Facebooks-archive.pdf> by scraping all of that raw data.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Common Cause, the National Election Defense Coalition and Protect Democracy Support Legal Challenge to Georgia’s Insecure Voting System”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100149>
Posted on July 17, 2018 5:29 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100149> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Release:<https://www.commoncause.org/press-release/common-cause-the-national-election-defense-coalition-and-protect-democracy-support-legal-challenge-to-georgias-insecure-voting-system/>

Common Cause, the National Election Defense Coalition and Protect Democracy today filed an Amicus Curiae brief<https://www.commoncause.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/240-1-Amicus-Brief.pdf> in support of all plaintiffs in the Curling v. Kemp lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.  The brief was filed on July 17, 2018.

As national, nonpartisan organizations with expertise in vulnerable voting systems, these groups have urged the Court to reject the State defendants’ motion to dismiss the case, and to promptly consider and grant the plaintiffs’ anticipated motions for preliminary injunctive relief to prevent the use of insecure paperless voting machines in Georgia’s elections.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, voting technology<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>

Senate Hearing: “Voting Rights, Access, and Barriers in Indian Country (webcast)”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100147>
Posted on July 17, 2018 5:26 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100147> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Watch the hearing<https://www.indian.senate.gov/hearing/voting-rights-access-and-barriers-indian-country-webcast> of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

“Schuette set to fight redistricting proposal in Michigan Supreme Court”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100145>
Posted on July 17, 2018 12:42 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100145> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Detroit News reports.<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/07/17/schuette-redistricting-michigan-supreme-court/791994002/>
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

“NSA and Cyber Command to coordinate actions to counter Russian election interference in 2018 amid absence of White House guidance”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100143>
Posted on July 17, 2018 12:40 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=100143> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-and-cyber-command-to-coordinate-actions-to-counter-russian-election-interference-in-2018-amid-absence-of-white-house-guidance/2018/07/17/baac95b2-8900-11e8-85ae-511bc1146b0b_story.html?utm_term=.1d5f2d550589>

The head of the nation’s largest electronic spy agency and the military’s cyberwarfare arm has quietly directed the two organizations to coordinate actions to counter potential Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

The move, announced to staff at the National Security Agency last week by NSA Director Paul Nakasone, is an attempt to maximize the efforts of the two groups and comes as President Trump in Helsinki on Monday<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/07/16/full-text-president-trumps-news-conference-with-russias-putin/?utm_term=.f8cc208a2326> said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “extremely strong and powerful” in denying Russian involvement in the presidential election two years ago.

It is the latest initiative by national security agencies to push back against Russian aggression in the absence of direct guidance from the White House on the issue.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<http://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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