[EL] ELB News and Commentary 3/9/18

[Rick Hasen]

Speaking Saturday at SXSW with Rep. Terri Sewell and Mike Allen on “Reforming the Vote”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98073>
Posted on March 8, 2018 8:34 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98073> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Hope to see folks there!<https://schedule.sxsw.com/2018/events/PP78059>
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Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


What’s Up, Justice Alito?<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98071>
Posted on March 8, 2018 8:30 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98071> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I’ve been expecting a quick rejectio<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97974>n of the Pa. Republicans’ longshot claim in the congressional redistricting lawsuit.

The last time around Justice Alito rejected the claim<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97340> without referring to the Court.

But briefing has been done<https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/17a909.html> since Tuesday, and still no word.  So what could be going on?

Justice Alito might just be taking a close look.  He took longer last time than I expected<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97340>.

Or he might have referred it to the whole Court, which takes time for all the Justices to weigh in.

And if he’s referred it, and the Court issues an order, one or more Justices might write something dissenting from that decision.

We’ll just have to wait and see.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


“Stormy Daniels Lawsuit Opens Door to Further Trouble for Trump”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98069>
Posted on March 8, 2018 8:19 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98069> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/us/politics/stormy-daniels-trump-legal-case.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront>

Mr. Cohen has said that he “facilitated” the payment with his own money and was not reimbursed by Mr. Trump’s company or campaign, and that the payment was “not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.” But in her suit, Ms. Clifford tries to implicate Mr. Trump in the transaction, saying the offer of money was intended to buy her silence to help “ensure he won the presidential election.”

Paul S. Ryan, the vice president for litigation and policy at Common Cause, said that assertion makes clear that the payment was connected to the campaign. “That’s a threshold legal issue, establishing that the purpose of the payment was to influence the election,” he said.

Jan Baran, a former general counsel to the Republican National Committee, said the facts so far do not support the notion that the payment to Ms. Clifford was “indisputably directly for the campaign itself.” It could have simply been a personal matter, he said, of Mr. Trump wishing to keep a secret from his wife.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“ACLU: Report to Kris Kobach shows 5 illegal voters out of 1.3 million ballots”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98066>
Posted on March 8, 2018 8:08 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98066> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Topeka Capital-Journal:<http://www.cjonline.com/news/20180308/aclu-report-to-kris-kobach-shows-5-illegal-voters-out-of-13-million-ballots>

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys on Thursday scrutinized examples of questionable voters compiled by the Sedgwick County elections commissioner and reported to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Of the 38 people in Tabitha Lehman’s spreadsheet, only five were noncitizens who tried to vote, Lehman said.

During the third day of a trial that challenges Kobach<http://www.cjonline.com/news/20180307/kansas-democratic-party-official-instructed-ku-student-not-to-provide-documents-to-vote> to prove his claims of widespread voter fraud, the ACLU questioned Lehman about people who were mistakenly given registration forms after admitting they weren’t citizens and compared the dozen illegal votes by five noncitizens to the 1.3 million ballots casts in her county while she compiled her list.

The spreadsheet contains three types of individuals: 18 noncitizens who successfully registered to vote, 16 who tried to register, and four who were blocked until an appeals court halted enforcement of the state’s proof of citizenship law. Those four became citizens before voting….

In a recurring theme for this trial, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson repeatedly refused to allow Kobach and his team to introduce new evidence during Thursday’s testimony.

After a failed attempt to question Caskey about the latest number of suspended voters in the state database, Kobach and Robinson engaged in a fiery discussion about Kobach’s failure to provide updated figures for two years before trying to submit new numbers on the night before the trial began. If updated numbers were important, she said, he could have followed the rules.

“You’re not going to introduce new evidence through witnesses here,” Robinson said. “That’s not fair. That’s surprise. That’s ambush.”

Sue Becker, Kobach’s chief legal counsel, shouted over Robinson with an allegation the ACLU team had been dishonest earlier in the week. Robinson told Becker she was out of line and admonished her for confusing the record.

Earlier in the day, the ACLU pointed out Lehman failed to follow the court’s order that witnesses not listen to any other testimony or read news stories about the trial. Lehman admitted she had done both.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


“Ex-Tennessee governor’s Senate campaign fears it was hacked”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98064>
Posted on March 8, 2018 7:57 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98064> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP:<https://apnews.com/7bd9bffe405e4cc0828d65eea00476ed?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=APSouthRegion>

Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen’s campaign for U.S. Senate told the FBI on Thursday that it fears it has been hacked, amid growing concern that candidates in the 2018 election could be targets of cyberattacks.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, campaign lawyer Robert E. Cooper Jr. wrote that Bredesen’s aides became suspicious when someone pretending to be the campaign’s media buyer asked for money to be wired to an international account.

The letter says the person used an email address nearly identical to the actual media buyer’s and knew about an upcoming TV campaign and its proposed dates. Cooper says the campaign hired a cyber-security firm that found the impostor emails were registered through an Arizona-based registrar.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“Election Panel Moves Toward Online Ad Disclosure Compromise”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98062>
Posted on March 8, 2018 7:48 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98062> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Bloomberg BNA:<http://news.bna.com/mpdm/MPDMWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=129322798&vname=mpebulallissues&jd=00000162069fd54ba7769fbf52a10002&split=0>
Federal Election Commission members said today they were close to reaching a deal to advance new disclosure rules for online political advertisements.
The commission postponed a vote on new rules to give them more time to draft a compromise. The move appeared likely to head off a partisan clash, which could have derailed the FEC’s efforts to write new disclosure rules for political ads on Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Twitter Inc. and other online platforms. An FEC vote now is expected to take place March 13 or March 14, said FEC chairwoman Caroline Hunter.
“We’re very close to finalizing” a rulemaking plan, Hunter, a Republican, said at a brief commission meeting. “I have full confidence we’ll get there.”
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>


“Criminal Investigation Sought into Sanders Campaign for Collusion During a Federal Election With a Foreign Entity”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98059>
Posted on March 8, 2018 10:12 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=98059> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Veritas:<https://www.projectveritasaction.com/2018/03/08/criminal-investigation-sought-into-sanders-campaign-for-collusion-during-a-federal-election-with-a-foreign-entity/>

 Project Veritas Action Fund has requested a criminal investigation<https://www.projectveritasaction.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ALP-Bernie-2016-Complaint-Filed.pdf> by the US Department of Justice into the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign to determine if the Sanders campaign and the Australian Labor Party conspired to “defraud the U.S. government” and allowed “foreign national interference with U.S. elections.”

The request for an investigation of the Sanders campaign and the Australian Labor Party is based on the belief that there was a “conspiracy to defraud the United States government,” as well as the likelihood of “false statements to the United States government.”,,

This comes in the wake of the Sanders Campaign agreeing to pay a civil penalty<https://www.projectveritasaction.com/2018/02/28/sanders-campaign-pays-fine-for-foreign-govt-election-meddling-fec-credits-pva-videos/> of $14,500 to the Federal Election Commission for accepting “prohibited foreign contributions,” although the campaign agreed to do so “without admitting liability.”

This fine was a result of an initial complaint<http://www.wmur.com/article/former-nh-house-speaker-files-fec-complaint-against-australian-labor-party-sanders-campaign/5209487> filed by O’Brien, citing Project Veritas Action Fund’s hidden-camera videos from 2016 which exposed Australian nationals who were sent by the Australian Labor Party and financed by the Australian Labor Party to assist the the Sanders Presidential campaign.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>



--
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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