[EL] ELB News and Commentary 12/24/19 (last planned #ELB daily mailing for the year)

Tue Dec 24 09:39:08 PST 2019

Happy Holidays, Light Blogging, Then Guest Bloggers Through Mid-January<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108534>
Posted on December 24, 2019 9:34 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108534> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Happy holidays to all our #ELB readers! Your tips, feedback, and support make all this worthwhile.

Blogging will be light through the end of the year. From the end of December to January 15, I will be off the grid before the crazy 2020 election season starts in earnest and before the release of my new book, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy<https://www.amazon.com/Election-Meltdown-Distrust-American-Democracy/dp/0300248199/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=hasen+election+meltdown&qid=1565015345&s=digital-text&sr=1-1-catcorr> and the accompanying book tour<https://sites.uci.edu/electionmeltdown/book-tour/>.

Justin Levitt<https://www.lls.edu/faculty/facultylistl-r/levittjustin/> and Dan Tokaji<https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/daniel-p-tokaji/> will be guest blogging Dec. 30 to January 15. Please send any tips and feedback to them during that period.

To all the ELB readers, wishing you a safe, happy, healthy, peaceful, and prosperous 2020!
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D108534&title=Happy%20Holidays%2C%20Light%20Blogging%2C%20Then%20Guest%20Bloggers%20Through%20Mid-January>
Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“As Georgia rolls out new voting machines for 2020, worries about election security persist”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108532>
Posted on December 24, 2019 9:25 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108532> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-georgia-rolls-out-new-voting-machines-for-2020-worries-about-election-security-persist/2019/12/23/c5036d74-2017-11ea-bed5-880264cc91a9_story.html>

Last month, voters in six Georgia counties cast ballots for local elections using new touch-screen voting machines that officials have said will resolve long-standing questions about the security of the state’s election system.

Richard DeMillo, a professor of computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said he was worried as he visited polling places in a county north of Atlanta.

DeMillo said bystanders could easily see the screens from 30 feet away, presenting serious privacy concerns. In some counties, elections officials reported <https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/problem-with-new-election-equipment-delays-voting-georgia-counties/vxltEshk0grck0uJiWA5RM/> that programming problems led to delays in checking in voters, and in some precincts, the machines unexpectedly shut down <https://georgiarecorder.com/2019/11/07/georgias-new-voting-machines-buggy-in-tuesdays-election-debut/> and rebooted.
Georgia is preparing to roll out 30,000 of the machines in every polling place for its presidential primary in March, replacing a paperless electronic voting system that a federal judge declared <https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/judge-denies-paper-ballots-georgia-this-year-but-requires-them-2020/k3OcClTXuJ058FRfHWBQfO/> insecure and unreliable.AD

But election security experts said the state’s newest voting machines also remain vulnerable to potential intrusions or malfunctions — and some view the paper records they produce as insufficient if a verified audit of the vote is needed.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D108532&title=%E2%80%9CAs%20Georgia%20rolls%20out%20new%20voting%20machines%20for%202020%2C%20worries%20about%20election%20security%20persist%E2%80%9D>
Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, voting technology<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>

North Carolina: “‘Get off Facebook.’ Local election officials warned over partisan posts”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108530>
Posted on December 24, 2019 9:10 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108530> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

News and Observer<https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article238675608.html>:

Members of the State Board of Elections admonished county election board members to “get off Facebook” and “delete your Twitter account,” as they reviewed the latest complaints of improper social media posts by local election officials.

The state board ultimately voted 4-1 last week to reject a pair of complaints filed by local Republican Party leader Jane Pait against two members of the Bladen County Board of Elections, who she accused of posting statements on Facebook that disparaged President Donald Trump.

One of the posts in question involved an image of Trump’s face superimposed on the head of a lion with the caption “The Lyin’ King.”
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D108530&title=North%20Carolina%3A%20%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98Get%20off%20Facebook.%E2%80%99%20Local%20election%20officials%20warned%20over%20partisan%20posts%E2%80%9D>
Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>

“Federal judge overturns Michigan’s ballot access rule for independent candidates”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108527>
Posted on December 23, 2019 2:50 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108527> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Detroit News:<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/12/23/federal-judge-overturns-michigans-ballot-access-law-independents/2732742001/>

A federal district judge on Sunday overturned state law governing independent candidates’ access to the ballot and lowered the signature threshold for qualification in 2020.

Michigan Eastern District Judge Victoria Roberts ruled that the state’s ballot access requirements were “severely burdensome” to Christopher Graveline, other independent candidates seeking statewide office and voters who wished to vote for them. She granted Graveline a permanent injunction that lowers the signature threshold for future independent candidates seeking state office in Michigan.

The set of rules governing the number of signatures, where they’re gathered and when they are submitted is unconstitutional, Roberts said in her Sunday opinion.

Until the Legislature draws up new rules, she said, an independent candidate for statewide office can qualify with just 12,000 signatures instead of 30,000.

BAN<http://ballot-access.org/2019/12/22/u-s-district-court-strikes-down-michigans-30000-signature-requirement-for-statewide-independent-candidates/> has the decision<http://ballot-access.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Order_12-22-2019_Graveline-SJ.pdf>.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D108527&title=%E2%80%9CFederal%20judge%20overturns%20Michigan%E2%80%99s%20ballot%20access%20rule%20for%20independent%20candidates%E2%80%9D>
Posted in ballot access<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=46>, third parties<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=47>

--
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/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20191224/05aeffd6/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2021 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20191224/05aeffd6/attachment.png>