[EL] ELB News and Commentary 2/28/19

Thu Feb 28 08:24:34 PST 2019

Reminder: Dan Tokaji and Then Justin Levitt Guest Blogging for Me March 1-9<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103805>
Posted on February 28, 2019 8:21 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103805> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Please send any news tips and comments their way. Thanks!
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson dies of brain cancer”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103803>
Posted on February 28, 2019 8:18 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103803> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Sad news:<https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2019/02/oregon-secretary-of-state-dennis-richardson-dies-of-cancer.html>

Dennis Richardson, the Oregon secretary of state and first Republican elected to the position in three decades, died of brain cancer Tuesday night at age 69.

Richardson was a respected and well-liked statesman, although at times a divisive figure in Oregon politics, who rose through the ranks to become his party’s most successful standard-bearer in more than a generation with his election as secretary of state in 2016. The victory snapped a 16-year losing streak that had kept Republicans from statewide office….

The Oregon Constitution directs the governor to appoint Richardson’s successor. Brown’s statement said she will review candidates “in the coming weeks” and only appoint a Republican who will promise not to run for secretary of state in 2020.

Condolences to Secretary Richardson’s family and friends.
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Posted in election law biz<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=51>

“N.C. political operative indicted, and prosecutor signals that more charges are likely”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103801>
Posted on February 28, 2019 8:11 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103801> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/north-carolina-political-operative-indicted-in-election-fraud-case-that-upended-congressional-race/2019/02/27/b0d5f004-3aaf-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html?utm_term=.3eea02abb902>:

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman’s decision to seek indictments almost immediately after the close of those hearings sent a “clear signal,” she said, “that we take seriously the public’s confidence in the electoral process and that we intend to pursue this case vigorously and see that justice is done.”

More charges are likely, Freeman said. She said her office’s “very large-scope” investigation will examine “who was aware of and helped finance these fraudulent absentee ballot activities” — a sign of potential legal peril for Harris, who hired Dowless. She also plans to determine whether anyone else besides Dowless allegedly tried to obstruct either the criminal or state board investigations.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Explainer: What legal risks does Cohen’s testimony pose to Trump?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103799>
Posted on February 28, 2019 8:03 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103799> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Reuters reports<https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-russia-cohen-explainer/explainer-what-legal-risks-does-cohens-testimony-pose-to-trump-idUSKCN1QG2WD>.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

Maine: “LePage claims national popular vote bill will silence ‘white people’”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103797>
Posted on February 28, 2019 7:59 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103797> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Oh my<http://mainebeacon.com/lepage-claims-national-popular-vote-bill-will-silence-white-people/>:

Speaking to the hosts of the WVOM morning show this week, former Governor Paul LePage lambasted a bill<http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/display_ps.asp?ld=816&PID=1456&snum=129&sec3> being considered by Maine’s legislature to join with other states to essentially bypass the Electoral College and ensure that the President is elected by the national popular vote.

“Actually what would happen if they do what they say they’re gonna do is white people will not have anything to say. It’s only going to be the minorities that would elect. It would be California, Texas, Florida,” said LePage.

The former governor, calling into the show from his home in Florida, also labeled the proposal “an insane process” and warned that “we’re gonna be forgotten people.”

The proposal would actually, if adopted by a sufficient number of states, ensure that every voter, regardless of race, has the same say in electing the president.
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Posted in electoral college<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=44>

“Michael Cohen’s testimony, if true, confirms Trump’s crimes: Today’s talker”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103795>
Posted on February 28, 2019 7:52 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103795> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Paul Ryan USA Today oped<https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/27/michael-cohens-testimony-if-true-confirms-trumps-crimes/3001819002/>:

On Wednesday, in his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Cohen for the first time provided details to the American people of precisely how Trump directed and coordinated these hush payments in violation of federal law. Cohen also identified a witness to Trump’s seemingly illegal actions.

Cohen testified, for example, that after each of his conversations with Stormy Daniels’ lawyer at the time before the hush payment, he went “straight into Mr. Trump’s office<https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-02-27/cohen-trump-trump-jr-trump-cfo-involved-in-stormy-daniels-hush-money-payments>” to “discuss the issue with him.” Cohen explained that when it was ultimately determined “days before the election<https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-02-27/cohen-trump-trump-jr-trump-cfo-involved-in-stormy-daniels-hush-money-payments> that Mr. Trump was going to pay the $130,000″ to Daniels, with Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg in the room, Trump directed Cohen and Weisselberg to “figure out how to do it.”

Cohen also offered important details about the electoral purpose of the payment to Daniels — this is what makes the payment a campaign finance crime. Cohen was asked whether he was concerned that the Daniels story might be in the news right after the “Access Hollywood” story, in terms of impact on the election. Cohen replied, “I was concerned about it, but more importantly,  Mr. Trump was concerned about it<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/michael-cohen-testimony/2019/02/27/089664f0-39fb-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html?utm_term=.6ad5f73c89d1>.” Specifically, Trump was concerned about the effect the Daniels story would have on how women were seeing him.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“In Chicago, History-Making Didn’t Have to Be So Hard; Ranked-choice voting in the mayoral election would have significantly smoothed the decision-making process for overwhelmed voters.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103793>
Posted on February 28, 2019 7:49 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103793> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Kim Bellware<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/opinion/chicago-mayor-black-women-ranked-voting.html> for NYT Opinion.
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Posted in alternative voting systems<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=63>, campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Campaign Reforms May Never Pass, But the Low-Dollar Revolution Has Already Begun”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103791>
Posted on February 28, 2019 7:46 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103791> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Important Eliza Newlin Carney column<https://prospect.org/article/campaign-reforms-may-never-pass-low-dollar-revolution-has-already-begun>.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Kagan Wants Proof Gerrymandering Harms Both Parties. Here It Is.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103789>
Posted on February 28, 2019 1:49 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103789> by Nicholas Stephanopoulos<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=12>

A new column<https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elena-kagan-gerrymandering-harm-association-first-amendment.html> of mine in Slate, based on my new paper<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3330695> with Chris Warshaw.

In a nutshell, we found<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3330695_code831040.pdf?abstractid=3330695&mirid=1> that Kagan was right. A party disadvantaged by gerrymandering fails to contest more districts. The candidates it does nominate have weaker credentials. Donors give less money to these candidates. And voters are less inclined to support them. Moreover, these effects are statistically significant at both the congressional and statehouse levels and hold no matter how gerrymandering is measured. The effects are substantively quite large too. A 1 standard deviation rise in gerrymandering, for example, is linked to about a 5 percentage point drop in the targeted party’s share of campaign contributions. It’s also tied to roughly a 9 point decline in relative candidate quality, as measured by incumbency or having previously won another office.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Conservative Expert Privately Warned GOP Donors That a Voting Rights Bill Would Help Democrats”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103786>
Posted on February 27, 2019 11:36 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103786> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Intercept:<https://theintercept.com/2019/02/27/hr1-bill-voting-rights-republicans/>

By the end of the month, hearings were held on Capitol Hill<https://theintercept.com/2019/02/07/house-republicans-warn-that-bill-combatting-big-money-in-politics-resembles-russian-government-policy/>. One of the witnesses before the House Judiciary Committee hearings was Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member who is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Von Spakovsky used high-minded and principled language to oppose the bill<https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9298&v=isb6ssJy2uY>. In his prepared testimony<https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20190129/108824/HHRG-116-JU00-Wstate-vonSpakovskyH-20190129-U1.pdf>, he wrote that H.R.1 is “clearly unconstitutional,” complaining that its provisions “come at the expense of federalism.”

Just two weeks later, however, as von Spakovsky addressed a private gathering of conservatives, he was considerably more candid about his reason for opposing the bill: It would be bad for Republicans.
That’s the message this scholar delivered when he traveled to Orlando, Florida, to brief a Council for National Policy-sponsored meeting of Republican donors and Christian right leaders on the bill. Sitting in the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes Ballroom, von Spakovsky explained that expanded voting rights and nonpartisan redistricting could imperil GOP political power.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“The evidence has shown in a hearing before this Court that there is no widespread voter fraud. The challenge is how to ferret the infinitesimal needles out of the haystack of 15 million Texas voters. “<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103784>
Posted on February 27, 2019 11:10 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103784> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

So begins this opinion<https://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/athena/files/2019/02/27/5c76df91e4b0952f89ddcd34.pdf> in the Texas voter purge case. (via Sam Levine<https://twitter.com/srl/status/1100834450148114439>)
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“North Carolina political operative indicted in election fraud case that upended congressional race”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103782>
Posted on February 27, 2019 10:27 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103782> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/north-carolina-political-operative-indicted-in-election-fraud-case-that-upended-congressional-race/2019/02/27/b0d5f004-3aaf-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html?utm_term=.5487286b5907>:

Leslie McCrae Dowless, a political operative at the center of a Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina tainted by evidence of ballot fraud, was indicted by a grand jury on seven counts, a prosecutor announced Wednesday.

Dowless, who worked for Mark Harris, the Republican nominee in the state’s 9th Congressional District, was arrested and charged with three counts of felonious obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice, and two counts of possession of absentee ballot, the Wake County district attorney’s office said.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Testimony from Cohen Could Create New Legal Issues for Trump”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103780>
Posted on February 27, 2019 10:25 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103780> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/politics/congressional-testimony-cohen.html>

The dramatic public testimony to Congress on Wednesday morning by President Trump’s<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/27/us/politics/cohen-testimony-documents.html?module=inline> former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, could intensify the legal issues facing the president in the criminal and civil investigations that are swirling around him, legal experts said.

Mr. Cohen’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee was a remarkable personal and political rebuke to the president from a lawyer who served Mr. Trump with fierce loyalty for more than a decade.
In his prepared testimony<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/politics/cohen-documents-testimony.html?module=inline>, Mr. Cohen — who has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and will go to prison for his crimes — blasted the president as a “racist,” a “con-man” and a “cheat.”

But legal experts said that several of the specific allegations by Mr. Cohen in his opening statement could be relevant to questions about whether Mr. Trump participated in a conspiracy to affect the 2016 election, violated campaign finance laws and obstructed justice in an effort to deflect investigations.

The experts cautioned that nothing Mr. Cohen said in his prepared remarks dramatically altered what is known about any legal case against the president. The relevant laws are complex and the president’s lawyers have repeatedly argued that he did not violate them. And perhaps most important, they note, there is a Justice Department policy that asserts that a president may not be indicted while in office.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

With Michael Cohen’s Hush Money Testimony Coming, Lower Your Expectations<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103778>
Posted on February 26, 2019 8:17 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103778> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Thread on Twitte<https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1100610061276069888>r starts here:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1027236869476573184/PFqQJu6__bigger.jpg]<https://twitter.com/rickhasen>
<https://twitter.com/rickhasen>
Rick Hasen<https://twitter.com/rickhasen>
✔@rickhasen<https://twitter.com/rickhasen>

<https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1100610061276069888>

We don't know exactly what Cohen will produce tomorrow in terms of documents, but if the only documents produced prove that the Trump Org paid Cohen with Trump's knowledge for hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, don't yell impeachment yet. /1
<https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1100522942641917957>
Rebecca Ballhaus<https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1100522942641917957>
✔@rebeccaballhaus<https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1100522942641917957>

Michael Cohen tomorrow will show the Oversight Cmte a signed check he received as part of his reimbursement for the Stormy Daniels payment. *Trump* signed some of the checks reimbursing Cohen, which he began receiving after Trump took office, per source. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cohen-to-testify-that-trump-engaged-in-criminal-conduct-while-in-office-11551175201 …<https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1100522942641917957>

<https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1100610061276069888>
10<https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1100610061276069888>
8:14 PM - Feb 26, 2019<https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1100610061276069888>
Twitter Ads info and privacy<https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175256>
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See Rick Hasen's other Tweets<https://twitter.com/rickhasen>

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

--
Rick Hasen
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UC Irvine School of Law
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