[EL] ELB News and Commentary 5/10/19

[Rick Hasen]

“Kamala Harris says voter suppression kept Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum out of office. Really?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105098>
Posted on May 10, 2019 7:49 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105098> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politifact<https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/may/10/fact-checking-kamala-harris-claim-stacey-abrams-an/>:

In a speech to the NAACP, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris called for changing election laws to “fight back against those Republicans who suppress our constitutional right to vote.”
Harris, a U.S. senator from California, pointed to the outcome of two close races for governor in the South.

“Let’s say this loud and clear — without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia, Andrew Gillum is the governor of Florida,” Harris told the NAACP in Detroit<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9p4-IPS50Q&feature=youtu.be> May 5.

It isn’t possible to prove if any election law or policy in either state cost the Democrats their elections, so we aren’t rating the statement by Harris on the Truth-O-Meter. However, our review found there’s more to the story of why these Democrats lost both races.

Harris has a weaker case for blaming voter suppression in Gillum’s loss. Among other issues, Gillum faced ties to an FBI investigation during his campaign

.
In explaining Abrams’ loss, Harris faulted controversial actions by Brian Kemp, who was the Republican secretary of state in charge of state elections before he beat Abrams to become Georgia governor.
While Kemp made some controversial decisions that probably hurt Democrats overall, it is difficult to determine exactly how many people were prevented from voting, said Daniel P. Tokaji, who teaches election law at Ohio State University.

“The only really honest answer is that no one knows for sure how much voting was depressed by the alleged acts of ‘voter suppression’ by former Secretary of State Kemp,” he said. “It’s not necessarily inaccurate for Sen. Harris to make this claim, but it is speculative.”…

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at University of California, Irvine, has said Democrats should cool it with rhetoric that the Georgia race was “stolen.”<https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/georgia-stacey-abrams-brian-kemp-election-not-stolen.html>

“I have seen no good evidence that the suppressive effects of strict voting and registration laws affected the outcome of the governor’s races in Georgia and Florida,” he told PolitiFact. “It would be one thing to claim, as some have, that these laws are aimed to suppress the vote and likely suppressed some votes. It is quite another to claim that there is good proof they affected the outcome.”
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Feds open foreign-money investigation into Trump donor Cindy Yang”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105096>
Posted on May 10, 2019 7:39 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105096> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Miami Herald<https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article230217729.html>:

The FBI has opened a public corruption investigation into Republican donor and South Florida massage-parlor entrepreneur Li “Cindy” Yang<https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2189400/who-cindy-yang-china-born-founder-florida-spa-busted>, focusing on whether she illegally funneled money from China into the president’s re-election effort or committed other potential campaign-finance violations, the Miami Herald has learned.

Investigators obtained a federal grand jury subpoena Tuesday seeking records from Bing Bing Peranio, an employee of Yang’s family’s spa business who last year contributed a maximum $5,400 to President Donald Trump’s re-election effort, according to a source familiar with the probe. Yang came to Peranio’s workplace and helped her write the check, Peranio told reporters from The New York Times<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/us/cindy-yang-trump-donations.html>, who first reported the contribution. Peranio told The Times she didn’t “say no.”

The subpoena asked for any records related to that March 5, 2018, donation and possibly other contributions between 2014 and the present, said the source, who asked for anonymity to discuss an ongoing federal investigation….

A spokesperson for the RNC told the Herald that the organization takes every step possible to ensure donations are made legally and that foreign citizens are not able to contribute.

The White House declined to provide a statement for publication and the Trump Organization also did not respond to inquiries from the Herald.

Asked if Yang had reimbursed her for the donation to Trump, Peranio said she could not hear the question and ended the call.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“South Dakota Out-of-State Donor Ban Ruled Unconstitutional”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105094>
Posted on May 9, 2019 2:36 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105094> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Release via email:

A federal judge has ruled unconstitutional<https://www.ifs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/South-Dakota-Newspaper-Association-Opinion_5.9.pdf> South Dakota Initiated Measure 24, a state law which would have banned Americans from other states from contributing to ballot measure campaigns in South Dakota. The Institute for Free Speech and former South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley represented a coalition of trade associations, an advocacy group, and a former South Dakota resident in a challenge to the law.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“Federal Election Commission Lays Bare Internal Conflicts and Challenges in Letters to Congress”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105092>
Posted on May 9, 2019 2:33 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105092> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CPI<https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/federal-election-commission-congress-fec-conflict/>:

The Federal Election Commission’s four leaders are offering lawmakers clashing perspectives on the agency’s very purpose.

The FEC’s greatest challenge to fulfilling its mission is a misperception that “adherence to the rule of law and sensitivity to Americans’ First Amendment rights reflect hostility towards enforcing the law or, even, toward the Commission itself,” Republican commissioners Matthew Petersen and Caroline Hunter wrote.

Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, took the opposite view, arguing the FEC has been “severely challenged from the inside by a group of commissioners who harbor ideological opposition to the very nature of the agency and the law we are charged with enforcing.”

The FEC commissioners’ comments are part of 171 pages’ worth of responses to dozens of questions Committee on House Administration Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., sent the FEC on April 1<https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/fec-elections-watchdog/>.

The Center for Public Integrity<https://publicintegrity.org/> on Thursday obtained the FEC responses, dated May 1, from the Committee on House Administration. Commissioners at the FEC — an independent, bipartisan agency tasked with enforcing and regulating federal campaign finance laws — had refused the Center for Public Integrity’s requests to review their responses.

Lofgren has openly doubted<https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/democrats-plan-aggressive-oversight-of-federal-election-commission/> the FEC’s ability to function as the agency struggles with deadlocked votes, internal conflict, chronic vacancies and low morale. Her inquiries come at a time when “dark money<https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/what-is-political-dark-money-and-is-it-bad/>” and the specter of foreign election influence<https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/lawmakers-seek-to-curb-foreign-influence-by-closing-online-ad-loopholes/> have captured the attention of the public amid historically long and expensive federal campaign seasons.

The FEC’s commissioners responded to Lofgren’s questions jointly<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5995166-FEC-Response-to-House-Administration-Questions.html>, but Weintraub<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5995163-Attachment-a-Weintraub.html> and independent Commissioner Steven Walther<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5995177-Walther-Response-to-Q-46-House-Admin-Committee.html> also sent individual responses to some of her questions. Petersen and Hunter<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5995173-Response-of-Vice-Chairman-Petersen-and.html> issued a separate, joint responses to Lofgren’s queries about “deadlocks<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5995164-Attachment-B-From-VC-Petersen-and-Commissioner.html>” and the FEC’s greatest challenges to fulfilling its mission and mandate.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal election commission<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>


“NOT REAL NEWS: Texas bill won’t ban van pools to polls”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105090>
Posted on May 9, 2019 2:23 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105090> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP<https://apnews.com/301d8df1557b486f8bde568edf562bc6>:

A proposed Texas Senate bill does not prohibit drivers from transporting groups of “elderly, disabled or poor” to the polls to vote as social media posts shared widely suggest.

The false claims, which have been shared thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook, distort a provision about Election Day transportation in Senate Bill 9. The posts suggest the bill would make it illegal for organized vans to transport people without cars, including the poor and those in nursing homes, to polling places.

The bill, introduced in March by Mineola Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes, would stiffen penalties for election-related crimes, including making it a felony to put false information on a voter registration form. Since the GOP-backed bill passed the Senate in April, civil rights groups have rebuked it, saying it would make voting in the state difficult and bureaucratic.

The posts single out a section of the bill that requires anyone driving three or more non-relatives to vote to fill out a form, but the rule applies only in a special circumstance.

“It’s only if you are driving three or more people who are physically disabled who want to vote curbside from the polls, allowing them to vote from their car,” Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state’s office, told The Associated Press.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


Steve Mazie on the Ohio Partisan Gerrymandering Ruling<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105088>
Posted on May 9, 2019 10:40 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105088> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Here <https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2019/05/09/a-court-says-ohios-congressional-map-is-unconstitutional> at The Economist.
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Posted in redistricting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


Today’s Must-Read: Linda Greenhouse: “The Supreme Court, the Census Case and the Truth: Will the justices be the administration’s enablers or form a firewall against its lies?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105086>
Posted on May 9, 2019 8:33 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105086> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Linda Greenhouse NYT column:<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/supreme-court-census-trump.html>

But if the plaintiff states are going to lose, it seems to me that it matters greatly how they lose. What was depressing and even scary about the April 23 argument was the disingenuous lengths to which the conservative justices were willing to go to tilt the case in the administration’s favor. They played dumb. They pretended not to know what they surely knew: that the citizenship question will depress the census count in a way that is predictably harmful and that the administration’s brief concealed the real story of how the citizenship question made its way onto the census. In other words, I have enough respect for the justices’ basic intelligence, which includes the ability to read the same briefs and opinions that I read, to conclude that they know full well what game is afoot.

Don’t take my word for it. Read the transcript. The conservative justices were at pains to challenge the very idea that the citizenship question could depress noncitizens’ response rates, despite the fact that numerous Census Bureau studies have shown that to be the case. “What jumps out,” Justice Samuel Alito said to Solicitor General Barbara D. Underwood of New York, “is the fact that citizens and noncitizens differ in a lot of respects other than citizenship. They differ in socioeconomic status. They differ in education. They differ in language ability.” And so, he went on, “I don’t think you have to be much of a statistician to wonder about the legitimacy of concluding” that the response rate would go down “because of this one factor.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch weighed in. “There could be multiple reasons why individuals don’t complete the form.” He continued: “We don’t have any evidence disaggregating the reasons why the forms are left uncompleted. What do you do with that? I mean, normally we would have a regression analysis that would disaggregate the potential cause and identify to a 95th percentile degree of certainty what the reason is that persons are not filling out this form and we could attribute it to this question. We don’t have anything like that here. So what are we supposed to do about that?”

Justice Alito then returned to his theme. There were “many factors that could explain a decline when you’re distinguishing between citizens and noncitizens,” he said.

When Ms. Underwood started to explain that the Census Bureau studies had controlled for the differences, Justice Gorsuch broke in. “It’s fair to say we don’t have this isolated, though, isn’t it?” he asked.

At this point in the transcript, Justice Stephen Breyer’s exasperation with his colleagues almost jumps off the page. “There are a million factors,” he said with evident sarcasm. “There are pet dogs, you know. I mean, there are cats.”
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Posted in census litigation<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=125>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


New Jersey: “Man pleads guilty in alleged Hoboken voter bribery scheme” /$50 per ballot for absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105084>
Posted on May 9, 2019 7:37 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105084> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Hudson Reporter.<https://hudsonreporter.com/2019/05/08/man-pleads-guilty-in-alleged-hoboken-voter-bribery-scheme/>
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“President Trump’s shifting claim that ‘we got rid’ of the Johnson Amendment”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105082>
Posted on May 9, 2019 7:35 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=105082> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo fact checker<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/09/president-trumps-shifting-claim-that-we-got-rid-johnson-amendment/?utm_term=.415fc7b98211>.
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Posted in tax law and election law<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>


--
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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