[EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/11/19

Mon Nov 11 09:54:23 PST 2019

Today’s Must-Read; “Close Election in Kentucky Was Ripe for Twitter, and an Omen for 2020”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108027>
Posted on November 11, 2019 9:50 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108027> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/us/politics/kentucky-election-disinformation-twitter.html>

A few hours after polls closed in Kentucky last Tuesday, a Twitter user writing under the handle @Overlordkraken1 posted a message to his 19 followers saying he had “just shredded a box of Republican mail-in ballots.”

It was clear that the Kentucky governor’s race was going to be excruciatingly close, and that the Republican incumbent, Matt Bevin, could be headed to defeat. But just in case anyone missed the significance of the destroyed-ballots claim, @Overlordkraken1 added a final touch to his tweet: “Bye-Bye Bevin,” he wrote.

For those eager to cry fraud as a reliably red state leaned blue, the fact that @Overlordkraken1 did not appear to be in Kentucky — Louisville was misspelled in the location tag on his tweet, for one thing — was not going to get in the way of a useful narrative. Nor was Twitter’s decision to suspend his account.

Within hours of @Overlordkraken1’s tweet, as it became apparent that Mr. Bevin was trailing in the vote tally, hyperpartisan conservatives and trolls were pushing out a screenshot of the message, boosted by what appeared to be a network of bots, and providing early grist for allegations of electoral theft in Kentucky. High-profile right-wing figures were soon tweeting out their own conspiracy theories about the election being stolen — messages that were in turn pushed by even more trolls and bots — and the Bevin campaign began talking about “irregularities” in the vote without offering any specifics or evidence.

The talk has only intensified in the days since, though it has yet to be matched by any evidence of actual election rigging. But with Mr. Bevin’s choosing not to concede, and Kentucky authorities’ preparing to recanvass all of the votes at his insistence, Kentucky is shaping up to be a case study in the real-word impact of disinformation — and a preview of what election-security officials and experts fear could unfold a year from now if the 2020 presidential election comes down to the wire.
Since his election four years ago, Mr. Bevin has hitched himself to President Trump, and his allegations of irregularities echo the Trump playbook. Mr. Trump has sown doubts about a “rigged election” system since before his own election, including openly questioning the mail-in ballot process in Colorado<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/politics/donald-trump-ballots-colorado.html?module=inline>. He then contended that fraud had lost him the popular vote (which Hillary Clinton won by 2.9 million votes). And he has amplified similar theories while in office, tweeting at least 40 times about unfounded voter fraud allegations, according to an analysis by The New York Times<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/02/us/politics/trump-twitter-presidency.html?module=inline>, including a claim after the midterm elections last year that “many ballots are missing or forged” in Florida<https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1061962869376540672>.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>, fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

“Skeptics Urge Bevin To Show Proof Of Fraud Claims, Warning Of Corrosive Effects”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108025>
Posted on November 11, 2019 9:43 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108025> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Miles Parks<https://www.npr.org/2019/11/10/777300611/skeptics-urge-bevin-to-show-proof-of-fraud-claims-warning-of-corrosive-effects?utm_term=nprnews&utm_campaign=npr&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social> for NPR:

Bevin isn’t the first politician to question the results of a race after the fact, and occasionally, if infrequently, those concerns have been founded in reality.

After the 2018 midterms, then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott alluded to “rampant voter fraud<https://www.npr.org/2018/11/09/666018707/trump-scott-spread-claims-of-voter-fraud-as-florida-race-narrows>” that was never borne out in his Senate race.
Democrats also have continued to blame the results<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/30/did-racially-motivated-voter-suppression-thwart-stacey-abrams/> of the Georgia gubernatorial election on election administration issues that they say suppressed turnout.

And in North Carolina, an election for a House seat did end up being nullified<https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/695874034/n-c-officials-examine-fraud-charges-in-disputed-congressional-election> because of an absentee ballot scheme.

Even after winning the 2016 election, President Trump alleged that “millions and millions of people” voted illegally<https://www.npr.org/2018/04/05/599868312/fact-check-trump-repeats-voter-fraud-claim-about-california> in the 2016 election, which he said was why he lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

Trump has never presented any evidence for that claim, and a group his administration assembled to investigate voter fraud disbanded <https://www.npr.org/2018/01/03/575524512/trump-dissolves-controversial-election-commission> less than a year after it was formed, with no major result.

Overall, there has seldom been any evidence<https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/Briefing_Memo_Debunking_Voter_Fraud_Myth.pdf> of widespread fraud in elections.

All the same, Americans’ confidence in elections has been slowly eroding<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/10/are-u-s-voters-confident-in-their-electoral-system-yes-and-no/> over the past 20 years — and democracy-watchers put some of the blame on political rhetoric.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

“I worked on political ads at Facebook. They profit by manipulating us.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108023>
Posted on November 11, 2019 9:41 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108023> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Yael Eisenstat WaPo oped<https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/04/i-worked-political-ads-facebook-they-profit-by-manipulating-us/>:

I joined Facebook in June 2018 as “head of Global Elections Integrity Ops” in the company’s business integrity organization, focused specifically on political advertising. I had spent much of my career working to strengthen and defend democracy — including freedom of speech — as an intelligence officer, diplomat and White House adviser. Now I had the opportunity to help correct the course of a company that I viewed as playing a major role in one of the biggest threats to our democracy.

In the year leading up to our 2016 election, I began to see the polarization and breakdown of civil discourse, exacerbated by social media, as our biggest national security threat; I had written about that before Facebook called. I didn’t think I was going to change the company by myself. But I wanted to help Facebook think through the role it plays in politics, in the United States and around the world, and the best way to ensure that it is not harming democracy.

A year and a half later, as the company continues to struggle with how to handle political content and as another presidential election approaches, it’s clear that tinkering around the margins of advertising policies won’t fix the most serious issues. The real problem is that Facebook profits partly by amplifying lies and selling dangerous targeting tools that allow political operatives to engage in a new level of information warfare. Its business model exploits our data to let advertisers aim at us, showing each of us a different version of the truth and manipulating us with hyper-customized ads — ads that as of this fall<https://washpost.arcpublishing.com/pb/technology/2019/oct/04/facebook-exempts-political-ads-ban-making-false-claims> can contain blatantly false and debunked information if they’re run by a political campaign. As long as Facebook prioritizes profit over healthy discourse, it can’t avoid damaging democracy.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Expensive, Glitchy Voting Machines Expose 2020 Hacking Risks”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108021>
Posted on November 11, 2019 9:40 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108021> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Bloomberg:<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/expensive-glitchy-voting-machines-expose-2020-hacking-risks>

Digital voting machines were promoted in the wake of a similarly chaotic scene 19 years ago: the infamous punch-card ballots and hanging chads of south Florida that tossed the presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore into uncertainty.

But now, the machinery that was supposed to be the solution has spawned a whole new controversy, this time with national security at stake—the prospect of foreign states disrupting American elections.
Security experts say the cheapest, and to their minds, most reliable and hack-proof method to cast votes also happens to be the lowest tech: paper ballots marked by hand and fed through scanners (no chads) to tally the results. They have called for replacing computerized equipment—particularly paperless older models—with the decidedly Luddite alternative.The devices have “raised far more security questions than paper ballots because you have a potentially hackable computer standing between the voter and the record,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, adding that without sufficient research, these new machines could be “a waste of money.”

…

Cybersecurity experts are baffled by local election officials choosing the computerized voting machines. “It’s a mystery to me,” said Rich DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer science professor and former Hewlett-Packard chief technology officer. “Does someone have 8 x 10 glossies? No one has been able to figure out the behavior of elections officials. It’s like they all drink the same Kool-Aid.”
The animus is mutual. At conferences, election administrators swap complaints about cyber experts treating them like idiots, said Dana DeBeauvoir, head of elections in Travis County, Texas, whose office purchased a computerized system DeMillo deplores. Hand-marked ballots are “a supremely horrible idea” cooked up by people in Washington “who have never had to really conduct an election,” she said.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, voting technology<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>

“Intelligence community unveils plans for disclosing foreign electoral interference; promises no ‘partisan politics'”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108019>
Posted on November 11, 2019 9:31 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108019> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Yahoo News reports.<https://www.yahoo.com/news/intelligence-community-unveils-plans-for-disclosing-foreign-electoral-interference-promises-no-partisan-politics-212106996.html>
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>

“An Inconclusive 2020 Election Night Is Already Looming”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108016>
Posted on November 11, 2019 9:29 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108016> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jonathan Bernstein<https://www.yahoo.com/news/inconclusive-2020-election-night-already-130011530.html> for Bloomberg Opinion.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>

Congratulations to Derek Muller<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108014>
Posted on November 11, 2019 9:16 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108014> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

who will be moving to Iowa Law School<https://twitter.com/derektmuller/status/1193920877336772608> in the fall. Iowa is one lucky place!
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Posted in election law biz<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=51>

“Make America Great Again” Shirt on Poll Worker and the Ban on Electioneering<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108011>
Posted on November 8, 2019 2:40 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108011> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

From Newsday’s report<https://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/voting-problems-election-1.38342417> of New York voting:

One of the issues made a splash in social media. Some voters complained that a poll worker in Remsenburg wore a blue shirt with the slogan “Make America Great Again” emblazoned on the front. State law prohibits “electioneering” within 100 feet of a polling place, but the shirt didn’t mention a candidate or the slogan’s promoter, Republican President Donald Trump.

“I did get some calls on that and I got some emails about that as well,” LaLota said. He said the slogan didn’t seem to violate the law against electioneering for a candidate.

“I would say that whatever the slogan is, whether it’s left or right, that people show a little more tolerance,” LaLota said. “There is no rule to enforce to make this 77-year-old gentleman remove his shirt.”

Anita Katz, Democratic elections commissioner in Suffolk County, acknowledges wearing the slogan wasn’t illegal, but she said it made many voters uncomfortable.

From the Lowenstein et al. election law casebook 2019 supplement<https://caplaw.com/el2019/>:
[cid:image002.png at 01D59875.FE3772E0]
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Kentucky: “Senate president says Bevin should concede election if recanvass doesn’t alter vote totals”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108009>
Posted on November 8, 2019 11:07 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108009> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Courier-Journal:<https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/elections/kentucky/2019/11/08/kentucky-senate-president-bevin-should-concede-if-votes-unchanged/2530822001/>

Republican Senate President Robert Stivers believes Gov. Matt Bevin should concede his loss to Democrat Andy Beshear if next week’s recanvass doesn’t significantly change the vote totals.

“It’s time to call it quits and go home, say he had a good four years and congratulate Gov.-elect Beshear,” Stivers said in a brief Friday interview at the Capitol.

Bevin finished 5,189 votes behind Democrat Andy Beshear in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election but has refused to concede the race, requesting a recanvass of the vote that will take place Nov. 14<https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/11/06/kentucky-governor-race-matt-bevin-campaign-requests-recanvass/2510081001/>.

The governor has also made allegations of widespread voting irregularities and fraud on Election Day, but hasn’t provided any evidence to back up those claims<https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/elections/kentucky/2019/11/07/kentucky-governor-election-fact-check-matt-bevins-voter-fraud-claims/2516391001/>.

Stivers said if Bevin chooses to contest the election by calling a special session of the General Assembly and making a case that there was illegal activity, lawmakers would have to hear the dispute under the state constitution…

Stivers also said he has received numerous angry calls and messages from people accusing him of somehow trying to steal the election should Bevin contest the outcome to the state legislature.

These calls followed Stivers’ response to a reporter’s question on election night<https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/11/06/beshear-vs-bevin-legislature-could-decide-race-senate-president-says/4174103002/> about the procedure for a gubernatorial candidate to contest the outcome, he said.

Stivers said lawmakers don’t have a choice once a candidate seeks to contest the election, as “it’s a constitutional mandate.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Mitch McConnell has to condemn this power grab”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108007>
Posted on November 8, 2019 9:01 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108007> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Josh Douglas<https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/opinions/kentucky-election-fraud-bevin-opinion-douglas/index.html> on Bevin and the Kentucky governor’s race.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Bevin Supporter Fishing for Voter Fraud Evidence They Don’t Have Through Robocalls That May Mislead Voters Into Thinking They Are Coming from Kentucky Board of Elections<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108005>
Posted on November 8, 2019 8:53 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108005> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Courier Journal:<https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/elections/kentucky/2019/11/08/kentucky-governor-race-activists-robocall-seeks-voter-fraud-reports-before-recanvass/2528098001/>

Conservative political activist Frank Simon, a longtime supporter of Gov. Matt Bevin, is sending robocalls asking Kentuckians to report suspicious activity or voter fraud to the State Board of Elections before Nov. 14 — the day of Bevin’s requested recanvass.

Bevin finished 5,189 votes behind Democrat Andy Beshear in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election but has refused to concede the race, requesting a recanvass of the vote<https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/11/06/kentucky-governors-election-race-recount-look-what-happens-now/4172935002/>, which is essentially a review of the vote totals in each county.

The governor has also made allegations of widespread voting irregularities and fraud on Election Day, but he hasn’t provided any evidence<https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/11/07/kentucky-governor-race-bevin-should-stop-recanvass-lawmakers-say/2517278001/> to back up those claims.

According to a voicemail of the robocall sent to a Republican in Western Kentucky, Simon says, “If you or anyone you know has information regarding suspicious activity at polling locations, please report suspected voter fraud to the state department of elections by calling 502-573-7100.”
‘
He also asked that those calls to the State Board of Elections phone number take place by Nov. 13 — the day before each county board of elections conducts the recanvass.

There is no disclaimer on the call indicating who paid for it, nor is it explained that the call is not coming from the State Board of Elections.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

--
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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