[EL] ELB News and Commentary 10/30/19

[Rick Hasen]

Democrats File Lawsuits in North Carolina, Texas, and Michigan Fighting Restrictive Voting Rules<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107856>
Posted on October 30, 2019 8:30 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107856> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Marc Elias and Co. have been busy.

Democrats file lawsuit to restore last Saturday early voting in North Carolina<https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article236732063.html>

Texas Democratic Party challenges mobile voting ban in lawsuit<https://www.statesman.com/news/20191030/texas-democratic-party-challenges-mobile-voting-ban-in-lawsuit>

Suit opposes signature check of Michigan absentee ballots<http://www.startribune.com/suit-opposes-signature-check-of-michigan-absentee-ballots/564121132/>
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Georgia Plans to Purge 300,000 Names From Its Voter Rolls”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107854>
Posted on October 30, 2019 8:12 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107854> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/politics/georgia-voter-purge.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share>

A coming purge of Georgia’s voter rolls has raised alarms among advocacy groups in the state and nationwide, many of whom see the issue of who gets to cast a ballot re-emerging with next year’s election, particularly in battleground states.
This week, Georgia state officials said they would be removing about 300,000 names from their lists of eligible voters, a number that amounts to almost 4 percent of those registered to vote. The state said the move is a normal part of updating records after voters have moved away or stopped casting ballots.
Walter Jones, the spokesman for the Georgia secretary of state’s voter education program, called the purge “a routine process that every state does,” and one that has gone on for years in Georgia under both parties.
The purges, however, have become deeply controversial in Georgia. In 2018, in one of the most competitive governor’s races in years, Brian Kemp, a Republican, declared a narrow victory against his democratic rival, Stacey Abrams<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/politics/stacey-abrams-georgia-democrats.html?module=inline>. Since Mr. Kemp was then serving as Georgia secretary of state, he oversaw his own election, which critics accused him of manipulating by conducting purges in communities that were more likely to vote for Democrats. He beat Ms. Abrams by 1.4 percentage points.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Amazon Tests ‘Soul of Seattle’ With Deluge of Election Cash; Amazon is flexing its financial power in Seattle’s City Council elections, putting an innovative program meant to combat such influence at risk.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107852>
Posted on October 30, 2019 7:28 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107852> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/seattle-council-amazon-democracy-vouchers.html>

In 2015, Seattle voters approved a plan to foil corporate political contributions, creating “democracy vouchers<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/sunday/in-seattle-a-campaign-finance-plan-that-voters-control.html?searchResultPosition=1&module=inline>” that allow residents to assign public campaign funds to local candidates of their choice.
With the goal of amplifying the voices of regular people and diluting the influence of powerful donors, the voucher program has since drawn the interest of 2020 presidential candidates, such as Andrew Yang<https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/>, who said Seattle’s system could be used nationally to “drown out the influence of megadonors.”

But in Seattle, the megadonors are back, this time with an even larger deluge of cash. Thanks in large part to the hometown tech giant Amazon<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/technology/amazon-seattle-council-election.html?module=inline>, independent groups that receive bulk donations have already spent more money — $4.1 million — on next week’s City Council elections than they spent in the previous two decades of elections combined, according to campaign finance data.

Amazon’s aggressive bid to overhaul a council it has clashed with over taxes and the company’s giant corporate footprint has exposed the tensions between the Seattle region’s sometimes-competing identities. On the one hand, it is an innovative tech hub, home to some of the world’s most influential businesses and billionaires. On the other, the city has led efforts to lift up marginalized residents with a $15 minimum wage<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/business/economy/seattle-minimum-wage-study.html?module=inline>, strong support for unions<https://www.kuow.org/stories/business-tries-to-claw-its-way-back-in-seattle-city-council-races> and its unique experiment in public campaign funding.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Twitter Will Ban All Political Ads, C.E.O. Jack Dorsey Says”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107850>
Posted on October 30, 2019 7:21 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107850> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/twitter-political-ads-ban.html>

Twitter said on Wednesday that it would ban all political ads<https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952>, putting a spotlight on the power and veracity of online advertising and ramping up pressure on Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to reverse his hands-off stance.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said political ads, including manipulated videos and the viral spread of misleading information, presented challenges to civic discourse, “all at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.” He said he worried the ads had “significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.”

He added that he believed that the reach of political messages “should be earned, not bought.”
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, social media and social protests<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=58>


NC Republicans Could Have Drawn an 11th or 12th Republican Congressional District, Producing an All-White Congressional Delegation<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107848>
Posted on October 30, 2019 1:00 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107848> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

David Daley:<https://theintercept.com/2019/10/30/north-carolina-gerrymandering-maps-redistricting/>

“I PROPOSE THAT we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats,” said North Carolina Rep. David Lewis, in 2016 in a legislative committee hearing, “because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”

This might be the most infamous gerrymandering confession ever — a rare moment of clarity exposing the GOP’s ambition to control the state’s map through redistricting. This year, Lewis’s statement was debated in the Supreme Court; in 2017, it was even cited by comedian John Oliver. And this week, the admission that state lawmakers intended to give an advantage to the Republican Party was at the root of a decision by a North Carolina state court<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/us/north-carolina-gerrymander-maps.html> that invalidated the state’s congressional map ahead of 2020.

But even Lewis’s bold acknowledgement understated the GOP’s redistricting capabilities, new documents obtained by The Intercept suggest. In fact, GOP strategists did prove that it was possible to draw a map with 11 or 12 Republican congressional seats — in one case, a partisan gerrymander that could have feasibly elected an all-white slate.

In 2016, Thomas Hofeller, the veteran redistricting mastermind, was tapped by Lewis and the North Carolina legislature to craft the state’s congressional lines. The original map, drawn in 2011 redistricting, had been thrown out for racially discriminatory intent. During that process, Hofeller created drafts of maps that would give Democrats only one or two seats in this competitive purple state. These never-before-seen draft maps are among the more than 70,000 previously unpublished documents and emails from Hofeller’s hard drives, obtained and reviewed by The Intercept. And there is evidence that he talked them over with Lewis, who chaired the state House of Representatives redistricting committee from 2011 until 2018.
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Posted in redistricting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>


“Threat to US elections in 2020 is not limited to Russia”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107846>
Posted on October 30, 2019 12:56 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107846> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP:<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/30/threat-us-elections-limited-russia/40502687/>

Russia interfered in the 2016 election and may try to sway next year’s vote as well. But it’s not the only nation with an eye on U.S. politics.

American officials sounding the alarm about foreign efforts to disrupt the 2020 election include multiple countries in that warning. Concerns abound not only about possible hacking of campaigns but also about the spread of disinformation on social media and potential efforts to breach voting databases and even alter votes.

The anxiety goes beyond the possibility that U.S. adversaries could affect election results: The mere hint of foreign meddling could undermine public confidence in vote tallies, a worrisome possibility in a tight election.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>



“After the Purge; How a massive voter purge in Georgia affected the 2018 election”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107844>
Posted on October 30, 2019 12:55 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107844> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

APM Reports<https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/10/29/georgia-voting-registration-records-removed>:

Georgia is one of a handful of states that removes people from the voter rolls for not turning out to vote in recent elections. Democrats and voting rights advocates have argued that just because someone chooses not to exercise their right to vote doesn’t mean they should be removed from the registration list. On the campaign trail, Kemp maintained that, in weeding out infrequent voters, he was safeguarding the election from fraud. Georgia officials have also argued that most of the people purged in 2017 had likely moved away or died.

But an APM Reports investigation has found that — contrary to those claims from state officials — 70,000 purged Georgians re-registered to vote. In a first-of-its-kind investigation, APM Reports used provisional ballots, registration and purge lists to piece together what happened to the Georgians who’d been scrubbed from the rolls. A majority — 65 percent — of those purged under “use it or lose it” who re-registered did so in the same county, meaning they would otherwise have been eligible to vote if not for the state’s aggressive purge policy.

The APM Reports investigation, the first to show significant impact from the “use it or lose it” policy, undermines the theory that it’s safe to assume that people who sit out multiple elections, or don’t make other contact with election officials, have likely moved or died. In Baiye’s case, nothing in his voter profile needed to be updated when he re-registered on Election Day, weeks after the state’s registration deadline<https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/10/28/georgia-voting-deadlines-2020-election>. He still lives in the same house.
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Posted in voter registration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=37>


--
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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