[EL] ELB News and Commentary 4/6/20

[Rick Hasen]

Wisconsin Update: What to Expect Today and Tomorrow<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110434>
Posted on April 6, 2020 9:08 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110434> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Wisconsin legislature ended the special session<https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/04/06/coronavirus-wisconsin-latest-updates-cases-cancellations/2952455001/> without taking action to postpone tomorrow’s primary. There will be in-person voting tomorrow, but it is not clear how badly turnout will be down. Last I heard, all but 5 of 180 polling places in Milwaukee will be closed.

There are still about 10,000 absentee ballot<https://twitter.com/cstewartiii/status/1247162387570008064> requests that the state has not yet processed, meaning that if the Supreme Court reverses the lower court order, those people will almost certainly have to vote in person or be disenfranchised. (The district court order would allow absentee ballots received by April 13 to count in the election; if the Supreme Court reverses they will have to be postmarked tomorrow.)

The Supreme Court could act any time<https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/19a1016.html> on the Republicans’ request to go back to the April 7 date. The Court almost certainly will act today, so those people without ballots (and election officials) will know what the rules are for tomorrow. It is hard to game out what the Court will do. I think that ordinarily the conservatives would bristle at a last-minute court ordered change to extend the time for receipt of ballots. But these are not ordinary times, and the Purcell Principle seems to have a different application<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110420> when a federal court is responding to an unforeseen natural disaster like this.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


“Georgia elections chief launches effort against mail-in voting fraud”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110432>
Posted on April 6, 2020 8:55 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110432> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AJC<https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/georgia-elections-chief-launches-effort-against-mail-voting-fraud/uKcFoPbbLnFC0A4nXihaLI/>:

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger launched an effort Monday to investigate voting fraud that could arise from widespread use of mailed-in ballots in Georgia’s primary.

Raffensperger, who mailed absentee ballot request forms<https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/voters-mailed-absentee-ballot-request-forms-for-may-georgia-primary/hc0FkOo85uVCALbWvQUo9L/> to Georgia’s 6.9 million active voters, said he wants to ensure no one takes advantage of the state’s unprecedented reliance on remote voting for the May 19 primary.

A task force of election officials, prosecutors and law enforcement will investigate mismatched voter signatures, multiple voters at the same address and voters who use nonresidential addresses, Raffensperger said.

Election fraud<https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/ralston-says-his-concern-that-mail-vote-hurts-gop-about-fraud/xFLO67sQd34eiFKu1yqWuM/> is rare in Georgia, but Raffensperger said it could increase when voters avoid regular precincts during the coronavirus pandemic<https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/kemp-declares-unprecedented-public-health-emergency-georgia/gdTeQfD6zJPb1kbYlRLHRO/>.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Texas’s election law could disenfranchise millions during a pandemic; Texas’s absentee ballot law is utterly unfit for a state holding an election during a public health crisis.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110430>
Posted on April 6, 2020 8:46 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110430> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ian Millhiser<https://www.vox.com/2020/4/4/21204571/texas-election-law-disenfranchise-millions-pandemic-coronavirus-absentee-ballots> for Vox.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Biden seeks to revive fundraising momentum as coronavirus — and Trump — grab attention”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110428>
Posted on April 6, 2020 8:44 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110428> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo reports.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-seeks-to-revive-fundraising-momentum-as-coronavirus--and-trump--grab-attention/2020/04/05/75cb75b6-7455-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Charlie Sykes on Wisconsin’s Election, and What It Means for November<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110426>
Posted on April 6, 2020 8:34 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110426> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I’ve been waiting for this:<https://thebulwark.com/tuesdays-wisconsin-election-is-our-future/>

And in case it’s not yet obvious, what’s happening in Wisconsin is a dry run for what’s coming for the rest of the country in November: Elections roiled in partisan rancor, dysfunction, voter suppression, and questionable legitimacy….

In Congress, Democrats are pushing for expanded vote-by-mail to help states avoid a Wisconsin-like FUBAR in November. But for anyone naïve enough to imagine that the country would find a good-faith, common-sense, bipartisan solution for the challenges to election integrity posed by the pandemic, what is happening in Wisconsin should be sobering.

Trump himself is set to lead the effort to block pandemic-era reforms, claiming that mail ballots would encourage fraud. Of course he will be able to rally his base behind this idea. Belief in massive voter fraud is a founding part of the Trump mythos, which insists that despite losing the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million votes, he would have won it if not for voter fraud.

Less overt, but equally deep, is the belief that more people voting is bad for Republicans. As always, Trump has been willing to say the quiet part out loud. Last week on Fox & Friends he claimed the Democrats had a plan “that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Who Has Emergency Authority Over Elections? Nobody’s Quite Sure.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110424>
Posted on April 6, 2020 8:31 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110424> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jessica Huseman<https://www.propublica.org/article/who-has-emergency-authority-over-elections-nobodys-quite-sure> for ProPublica:

There are only six states where election officials have the authority both to delay an election and shift polling places, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In six others, they can only reschedule an election, and in 18, their powers are limited to relocating poll sites. In Massachusetts and Idaho, secretaries of state, who generally oversee elections, have pressed unsuccessfully for more emergency clout. Opponents questioned the wisdom of vesting too much authority over an election in any one individual, and contended that, since democracy depends on regular voting at predictable intervals, arrangements for postponement should not be overly nimble.

“Election officials have literally zero authority,” said Amber McReynolds, CEO of Vote at Home, a nonprofit that helps policymakers and election officials improve their vote by mail processes and policies. “An issue that this pandemic has exposed is the lack of agility with respect to elections.”

The impotence of state election officials forces governors and legislators with no experience running elections to make choices that they don’t understand the implications of, said David Levine, the Elections Integrity Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit. “Short of a compelling reason otherwise, election officials need to have the ability to act quickly so that the accessibility and the integrity and the security of the vote aren’t questioned,” he said.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Wisconsin Republicans File Reply in SCOTUS Case; Court Ruling Could Come at Any Time<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110422>
Posted on April 5, 2020 5:48 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110422> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Read it here<https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19A1016/140893/20200405201635281_Emerg.%20App.%20Reply%20-%20FINAL.pdf>.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


--
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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