[EL] ELB News and Commentary 12/21/20

[Rick Hasen]

“Fox News, Newsmax Walk Back Election Fraud Claims After Voting Machine Manufacturer Threatens Legal Action”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119837>
Posted on December 21, 2020 2:02 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119837> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Forbes reports.<https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/12/21/fox-news-newsmax-walk-back-election-fraud-claims-after-voting-machine-manufacturer-threatens-legal-action/?sh=63018defcfd2>

Watch this “clarification” video<https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1341078245878472706?s=20> from Newsmax:
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Republicans desperate to avoid floor fight over Electoral College vote”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119835>
Posted on December 21, 2020 1:58 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119835> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Hill:<https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/530910-republicans-desperate-to-avoid-floor-fight-over-electoral-college-vote>

National Republicans are desperate to avoid a floor fight in Congress over the certification of the Electoral College vote next month, believing it would be horrible politics to continue waging what most recognize to be a hopeless battle to overturn the outcome of the election.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell<https://thehill.com/people/mitch-mcconnell> (R-Ky.) has intervened, asking his members not to join Rep. Mo Brooks<https://thehill.com/people/mo-brooks> (R-Ala.) or any other House members looking to object to the results on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to certify the Electoral College count.

President Trump<https://thehill.com/people/donald-trump> is waging a pressure campaign to get senators to revolt. Incoming Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who will be sworn in Jan. 3, has said he’ll join the floor fight and Sen. Rand Paul<https://thehill.com/people/rand-paul> (R-Ky.), who has said he believes the election was “stolen” from Trump, is always a wild card.

Republican strategists are hoping McConnell can quash the insurgency, believing the debate over Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election is tearing the party apart ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia that will determine the balance of power in the Senate.

The article wrongly states that if the Senate approved objections, the matter of the electoral college votes would be “kicked back” to the states “where the governors would in all likelihood recertify the results.” That’s not correct. If the House does not agree with the objection to a slate fails. (The writer was probably thinking about the rule that gives preference to the slate of electors certified by the governor when there are competing slates. That is NOT a remand to the states).
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Derek Muller Lays Out THE Conservative Case Against Texas’s Bizarre Suit to Steal the Election for Trump at the Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119833>
Posted on December 21, 2020 1:51 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119833> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Derek<https://lawliberty.org/what-has-texas-to-do-with-pennsylvania/> at Law & Liberty:

The Electoral College is a designedly decentralized process for the selection of the President of the United States. Each State may choose its presidential electors in the manner that the legislature deems appropriate.

The State of Texas, in Texas v. Pennsylvania, sought to upend this system in advance of one end: get the Supreme Court to something, anything, to prevent President-Elect Joe Biden from taking office.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>, electoral college<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=44>, fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


“Undercutting Trump, Barr says there’s no basis for seizing voting machines, using special counsels for election fraud, Hunter Biden”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119831>
Posted on December 21, 2020 12:45 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119831> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/barr-trump-special-counsel-voter-fraud-hunter-biden/2020/12/21/4d85f060-439c-11eb-b0e4-0f182923a025_story.html>

Outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday that he saw no basis for the federal government seizing voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud — again breaking with President Trump as the commander in chief entertains increasingly desperate measures to overturn the election.

At a news conference to announce charges in a decades-old terrorism case, Barr — who has just two days left in office — was peppered with questions about whether he would consider steps proposed by allies of the president to advance Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud.

Barr said that while he was “sure there was fraud in this election,” he had not seen evidence that it was so “systemic or broad-based” that it would change the result. He asserted he saw “no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government,” and he would not name a special counsel to explore the allegations of Trump and his allies.
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Posted in Department of Justice<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=26>


“How Trump drove the lie that the election was stolen, undermining voter trust in the outcome”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119829>
Posted on December 21, 2020 12:42 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119829> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-voter-trust/2020/12/20/00282aa6-407a-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html>

Trump is continuing to press his case<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-aides-new-jobs/2020/12/18/157a02e6-3fd8-11eb-a402-fba110db3b42_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_13>, even now that the electoral college has formally elected Biden. In a meeting with allies on Friday, the president discussed deploying the military to rerun the election and appointing attorney Sidney Powell, whose conspiracy theories about election fraud have been widely discredited, as a special counsel to investigate the outcome.

Along the way, Trump has willfully damaged two bedrocks of American democracy that he has been going after for years: confidence in the media as a source of trusted information and faith in systems of government. It might be one of his lasting legacies.

A Fox News poll<https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/12/Fox_December-6-9-2020_National_Topline_December-11-Release.pdf> releasedon Dec. 11shows that more than a third of registered voters believe the election was stolen from Trump — a number that rises to 77 percent among those who voted for Trump. Conversely, 56 percent of voters believe Trump weakened American democracy by contesting election results in various states, with the number rising to 85 percent among those who voted for Biden, according to the poll.

Trump’s campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, declined to answer specific questions about the damage the president has done or the untruths he embraced…

Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, said that kind of rhetoric has emboldened some in the country to doubt the results merely because their preferred candidate lost.

“We’re entering a very dangerous phase where a sizable share of the population has no faith in the basic mechanics of the democracy,” Persily said. Millions of voters, he added, now see the fight over who should lead the country as a function of “the willingness to exert power as opposed to playing by fair rules of the game.”
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


“Policy Brief on Seattle Democracy Vouchers in 2019”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119827>
Posted on December 21, 2020 12:34 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119827> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jennifer Heerwig & Brian McCabe analysis.<https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/r2skgxfnc230ukkb3dfqgm4576phzabd>

Executive Summary

• After a successful inaugural implementation in 2017, the Democracy Voucher program provided public financing in seven districted City Council races in 2019.

Thirty-five candidates used the program in the primary, including twelve who went on to use the program in the general election.

• More than 38,000 Seattle residents participated in the Democracy Voucher program – nearly double the number of participants in 2017. The participation rate was nearly 7 percent of eligible residents.• Although participation increased across demographic groups, the largest gains were concentrated among white, higher-income and older residents, as well as those who vote regularly in elections.

• More than one-third of voucher users assigned their vouchers outside of their district of residence. Younger, lower-income and non-white voucher users were more likely to assign their vouchers outside of the district where they lived.

• Voucher users were not fully representative of the electorate, but they were more representative than cash donors who contributed at least $25.

• Across City Council districts, the coalition of voucher users generally contained a larger share of young, lower-income contributors than the coalition of cash donors.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>



Video Now Available of Dec. 17 OSU Event: Unpacking of 2020 Electoral College Process<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119825>
Posted on December 21, 2020 12:24 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119825> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Watch here.<https://u.osu.edu/electionlaw/events/unpacking-the-2020-electoral-college-process-a-conversation-among-election-law-scholars/>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Transparency for Democracy’s Sake”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119823>
Posted on December 21, 2020 12:20 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119823> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy<https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/transparency-democracys-sake> at Brennan.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Congrats to Election Law Prof Chris Elmendorf, Elected to the American Law Institute<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119821>
Posted on December 21, 2020 12:03 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119821> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

New member list<https://www.ali.org/members/newly-elected-members/december-2020/?utm_source=Informz&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email&_zs=Dg0kb1&_zl=1RXJ7>.
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Posted in election law biz<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=51>


Honored to Be Included in Orange County Register’s 100 Top Influencers of 2020<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119819>
Posted on December 21, 2020 12:01 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119819> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Proud<https://www.ocregister.com/2020/12/20/most-influential-meet-orange-countys-100-top-influencers-for-2020/> to be with a number of UC Irvine colleagues.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Report: Social media manipulation affects even US senators”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119817>
Posted on December 21, 2020 9:29 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119817> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP:<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/tech/2020/12/21/report-social-media-manipulation-affects-even-us-senators/3990099001/>

The conversation taking place on the verified social media accounts of two U.S. senators remained vulnerable to manipulation, even amid heightened scrutiny in the run up to the U.S. presidential election, an investigation by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence found.

Researchers from the center, a NATO-accredited research group based in Riga, Latvia, paid three Russian companies 300 euros ($368) to buy 337,768 fake likes, views and shares of posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, including content from verified accounts of Sens. Chuck Grassley and Chris Murphy.

Grassley’s office confirmed that the Republican from Iowa participated in the experiment. Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said in a statement that he agreed to participate because it’s important to understand how vulnerable even verified accounts are.

“We’ve seen how easy it is for foreign adversaries to use social media as a tool to manipulate election campaigns and stoke political unrest,” Murphy said. “It’s clear that social media companies are not doing enough to combat misinformation and paid manipulation on their own platforms and more needs to be done to prevent abuse.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media; Voting machine companies threaten “highly dangerous” cases against Fox, Newsmax and OAN, says Floyd Abrams.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119815>
Posted on December 21, 2020 9:16 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119815> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ben Smith <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/media/smartmatic-lawsuit-fox-news-newsmax-oan.html?referringSource=articleShare> NYT column.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


“Voting in U.S. Got Easier in 2020. Will Changes Remain in Next Election?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119813>
Posted on December 21, 2020 9:14 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119813> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WSJ reports.<https://www.wsj.com/articles/voting-in-u-s-got-easier-in-2020-will-changes-remain-in-next-election-11608482155?st=rsgn5om9awtu1vz&reflink=article_copyURL_share>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Despite what Court briefs say, no state legislature has appointed–or ‘endorsed’–a rival slate of presidential electors”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119811>
Posted on December 20, 2020 1:02 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119811> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Derek Muller<https://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2020/12/despite-what-court-briefs-say-no-state-legislature-has-appointed-or-endorsed-a-rival-slate-of-presidential-electors> with the fact check.
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Posted in electoral college<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=44>


11th Circuit Rejects Emergency Relief Sought by GA Republican Party and Loeffler Campaign to Cut Back on Absentee Balloting During Runoffs<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119809>
Posted on December 20, 2020 12:36 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119809> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

They sued<https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2020/12/Document.pdf> the Secretary of State but relief must come from county election officials:

The Campaigns’ motion for injunction asks us to do what we said could not be done in Jacobson: order a nonparty county official to do something contrary to state law. Since the Secretary and the election board do not conduct the signature matching process, are not the election officials that review the voter’s signature, and do not control whether the signature matching process can be observed, the Campaigns’ alleged injury is not traceable to the Secretary. And the Secretary does not have the authority to redress it. Further, to the extent the requested injunction sought to enjoin parties other than the Secretary and election board, that would exceed our authority because these other parties were not before the district court and are not before us.
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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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