[EL] ELB News and Commentary 2/26/20

Wed Feb 26 09:14:44 PST 2020

Coronavirus, the Census, and Election 2020: A Desperate Plea for “Plan B”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109719>
Posted on February 26, 2020 9:11 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109719> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

You are going to hear this message a lot from me in the months going forward: election officials and others need to have a “Plan B” to deal with intentional interference or natural disasters that can disrupt our democratic processes. The point is to come up with the backup plans now, before disaster strikes, when it is much harder to put a plan in place and much easier to see the political consequences of alternative courses of action. We will have much more buy-in across the country into clear contingency plans that have been put in place ex ante.

In the next nine months we will conduct a national census, a series of primary elections, two major party (and some minor party) political conventions to choose presidential nominations, and a general election in November amid an atmosphere of intense negative and tribal partisanship.

Should we be unfortunate enough to be dealing with a coronavirus pandemic which disrupts normal life in the United States during this period, we need to ask how is this going to affect these democratic processes? What if census takers cannot effectively go door to door to take census information from those who are not filling out the information online or in writing? What if that impacts particular states or areas of the country? When should votes be delayed? Would remote technology that might be used to conduct democratic processes in the event that a physical convention cannot happen be secure from hacking? Would there ever be reasonable grounds to delay an election, and who would have authority to do so?

I don’t have any answers to these questions. But I hope that people in authority are beginning to grapple with them.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Fishkin: “Arguing with Nihilists as the House Burns” (Balkinization Symposium on Election Meltdown)<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109716>
Posted on February 26, 2020 8:58 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109716> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Joey Fishkin:<https://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/02/arguing-with-nihilists-as-house-burns.html>

One oddity of writing a book like Election Meltdown is that the worse things get, the better it is for the book. That is, the more conspicuously our election system actually does melt down, the more Rick Hasen’s book feels relevant, urgent, even prescient. Rick is a good small-d democrat and an altogether decent human being, so I’m certain he was not especially tempted to hope for anything like the Iowa Caucus meltdown. But good lord. As it happens, I had just started reading his book while the caucus was collapsing under the weight of its own incompetence and I felt like I was reading a field guide.

Election Meltdown is a story of four sources of problems in election administration: voter suppression, pockets of incompetence in administration, dirty tricks, and incendiary rhetoric about stolen or rigged elections. The book argues convincingly that these interact with and fuel one another in various ways. The sobering thing about watching the Iowa caucus meltdown through Rick’s lens was that two of his four elements were not even present (voter suppression or dirty tricks, so far as I am aware), and yet one pocket of incompetence was enough by itself to lead to a material delay in the results, a significant loss of public confidence in their accuracy, and inevitably, some eagerly “incendiary” (to use Rick’s word) cries of a “rigged” caucus, oddly but totally unsurprisingly coming not from prominent Democrats but from prominent Trumps<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-s-campaign-shouts-rigged-iowa-caucuses-thrown-chaos-n1129636>. This raised an obvious question: in November, when we will almost certainly have all four elements of Rick’s story in play at the same time instead of two, how much worse is it going to get? If the election is close, most likely a lot worse.

Election Meltdown reads like Rick’s shorter writing in Slate and on his indispensable Election Law Blog (the book draws on some of the Slate pieces). Like those writings, the book does a good job of avoiding unnecessary complication, showing rather than telling, and generally keeping the story sharp and swift. The book also has to confront the same two paradoxes that so much of Rick’s writing on these matters must confront. The two paradoxes, as I see them, are as follows….
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>

“New Intelligence Chief Asks Election Czar to Remain in Post”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109714>
Posted on February 26, 2020 8:53 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109714> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/us/politics/grenell-intelligence-trump.html>

The new acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, has asked an intelligence official who angered some lawmakers with a briefing about Russian interference in the 2020 election to stay on in her role.

Mr. Grenell’s move is a peace offering to the 17 intelligence agencies he oversees and a potential sign that he will not be conducting a widespread purge, as some administration officials have feared. Mr. Grenell, a Trump loyalist who has little experience in intelligence, removed the No. 2 official in his office in his first day on the job last week.

Whether Mr. Grenell, appointed to the post last week by President Trump<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html>, can win over members of Congress and the intelligence community will depend in part whether he can convince them that he will focus on protecting the elections from outside interference.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Steve Bannon’s Use of Private Jet Linked to Chinese Businessman Could Violate Campaign Finance Law”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109712>
Posted on February 26, 2020 8:49 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109712> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

ProPublica<https://www.propublica.org/article/steve-bannon-guo-wengui-private-jet-campaign-finance-law>:

Former Donald Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon used a private jet apparently owned by a wealthy Chinese businessman to fly to events to promote Republican congressional candidates in 2018.

The previously unreported flights could run afoul of a campaign finance law<https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/> that bars foreign money from U.S. elections, according to campaign finance experts, though it depends on several factors that are not known. One of the unknowns is whether Bannon paid Guo Wengui — the Chinese businessman, who is a vocal critic of the Chinese regime, and with whom he has other reported financial ties — for the use of the jet.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

“Colo GOP Congressman Says ‘Gullible’ Minorities Believe ‘Garbage’ From Lying Democrats About Voter Suppression”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109710>
Posted on February 26, 2020 8:40 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109710> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Colorado Times Recorder reports<https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2020/02/colo-gop-congressman-says-gullible-minorities-believe-garbage-from-lying-democrats-about-voter-suppression/21570/>.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Balkinization Symposium Begins on “Election Meltdown”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109708>
Posted on February 26, 2020 8:37 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109708> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jack Balkin<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/02/balkinization-symposium-on-richard.html>:

This week and next at Balkinization we are hosting a symposium on Rick Hasen’s new book, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy<https://www.amazon.com/Election-Meltdown-Distrust-American-Democracy/dp/0300248199> (Yale University Press, 2020).

We have assembled a terrific group of commentators, including Joey Fishkin (Texas), Tabatha Abu El-Haj (Drexel), Nate Persily (Stanford), Daniel Tokaji (Ohio State), Justin Levitt (Loyola-LA), Franita Tolson (USC), Ciara Torres-Spelliscy (Stetson), Guy Charles (Duke), and Steve Griffin (Tulane).

At the conclusion, Rick will respond to the commentators.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>

How Vote Centers Increased Participation in Houston<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109706>
Posted on February 25, 2020 10:08 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109706> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Analysis here.<https://www.januaryadvisors.com/vote-your-way-top-5-takeaways/>
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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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