[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/20/19

[Rick Hasen]

“Lev Parnas Paid His Way Into Donald Trump’s Orbit”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109067>
Posted on January 20, 2020 8:26 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109067> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WSJ:<https://www.wsj.com/articles/lev-parnas-paid-his-way-into-donald-trumps-orbit-11579469071>

After Donald Trump’s election, Lev Parnas saw a chance to cash in on his connections.

The Florida businessman and Trump donor was courting investors for a real-estate project. He took one of them, Roman Nasirov, at the time the head of Ukraine’s tax service, to Mr. Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, where they chatted with the president-elect in a crowd of supporters, a video released by Mr. Parnas’s attorney shows. Mr. Nasirov ultimately helped fund a $10 million loan Mr. Parnas arranged for the project, people familiar with the matter said.

A sizable donation to a political campaign typically brings a handshake and some chitchat with the candidate. In the three years that followed, Mr. Parnas went further.

As he launched himself into Mr. Trump’s orbit, Mr. Parnas found sponsors for his own ventures among wealthy Republican donors, mingling with them at fundraisers and dinners that he documented in copious selfies. He also sought out and eventually became a key associate of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, who embraced Mr. Parnas in his pursuit of investigations in Ukraine.

The role he has carved out for himself has thrust the Ukrainian-born Mr. Parnas into the impeachment saga, injecting a wild card into the tightly choreographed proceedings on Capitol Hill<https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-outline-plan-for-removing-trump-11579392444?mod=article_inline>. Last week, he offered new allegations in several interviews that have inflamed the debate about whether senators should call witnesses in the president’s trial, which opens Tuesday.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


For MLK Day<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109065>
Posted on January 20, 2020 8:23 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109065> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Here’s a piece I wrote for an MLK50 event at Memphis Law: Civil Right No. 1: Dr. King’s Unfinished Voting Rights Revolution.<https://www.memphis.edu/law/documents/hasen.pdf>
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>


“Election Security In Georgia”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109062>
Posted on January 19, 2020 9:14 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109062> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NPR<https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797722002/election-security-in-georgia?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social>‘s Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Marilyn Marks of the Coalition for Good Governance about the reasons behind the lawsuit seeking to bar Georgia from using its paperless voting machines.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Trump Campaign Plans Greater Focus on ‘Bundlers’”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109060>
Posted on January 19, 2020 9:12 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109060> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/us/politics/trump-campaign-bundling.html>

President Trump’s re-election campaign plans to step up its efforts to capitalize on so-called bundlers, supporters who can raise money from friends and business associates in increments up to $2,800, the legal limit for a level of giving that has lagged in the campaign despite a far more sophisticated fund-raising operation than existed in 2016.

The campaign has excelled at small-dollar fund-raising online and at raising six-figure donations from wealthy individuals and corporations for a joint-effort fund-raising arrangement between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.

But there has been little effort to cultivate bundlers who can gather donations from a network of friends and associates that can go directly to a candidate’s campaign.

Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, who ran for president before legal changes allowed joint committees to accept six-figure checks, were prodigious fund-raisers who tended to their bundling networks, ranking them based on the amount they had raised and rewarding the bundlers with names like “Pioneers” and “Ramblers” and giving them special access at retreats and other events.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>


“Iowa Democrats revamped their caucuses to fend off disinformation. Now some fear the changes could sow new confusion in tight 2020 race.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109058>
Posted on January 19, 2020 9:08 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109058> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/iowa-democrats-revamped-their-caucuses-to-fend-off-disinformation-now-some-fear-the-changes-could-sow-new-confusion-in-tight-2020-race/2020/01/18/a039e7c0-33ea-11ea-9313-6cba89b1b9fb_story.html>

Now, as Iowa Democrats hurtle once again toward the opening faceoff of a hard-fought presidential primary cycle — with at least four candidates seemingly in contention to win Iowa’s Feb. 3 contest — some in the party fear that reforms put in place to prevent the disarray of 2016 may create an entirely new set of problems in 2020.

It has long been the tradition here that voting plays out in school gyms and church basements, with multiple vote tabulations as supporters of candidates who do not reach a threshold on the initial vote scramble to make a second choice among the remaining contenders. This year, for the first time, the state party will release the initial raw vote totals as well as the final delegate allocation.

The change will mean more transparency, but it also will add to the workload of party officials and volunteer leaders — and it raises the possibility that multiple campaigns could claim a victory of sorts, with supporters of one candidate seeing another’s triumph as illegitimate.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“In Texas and Other States, Voters Face a Variety of Barriers”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109056>
Posted on January 19, 2020 9:05 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109056> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP reports.<https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/19/us/ap-us-election-2020-voting.html>
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Complaint alleging Iowa voter registration prone to hacks is dismissed”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109053>
Posted on January 17, 2020 1:15 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109053> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Des Moines Register reports<https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/investigations/2020/01/17/iowa-linn-county-auditor-complaint-voter-registration-vulnerable-dismissed/2774034001/>.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Divided Fifth Circuit Rejects Argument of Dallas, Texas White Voters of Voting Rights Violation and Racial Gerrymandering; Judge Ho Partly Dissents, Seeking to Read Voting Rights Act More Strictly<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109050>
Posted on January 17, 2020 1:01 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109050> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

You can find the opinions in Harding v. County of Dallas at this link<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/Dallas-opinion.pdf>.

Judge Ho’s partial dissent is significant in that it reads the Supreme Court’s 2018 opinion in Perez v. Abbott to add new requirements for plaintiffs seeking to bring Voting Rights Act claims. (For authority, he relies on Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in the case and a Slate piece of mine<https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/the-abbott-v-perez-case-echoes-shelby-county-v-holder-as-a-further-death-blow-for-the-voting-rights-act.html> on the case.)

And yet even as Judge Ho says that plaintiffs generally will have a harder time winning VRA cases, he wants a remand for the white voters who failed to prove their case under (what he considers to be) an easier standard. That’s quite odd.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>


Breaking: Supreme Court Takes Colorado and Washington Faithless Elector Cases, Teeing Up Major Issue and Possible Uncertainty in 2020 Presidential Election<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109048>
Posted on January 17, 2020 12:38 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109048> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Court’s order granting and consolidating the two cases is here<https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/011720zr_h31j.pdf>.

From my earlier Slate piece <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/electoral-college-supreme-court-lessig-faithless-electors.html> on these cases:

As Lessig explained to me, the Supreme Court “should have the opportunity to reflect on the question without it determining an election one way or the other. If the court follows the Washington Supreme Court, then this uncertainty within our election process has been removed. If the Court follows the 10th Circuit, then the public has a chance to determine whether it wants to accept that result. If it doesn’t, then either the National Popular Vote compact or an amendment could remedy it.”

How would giving electors the power to vote their consciences lead to the adoption of voting along the lines of the National Popular vote compact? According to Lessig, “NPV would most likely create a significant buffer in favor of the winner, so that any changes caused by independent electors would not be likely to affect the result.” In other words, with enough states in the compact voting for the national popular vote winner, and other states not in the compact going the same way, there would be a large-enough margin in the Electoral College that a handful of faithless electors would not threaten to change the result.

Perhaps.

Despite this high risk that the presidential election results could be thrown into chaos by a handful of rogue electors, it is not clear that the country could come together at this time of polarization to amend the Constitution or adopt the NPV compact. So far, only states with Democratic majorities have adopted it. Fairly or not, Electoral College reform has become yet another partisan issue.
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Posted in electoral college<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=44>


Today’s Must-Read: “Hackers Are Coming for the 2020 Election — And We’re Not Ready”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109046>
Posted on January 17, 2020 9:56 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109046> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Andy Kroll for Mother Jones<https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-election-hacking-russia-iran-ransomware-interference-938109/>:

Are we prepared going into the 2020 election? After seven months of reporting, interviewing more than 40 experts as well as current and former government officials and reviewing thousands of pages of records, the reality is this: We’ve made progress since the last election — but we’re much less secure than we should be. To use Sen. Warner’s analogy, the windows and doors are no longer wide open, but the burglars are more sophisticated, and there are a lot more of them than there were four years ago. They may try to break into our voting systems; they may push online propaganda to merely create the impression of an attack as a way to undermine our faith in the electoral process. “The target is the minds of the American people,” says Joshua Geltzer, a former counterterrorism director on the National Security Council. “In some ways, we’re less vulnerable than we were in 2016. In other ways, it’s more.”

Nearly every expert agrees on this: The worst-case scenario, the one we need to prepare for, is a situation that causes Americans to question the bedrock of our democracy — free and fair elections. If such a catastrophe occurred and the integrity of a national election came into doubt, Michael Daniel, the former cybersecurity coordinator in the Obama White House who now runs the Cyber Threat Alliance, isn’t sure the country would ever be the same. “How do we deal with that?” he asks. “How do we recover from that?”
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>, voting technology<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>


--
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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