[EL] ELB News and Commentary 6/12/20

[Rick Hasen]

“‘It’s broken’: Fears grow about strength of US voting system”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112176>
Posted on June 11, 2020 8:23 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112176> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP:<https://apnews.com/550d11a97af645b1d6e64ad2047cd72a>

 The chaos that plagued Georgia’s primary this week is raising concerns about a potential broader failure of the nation’s patchwork election system that could undermine the November presidential contest, political leaders and elections experts say.

With less than five months to go, fears are mounting that several battleground states are not prepared to administer problem-free elections during the pandemic.

The increasingly urgent concerns are both complex and simple: long lines disproportionately affecting voters of color in places like Atlanta with a history of voter suppression; a severe shortage of poll workers scared away by coronavirus concerns; and an emerging consensus that it could take several days after polls close on Election Day to determine a winner as battleground states struggle with an explosion of mail voting….

The final Las Vegas voter wasn’t able to cast a ballot until 3 a.m. Wednesday, eight hours after polls were supposed to close. Some Atlanta voters brought lawn chairs to wait in lines that exceeded five hours.

Wait times of two hours or more were reported in recent weeks across Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Washington, D.C.

Beyond lines, the mail voting boom has caused unprecedented reporting delays.

Pennsylvania officials were still counting mail ballots from the state’s June 2 election on June 11. Because of a court order, Wisconsin didn’t begin to release results of its April 7 primary until six days after polls closed.

Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said he’s confident in the state’s voting system and blames any issues on the “incompetence” of municipal election officials. The criticism was in line with that of Georgia’s chief elections officer, a Republican who blamed the election leaders of two Democratic-controlled counties for most of the problems in Tuesday’s primary.

That highlights a complicated reality across America. Each state has its own set of complicated ballot-access laws, adopted by the party in power at the statehouse and implemented by local governments with little to no federal oversight.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


“Georgia Havoc Raises New Doubts on Pricey Voting Machines”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112174>
Posted on June 11, 2020 8:19 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112174> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/politics/georgia-voting-machines.html>

As Georgia elections officials prepared to roll out an over $100 million high-tech voting system last year, good-government groups, a federal judge and election-security experts warned of its perils. The new system, they argued, was too convoluted, too expensive, too big — and was still insecure.

They said the state would regret purchasing the machines. On Tuesday, that admonition appeared prescient.

A cascade of problems<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/us/politics/georgia-primary-election-voting.html> caused block-long lines across Georgia, as primary voters stood for hours while poll workers waited for equipment to be delivered or struggled to activate the system’s components. Locations ran out of provisional ballots. Many people, seeing no possible option to exercise their right to vote, simply left the lines.

With partisans on both sides hurling blame for the meltdown, elections experts said there were too many moving parts to place the onus for Georgia’s election chaos on any single one.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


The list of COVID-19 election cases<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=111962>
Posted on June 11, 2020 5:34 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=111962> by Justin Levitt<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=4>

Hi, all. Justin here. A few months ago, I set out to try to follow a few lawsuits brought over election practices in light of COVID-19, to see if I could spot some patterns (like Rick<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3604668>). Then I kept adding to my working list. And I eventually got to a place where I’ve tracked quite a lot of them: as of June 11, I count 93 cases in 34 states and DC. (And I’m 100% sure I’m missing some.)

As a resource for others looking for trends, I’ll try to keep this post periodically updated, as new cases come in and old ones get resolved. As anyone who’s tried this knows, it can be particularly difficult to track cases in state court — so if you know of a case (or a dispositive result) not captured or linked on this list, please just let me know<https://www.lls.edu/faculty/facultylistl-r/justinlevitt/> and I’ll happily add.

The post below delineates the state, the court, a shorthand indication of the issue(s) involved, and the date (and where I can, link) for decisions.

[Note: this list does not purport to be a list of all current litigation over election issues. There was plenty of litigation before COVID-19 (some of which is still unresolved — indeed, some of which has been unresolved for years<http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/oralArguments/oar.jsp?caseyear=16&casenumber=3003&listCase=List+case%28s%29>), and there have been some recent cases that don’t involve the pandemic. Election Law @ Moritz has continuing updates of the major election cases<https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/index.php>, COVID-19 and not; the Michigan Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse has continuing updates of the major COVID-19 cases<https://clearinghouse.net/results.php?searchSpecialCollection=62>, election and not. This list tries to capture all of the COVID-19 election cases, “major” and not. Also, thanks to Eda Harotounian and Erika De La Torre for the assist on some of the details below.]
Continue reading →<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=111962#more-111962>
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>, The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>, voting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>


“Is OAN the Leading Edge of Russian Misinformation?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112091>
Posted on June 11, 2020 2:44 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112091> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Atlantic:<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/biden-ukraine-recordings-oan/612454/>

In what appears to be a signal of intensifying political warfare ahead of the November election, One America News Network, the Trump-supporting cable channel that has been promoting anti-Biden conspiracies for several months<https://www.oann.com/oaninvestigates/>, says it has obtained several hours of secret recordings of then–Vice President Biden’s conversations with Ukrainian officials. If such recordings exist, they’re likely linked to pro-Russian interests in Ukraine and a Russian intelligence operation, two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine and a former ambassador to Russia told me. The OAN employee who claims to have the tapes would not say what was on them, other than suggesting that they will be revelatory.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


Federalist Society Panel on COVID-19 and the 2020 Elections<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112085>
Posted on June 11, 2020 8:54 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112085> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>

This Friday, June 12th, I’ll be participating on this panel on COVID-19 and the 2020 Elections at the National Federalist Society Convention. The Federalist Society does a good job of ensuring ideological diversity on these panels. The entire conference is on COVID-19 and the Law. The elections panel is at 10 am EST and offered as both a Zoom webinar and a live stream on YouTube; there is no need to register for those who just want to watch:

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, Senior Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Prof. Michael T. Morley, Assistant Professor, Florida State University College of Law
Prof. Richard H. Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Hon. Bradley A. Smith, Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Moderator: Hon. R. Patrick DeWine, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio

The full conference program is here: https://lnkd.in/eXj4_HB
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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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