[EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/2/20
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Mon Nov 2 12:22:38 PST 2020
Report Card for Election Administrators, Congress, Media, Social Media and Others in Handling “Fair Elections During a Crisis”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118065>
Posted on November 2, 2020 12:17 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118065> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
When I was writing my book, Election Meltdown<https://www.amazon.com/Election-Meltdown-Distrust-American-Democracy/dp/0300248199/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=hasen+election+meltdown&qid=1565015345&s=digital-text&sr=1-1-catcorr>, I recognized that although there are decent medium- and long-term ways to improve how our elections are run and bolster voter confidence in the legitimacy of our election system, short term solutions were hard to come by. So, with generous funding from the Democracy Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, I convened a conference that took place at UC irvine at the end of February called “Can American Democracy Survive the 2020 Elections<https://www.law.uci.edu/events/election-law/election-2020/>?” Then some of the speakers at the conference–a cross-ideological and cross-disciplinary group of leaders in law, media, politics and norms, and tech—came together as a committee to draft a report on what could be done in time for the 2020 elections. We drafted the report mostly online just as the coronavirus crisis hit the United States, causing us to modify some of our recommendations.
We issued a report in April called Fair Elections During a Crisis<https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/2020ElectionReport.pdf> with a set of 14 recommendations across law, media, tech, and politics. We are now a day before the election and I wanted to reflect on how well different actors who help assure we have safe and fair elections have done during this crisis. These views are mine alone. The committee stopped existing as a formal body after we issued the report, and I do not purport to speak for anyone else on the committee.
1. Local Election Administrators A+
Our report recommended a number of steps that election administrators could take to deal with the tremendous difficulties of conducting an election during the pandemic both in person and absentee voting being more difficult. We called on election administrators to provide various paths to assuring voters have safe and healthy means of voting. We called on election administrators to consider how to deal with election emergencies and to make contingency plans. While there are still pockets of weak election administration, an overall grade of A+ goes to the local election administrators who have stepped up to be on the front lines of our democracy during this pandemic.
2. State legislatures and Secretaries of State B
This grade is an average grade. Some state legislatures deserve an A for stepping up and making voting easier during a pandemic, easing voting requirements for voting by mail and extending deadlines or early voting periods. This includes both Democratic and Republican led states. There was a subset <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117994> of Republican state legislators and Secretaries of State, however, who have fought politically and in court against safe and healthy voting during a pandemic. Some of these folks deserve an F. States also need to do more about election security, paper backups, and risk-limiting audits, a topic which has gotten less attention than it deserves with everything going on. (An A for the coalition of federal, state, and local election administrators working on election cybersecurity behind the scenes.)
3. Senate Republicans F
Senate Republicans blocked additional money for election reform. Those expenses are still there during the pandemic and now we will just have sloppier elections, which raise the risk of problems that can delegitimize the election. Republicans in the Senate also blocked more money for election security.
4. House Democrats C
Democrats overreached in their election reform bills, including trying to pass laws to make no excuse absentee balloting permanent, and not just for this pandemic election, a total nonstarter with a Republican Senate. While there was no guarantee that Republicans would compromise, there was little sense or urgency coming from House Democrats about finding a viable compromise.
5. Social media companies C-
On the one hand, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter have addressed some of the problems concerning disinformation, and Twitter has perhaps been the best with its pre-bunking, its read-the-story-first friction, and its leadership with respect to treating Trump disinformation. Facebook has been good at addressing coordinated attacks, but they have not addressed the fundamental problems of how their model of engagement encourages disinformation. But overall, the companies seem still to be acting on the fly, constantly surprised by manipulation of their platforms, showing a deep failure to grapple with how they’ve become tools of disinformation. The handling of the New York Post Hunter Biden stories shows just how poorly prepared these companies have been even for things that could be easily anticipated.
6. NGOs A There have been a number of efforts to help bolster the legitimacy of the 2020 election, including from groups that have strived to be bipartisan and comprehensive in dealing with all kinds of threats to the election process. These groups have produced reports and issued guidelines for how to conduct fair and safe elections during a pandemic, and how to deal with potentially contested elections.
7. The Media Incomplete
The media have done an excellent job overall covering voting during the pandemic and the extent to which some actors have tried to make it hard to vote through court cases and legislative and administrative rules. This issue has gotten a lot of attention. There have been a lot of explainers about how voting works, and great public service messaging about how to maximize the chances of voting during the pandemic.
The reason for the incomplete is that the media’s biggest test comes on election night.
The pandemic has drastically shifted many people to voting by mail, but President Trump’s statements against voting by mail has created a partisan divide: more Democrats and independents are voting by mail and more Republicans are voting in person. Depending upon how states report their election returns, a state that starts out with a big Biden or Trump lead could reverse as more mail-in or in person votes get added into the mix.
The problem is especially dramatic in Pennsylvania because that state’s Republican legislature has blocked the early processing of absentee ballots (in contrast, in Florida we will have most of those absentee votes counted by the time the evening is over). According to calculations by FiveThirtyEight<https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-pennsylvanias-vote-count-could-change-after-election-night/?ex_cid=story-twitter>, we could be in a situation where Trump is ahead by as much as 16 points on election night in Pennsylvania, only to see a loss of 5 points or more when all the ballots are counted within about a week of the election: a 21-point swing.
Saying that a candidate is leading when the votes outstanding could skew one way or the other is a recipe for disaster, because supporters may believe the election is stolen with such dramatic shifts in voting results. That’s why it is crucial for media to give a “too early to call” message on election night in those states where the outstanding ballots easily could shift the results of the race.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>
The Media’s Big Test Comes Election Night: With Huge Swings in Results Possible, Including a Possible 21-Point Swing in Pennsylvania from Trump +16 to Biden +5, The Message About Early Returns Must Be “Too Early to Call” Not That One Candidate is Leading in Early Returns<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118062>
Posted on November 2, 2020 11:23 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118062> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
The pandemic has drastically shifted many people to voting by mail, but President Trump’s statements against voting by mail has created a partisan divide: more Democrats and independents are voting by mail and more Republicans are voting in person. Depending upon how states report their election returns, a state that starts out with a big Biden or Trump lead could reverse as more mail-in or in person votes get added into the mix.
The problem is especially dramatic in Pennsylvania because that state’s Republican legislature has blocked the early processing of absentee ballots (in contrast, in Florida we will have most of those absentee votes counted by the time the evening is over). According to calculations by FiveThirtyEight<https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-pennsylvanias-vote-count-could-change-after-election-night/?ex_cid=story-twitter>, we could be in a situation where Trump is ahead by as much as 16 points on election night in Pennsylvania, only to see a loss of 5 points or more when all the ballots are counted within about a week of the election: a 21-point swing.
Saying that a candidate is leading when the votes outstanding could skew one way or the other is a recipe for disaster, because supporters may believe the election is stolen with such dramatic shifts in voting results. That’s why it is crucial for media to give a “too early to call” message on election night in those states where the outstanding ballots easily could shift the results of the race.
Here’s the full set of our recommendation on this topic from our cross-ideological, cross-disciplinary group in our Fair Elections During a Crisis<https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/2020ElectionReport.pdf> report:
Best practices for election night coverage
Irresponsible media coverage risks endangering the perceived legitimacy of the election. News outlets need to prepare the public to understand a process that is unlikely to provide a quick resolution and whose results are likely to change as votes are tallied. We offer the following best practices as recommendations to the media:
• Prepare to report the results as “too early to call;” emphasize the need for a careful count rather than reporting that the timeline reflects an institutional failure
• Explain more votes will be counted after all precincts report due to mail ballots • Report estimates of expected votes outstanding or other information besides percentage of precincts reported (but beware of changes in those estimates, which may confuse people and create fears of fraud)
• Explain why shifts in vote margins are routine as counts of mail ballots are conducted and not indicative of fraud
• Avoid putting isolated events and unverified claims into live coverage
(especially TV) but be prepared to debunk viral misinformation if it reaches
large audiences or is amplified by national politicians or political figures
• Forecasts and exit poll projections are frequently incorrect; avoid emphasizing them for fear of affecting turnout or causing unfounded suspicions of fraud if they miss the mark
• Have election procedure experts on call to help inform reporters and editors
Journalists should report that vote counts continuing beyond election day are normal and that errors and delays are not necessarily indicators of nefarious intent.
Opportunistic elites will seek to take advantage of this confusion, particularly if it can harm the standing of the side that is likely to win. Irresponsible coverage that amplifies such claims runs the risk of encouraging more fundamental challenges to accepting the outcome of the election itself, a compact that is at the very heart of democracy.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>
“Republicans now think Texas courts don’t decide their own election law”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118060>
Posted on November 2, 2020 11:06 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118060> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Steve Vladeck<https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/02/harris-county-drive-through-federal-court/> in WaPo.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
Barton Gellman Goes to the Very Dark Place in Contemplating Election Meltdowns<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118058>
Posted on November 2, 2020 11:02 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118058> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
His Atlantic piece is called<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/how-trump-could-attempt-coup/616954/> “How Trump Could Attempt a Coup”:
In public, Biden and his senior advisers profess full confidence in the electoral system to work as it always has. Every vote will be counted, they say, and the winner will be sworn in on January 20—end of story.
Behind the scenes, they are preparing for the worst. A special working group of high-powered lawyers led by three former solicitors general—Walter Dellinger; Donald B. Verrilli Jr.; and a recent addition, Seth Waxman—has overseen a massive planning exercise for rapid responses to dozens of scenarios in which Trump tries to interfere with the normal functioning of the election. Thousands of pages of legal analysis, according to an authoritative campaign source, have been boiled down into “template pleadings” for at least 49 predrafted emergency motions in state or federal court. The campaign will be ready on an hour’s notice to file for a temporary restraining order in any case it has thus far been able to anticipate.
“There’s no question that the Biden campaign has worked through every imaginable scenario and is certainly prepared—legally, at least—for any of these possibilities,” says Richard H. Pildes, a constitutional-law professor at NYU. Nothing Trump might do “would surprise the enormous legal team they’ve created to deal with twists and turns in the election. I assure you they’ve thought of more scenarios than the media would ever get to.”
The Biden team says it is ready even for scenarios it is sure will “never happen, and we’re not worried about it,” a Biden-campaign lawyer told me. “There have been a couple of lawsuits challenging Kamala Harris’s eligibility to be vice president,” he said. “Do we have stuff on that? Yeah. Do I think we have to worry about it? Absolutely not.”…
Most election-law experts I talked with expressed deep skepticism of this scenario.
“The kinds of things you’re talking about are the kinds of things that would lead to rioting in the streets,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the UC Irvine School of Law. “Now we’ve truly crossed into banana-republic territory.”
Maybe rioting is just what Trump would want in order to validate the deployment, I observed.
“You’re one of the few people I know who’s darker than I am,” Hasen replied.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>
“‘It’s Just Crazy’ in Pennsylvania: Mail Voting and the Anxiety That Followed”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118055>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:49 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118055> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Trip Gabriel <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/us/politics/Pennsylvania-presidential-election.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage> for the NYT:
“Hello, Elections.”
“Hello, Elections.”
“Hello, Elections.”
The rapid-fire calls were pouring in to Marybeth Kuznik, the one-woman Elections Department of Armstrong County, a few days before Election Day. “This is crazy,” she told an anxious caller. “Crazy, crazy, crazy. It’s a good thing because everybody should vote,” she added, “but it’s just crazy.”
Armstrong County, northeast of Pittsburgh, is one of Pennsylvania’s smaller counties with 44,829 registered voters. But it is a microcosm of the high tension, confusion and deep uncertainty that have accompanied the broad expansion of mail-in voting this year, during an election of passionate intensity.
With all Pennsylvania voters eligible for the first time to vote by mail, more than three million ballots were requested statewide — nearly half the total turnout from 2016. One in five voters in Armstrong County requested a mail-in ballot.
A complicated two-envelope ballot, uncertainty over the reliability of the Postal Service and a glitchy online system for tracking returned votes have caused Ms. Kuznik to be bombarded by callers. And, though to a lesser extent, she has also been visited by a stream of walk-ins at her small second-floor office in the county administration building, where an American flag was stuck into a dying plant above her desk.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Wisconsin Faces a Challenge: Getting Out the Vote When Most People Have Already Voted”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118053>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:41 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118053> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT reports.<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/us/politics/wisconsin-voters.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
Nevada: “Judge rejects Trump campaign effort to slow down, amend Clark County mail ballot counting and processing system”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118050>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:40 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118050> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Nevada Independent<https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/judge-rejects-trump-campaign-effort-to-slow-down-amend-clark-county-mail-ballot-counting-and-processing-system?utm_source=The+Nevada+Independent&utm_campaign=956d18648a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_02_03_47&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15592b5f76-956d18648a-365425609>:
A District Court judge has again blocked efforts by President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and the Nevada Republican Party to delay the counting of mail ballots in populous Clark County over alleged issues with signature verification and observation plans — saying their claims largely lacked evidence or standing necessary for last-minute judicial intervention in the election process.
Carson City District Court Judge James Wilson issued the order Monday morning denying the request to halt mail ballot processing after a lengthy evidentiary hearing held telephonically last week. The decision ensures that Clark County — by far the largest county in the state — will continue its process for counting and processing the record number of mail ballots submitted for the 2020 election, without any delays that could potentially bottleneck results on Election Night.
Wilson wrote in the order that attorneys for the Trump campaign and the state Republican Party had failed to produce any evidence of “any injury, direct or indirect, to themselves or any other person or organization” that would be necessary standing for an eleventh-hour judicial intervention in the election process.
“There is no evidence that any vote that should be lawfully counted has been or will not be counted,” he wrote. “There is no evidence that any vote that should lawfully not be counted has been or will be counted. There is no evidence that any election worker did anything outside of the law, policy or procedures. Petitioners do not have standing to maintain their mandamus claims.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“The voting technology problems that could trigger panic at the polls”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118048>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:38 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118048> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Eric Geller<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/02/voting-tech-problems-433748?nname=playbook-pm&nid=0000015a-dd3e-d536-a37b-dd7fd8af0000&nrid=0000014e-f109-dd93-ad7f-f90d0def0000&nlid=964328> for Politico.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
Talk About Incentives for Voting: Major Porn Site Issues Release Saying It Will Be Available on Election Day Only to Those Who Voted<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118046>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:34 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118046> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Release via email:
Pornhub, the premier online destination for adult entertainment, today announced “Give A F**k, Get A F**k,” a campaign to encourage American users to vote. On Election Day, Pornhub will be reserved only for those who have voted in the United States.
“Roughly 43 percent of eligible voters – equal to 100 million people – didn’t vote in the 2016 U.S Presidential Election, according to turnout estimates from the U.S. Elections Project. We want to encourage people to do their civic duty this year by casting their ballot and having their voice heard,” said Corey Price, Vice President, Pornhub.
Leading up to the campaign officially launching on Nov. 3, Pornhub will be running a social campaign with an assortment of high-profile models – including Pornhub Brand Ambassador Asa Akira, Domino Presley, Natassia Dreams, Janice Griffith, Lance Hart, Soverign Syre and Lotus Laine – posting videos encouraging people to get out and vote and also teasing them that “if they don’t give a f***, they don’t get a f**k.” When the campaign officially kicks off on Nov. 3, Pornhub users in the United States will be greeted by an overlay page which will appear over the Pornhub website from 10 a.m. EST to 9 p.m. EST reminding them to vote before entering the site that day.
It is not clear if proof of voting would be required to enter the site, which would be illegal.<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117845>
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Posted in vote buying<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=43>
New Retro Report: “Poll Watchers and the Long History of Voter Intimidation” (Watch here, including on the 1981 Consent Decree Against the RNC)<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118044>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:25 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118044> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Watch<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvhE916tb7M&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=RETROREPORT>:
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“So Far, Trump’s ‘Army’ of Poll Watchers Looks More Like a Small Platoon”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118042>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:13 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118042> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Jessica Huseman<https://www.propublica.org/article/so-far-trumps-army-of-poll-watchers-looks-more-like-a-small-platoon>:
Donald Trump Jr. looked straight into a camera at the end of September as triumphant music rose in a crescendo. “The radical left are laying the groundwork to steal this election from my father,” he said. “We cannot let that happen. We need every able-bodied man and woman to join the army for Trump’s election security operation.”
It was an echo of what his father, President Donald Trump, has said in both of his presidential campaigns. At a September campaign rally in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the president encouraged his audience to be poll watchers. “Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do,” he said. “Because this is important.”
But the poll-watching army that the Trumps have tried to rally hasn’t materialized. Although there’s no official data, election officials across the country say that they have seen relatively few Republican poll watchers during early voting, and that at times Democratic poll watchers have outnumbered the GOP’s. In Colorado and Nevada, where the Trump campaign was particularly active in recruiting poll watchers, its efforts largely petered out….
The paucity of Republican poll watchers doesn’t necessarily reflect a lack of enthusiasm for the candidate. In fact, avid supporters may prefer more vocal or demonstrative ways of expressing their views than watching polls all day. Trump’s cries for help in the prevention of fraud make the poll watcher’s role seem far more dramatic and consequential than it actually is. More than 20 Trump campaign training videos for poll watchers, reviewed by ProPublica, make clear the mundane nature of the task, encouraging volunteers to be on time, to bring a water bottle, to not interact with voters and to be respectful “even to our Democratic friends!”
Poll watching “is like watching paint dry,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, specializing in elections. “If you’re waiting for the busloads of fraud to arise, and what you get is small American-flag-waving democracy, you begin to go out of your head. It’s like sitting in a field waiting for the UFOs and the UFOs never show up. And then you’re just sitting in a field, which is fine for a couple hours, but polls are open about 15 hours a day.”
Analysts say that the president and his staff may not believe their own predictions of a poll-watching army, but that they may be raising the specter to deter Democratic voters from going to the polls. The campaigns also want people to sign up to be poll watchers, even if they don’t actually follow through, because their contact information helps identify potential donors.
Bob Bauer, the attorney for the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden, said the Trump campaign is betting on scaring voters into staying home to avoid confrontation. But, he said, that tactic appears to have backfired, as young people and other likely Democratic voters have flocked to the polls during early voting.
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
Professors Fishkin, Vladeck, and Rave Amicus Brief in Texas Drive-Thru Voting Case<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118039>
Posted on November 2, 2020 10:09 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118039> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Read it here<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/fishkin-vladeck-rave.pdf>.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Trump can declare whatever he wants, but it doesn’t make it so”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118037>
Posted on November 2, 2020 8:47 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118037> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Jennifer Rubin WaPo column.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/02/trump-can-declare-whatever-he-wants-it-doesnt-make-it-so/>
See also my Slate piece <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/if-trump-declares-victory-election-night-axios-nope.html> from yesterday on this topic.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
GOP Attorney Ben Ginsberg and Former Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus File Brief Against Last-Minute Outrageous Attempt to Disenfranchise More than 100,000 Harris County Voters<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118035>
Posted on November 2, 2020 8:41 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118035> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Brief here<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IIHWfAd-M-XeTKXGfW6tUqglKIPbMlcD/view?fbclid=IwAR3v226piHKPyo87-_Cyz-CipRf4vTVKLYCOJvRpqVB058r6IYQyY-R0oRY>.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D118035&title=GOP%20Attorney%20Ben%20Ginsberg%20and%20Former%20Texas%20Speaker%20of%20the%20House%20Joe%20Straus%20File%20Brief%20Against%20Last-Minute%20Outrageous%20Attempt%20to%20Disenfranchise%20More%20than%20100%2C000%20Harris%20County%20Voters>
Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>
“U.S. judge orders USPS to reinforce ‘extraordinary measures’ ballot delivery policy”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118033>
Posted on November 2, 2020 8:04 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118033> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Reuters reports.<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-post-office/u-s-judge-orders-usps-to-reinforce-extraordinary-measures-ballot-delivery-policy-idUSKBN27I05B?il=0>
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D118033&title=%E2%80%9CU.S.%20judge%20orders%20USPS%20to%20reinforce%20%E2%80%98extraordinary%20measures%E2%80%99%20ballot%20delivery%20policy%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Twitter names 7 outlets to call election results”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118031>
Posted on November 2, 2020 8:02 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118031> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Axios:<https://www.axios.com/twitter-names-7-outlets-to-call-election-results-b89a043d-ed50-4478-8d8a-de27b271ea85.html>
Twitter on Monday provided more details<https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1323265819934105600> about its policies around tweets that declare election results, and named the seven outlets it will lean on to help it determine whether a race is officially called.
Driving the news: The list includes ABC News, AP, CNN, CBS News, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News and NBC News — all outlets that experts agree have verified, unbiased decision desks calling elections.
Our thought bubble: Some conservatives have alleged that Twitter is biased against them. In the past few weeks, data from the Stanford Cable TV Analyzer<https://tvnews.stanford.edu/?dataVersion=v1&data=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> shows that Fox News has discussed Jack Dorsey and Big Tech censorship at length.
Fox News’ Decision Desk is considered very authoritative<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/business/media/trump-election-fox-news.html> and is highly-respected amongst media and politics insiders. By including Fox News’ decision desk in this list, Twitter is saying that it believes its decision desk is verified and legitimate.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Has the Court Learned Nothing From Bush v. Gore? Apparently Not”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118029>
Posted on November 2, 2020 8:00 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118029> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
David Kaplan NYT oped<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/opinion/election-supreme-court.html>.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D118029&title=%E2%80%9CHas%20the%20Court%20Learned%20Nothing%20From%20Bush%20v.%20Gore%3F%20Apparently%20Not%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Bush v. Gore reflections<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=5>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>
Number of Rejected Absentees so Far in NC: 7,675<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118025>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:56 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118025> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
North Carolina has a lower percentage of votes being cast absentee than many states. According to the most recent data, about 21% of the votes cast thus far have been by absentee ballot, with the rest coming from early in-person voting. This means that the total number of rejected absentees is smaller than it might have been, at least so far. With more than 4.5 M votes cast so far, the number of rejected absentees is 7,675. That’s 0.17% of votes cast, before we get to all the Election Day voting in person.
Numbers come for the invaluable US Elections Project<https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/NC.html>. These numbers will change, of course, in the next days.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Biden camp quietly raises money for post-election court brawl”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118026>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:42 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118026> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Politico reports.<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/02/biden-camp-fundraising-post-election-433803?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014e-f109-dd93-ad7f-f90d0def0000&nlid=630318>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Trump Legacy: Boom in Corporate Political Disclosure”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118022>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:20 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118022> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
New from Bruce Freed, Karl Sandstrom, and Dan Carroll:
How has the Trump presidency impacted corporate political disclosure and accountability? The answer might come as a surprise. It’s been a boon and a boom.
Over the past four years, more large publicly held U.S. companies than ever before have adopted sound transparency and oversight practices for their political spending. This trend has strengthened between the 2016 presidential election and next month’s, according to the 2020 CPA-Zicklin Index<https://politicalaccountability.net/hifi/files/2020-CPA-Zicklin-Index.pdf> released this month.
The annual benchmarking of the S&P 500 companies is conducted by the Center for Political Accountability<https://politicalaccountability.net/> and The Wharton School’s Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research<https://zicklincenter.wharton.upenn.edu/>. It rates the largest U.S. public companies for their political disclosure and accountability and includes these major findings:
· The number of companies with the best transparency and accountability policies, labeled Trendsetters for scores of 90 percent or higher, more than doubled to 79 this year from 35 in 2016. Five companies scored 100 percent. (The number of Trendsetters nearly tripled from 28 when the S&P 500 were first scored by the Index in 2015.)
· Companies adopting board oversight and a more detailed board committee review of political spending have increased 46 percent in the four-year period.
· Companies getting scores in the first tier (80 percent to 100 percent) totaled 156 this year, up two-thirds from 94 companies in 2016.
· For those companies that have stayed constant in the S&P 500 over recent years, there is steady improvement over time; their average score has risen from 46 percent in 2016 to 57.0 percent now—an increase of nearly 25 percent.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“How Trump-appointed judges have made it harder to vote”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118020>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:18 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118020> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Josh Douglas<https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/opinions/trump-judges-harder-to-vote-douglas/index.html> at CNN:
In at least 18 cases<https://drive.google.com/file/d/15xC1qbr_IZH7p363hKHrjAZBW2Uuu4hG/view> this year, federal trial courts ruled in favor of plaintiffs and put on hold various election rules, often due to the challenges of voting during the pandemic, only to see federal appeals courts reverse those pro-voter rulings. Twelve of those decisions included at least one Trump-appointed judge. Seven of those 12 cases were 2-1 decisions with a Trump appointee in the majority; an eighth case was a 6-4 decision <https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202012003.enb.pdf> by the entire Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, with five Trump-appointed judges in the majority.
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“‘America Is a Republic Not a Democracy’ Is a Dangerous—and Wrong—Argument; Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118018>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:13 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118018> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
George Thomas<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-constitution-democracy/616949/> for The Atlantic.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D118018&title=%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98America%20Is%20a%20Republic%20Not%20a%20Democracy%E2%80%99%20Is%20a%20Dangerous%E2%80%94and%20Wrong%E2%80%94Argument%3B%20Enabling%20sustained%20minority%20rule%20at%20the%20national%20level%20is%20not%20a%20feature%20of%20our%20constitutional%20design%2C%20but%20a%20perversion%20of%20it.%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
I Was on PBS Talking to Ian Bremmer for GZero World About Our Current Election Mess and What It Will Take to Get to the Other Side (Video)<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118016>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:09 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118016> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
You can watch here<https://www.pbs.org/video/america-votes-the-world-watches-imk09h/>.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D118016&title=I%20Was%20on%20PBS%20Talking%20to%20Ian%20Bremmer%20for%20GZero%20World%20About%20Our%20Current%20Election%20Mess%20and%20What%20It%20Will%20Take%20to%20Get%20to%20the%20Other%20Side%20(Video)>
Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>
“Polarized electorate, mail-in ballots could spark post-election legal ‘fight of our lives'”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118014>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:04 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118014> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Reuters reports.<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-legal-challenges-idUSKBN27I1BO>
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D118014&title=%E2%80%9CPolarized%20electorate%2C%20mail-in%20ballots%20could%20spark%20post-election%20legal%20%E2%80%98fight%20of%20our%20lives%27%E2%80%9D>
Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“A Giant Test for Election Law”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118012>
Posted on November 2, 2020 7:01 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118012> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
I spoke <https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next/2020/11/election-law-scotus-republicans-disaster> with Mary Harris of Slate’s “What’s Next” podcast about the state of play in the courts.
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
A literal Fraudulent Fraud Squad: “The Trump Campaign’s Chaotic Closing Strategy”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118010>
Posted on November 2, 2020 6:59 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118010> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
McKay Coppins<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/10/how-army-trump-could-spread-disinformation/616943/> for The Atlantic:
In the coming days, thousands of pro-Trump poll watchers<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-watchers-insight/cellphones-in-hand-army-for-trump-readies-poll-watching-operation-idUSKBN26S1J5> are set to fan out across battleground states—smartphones in hand—and post themselves outside voting locations to hunt for evidence of fraud. This “army” has been coached<https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/10/09/trump-campaign-poll-watchers-orig.cnn> on what to look for, and instructed<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-watchers-insight/cellphones-in-hand-army-for-trump-readies-poll-watching-operation-idUSKBN26S1J5> to record anything that seems suspicious. The Trump campaign says these videos will be used in potential legal challenges; critics say their sole purpose is to intimidate voters. But in recent conversations with a range of unnerved Democrats and researchers, I was offered another scenario: If the president decides to contest the election’s results, his campaign could let loose a blizzard of misleading, decontextualized video clips as “proof” that the vote can’t be trusted.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>
County Election Administrators, the Unsung Heroes of This Election<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118007>
Posted on November 2, 2020 3:44 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118007> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
See this story<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/us/politics/Pennsylvania-presidential-election.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage> in the NYT, focusing on one official in a small county in PA.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D118007&title=County%20Election%20Administrators%2C%20the%20Unsung%20Heroes%20of%20This%20Election>
Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
Misleading Headlines With Bad Political Consequences<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118003>
Posted on November 2, 2020 3:00 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118003> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
In advance of a possible Susan Collins loss in Maine, the headline writers at the New York Times and Washington Post are blaming Maine’s ranked-choice voting system (don’t blame the authors of these stories, they do not control the headlines). The reason is that once the votes are transferred from the independent candidate, Lisa Savage, who is projected to come in third, most of those votes are thought to be going to Collins’ opponent, Sara Gideon.
What these headlines fail to recognize is that the type of voting system we use changes the mix of candidates who will choose to run. If Maine had stayed with traditional plurality-winner voting, Lisa Savage might well not have run at all. It’s clear she has no desire to damage Gideon’s campaign and strongly prefers her to Collins. In a traditional voting system, Savage would have siphoned votes from Gideon, which could have thrown the election to Collins. Savage understands this, and since her candidacy would have threatened to sink Gideon, Savage quite likely would not have run. And in a two-person race between Collins and Gideon, Gideon might well have won (we will have to see what the voting tallies show).
But once Maine adopted RCV, Savage could safely run, push her message, but know that doing so would not damage Gideon, because left-leaning voters could rank Savage first, but Gideon second. In the traditional voting system, those votes would have gone directly to Gideon.
If RCV is wrongly “blamed” for costing the Republicans a Senate seat, that is going to make it significantly more difficult to have well-informed public debates going forward about RCV. There is no reason to think RCV systematically favors one party or the other. In some races, in some states, there will be more third-party candidates from the left; in others, there will be more from the right.
Indeed, if Republicans lose badly in this election, the Republican Party will likely go through a period of internal factional conflict over which direction to take the party — which could easily lead to more candidates from the conservative side of the spectrum running for office as independent or under a third-party umbrella. In that context, the Republican Party would benefit from RCV.
Headline writers have the tricky task of coming up with concise leads that will draw readers in. These headlines will probably do that. Still, it’s troubling how much these narratives might affect public understanding about RCV.
Here are the headlines that prompted this post:
Voting System in Maine Threatens Collins in Final Days of Close Senate Race<http://voting%20system%20in%20maine%20threatens%20collins%20in%20final%20days%20of%20close%20senate%20race/>
Could Maine’s ranked-choice voting system cost Sen. Susan Collins?<http://Could%20Maine%E2%80%99s%20ranked-choice%20voting%20system%20cost%20Sen.%20Susan%20Collins/?>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“False video of Joe Biden viewed 1 million times on Twitter”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118001>
Posted on November 1, 2020 8:37 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118001> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CNN<https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/tech/false-biden-video-twitter/index.html?utm_term=1604290490314812b9f1974d8&utm_source=Reliable+Sources+-+November+1%2C+2020&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=255301_1604290490316&bt_ee=39OFm01ogxEJt2aEnrjy0uCECTuJ5BzcwHdHmIcoQjuNrmb6zRyWU%2B6iQyU9%2FvY%2F&bt_ts=1604290490316>:
A deceptively edited video of Joe Biden making it appear the Democratic presidential nominee forgot what state he was in was viewed more than one million times on Twitter over the weekend.In the video, Biden addresses a crowd — saying,”Hello, Minnesota!” The event did, indeed, take place<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eJHh3rmSe8&feature=emb_title> in St Paul, Minnesota.
In the unedited, original video, signs in front of and behind Biden on the stage read “Text MN to 30330” — making it clear the event was in Minnesota.However in the false video, the on-stage signs were edited to read “Tampa, Florida,” and “Text FL to 30330.”
The video was shared on Twitter by a person who accused Biden of forgetting what state he was in.One version of the false video circulating on Twitter was viewed more than 1.1 million times in less than 24 hours.close dialog<javascript:void(0)>
We read all day so you don’t have to.Get our nightly newsletter for all the top business stories you need to know.Sign Me UpBy subscribing you agree to our privacy policy.<https://www.cnn.com/privacy0?no-st=9999999999> The video was only labeled as “manipulated media” by Twitter on Sunday evening after it had more than 1 million views. The user then deleted the video.
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Posted in cheap speech<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=130>
“Quasi Campaign Finance”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117998>
Posted on November 1, 2020 8:26 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117998> by Nicholas Stephanopoulos<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=12>
The Duke Law Journal has just published this article<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3540231> of mine. Here’s the abstract:
Say you’re wealthy and want to influence American politics. How would you do it? Conventional campaign finance — giving or spending money to sway elections — is one option. Lobbying is another. This Article identifies and explores a third possibility: quasi campaign finance, or spending money on non-electoral communications with voters that nevertheless rely on an electoral mechanism to be effective. Little is currently known about quasi campaign finance because no law requires its disclosure. But its use by America’s richest and politically savviest individuals — the Koch brothers, Michael Bloomberg, and the like — appears to be rising. It also seems to skew policy outcomes in the spenders’ preferred direction.
After introducing quasi campaign finance, the Article considers its legal status. Is it like ordinary campaign finance, in which case it could be regulated fairly extensively? Or is it like garden-variety political speech, rendering it presumptively unregulable? One argument for pairing quasi and regular campaign finance is that they share several features — who bankrolls them, the tactics they pay for, the reasons they work — and so may serve as substitutes. Another rationale for conflation is that they may both cause the same democratic injuries: corruption, the distortion of public opinion, and the misalignment of public policy. Pitted against these points is the slippery-slope objection: If quasi campaign finance may constitutionally be curbed, what political speech may not be?
Lastly, the Article suggests how quasi campaign finance should (assuming it actually may) be regulated. Limits on contributions and expenditures are unwise and probably unadministrable. Disclosure, though, is a necessity. The public should know who is trying to persuade it (and how). Even more promising is the public subsidization of quasi campaign finance. If every voter received a voucher for this purpose, then public funds might crowd out private capital, thus alleviating its harmful effects.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Preventing a Military Decision About Who Won a Disputed Election”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117996>
Posted on November 1, 2020 8:13 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117996> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Dakota Rudesill<https://www.justsecurity.org/73047/preventing-a-military-decision-about-who-won-a-disputed-election/> for Just Security.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
Running List of Ways that Republican Legislators, Elected Officials, and Party and Campaign Officials Have Fought to Make It Harder to Vote During the Pandemic<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117994>
Posted on November 1, 2020 5:13 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117994> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
List starts here<https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1323055904699285504>:
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Ben Ginsberg: “My party is destroying itself on the altar of Trump”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117992>
Posted on November 1, 2020 5:08 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117992> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
New WaPo oped <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/01/ben-ginsberg-voter-suppression-republicans/> from Ben:
President Trump has failed the test of leadership. His bid for reelection is foundering. And his only solution has been to launch an all-out, multimillion-dollar effort to disenfranchise voters — first by seeking to block state laws<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts-voting-fraud-claims-republicans/2020/09/28/ceff1184-fda2-11ea-b555-4d71a9254f4b_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_3> to ease voting during the pandemic, and now, in the final stages of the campaign, by challenging the ballots of individual voters<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-shift-2020-legal-strategy/2020/10/30/339a3054-1a24-11eb-82db-60b15c874105_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_3> unlikely to support him.
This is as un-American as it gets. It returns the Republican Party to the bad old days of “voter suppression” that landed it under a court order<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-gop-just-received-another-tool-for-suppressing-votes/550052/> to stop such tactics — an order lifted before this election. It puts the party on the wrong side of demographic changes in this country that threaten to make the GOP a permanent minority<https://www.brookings.edu/research/americas-electoral-future-the-coming-generational-transformation/>.
Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I’ve worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered.
The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.
As he confronts losing, Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud. Absent being able to articulate a cogent plan for a second term or find an attack against Joe Biden that will stick, disenfranchising enough voters has become key to his reelection strategy.
Perhaps this was the plan all along. The president’s unsubstantiated talk about “rigged” elections caused by absentee ballot “fraud” and “cheating” has been around since 2016<https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-rigged-election-guide-230302>; it’s just increased in recent weeks.
Trump has enlisted a compliant Republican Party in this shameful effort. The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases<https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-donald-trump-voting-lawsuits-124eca1b346c2fa64f6add1710031ec4> around the country this year. In exactly none — zero — are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers<https://healthyelections-case-tracker.stanford.edu/search>….
“We have volunteers, attorneys and staff in place to ensure that election officials are following the law and counting every lawful ballot,” Justin Riemer, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, said<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-shift-2020-legal-strategy/2020/10/30/339a3054-1a24-11eb-82db-60b15c874105_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_27> Friday.
That’s not precisely true. The Republican challenging effort is focused almost exclusively in heavily Democratic areas. Signature mismatches will go unheeded by Trump forces in friendly precincts. This is not about finding fraud and irregularities. It’s about suppressing the number of votes not cast for Trump.
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Trump Disputes Axios Report He Will Prematurely Declare Victory But Threatens to Send In the Lawyers on Election Night<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117990>
Posted on November 1, 2020 5:05 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=117990> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Updated Axios<https://www.axios.com/trump-claim-election-victory-ballots-97eb12b9-5e35-402f-9ea3-0ccfb47f613f.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100>:
The latest: Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Trump denied<https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1323038755712847872> that he would declare victory prematurely, before adding, “I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over.”
· He continued: “I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election. … We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.”
· “We don’t want to have Pennsylvania, where you have a political governor, a very partisan guy. … We don’t want to be in a position where he’s allowed, every day, to watch ballots come in. See if we can only find 10,000 more ballots.”
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--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
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