[EL] more news and commentary 11/6/20

[Rick Hasen]

“Trump-associated firm helped send unmarked texts urging vote protests in Philadelphia”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118233>
Posted on November 6, 2020 7:50 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118233> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/06/trump-text-messages-philadelphia/>

A Republican firm run by a top aide to President Trump’s 2020 campaign appears to have helped send unmarked text messages on Thursday that urged supporters in Philadelphia to converge outside a building where local election officials counted votes.Follow the latest on Election 2020<https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/?itid=lk_interstitial_hub_election>

“ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump!” began the short text, sent in the hours before former vice President Joe Biden took the lead in the state. “We need YOU! Show your support at the corner of 12th St. & Arch St. in Philadelphia.”

The messages were sent from phone numbers that had been leased by Opn Sesam<https://opnsesame.com/>e, a company that offers texting services to Republican candidates and causes, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the messages. Opn Sesame is run by Gary Coby, the digital director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, and it has worked for years on behalf of a number of key GOP clients, including the Republican National Committee. It is unclear which of Opn Sesame’s clients actually sent the message, and the company does not disclose its full list of users.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


Important statement about the end of the election from PA’s legislative leaders<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118230>
Posted on November 6, 2020 7:25 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118230> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>

This<https://www.centredaily.com/opinion/article246527648.html> is an extremely responsible, important statement from the majority leaders of the PA Senate and House. It deserves wide circulation because it makes clear that the voters will decide the election. This statement goes a long way to ensuring we will have an orderly end to the process. I have been highly critical of the PA Governor and legislature, but kudos to the legislative leaders for issuing this statement:

“Pennsylvania lawmakers have no role to play in deciding the presidential election“

We have said it many times and we will happily say it again: The Pennsylvania General Assembly does not have and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election.

To insinuate otherwise is to inappropriately set fear into the Pennsylvania electorate with an imaginary scenario not provided for anywhere in law — or in fact.

Pennsylvania law plainly says that the state’s electors are chosen only by the popular vote of the commonwealth’s voters.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Trump’s legal team makes no significant progress in election fight”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118228>
Posted on November 6, 2020 7:02 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118228> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Josh Gerstein sums it up<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/05/trumps-legal-team-win-loss-election-434360?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014e-f109-dd93-ad7f-f90d0def0000&nlid=630318>:

President Donald Trump’s barrage of lawsuits related to the 2020 presidential election kicked up considerable dust on Thursday, but delivered his campaign no tangible progress in halting or slowing the slide of vote tallies away from him in key battleground states.

The flurry of litigation yielded a couple of minor victories for the president, as a state judge granted his campaign’s poll watchers closer access to ballot counting in Philadelphia and a federal court judge there brokered a deal that’s likely to let more volunteers from Trump’s campaign observe the process.

Despite mixed results, the court fights seemed to serve their intended purpose of creating an air of legal uncertainty around the election while the president and his advisers scramble to preserve a sense of viability for a reelection bid that is by objective measures growing more remote.

The performative nature of the litigation was evidenced by the campaign’s dispatching some of its most combative surrogates to sites where court fights were underway or threatened.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Wisconsin Republicans Urged to Get PA Republicans to Commit Voter Fraud to Help Trump win PA; Never Heard Something Dumber<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118226>
Posted on November 6, 2020 6:51 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118226> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

This<https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-warns-of-corrupt-post-election-day-votes-as-his-supporters-push-for-them-in-pa?ref=wrap> is some really<https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/06/trumps-wisconsin-campaign-asks-pennsylvania-cast-late-ballots/6182506002/> 4th dimensional chess stuff: Wisconsin Republicans solicit PA Republicans to commit voter fraud by sending in late ballots to make the election look fraudulent to cause courts to throw out Pennsylvania’s election results—after using the Supreme Court to force late ballots to be segregated so that can’t happen. LOL.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“In Georgia, about 23,000 young people were not old enough to vote in the super-close general election this year, but will be eligible to vote in the runoff election for U.S. Senate in January 2021”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118224>
Posted on November 6, 2020 6:48 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118224> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Laura Brill<https://thecivicscenter.org/blog/2020/11/6/young-people-could-decide-the-georgia-runoff-races-for-us-senate> makes a good point.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The 2020 Election Meltdown That Didn’t Happen, Even Amid the Covid Pandemic; Administrators and ordinary citizens came together to make a fair, safe and secure national vote possible”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118222>
Posted on November 6, 2020 6:39 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118222> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Nate Persily and Charles Stewart with a smart retrospective<https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-2020-election-meltdown-that-didnt-happen-even-amid-the-covid-pandemic-11604667974?fbclid=IwAR0G8L4pogEjhZJ5ZsON3Z9zINkF2G1oQRWfPagly22Ra_wnjyImJ5wo7-M> in the WSJ.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


“In Torrent of Falsehoods, Trump Claims Election Is Being Stolen”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118220>
Posted on November 6, 2020 6:34 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118220> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/us/politics/trump-presidency.html?smid=tw-share>

Even for President Trump, it was an imagined version of reality, one in which he was not losing but the victim of a wide-ranging conspiracy stretching across the country in multiple cities, counties and states, involving untold numbers of people all somehow collaborating to steal the election in ways he could not actually explain.

Never mind that Mr. Trump presented not a shred of evidence during his first public appearance since late on election night or that few senior Republican officeholders endorsed his false claims of far-reaching fraud. A presidency born in a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace appeared on the edge of ending in a lie about his own faltering bid for re-election.

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Mr. Trump said Thursday night in an unusually subdued, 17-minute televised statement from the lectern in the White House briefing room, complaining that Democrats, the news media, pollsters, big technology companies and nonpartisan election workers had all corruptly sought to deny him a second term.

“This is a case where they’re trying to steal an election,” he said. “They’re trying to rig an election, and we can’t let that happen.”

He convinced few people who were not already in his corner. Most of the television networks cut away from the statement on the grounds that what Mr. Trump was saying was not true. On CNN, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican often put in the position of defending Mr. Trump over the years, appeared exasperated as he denounced the president’s loose talk of election thievery as “dangerous” and “shocking” and declared that “counting absentee ballots and counting mail-in ballots is not fraud.”<https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/11/06/rick-santorum-shocked-trump-address-election-vote-ballot-elexnight-jones-vpx.cnn>

The New York Post, which published salacious articles on Hunter Biden planted by Mr. Trump’s associates before the election, headlined an article<https://nypost.com/2020/11/05/trump-to-speak-from-white-house-as-vote-count-leans-toward-biden/>: “Downcast Trump Makes Baseless Election Fraud Claims in White House Address.” Even Fox News noted it had seen no “hard evidence” of widespread wrongdoing.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>, fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


If PA Had Moved Its Ballot Processing Start Day up 3 Days, Today would be Tuesday<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118218>
Posted on November 6, 2020 3:58 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=118218> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
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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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