[EL] Pa. Green Party ruling/more news and commentary

[Mark Scarberry]

Is there a substantial federal question here that would make justify the Greens in seeking Supreme Court review?

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine University
Rick J. Caruso School of Law
________________________________
From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on behalf of Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2020 9:18 AM
To: Election Law Listserv
Subject: Re: [EL] Pa. Green Party ruling/more news and commentary

Here’s the concurring and dissenting opinion in Pa case

https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/Concurring-and-Dissenting-Opinion1.pdf


From: Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 17, 2020 at 8:54 AM
To: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Pa. Green Party ruling/more news and commentary

Breaking: Pennsylvania Supreme Court, on 5-2 Vote, Holds Green Party Won’t Be on November Ballot Because of Deficiencies in Nomination Papers<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115340>
Posted on September 17, 2020 8:51 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115340> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

You can find the majority opinion here<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/pa-green.pdf>. (I do not yet have the concurring/dissenting opinion).
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“How a Pennsylvania law could delay presidential election results for days or even weeks”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115338>
Posted on September 17, 2020 7:49 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115338> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jon Ward<https://www.yahoo.com/author/jon-ward>:

If Pennsylvania has a repeat performance of its primary, America is in trouble.

Election results in Pennsylvania’s June 2 primary took weeks<https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/election_2020/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-officials-worry-mail-in-ballot-surge-new-rules-could-delay-november-election-results/article_76969bf7-8468-564e-8b6e-7471d50ca782.html> to be announced. And because it is such a crucial swing state, a similar delay in the Nov. 3 election could end up leaving the country unsure of who the next president will be long after Election Day.

But state officials told Yahoo News they’re confident that results won’t take as long to be announced in the fall election.

“That’s not going to happen,” said Wanda Murren, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office.

Murren said the biggest reason for delays during the primary was the consolidation of polling places. Because of COVID-19 and a shortage of poll workers, Philadelphia reduced what are normally more than 800 voting locations in the city to just under 200.

For the Nov. 3 election, Murren said, the city plans to have around its usual number of polling places for in-person voting.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


Former DNI Dan Coats in NYT Oped Calls for High Level Election Commission to Weigh In on Election Issues<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115336>
Posted on September 17, 2020 7:45 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115336> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Coats:<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/opinion/2020-election-voting.html?smid=tw-share>

The most important part of an effective response is to finally, at long last, forge a genuinely bipartisan effort to save our democracy, rejecting the vicious partisanship that has disabled and destabilized government for too long. If we cannot find common ground now, on this core issue at the very heart of our endangered system, we never will.

Our key goal should be reassurance. We must firmly, unambiguously reassure all Americans that their vote will be counted, that it will matter, that the people’s will expressed through their votes will not be questioned and will be respected and accepted. I propose that Congress creates a new mechanism to help accomplish this purpose. It should create a supremely high-level bipartisan and nonpartisan commission to oversee the election. This commission would not circumvent existing electoral reporting systems or those that tabulate, evaluate or certify the results. But it would monitor those mechanisms and confirm for the public that the laws and regulations governing them have been scrupulously and expeditiously followed — or that violations have been exposed and dealt with — without political prejudice and without regard to political interests of either party.

Also, this commission would be responsible for monitoring those forces that seek to harm our electoral system through interference, fraud, disinformation or other distortions. These would be exposed to the American people in a timely manner and referred to appropriate law enforcement agencies and national security entities.

Such a commission must be composed of national leaders personally committed — by oath — to put partisan politics aside even in the midst of an electoral contest of such importance. They would accept as a personal moral responsibility to put the integrity and fairness of the election process above everything else, making public reassurance their goal.

We made a similar recommendation in our Fair Elections During a Crisis <https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/2020ElectionReport.pdf> report.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


“Democrats scramble to soothe voter fears about in-person voting ahead of November election”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115334>
Posted on September 17, 2020 7:03 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115334> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CNN<https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/politics/election-2020-democrats-in-person-voting/index.html>:

After months of warnings about the risks posed by in-person voting in a push to expand access to mail-in ballots<https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/politics/mail-in-voting/>, Democrats across the country are increasingly focused on communicating to voters that it is safe to cast their ballots in a voting booth.

The shift comes after a national legal campaign has successfully resulted in expanded access to mail-in voting in nearly every state — prompting an unprecedented shift in the way millions of Americans will be able to vote due to the coronavirus pandemic.But as voting is set to begin in more states in the coming weeks, Democrats have settled on a strategy of emphasizing that all voting options, including in-person early and Election Day voting, are safe amid the pandemic.

Perhaps the most pointed urging for Democrats to physically go to the polls came from former first lady Michelle Obama’s primetime speech <https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/08/17/michelle-obama-dnc-2020-speech-full-video-vpx.cnn> during the Democratic National Convention last month.

“We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can,” Obama said, as she urged Democrats to cast their ballots ahead of an election in which she said democracy itself was at stake.

The former first lady also did not miss an opportunity to urge voters to request their mail-in ballots as soon as possible. But her message to “grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks” and head to the polls was a notable change of emphasis compared to her party’s laser-like focus on mail-in voting since the coronavirus pandemic began.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Lara Trump: Did You Know? Voting Absentee is the Most Secure Way to Ensure Your Vote is Counted”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115332>
Posted on September 17, 2020 6:57 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115332> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Campaign messaging<https://twitter.com/EveryVoiceNC/status/1306573346205827075?s=20> in North Carolina:
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>
“How the Campaigns Are Preparing to Win the Chaotic Election Aftermath”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115330>
Posted on September 17, 2020 6:54 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115330> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ben Jacobs<https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/how-trump-and-biden-plan-to-win-the-messy-election-aftermath.html?utm_source=tw>:

With less than seven weeks to the general election, both Democrats and Republicans are preparing for a drawn-out fight to decide who serves the next four years in the White House — with at least some of the fighting taking place for an unknown duration after Election Day. There are some practical reasons for this: The contest will see an unprecedented number of absentee ballots and is occurring in the midst of a pandemic; there’s also the fact that the sitting president is, on an almost daily basis, making false and outlandish claims of voter fraud. But this election is also different in that increasingly both parties seem to be expecting chaos and uncertainty after votes are cast — and preparing for that chaos, with the hope of emerging triumphant, has become a key part of the overall campaign strategy. It’s a new political world in which November 3 doesn’t necessarily mark the end of the campaign but the beginning of a new phase.

Trump violates political norms on a daily basis, and the damage that his rhetoric and tweets have done to democratic institutions has altered American politics in fundamental ways. But top Democrats have now also begun talking about strategies for winning the post-election period that in the recent past would have fallen outside standard political norms for a presidential election. Recently<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/25/hillary-clinton-joe-biden-election-advice-401641>, Hillary Clinton advised that “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances.” She continued: “I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is.” A study group featuring Clinton’s former campaign manager, John Podesta, floated a scenario where Democratic governors of states that went narrowly for Trump might try to flip their Electoral College votes to Biden.

Campaigns have always prepared for legal issues. Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican election lawyer, told Intelligencer, “In normal times, campaigns approach Election Day and what comes after in terms of preparing for recounts and contests in terms of state law and federal overlay. They’ll still have to do that in 2020, but the reality is 2020 is going to be completely different because of the onslaught of absentee ballots, which stands to throw off the timing of election results.” (Ginsburg, who recently retired from the active practice of law, drew attention recently for his Washington Post op-ed<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/08/republicans-have-insufficient-evidence-call-elections-rigged-fraudulent/> that pushed back on Trump’s claim that elections, specifically those using absentee ballots, were “rigged” and noted that there are minimal cases of voter fraud in the U.S.)

What makes the fight over absentee ballots particularly thorny in 2020 is the expected partisan skew to them. Traditionally, there is a relatively minimal partisan variation to the mail vote, but the higher level ofconcern among Democrats over the pandemic combined with cries of fraud — particularly from Trump and Fox News — have changed the composition of the electorate that votes early. So far, in states that report absentee-ballot requests<https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html> by partisan affiliation, over 7 million more Democrats than Republicans have requested ballots. In the August primary<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/06/record-2-5-million-voters-tuesday-primary-1-6-million-absentee/3307495001/> in the swing state of Michigan, between 70 and 80 percent of Democrats voted absentee, while only 45 to 55 percent of Republicans did the same.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>, The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Watchdogs demand election night clarity from the media”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115328>
Posted on September 17, 2020 6:52 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115328> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politico<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/17/election-night-2020-calling-winner-416644>:

The unprecedented, pandemic-era 2020 election is bringing increased scrutiny to how the news media report the vote count and project who will be the next president.

The National Task Force on Election Crises, a consortium of election experts and academics, is urging major media outlets to detail how they plan to account for the expected surge of mail ballots in how they project winners, and are pleading for caution with calling a victor when results may still be inconclusive on election night.

The task force sent letters<http://politico.com/f/?id=00000174-99d0-d809-a9f5-fbd6a04f0000> Wednesday evening to The Associated Press, Fox News and the National Election Pool, which includes the three broadcast networks and CNN, calling for the outlets to detail four things publicly: how they’re adapting their underlying exit polling data and voter surveys to account for an increase in mail ballots; how they’ll contextualize discrepancies from results released on Election Day and final results; how they’ll protect their decision desks from internal and external pressure on making election calls; and how they’ll cover a politician who declares victory before the outlets project a winner.

“We know that there is a furious race to call the winner in every election cycle. But this year needs to be different,” Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the head of policy and strategy at the Emes Project and a former editor at The Washington Post, said via a spokesperson for the group. “With such a large number of absentee ballots that will be cast in so many battleground states, the rush to be first could result in getting it wrong.”…

Of particular concern to the task force is how outlets will project winners in races in states that will see a wave of mail ballots with no historical precedent. Many decision desks rely, in part, on historical data to model the electorate — but states that have seen past mail voting rates in the single digits could climb as high as half of all voters this cycle.

“With a record number of mail-in and absentee ballots expected this election cycle because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is imperative for newsrooms to be transparent about their modeling and how they are accounting for an increase in vote by mail,” Avery Davis-Roberts, the associate director of the democracy program at The Carter Center and a member of the task force, said in a statement. “If the American electorate understands how the media will be addressing these challenges, they will have more trust in our democratic process.”

We made a similar recommendation in our Fair Elections During a Crisis <https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/2020ElectionReport.pdf> report.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


“New Report: Republican-Controlled Senate Renders 116th Congress as Least Productive in History”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115326>
Posted on September 17, 2020 6:48 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115326> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Release<https://www.commoncause.org/press-release/new-report-republican-controlled-senate-renders-116th-congress-as-least-productive-in-history/>:

With mail-in voting underway and early in-person voting coming up in many states, Common Cause today released its 2020 Democracy Scorecard to help voters evaluate the records of their members of Congress.

The 2020 Democracy Scorecard<https://democracyscorecard.org/> provides data on every current member of the House of Representatives and Senate based on their votes for and co-sponsorship of key democracy reform bills, such as the historic For the People Act (HR 1)<https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text>. If enacted, the reforms would limit the influence of big money in our elections, end gerrymandering, and make it easier and safer to vote.

“What the 2020 Democracy Scorecard makes plain is the blatant disregard for democracy reforms in the Senate,” said Aaron Scherb, director of legislative affairs for Common Cause. “The House of Representatives passed nearly 10 democracy reform bills, often with bipartisan support, this session, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked debate and mark-ups on all of these bills and refused to allow a vote.”

“In fact, the Senate’s inaction has the 116th Congress on track to be the least productive in history, with just one percent of the bills becoming law,” said Scherb, author of the 2020 Democracy Scorecard.

To ensure all Members of Congress got a fair evaluation in the 2020 Democracy Scorecard, Common Cause sent each congressional office four letters listing the bills included in this year’s Scorecard to make sure every member of Congress knew which bills he or she was being evaluated on. Since these letters were sent, a combined total of more than 150 cosponsors have been added to these collective bills so voters can know what their Members of Congress are doing to protect our democracy.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Tribal nations face continued voter suppression”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115324>
Posted on September 17, 2020 6:45 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115324> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

High Country News:<https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.10/ideas-election2020-tribal-nations-face-continued-voter-suppression>

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Dakota encouraged voters to use absentee ballots in the June 3 presidential primary election. Although the state received almost 89,000 absentee ballots in the primaries— five times the number of absentee ballots cast in the June 2016 primaries — and voting increased across the state, voter turnout on the Pine Ridge Reservation remained low, at approximately 10%. As author Jean Schroedel explains in her new book, Voting in Indian Country: The View from the Trenches, barriers to Indigenous voting are nothing new. Absentee ballots may only make them worse.
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>, Voting Rights Act<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>


Brian Stelter: How the Media is Preparing for Potential “Election Chaos” in November<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115322>
Posted on September 17, 2020 6:40 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=115322> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Latest Reliable Sources newsletter<https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/16003147712784c12123846ba/raw?utm_term=16003147712784c12123846ba&utm_source=Reliable+Sources+-+Sept+16%2C+2020&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=243954_1600314771280&bt_ee=%2BOpl16Rl1LeYxxuhw73%2F8IclvpL0bUzqKY9HkfsrxExhrEhcxzhG4jtWHnGbePgA&bt_ts=1600314771280>.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
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