[EL] ELB News and Commentary 4/13/21

[Rick Hasen]

Today: Election Law Journal Roundtable: “Restoring Trust in the Voting Process”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121623>
Posted on April 13, 2021 8:07 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121623> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
April 13, 2021 | 2:00 PM EST

Join Election Law Journal for an exciting panel discussion led by Editor-in-Chief David Canon and featuring the nation’s leading experts on election administration and election law. This free event will delve into the critical issue of how to restore trust in the voting process and any fundamental changes needed in conducting our elections and counting our votes.
Register now<http://email.liebertpub.com/c/1yyJXT3ol2ax7kJzFDQx3Qw0> for the informative roundtable.

PANELISTS:
Guy-Uriel Charles
Edward and Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law,
Duke University Law School

Edward Foley
Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law;
Director, Election Law at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law

Richard Hasen
Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California,
Irvine School of Law

Lisa Manheim
Charles I. Stone Associate Professor of Law,
University of Washington, School of Law

Charles Stewart III
Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Daniel Tokaji
Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law,
University of Wisconsin Law School


REGISTER NOW<http://email.liebertpub.com/c/1yyKknaYAqFwVWKExAqkeZC9>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


New Data on Small Donors and Political Extremism<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121620>
Posted on April 13, 2021 7:39 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121620> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>

Ray La Raja is one of the leading political scientists who writes on campaign finance issues and political polarization. With his co-author, Zach Albert, he has a new working paper that examines small-donor funding patterns for moderate and extreme candidates from each party.

Their key finding on this issue: in 2018, the most extreme Democrats received 86% of their funding from small donors, while moderates received only 10%. On the Republican side, more extreme candidates received 58% of their funds from small donors while moderates received only 17% of their funding from small donors.

The abstract is here<https://preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/article-details/5e1f540bcd361a001afed264>, and the working paper can be downloaded in full from the American Political Science Association website at that link, for those who have access.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“How a Very Weird Quirk Might Let Michigan Republicans Limit Voting Rights”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121618>
Posted on April 13, 2021 7:12 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121618> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/politics/michigan-voting-rights-republicans.html>

At first glance, the partisan battle over voting rights in Michigan appears similar to that of many other states: The Republican-led Legislature, spurred by former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about election fraud, has introduced a rash of proposals to restrict voting access, angering Democrats, who are fighting back.

But plenty of twists and turns are looming as Michigan’s State Senate prepares to hold hearings on a package of voting bills beginning Wednesday. Unlike Georgia, Florida and Texas, which have also moved to limit voting access, Michigan has a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who said last month she would veto<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/26/michigan-gop-chairman-plans-go-around-whitmer-voting-law-changes/7010417002/> any bill imposing new restrictions. But unlike in other states with divided governments, Michigan’s Constitution offers Republicans a rarely used option for circumventing Ms. Whitmer’s veto.

Last month, the state’s Republican chairman told activists that he aimed to do just that — usher new voting restrictions into law using a voter-driven petition process that would bypass the governor’s veto pen.

In response, Michigan Democrats and voting rights activists are contemplating a competing petition drive, while also scrambling to round up corporate opposition to the bills; they are hoping to avoid a replay of what happened in Georgia, where the state’s leading businesses didn’t weigh in against new voting rules until after they were signed into law.

The maneuvering by both parties has turned Michigan into a test case of how states with divided government will deal with voting laws, and how Republicans in state legislatures are willing to use any administrative tool at their disposal to advance Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud and pursue measures that could disenfranchise many voters. The proposal puts new restrictions on how election officials can distribute absentee ballots and how voters can cast them, limiting the use of drop boxes, for example…

Michigan is one of just nine<https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/chart-of-the-initiative-states.aspx> states that allow voters to petition lawmakers to take up a piece of legislation; if passed, the law is not subject to a governor’s veto. If the Legislature does not pass the bill within 40 days of receiving it, the measure goes before voters on the next statewide ballot. It is a rarely used procedure: Lawmakers have passed only nine voter-initiated bills since 1963, according to the state Bureau of Elections.<https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Initia_Ref_Under_Consti_12-08_339399_7.pdf>

But last month, Ron Weiser, the state’s Republican Party chairman, told supporters in a video reported on by The Detroit News<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/26/michigan-gop-chairman-plans-go-around-whitmer-voting-law-changes/7010417002/> that the state party planned to subsidize a petition drive to cut Ms. Whitmer out of the lawmaking process.

To do so would require 340,047 voter signatures, or 10 percent of the vote in the last governor’s election. Mr. Weiser said that the signatures would be gathered through county committees with party funding. So far, the signature gathering has not begun, nor has the secretary of state’s office received a proposed bill needed to start a petition drive, as required by law.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


“Nevada Republicans vote to censure SOS Cegavske over voter fraud allegations”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121616>
Posted on April 13, 2021 7:05 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121616> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Nevada Independent<https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nevada-republicans-vote-to-censure-sos-cegavske-over-voter-fraud-allegations>:

The Nevada Republican Party Central Committee has voted to censure the state’s GOP secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, over claims that her office failed to do its job and “put the reliability of our elections in Nevada in question.”

Members of the central committee voted to approve the censure on a 126-112 vote on Saturday during the party’s spring meeting in Carson City, sources told The Nevada Independent. The censure, which was amended before a vote, originally banned Cegavske from party endorsements or resources for “the intense dishonor her failures brought upon the Nevada Republican Party.”

A cover letter obtained by The Nevada Independent reiterates that the state party brought forward four boxes of evidence purporting to show tens of thousands of alleged examples of voter fraud<https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-legislature-barbara-cegavske-elections-d926797575e3ac92895419bb8ef768db> that allegedly occurred in the 2020 election. The letter states that the state party saw a “surge in communications with sometimes vulgar messages” by individual Republicans saying they had left the party “claiming we did nothing to ensure voter integrity.”

“The irresponsible messaging of the Nevada Secretary of State, claiming, without investigating, that this election was error free, causing these attacks on our Nevada Republican Party,” the cover letter states.

Cegavske, in a statement Sunday morning, pushed back against the premise of the censure:

“Regrettably, members of my own political party have decided to censure me simply because they are disappointed with the outcome of the 2020 election,” she said. “My job is to carry out the duties of my office as enacted by the Nevada Legislature, not carry water for the state GOP or put my thumb on the scale of democracy. Unfortunately, members of my own party continue to believe the 2020 general election was wrought with fraud – and that somehow I had a part in it – despite a complete lack of evidence to support that belief. Regardless of the censure vote today by the Nevada Republican Party Central Committee, I will continue in my efforts to oversee secure elections in Nevada and to restore confidence in our elections, confidence which has been destroyed by those falsely claiming the 2020 general election produced widespread fraud.”
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“The great capitulation of Trump’s voter fraud crusade”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121614>
Posted on April 13, 2021 7:00 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121614> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Aaron Blake<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/12/great-capitulation-trumps-voter-fraud-crusade/>:

The 2020 election is a case study in how unproved claims can be weaponized. For decades, former president Donald Trump’s party warned of significant voter fraud while successfully pushing policies such as voter ID. In 2016, Trump laid a predicate for contesting an election by suggesting there was massive fraud, even in an election he had won<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/28/donald-trump-is-making-a-strong-case-for-a-recount-of-his-own-2016-election-win/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2>. By 2020, when Trump lost, it culminated in a huge portion of the electorate believing a “stolen election” theory for which there is vanishingly little actual evidence.

Some have done more than raise questions, though. They, like Trump and often in search of his allies’ support, have alleged actual massive fraud.

But now they’ve been asked to account for it. And crucially and increasingly, they have backed down.

The most recent example came Friday night — a time routinely used to bury bad news. In a statement<https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/joe-digenova-apologizes-to-former-cisa-director-chris-krebs-301266074.html>, former Trump lawyer Joe diGenova apologized to Christopher Krebs, a Trump administration official who had debunked Trump’s fraud claims and whose execution diGenova had endorsed. DiGenova had said Krebs “should be drawn and quartered” and “taken out at dawn and shot.”

“On November 30, 2020, I appeared on the ‘Howie Carr Show.’ During the show, I made regrettable statements regarding Christopher Krebs, which many interpreted as a call for violence against him,” diGenova said. He added that “today I reiterate my public apology to Mr. Krebs and his family for any harm my words caused. Given today’s political climate, I should have more carefully expressed my criticism of Mr. Krebs, who was just doing his job.”

DiGenova’s apology refers to a past apology made on Newsmax’s airwaves, but back then he went even further in downplaying his comments. He maintained at the time that it was a poorly chosen joke and said that he apologized “for any misunderstanding of my intentions.”

The statement very notably comes months after Krebs announced in December that he was suing diGenova<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/chris-krebs-sues-trump-campaign-digenova/2020/12/08/61a68a30-389a-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_12> for defamation.
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“These Minnesotans didn’t know they challenged the election until months later”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121612>
Posted on April 13, 2021 6:54 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121612> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Star-Tribune<https://www.startribune.com/these-minnesotans-didn-t-know-they-challenged-the-election-until-months-later/600041910/>:

The legal saga involving failed efforts to undo the 2020 election recorded an unusual new chapter recently in Ramsey County.

For more than three months, at least one of several lawsuits contesting the election’s outcome in Minnesota carried the names of citizens who were unaware that they had been named as plaintiffs in the case.

Ramsey County Judge Leonardo Castro slapped Minneapolis attorney Susan Shogren Smith with a $10,000 fine after concluding she “bamboozled” three Twin Cities voters into being part of the unsuccessful litigation.

According to testimony at a virtual hearing last month, plaintiff Corinne Braun described her shock upon searching for her name in a court records database only to find she was part of a lawsuit against Secretary of State Steve Simon and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar. “All of this was nothing I wanted anything to do with,” Braun said.

The suit was one of numerous cases filed by Smith on behalf of the Minnesota Election Integrity Team, a group assembled after the election. Smith filed lawsuits against Simon and Democratic members of Congress.

Smith’s lawsuits claimed “countless irregularities” in the election but offered no evidence of widespread fraud and failed to garner court action. No state or federal court challenge to the 2020 election results has produced such evidence. U.S. intelligence, federal law enforcement and election officials have verified the integrity of the vote.
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“The Electoral Reform Imperative to Address Our Polarization Crisis”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121610>
Posted on April 12, 2021 3:27 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121610> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

April 14 even<https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZYYyaOZqQRKy89J1oEEFTA>t:

The U.S. has an outdated election system that leaves Americans unrepresented while the country faces a polarization crisis. Most countries have chosen an electoral system very different to the one used in national elections in the United States. The system used in each country varies, but proportional systems are widely used. The U.S could switch to what we call “proportional ranked choice voting,” where the ballot is a ranked choice voting ballot but the outcome gives voters even better representation.

Join us for a discussion on how electoral reform can address the United State’s polarization crisis with FairVote President and CEO Rob Richie along with Harvard Professor Danielle Allen and Kevin Kosar of the American Enterprise Institute, plus watch a pre-recorded discussion with Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Defying Republicans, Big Companies Keep the Focus on Voting Rights; A coalition of 60 law firms has joined business leaders about the need for companies to use their clout to oppose state legislation that would make it harder to vote.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121608>
Posted on April 12, 2021 12:37 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121608> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/business/corporate-leaders-voting-laws.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage>:

As corporate America continues to push back against a wave of restrictive voting laws under discussion across the United States<https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-march-2021>, Big Law is joining the fight.

A coalition of 60 major law firms has come together “to challenge voter suppression legislation and to support national legislation to protect voting rights and increase voter participation,” said Brad Karp, the chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss and the organizer of the group, which has not been formally announced.

Mr. Karp said the coalition would “emphatically denounce legislative efforts to make voting harder, not easier, for all eligible voters, by imposing unnecessary obstacles and barriers on the right to vote.”

Many of Wall Street’s most powerful firms are also part of the effort, including Simpson Thacher; Skadden Arps; Akin Gump; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Ropes & Gray; Sullivan & Cromwell; Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Wachtell Lipton.

“We plan to challenge any election law that would impose unnecessary barriers on the right to vote and that would disenfranchise underrepresented groups in our country,” Mr. Karp said.

The firms will work with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit organization, to identify laws that it might challenge in court. Mr. Karp said that could include challenging the voting law that Republicans passed in Georgia last month, and which set off a national debate over voting rights.

“It puts legislators on notice that if there are laws that are unconstitutional or illegal they will face pushback from the legal community,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center. “This is beyond the pale. You’re hearing that from the business community and you’re hearing it from the legal community.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Can Climate Change Affect Redistricting?<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121605>
Posted on April 12, 2021 10:40 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121605> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
[cid:image002.png at 01D7303C.5AD99960]

Just ran across this story on the 12 most gerrymandered House districts, according to some experts The Fulcrum<https://thefulcrum.us/worst-gerrymandering-districts-example/1-beside-lake-erie> surveyed in 2019. Here is the comment on this district, OH 9, from Jason Fierman, founder and managing director of The Redistrict Network<https://thefulcrum.us/the-redistrict-network>:

Ohio’s so-called “snake by the lake” 9th District, which stretches from Toledo to Cleveland, is so thin and strangely shaped that they actually drove to Lake Erie to monitor sea levels with respect to the contiguity of the district. They are concerned that climate change could make the district non-contiguous and consequently altered in the next round of redistricting.

I don’t know if this comment is tongue-in-cheek or not.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


8th CA County Top Election Officer Resigns Since November, Sign of a National Problem<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121602>
Posted on April 12, 2021 9:13 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121602> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

This is a big problem<https://www.latimes.com/politics/newsletter/2021-04-12/california-elections-officials-exodus-essential-politics> (and not just in CA):

Now, months before a likely recall election<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-29/california-election-rules-could-make-gavin-newsom-recall-race-wild-ride> followed by the 2022 campaign season where political maps will be redrawn and voters will need help navigating the changes, California finds itself in the midst of an election officer exodus.

‘Worn down and tired’

Foote stepped down Friday as Inyo’s chief elections officer, the eighth registrar across California to resign since last November’s election. At least one more registrar is expected to resign in the coming weeks. Some have been on the job for almost three decades.

“I think, if anything, it’s just a sense of being worn down and tired,” Foote said about her decision to leave. “In 2020, we found ourselves working seven days a week, months on end, under tremendous pressure.”

Conducting a presidential election during the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t easy. State leaders required every registered voter to be sent a ballot in the mail<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-08/all-california-voters-will-be-asked-to-vote-by-mail-in-november-2020-coronavirus>, and for those voters who participated in person, there were detailed public health requirements<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-07/californians-voting-election-coronavirus-rules-for-november> that necessitated new and extensive training for poll workers.

Foote, who has accepted a job with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, contracted COVID-19 just after the primary last March and had to finish tallying votes while sick at home.

While she said the decision to leave was about more than just the challenges of running elections in California, other registrars and voting advocates said the exodus of so many skilled leaders should serve as a warning.

“We have all lived through the pandemic, of course, but folks administering elections are under even more stress because of the lies that spread like mad before and especially after election day in November,” said Cathy Darling Allen, the registrar of voters in Shasta County who has kept a tally of all of her counterparts who have left. “Sincerely, I was called a liar more times over the two-month period around the election than in my entire life.”
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


“Scoop: Trump campaign boosted by unsuspecting state GOPs”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121600>
Posted on April 12, 2021 8:50 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121600> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Axios<https://www.axios.com/republicans-state-gop-trump-campaign-cd16bae3-ebf9-4ed5-94de-98a85d23e06c.html>:

Federal regulators are probing financial reporting discrepancies stemming from an effort to funnel $75 million through state Republican parties to the national GOP effort to reelect Donald Trump, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: In comments to Axios and filings with the Federal Election Commission, some state party officials seemed unaware of their roles.

What they’re saying: “I am not sure what report your (sic) looking at please point me toward it or forward the link to it to me,” Vermont GOP chair Deb Billado told Axios when asked about nearly $400,000 sent to the state party by the Trump Victory joint fundraising committee last year and immediately routed to the RNC.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Polls show majority of Republicans mistakenly think the 2020 election wasn’t legitimate”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121598>
Posted on April 12, 2021 8:35 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121598> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Harry Enten<https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/11/politics/voting-restrictions-analysis/index.html> for CNN:

Following every election from 2004 to 2016, the Pew Research Center<https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/01/11-21-16-Updated-Post-Election-Release.pdf> queried voters on whether they were confident that the votes around the country were counted accurately.

The voters for the losing candidate in those elections had a lot more faith than Trump voters had in the results of the 2020 election. In every election from 2004 to 2016, between 8% and 14% of the voters of the losing candidate said they had no confidence at all that the election was legitimate. In 2016, just 11% of Hillary Clinton voters were not at all confident.

This means Republicans are somewhere between 40 points and 50 points more likely this time around to say they had no confidence in the results than the backers of any losing candidate in recent times.

The big difference this time around is that the losing candidate openly cast doubt on the results over and over again.

Republicans’ doubts come despite a clear margin for Biden in the swing states that made the difference. Trump would have had to have won at least three states<https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/data.php?year=2020&datatype=national&def=1&f=0&off=0&elect=0> he lost by more than 10,000 votes (one he lost by more than 20,000) to merely keep Biden from reaching 270 electoral votes.

Trump’s margins over Clinton<https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/data.php?year=2016&datatype=national&def=1&f=0&off=0&elect=0> in the pivotal swing states were similar to Biden’s over Trump’s in terms of percentage points, but Clinton voters didn’t have anywhere near the same doubt of the results.

Trump’s false allegations have certainly shifted the way Republicans think about who should be able to vote. Last month, Pew asked<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/01/share-of-republicans-saying-everything-possible-should-be-done-to-make-voting-easy-declines-sharply/> Americans whether citizens should prove they really want to vote by registering ahead of time or whether everything should be done to make it easy for every citizen to vote.

Today, a mere 28% of Republicans say everything should be done to make it easy for citizens to vote. That compares with 71% who say citizens should have to prove they really want to vote.

Back in 2018 (before Trump lost), the split was far closer at 48% of Republicans who believed voting should be made easy as easy as possible to 51% who thought voters should have to prove it.

(Democrats, by comparison, have barely moved on the question with 85% arguing voting should be made as easy as possible. That was 84% in 2018.)

The only thing that has really changed between 2018 and 2021 was the 2020 election.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>



--
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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URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20210413/a438309e/attachment-0001.png>