[EL] ELB News and Commentary 4/26/21

[Rick Hasen]

“Half a Year After Trump’s Defeat, Arizona Republicans Are Recounting the Vote”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121814>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:38 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121814> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Michael Wines<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/us/Election-audit-Arizona-Republicans.html> for the NYT:

Almost half a year after the election Mr. Trump lost, the promised audit has become a snipe hunt for skulduggery that has spanned a court battle, death threats and calls to arrest the elected leadership of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

The head of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm that Republican senators hired to oversee the audit, has embraced Mr. Trump’s baseless theories<https://www.azmirror.com/2021/04/09/arizona-audit-leader-doug-logan-wrote-fraud-claims-on-kraken-lawyers-website/> of election theft and has suggested, contrary to available evidence<https://www.azmirror.com/2021/03/31/arizona-senate-hires-a-stop-the-steal-advocate-to-lead-2020-election-audit/>, that Mr. Trump actually won Arizona by 200,000 votes. The pro-Trump cable channel One America News Network has started a fund-raiser to finance the venture and has been named one of the nonpartisan observers <https://twitter.com/AZGOP/status/1384738832302497798> that will keep the audit on the straight and narrow.

In fact, three previous reviews showed no sign of significant fraud or any reason to doubt President Biden’s victory. But the senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.

Critics in both parties charge that an effort that began as a way to placate angry Trump voters has become a political embarrassment and another blow to the once-inviolable democratic norm that losers and winners alike honor the results of elections.

“You know the dog that caught the car?” said Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the Republican-dominated Maricopa Board of Supervisors. “The dog doesn’t know what to do with it.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Trump is backing a new conservative group for donors aiming to compete with Democrats.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121812>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:35 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121812> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Maggie Haberman<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/us/politics/trump-conservative-donors.html> for the NYT:

Former President Donald J. Trump is backing a group whose officials say will aim to combat the sprawling Democratic donor network Democracy Alliance, the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to put his imprint and involvement on Republican fund-raising efforts since he left the White House.

The group, called the America Alliance, will ask donors to pay annual dues and commit to giving $100,000 to candidates and organizations that the umbrella group recommends, according to internal documents and people familiar with the plans. Mr. Trump has asked Michael Glassner, the former chief operating officer of the Trump re-election campaign in 2020, to be the chief executive officer.

The new group will recommend sending contributions to entities created by or working with Trump allies and also to organizations associated with Mr. Trump, including a planned super PAC and his own multicandidate PAC.

Internal documents for the group, viewed by The New York Times, contain a note that no employees “will be compensated on a commission basis.”
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>


Discussion on Voting Rights with Paul Auster and Alex Keyssar<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121810>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:31 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121810> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Register.<https://booksandbooks.com/event/voting-rights-an-afternoon-with-paul-auster-and-alexander-keyssar-moderated-by-mitchell-kaplan/>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“House Minority Leader McCarthy defends Trump’s response to Jan. 6 insurrection”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121808>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:29 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121808> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/25/mccarthy-defends-trump-january-6-insurrection/>

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) continued to defend former president Donald Trump’s response to the Jan. 6 insurrection, claiming in an interview Sunday that Trump was unaware the U.S. Capitol was being stormed until McCarthy called and urged him to tell his supporters to stop.

“I was the first person to contact him when the riot was going on,” McCarthy told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “He didn’t see it, but he ended the call . . . telling me he’ll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did. He put a video out later.”

The statement contradicted McCarthy’s initial response to Trump’s role in the attack and a fellow GOP lawmaker’s recollection<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-trump-unanswered-questions/2021/02/13/76273f76-6e0b-11eb-9ead-673168d5b874_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_5> of what had been a tense call between McCarthy and Trump. In addition, one Trump adviser told The Washington Post<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_5> that the then-president had been watching live television coverage of the riot, as multiple people were trying to reach Trump and his aides to beg for help.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


I Was on MSNBC’s “All in With Chris Hayes” Talking About the Danger of Election Subversion<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121806>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:21 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121806> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Watch the episode<https://www.nbc.com/all-in-with-chris-hayes> or read the transcript<https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-all-chris-hayes-4-23-21-n1265341>.

I talked about my recent NY Times oped<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/opinion/republicans-voting-us-elections.html> on election subversion.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Cyber Ninjas, hired by Arizona Senate to recount Maricopa County’s ballots, asks court to keep its procedures secret”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121804>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:16 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121804> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Arizona Republic<https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/04/25/cyber-ninjas-wants-to-keep-its-arizona-election-recount-secret/7379117002/>:

Lawyers for Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company the Arizona Senate hired to lead a recount of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million general election ballots, are asking a judge to keep secret its procedures for the recount and shut out the public as well as the press from a hearing in which the documents might be discussed.

Judge Christopher Coury asked the company on Friday to turn over its plans and procedures amid concerns about the security of the county’s ballots and voter privacy.

But the company argued on Sunday that filing the documents in court publicly would compromise the security of its recount. And it argued that the records include protected trade secrets. The company also maintained that the documents are protected by legislative privilege, as it is working on behalf of the state Senate.

The push to keep details of the recount process under wraps comes as part of a lawsuit that the Arizona Democratic Party and County Supervisor Steve Gallardo filed<https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/04/22/arizona-democratic-party-sues-stop-senates-election-audit/7343675002/> against the state Senate to stop the recount altogether, contending it violates various state election laws.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


“Republicans Target Voter Access in Texas Cities, but Not Rural Areas”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121802>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:14 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121802> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/us/politics/texas-republicans-voting.html>:

Voting in the 2020 election presented Zoe Douglas with a difficult choice: As a therapist meeting with patients over Zoom late into the evening, she just wasn’t able to wrap up before polls closed during early voting.

Then Harris County introduced 24-hour voting for a single day. At 11 p.m. on the Thursday before the election<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/texas-overnight-voting-polls.html>, Ms. Douglas joined fast-food workers, nurses, construction workers, night owls and other late-shift workers at NRG Arena, one of eight 24-hour voting sites in the county, where more than 10,000 people cast their ballots in a single night.

“I can distinctly remember people still in their uniforms — you could tell they just got off of work, or maybe they’re going to work; a very diverse mix,” said Ms. Douglas, 27, a Houston native.

Twenty-four-hour voting was one of a host of options Harris County introduced to help residents cast ballots, along with drive-through voting and proactively mailing out ballot applications. The new alternatives, tailored to a diverse work force struggling amid a pandemic in Texas’ largest county, helped increase turnout by nearly 10 percent compared with 2016; nearly 70 percent of registered voters cast ballots, and a task force found that there was no evidence of any fraud<https://www.texastribune.org/2020/12/18/harris-county-elections-secure/>.

Yet Republicans are pushing measures through the State Legislature that would take aim at the very process that produced such a large turnout. Two omnibus bills, including one that the House is likely to take up in the coming week, are seeking to roll back virtually every expansion the county put in place for 2020.

The bills would make Texas one of the hardest states in the country<https://newsroom.niu.edu/2020/10/13/how-hard-is-it-to-vote-in-your-state/> to cast a ballot in. And they are a prime example of a Republican-led effort to roll back voting access in Democrat-rich cities and populous regions like Atlanta and Arizona’s Maricopa County, while having far less of an impact on voting in rural areas that tend to lean Republican.

Bills in several states are, in effect, creating a two-pronged approach to urban and rural areas that raises questions about the disparate treatment of cities and the large number of voters of color who live in them. That divide is helping to fuel opposition from corporations that are based in or have work forces in those places.
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Posted in The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>


“Anti-Trump conservative group to grade GOP lawmakers on whether they uphold (or undermine) democracy”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121800>
Posted on April 26, 2021 7:05 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121800> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CNN:<https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/26/politics/gop-democracy-report-card/index.html>

An anti-Trump conservative group is launching an effort to track and evaluate whether Republicans in Congress, in the group’s view, have acted to either undermine or uphold democracy and democratic values and what role, if any, they played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Republican Accountability Project has created what it’s calling a “GOP Democracy Report Card,”<https://accountability.gop/report-card/> which assigns grades to Republican members of Congress ranging from an “A,” which the group describes as excellent, to an “F,” which it describes as very poor. The details of the report card were first shared with CNN ahead of its release on Monday.

The group behind the effort, the Republican Accountability Project, is led by Republicans and conservatives who were outspoken in their opposition against former President Donald Trump’s reelection, including former Trump administration officials Olivia Troye <https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/politics/former-pence-aide-coronvirus-task-force-slams-trump/index.html> and Elizabeth Neumann. The group operates as part of the advocacy organization Defending Democracy Together founded by prominent Trump critic Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell, a longtime conservative and Republican consultant.

Only 14 Republicans in Congress received an “A,” the highest possible grade. In contrast, more than 100 Republicans received an “F,” the lowest possible grade.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Chalmers & Adams and Political.law Merge”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121798>
Posted on April 26, 2021 6:55 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121798> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Dan Backer joins.<https://www.chalmersadams.com/2021/04/26/chalmers-adams-and-political-law-merge/>
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Posted in election law biz<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=51>


“Black Democrats, Conflicted on a Voting Rights Push, Fear It’s Too Late”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121796>
Posted on April 26, 2021 6:53 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121796> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/politics/democrats-voting-rights.html>

Now, as Republican state lawmakers across the country push new restrictions on voting, Democrats are hitting back. In Congress, the party is pushing a colossal elections system overhaul that would take redistricting out of the hands of politicians, introduce automatic voter registration and restore voting rights for the formerly incarcerated.

For some Black Democrats in the South, the fact that this fight is happening at all — in 2021 — is a profound failure of the Democratic Party’s politics and policies. In interviews, more than 20 Southern Democrats and civil rights activists described a party that has been slow to combat Republican gerrymandering and voting limits, overconfident about the speed of progress, and too willing to accept that voter suppression was a thing of the Jim Crow past.

But Black leaders are also facing some unexpected resistance from lawmakers who fear that the sweeping bill in Congress, known as the For the People Act, would endanger their own seats in predominantly Black districts.

Republicans have often used the redistricting method to pack Black Democrats into one House district. The practice has diluted Democrats’ influence regionally, but it also ensures that each Southern state has at least one predominantly Black district, offering a guarantee of Black representation amid a sea of mostly white and conservative House districts.

Some Black Democratic lawmakers in the South have so far remained relatively muted about these concerns of self-preservation, worried that it places their own interests above the party’s agenda or activists’ priorities. Still, the doubts flared up last month when Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, a Democrat whose district includes Jackson and who serves as Mr. Figgers’s congressman, surprisingly voted “no” on the House’s federal elections bill.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>


“Election conspiracies live on with audit by Arizona GOP”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121794>
Posted on April 25, 2021 7:47 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121794> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AP<https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2021/04/25/arizona-election-audit-conspiracies-democracy/115742840/>:

Months after former President Donald Trump’s election defeat, legislative Republicans in Arizona are challenging the outcome as they embark on an unprecedented effort to audit the results in the state’s most populous county.

The state Senate used its subpoena power to take possession of all 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County and the machines that counted them, along with computer hard drives full of data. They’ve handed the materials over to Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based consultancy with no election experience run by a man who has shared unfounded conspiracy theories claiming the official 2020 presidential election results are illegitimate.

The process is alarming election professionals who fear the auditors are not up to the complex task and will severely undermine faith in democracy.

“I think the activities that are taking place here are reckless and they in no way, shape or form resemble an audit,” said Jennifer Morrell, a partner at Elections Group, a consulting firm advising state and local election officials, which has not worked in Arizona.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


“Voting Rights Standoff Stalls Trump-Inspired Ethics Measures”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121792>
Posted on April 25, 2021 3:13 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121792> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/us/politics/trump-ethics-voting-rights.html>

After Donald J. Trump lost the election and was impeached for his role in the Capitol riot, democracy preservation groups pointed with urgency<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/politics/trump-ethics-democracy-biden.html> to what they called a last, best chance to address the holes in the Constitution exposed by his presidency.

But a suite of legislative responses, like requiring the release of presidential tax returns and barring presidents from channeling government money to their private businesses, is now hostage in the Senate to a more public fight over voting rights. And competing priorities of President Biden’s may ensure that the moment to fortify constitutional guardrails that Mr. Trump plowed through may already have passed.

Most Democrats and a coalition of watchdog groups say the ethics and voting rights sections<https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/annotated-guide-people-act-2021#t7-top> in a sprawling Senate bill known as the For the People Act, or S.1., should remain intact and entwined. But solid Republican opposition to the legislation’s voter access proposals threatens less debated elements in the measure, part of what was envisioned to be the most comprehensive ethics overhaul since Watergate.

Even Democratic support for the bill has begun to splinter, as the Congressional Black Caucus<https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/22/black-democrats-voting-rights-484089> and some advocacy groups pivot from the full 800-page legislation to pushing for narrower proposals.

“It’s hard to move many things simultaneously through the Senate, and you have a president who is rightly first focused on Covid relief and next focused on infrastructure,” said Max Stier, who leads the Partnership for Public Service, which champions a more effective federal work force. “I worry that important issues like ethics reform don’t make the cut.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Election law changes spark lawsuit; The Montana Democratic Party is suing to block new laws on voter registration and identification signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte this week.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121790>
Posted on April 25, 2021 3:03 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121790> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Montana Free Press reports.<https://montanafreepress.org/2021/04/21/montana-democratics-sue-over-voting-laws/>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“GOP attorneys general group in turmoil after Jan. 6 Trump rally”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121788>
Posted on April 25, 2021 3:01 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121788> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Reid Wilson<https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/549840-gop-attorneys-general-group-in-turmoil-after-jan-6-trump-rally?amp>:

The chairman of the top outside group dedicated to electing Republican attorneys general has resigned his position in the wake of a show of force by rivals from other states, months after it supported a rally with then-President Trump that turned into an insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) last week stepped down as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), citing a “significant difference of opinion” with the group’s strategic direction.

He is the latest in a string of departures from the organization, including its executive director, Adam Piper, who resigned under what sources said was pressure<https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-capitol-siege-1553d7757c667f09510ac785d76c0bf4> from the group in the days after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Carr cited that rally, which a nonprofit arm of the RAGA promoted in a robocall to supporters encouraging them to attend in the days leading up to Jan. 6. The robocall went out without the knowledge of Carr or other top attorneys general involved in the group, after substantial debate among staffers about whether it was appropriate for a group that backs law enforcement executives to promote a rally based on lies about the 2020 elections.

“At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” said the robocall, first reported by the investigative organization Documented<https://substack.documented.net/p/republican-attorneys-general-dark-money-group-organized-protest-preceding-capitol-mob-attack>. “We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The Supreme Court’s Looming Dark Money Decision”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121786>
Posted on April 25, 2021 2:58 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121786> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy<https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-courts-looming-dark-money-decision> on AFP.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


How Safe Seats Fuel Political Extremism<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121782>
Posted on April 25, 2021 4:29 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121782> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>

As part of my identification of four political reforms<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/opinion/elections-politics-extremists.html> that might help mitigate the most extreme forces in our current politics, I have argued that redistricters (whether independent commissions or legislatures) should strive to create competitive districts, rather than safe seats. In safe seats, members’ only electoral concern is to avoid being primaried from the wings of their parties. That dynamic furthers the polarization and extremism in our politics. In competitive districts, members have to worry about winning over enough voters in the center to hold (or gain) their seats. To be sure, there are legal and geographical constraints on how many districts can be made competitive — but fostering competition should be one value, along with others, that redistricters should take into account (but often do not).

I will be writing more about this issue soon. The journalists who most closely cover politics, and legislators themselves, strongly believe in this dynamic. But there is a great disjuncture between them and empirical political scientists, who do not believe members from competitive districts hold different policy views than those from safe seats. As I write more on this issues, I’ll explain why this surprising anomaly exists, and why I side with the journalists and legislators who are closest to the legislative process.

In the meantime, I will flag stories covering the political process that recognize the difference in policy and tactics between legislators from safe seats and those from competitive districts. These stories appear routinely, so it’s not hard to find them. Here is one from today’s New York Times, in a Michael Wines story<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/opinion/elections-politics-extremists.html> about the Arizona Senate’s current “audit” of the November election:

The Senate’s rightward drift is simply explained, political analysts say. Most of the 30 Senate districts are so uncompetitive that the Democratic and Republican primaries effectively choose who will serve as senators. Because most voters sit out primary elections, the ones who do show up — for Republicans, that often means far-right Trump supporters — are the key to getting elected.

Responding to stolen-election claims, through tougher voting laws or inquiries, is by far those voters’ top issue, said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican campaign strategist in Phoenix.

“They’re representing their constituency,” he said. “The whole process was built to produce this.”
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Explaining Ranked-Choice Voting<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121780>
Posted on April 23, 2021 7:36 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121780> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>

The New York Times has a good explainer<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/nyregion/ranked-choice-voting-nyc.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage>, with good visualization aids, that explains how RCV will work in our June primaries for mayor. I wanted to clarify one point of potential confusion.

The story says:

In New York’s primary, these rounds of elimination will continue until there are two candidates left — even if a candidate collects more than 50 percent of votes before the very end. In each round, when a candidate gets eliminated, his or her votes get redistributed to whoever was ranked next on the ballot.

A reader might think, wait a minute, once someone has gotten more than 50 percent of the votes, haven’t they won? Why is there still further counting to be done?

The answer is yes, once a candidate has more than 50 percent, that candidate has indeed won. Nothing in later rounds of counting could change that outcome. The reason the counting still continues is purely for informational purposes, so that the public can see how the process plays out all the way until there are only two candidates remaining and no more votes to be redistributed.

This is an approach a number of jurisdictions use with RCV, as Michael Parsons and I explain in our article<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3563257> on RCV.
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