[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/21/21

[Rick Hasen]

Programming Note: #ELB Blog Slowdown (at Least for Now)<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120597>
Posted on January 21, 2021 8:47 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120597> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Back on November 24, I noted <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=119034> a temporary blog slowdown as I completed work on a book manuscript and contemplated the future of ELB.

As regular readers know, that slowdown never happened, because election law remained deeply relevant as President Trump refused to concede and ramped up false rhetoric of a stolen election. This was followed by the storming of the Capitol, flash impeachment, and the Inauguration.

We are not out of the woods<https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-01-20/election-2020-election-lawlessness>, as I argued yesterday, but we should have a bit of a lull in major election news for a bit.

So I plan to now take that slowdown, and to contemplate ELB’s future. Posting here and on Twitter will be less frequent for now, and those on the listserv may see my daily emails come only a few times a week, at least for a while.

I’ll be putting some energy into my 200 students this semester, my ALI work on Tort Remedies, and my book project on “Cheap Speech.”

Thanks as always for reading!
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D120597&title=Programming%20Note%3A%20%23ELB%20Blog%20Slowdown%20(at%20Least%20for%20Now)>
Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Trump Departs Vowing, ‘We Will Be Back in Some Form’”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120595>
Posted on January 21, 2021 8:42 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120595> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Maggie Haberman<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/us/politics/trump-presidency.html> for the NYT:

President Donald J. Trump left Washington aboard Air Force One for a final time on Wednesday, the iconic plane creeping along the runway so the liftoff was timed to the closing strains of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

In many ways, Mr. Trump’s last hours as president were a bookend to the kickoff of his presidential campaign in June 2015<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/politics/donald-trump-runs-for-president-this-time-for-real-he-says.html>. As he did then, he tossed aside prepared remarks that aides had helped draft and spoke off the cuff, having them take down teleprompters they had set up. As he did then, he spent hours focused on the visual aspects of the scene where he would speak at the end of a calamitous final three months that capped a tumultuous term.

Before departing for Florida, Mr. Trump — defeated at the polls<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/us/politics/trump-approval-rating.html>, twice impeached<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-impeached.html>, silenced by social media platforms<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/trump-twitter.html> and facing an array of legal and financial problems — laid down a marker about his future, telling the roughly 300 supporters who greeted him on the windy tarmac, several holding American flags, that they had not seen the last of him.

“Goodbye. We love you. We will be back in some form,” Mr. Trump vowed, with the first lady, Melania Trump, by his side in sunglasses and a black outfit. He has yet to say what that form will take, but people who know him said he remained bitter that congressional Republicans had joined in rebuke of his speech at a Jan. 6 rally that incited his supporters to storm the Capitol….

Mr. Pence and the two Republican leaders in Congress skipped Mr. Trump’s departure and later attended Mr. Biden’s inaugural. Mr. Trump did not mention Mr. Biden, but for the first time he wished “great luck and great success” to the incoming administration. (A draft of Mr. Trump’s prepared remarks had included a space suggesting he acknowledge Mr. Biden, but were bracketed in case he did not, according to a person who saw them.)

He did find time to note his own vote total….

A large space was built for an audience that the White House had invited to see the president off. But for a man obsessed with crowd size, only about 300 people showed up, filling roughly a third of the standing area.

For several days, aides had tried to corral officials to come to the departure, and to bring guests. But several who remained working until the president’s final day in office said they were worn out and deeply angry over his behavior since Election Day, as he spread falsehoods about the race being stolen from him, overshadowing whatever substantive achievements they might remember. Some of his aides who had been with him the longest said they did not even watch the send-off on television.

Others wanted to steer clear of Washington in its current quasi-militarized state. And still others left the city before the new administration came in, returning to their home states.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D120595&title=%E2%80%9CTrump%20Departs%20Vowing%2C%20%E2%80%98We%20Will%20Be%20Back%20in%20Some%20Form%E2%80%99%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Biden Ends Trump Census Policy, Ensuring All Persons Living In U.S. Are Counted”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120593>
Posted on January 21, 2021 8:30 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120593> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Hansi Lo Wang<https://www.npr.org/sections/inauguration-day-live-updates/2021/01/20/958376223/biden-to-end-trump-census-policy-ensuring-all-persons-living-in-u-s-are-counted> for NPR:

One of President Biden’s first executive actions<https://www.npr.org/sections/inauguration-day-live-updates/2021/01/20/958630029/heres-what-biden-plans-to-do-in-his-1st-day-as-president> has reversed former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented policy of altering a key census count by excluding unauthorized immigrants. The change ensures that the U.S. continues to follow more than two centuries of precedent in determining representation in Congress and the Electoral College.

Hours after he was sworn in as president on Wednesday, Biden signed an executive order<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-ensuring-a-lawful-and-accurate-enumeration-and-apportionment-pursuant-to-decennial-census/> that calls for all U.S. residents, in the country legally or not, to be counted in state population numbers that, according to the 14th Amendment<https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv>, must include the “whole number of persons in each state.”

The state counts are used once a decade to reallocate each state’s share of electoral votes and the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Since the first national head count in 1790, those numbers have never omitted any residents because of immigration status.

Biden’s order also rescinds an executive order Trump issued in July 2019<https://web.archive.org/web/20210116031347/https:/www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-collecting-information-citizenship-status-connection-decennial-census/> as part of a project at the Census Bureau to produce citizenship data<https://www.npr.org/2020/05/20/855062093/to-figure-out-whos-a-citizen-trump-administration-is-using-these-records> using government records as an alternative to Trump’s failed push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census forms. Trump’s order directed federal agencies to share their records with the bureau, which has been compiling information from agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and the <https://www.npr.org/2020/01/04/793325772/to-produce-citizenship-data-homeland-security-to-share-records-with-census> Social Security Administration, as well as some states’ driver’s license information<https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/890798378/south-dakota-is-sharing-drivers-license-info-to-help-find-out-who-s-a-citizen>.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D120593&title=%E2%80%9CBiden%20Ends%20Trump%20Census%20Policy%2C%20Ensuring%20All%20Persons%20Living%20In%20U.S.%20Are%20Counted%E2%80%9D>
Posted in census litigation<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=125>


“Trump leaves QAnon and the online MAGA world crushed and confused”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120591>
Posted on January 21, 2021 8:25 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120591> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politico:<https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/20/trump-qanon-inauguration-day-460926?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014e-f109-dd93-ad7f-f90d0def0000&nlid=630318>

The pardons went to Democrats, lobbyists and rappers, with nary a “patriot” among them. The mass arrests of Antifa campaigners never came. The inauguration stage at the Capitol, full of America’s most powerful politicians, was not purged of Satan-worshipping pedophiles under a shower of gunfire. Even the electricity stayed on.

The moment the clock struck noon on Wednesday, Jan. 20, it was over — and the extreme factions of Trump’s diehard base were left reeling.

Inauguration Day 2021 was supposed to be a culminating moment for the legion of online conspiracy theorists and extremists who have rallied around the now former president. But the lengthy list of prophecies they’d been told would eventually happen under Trump’s watch never came.

In the days leading up to Trump’s departure from office, his online followers watched with horror as his pardons that were supposed to go to allies and supporters instead went to people who were inherently swampy: white-collar criminals convicted of tax fraud, family friends, Steve Bannon, even Democrat Kwame Kirkpatrick.

“So just to recap: Trump will pardon Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, high profile Jewish fraudsters … No pardons for middle class whites who risked their livelihoods by going to ‘war’ for Trump,” fumed a user in a white supremacist channel on Telegram, the encrypted messaging service that has gained thousands of new subscribers since the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Conspiracies flew — out of the mouth<https://www.mediaite.com/tv/tucker-carlson-calls-on-trump-to-pardon-julian-assange-as-final-announcements-expected-tonight/> of Fox News host Tucker Carlson — that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had blackmailed Trump out of pardoning Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, further infuriating MAGA hardliners. Trump’s anti-immigrant base, who’d been with him since his initial run for the presidency in 2015, flipped out when he granted amnesty to tens of thousands of Venezuelan migrants.

“Please vote to convict,” Ann Coulter tweeted<https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/1351789121103134727> to GOP senators.

And the QAnon community, a group that had desperately hoped Trump had one final ploy to stay in power and fight against the nebulous forces of darkness in Washington, erupted in despair as Joe Biden became president of the United States. It got so bad that one prominent QAnon online forum threatened to ban any users who posted negative content.

“There’s a lot of grief and confusion in Q world over the plan seeming to fizzle out, and feeling as if Q abandoned them,” Mike Rothschild, a disinformation researcher working on a book about QAnon, told POLITICO. “But I think that will very quickly turn into determination to continue down the path they’ve committed to.”

Taken together, the reactions across MAGA internet reveal a mosaic of anger, denial and disappointment that the former president let them down in his final days.

Without their leader to direct next steps, the MAGA coalition — the extremist militants, the hate groups, the conspiracy theorists, and the stans — is starting to turn on itself.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D120591&title=%E2%80%9CTrump%20leaves%20QAnon%20and%20the%20online%20MAGA%20world%20crushed%20and%20confused%E2%80%9D>
Posted in cheap speech<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=130>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“‘They Have Not Legitimately Won’: Pro-Trump Media Keeps the Disinformation Flowing<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120589>
Posted on January 21, 2021 8:22 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120589> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/business/media/misinformation-trump-media.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage>

Forgoing any appeals for healing or reflection, right-wing media organizations that spread former President Donald J. Trump’s<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/us/politics/trump-presidency.html> distortions about the 2020 election continued on Wednesday to push conspiracy theories about large-scale fraud, with some predicting more political conflict in the months ahead.

The coverage struck a discordant tone, with pro-Trump media and President Biden in a jarring split screen: There was the new president delivering an inaugural address of unity and hope, while his political opponents used their powerful media platforms to rally a resistance against him based on falsehoods and fabrications.

For some outlets, like One America News, it was as if Mr. Biden weren’t president at all. The network, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s because of its sycophantic coverage, didn’t show its viewers Mr. Biden’s swearing in or his inaugural address.

Rush Limbaugh, broadcasting his weekday radio show a few miles from the Palm Beach retreat where Mr. Trump is spending the first days of his post-presidency, told his millions of listeners on Wednesday that the inauguration of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris did not make them the rightful winners of the election.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D120589&title=%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98They%20Have%20Not%20Legitimately%20Won%E2%80%99%3A%20Pro-Trump%20Media%20Keeps%20the%20Disinformation%20Flowing>
Posted in cheap speech<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=130>, fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


#NY22: “Judge orders Oneida County to review 1,000+ rejected ballots in Brindisi-Tenney race”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120587>
Posted on January 20, 2021 2:06 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120587> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Syracuse.com<https://www.syracuse.com/politics/cny/2021/01/judge-orders-oneida-county-to-review-1000-ballots-in-ny22nd-race.html>:

State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte has ordered the Oneida County Board of Elections to go through more than 1,000 ballots in the 22nd Congressional District race, more than 70 days after the election was held.

It’s the latest turn and the latest delay in the last undecided Congressional race in the country. It’s an incredibly close race: Republican Claudia Tenney is ahead of Democrat Anthony Brindisi by 29 votes of 311,695 votes cast for the two candidates.

It comes after the discovery two weeks ago that Oneida County’s elections board failed to process 2,418 ballots <https://www.syracuse.com/politics/cny/2021/01/in-ny-22nd-race-judge-suggests-there-are-no-great-options-to-fix-oneida-county-mistake.html> from voters who applied on time via the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Those voters would have been told they weren’t registered when they arrived at the polling place. Hundreds of them likely walked away without voting, and many others went on to file affidavit ballots that were also not counted.

There are 1,028 rejected affidavit ballots in Oneida County that could be from voters who applied on time via the DMV, according to DelConte’s ruling. He’s ordered the county elections staff to review all of them to determine how many fit in that category.

Those that do fit will be counted, the judge ruled.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D120587&title=%23NY22%3A%20%E2%80%9CJudge%20orders%20Oneida%20County%20to%20review%201%2C000%2B%20rejected%20ballots%20in%20Brindisi-Tenney%20race%E2%80%9D>
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/>



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20210121/1acee6eb/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2021 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20210121/1acee6eb/attachment.png>