Votersuppr5 Bak

3 26

11 21 TN TAG PENDING

no merri

SEE BIG LIE 5

see poll watcher polarization violence civil war see militia 4

see local takeover election officials, poll watcher cleta

enemy hates am and does not deserve to vote, not real americans

see lara trump rnc

see intimidation dirty tricks lie pwr any means

illegal alien BS

see scotus roberts

see voter fraud // ELECTION INTEGRITY BS VOTER ID

see takeover 150 big lie gop run in 2022?

see ALEC CNP LISA NELSON

SEE INDEP LEGIS BS

see leo honest elections

SEE SAVE ACT // XO 3 26 CLETA REBOOT

see cleta election integrity BS --> DHS NOEM MILITARY BLUE CITIES

SEE FULTON FUCKERY

see eagleAI --> ED FUCKING MARTIN

SEE NOEM

byrne/flynn/roger stone

SEE XO EMERGENCY SAVE ACT CLETA

// stop steal

SEE COURTS DISTRUCT SUE TRUMP EG CA 1 26

see am 1st S o S

see African am POC

see evang and gotv

see vote by mail and drop box

see gerry N caro

see caging/ voter purge

see motor voter

see student suppression? ID

SEE ARIZONA

see texas 2 TEXAS 3 REDISTRICT GERRY

SEE MINORITY RULE

ICE thugs for voter intimidation

SEE OHIO 2 MAIL VOTE POSTMARK RULE CHANGED 1 26

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paste fail see election integrity BS salon

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see FULTON FANI FUCKERY GABBARD ED FUCKING MARTIN KRAKEN PIT BULLS...

1 26

OMFG

AN PP 3 26

Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.

According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.

Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were “all part of the same effort.”

The summit followed other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many not previously reported — stretching back to at least last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. The coordination between those inside and outside the government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, experts on U.S. elections said.

“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government,” said Brendan Fischer, a director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “This creates substantial risk that the administration is laying the groundwork to improperly reshape elections ahead of the midterms or even go against the will of the voters.”

Five of six federal officials who attended the summit didn’t answer questions about the event from ProPublica.

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ attendance at the gathering shouldn’t be construed as support for a national emergency declaration and that it was “common practice” for staffers to communicate with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas. The official pointed to comments Trump made to PBS News denying he was considering a national emergency or had read the draft executive order. “Any speculation about policies the administration may or may not undertake is just that — speculation,” the official said.

In the past, Trump has expressed an openness to a federal takeover as a way to stem projected Republican losses in November. This month, he said in an interview with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans need “to take over” elections and “to nationalize the voting.”

Mitchell did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to detailed questions from ProPublica by disparaging experts who expressed concerns, texting, “LOL ‘EXPERTS.’”

The 30-person roundtable discussion on Feb. 19, at an office building in downtown Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative think tank. Afterward, activists and government officials dined together, photos reviewed by ProPublica showed.

Flynn, the institute’s chair, told a social media personality why he’d arranged the event.

“I wanted to bring this group together physically, because most of us have met online” while “fighting battles” in swing states from Arizona to Georgia, Flynn said to Tommy Robinson on the gathering’s sidelines. Robinson of these. “The overall theme of this event was to make sure that all of us aren’t operating in our own little bubbles.”

Flynn has repeatedly advocated for Trump to declare a national emergency and posted on social media after the event addressing Trump, “We The People want fair elections and we know there is only one office in the land that can make that happen given the current political environment in the United States.”

In addition to Olsen and Honey, four other federal officials from agencies that will shape the upcoming elections attended the event. At least four of the six attended the dinner.

One is Clay Parikh, a special government employee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who’s helping Olsen with the 2020 inquiry. A spokesperson at ODNI said Parikh had attended the summit “in his personal capacity.”

Another, Mac Warner, handled election litigation at the Justice Department. A department spokesperson said that Warner had resigned the day after the event and had not received the required approval from agency ethics officials to participate.

The department “remains committed to upholding the integrity of our electoral system and will continue to prioritize efforts to ensure all elections remain free, fair, and transparent,” the spokesperson said in an email.

A third administration official who attended the summit, Marci McCarthy, directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of elections infrastructure like voting machines.

Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed as senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was a featured speaker. Lake worked with Olsen and Parikh in her unsuccessful bid to overturn her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.

Lake said in an email that she “showed up to the event, spoke for about 20 minutes about the overall importance of election integrity, a non-partisan issue that matters to all citizens — both in the United States and abroad. I left without listening to any other speeches.”

“Elections should be free from fraud or any other malfeasance that subverts the will of the people,” she added.

At the meeting, activists presented on ways to transform American elections that would help conservatives, according to social media posts and interviews they gave on conservative media, such as LindellTV, a streaming platform created by the pillow mogul Mike Lindell. They said the group broke down into two camps: those who wanted to pursue a more incremental legal and legislative strategy and those who wanted Trump to declare a national emergency.

Multiple activists left the meeting convinced Trump should do the latter, a step they believe would allow the president to get around the Constitution’s directive that elections should be run by states.

Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV that Trump has “played nice” so far in not seizing control of American elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”

Byrne responded to questions from ProPublica by sending a screenshot of a poll that he said suggested “2/3 of Americans correctly do not trust” voting machines, which the proposed national emergency declaration aims to do away with.

Will Huff, who has advocated for doing away with voting machines, told a conservative vlogger that Olsen, the White House lawyer, and other administration representatives would take the “consensus” from the gathering back to Trump. “It’s got to be a national emergency,” said Huff, the campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Arkansas secretary of state.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Huff said in an email that Olsen and Trump would use their judgment to decide whether to declare a national emergency.

“The President has been briefed on findings of shortcomings in election infrastructure,” Huff wrote. “I believe there are steady hands around the President wanting to ensure that any action taken is, first, constitutional and legal, but also backed by evidence.”

McCarthy, the cybersecurity official, expressed more general solidarity with fellow attendees in a post on social media about the summit. “Grateful for friendships forged through years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder, united by purpose and conviction,” she wrote. “The mission continues… and so does the fellowship.”

Last week’s gathering was the latest in a string of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. Many have involved Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Before taking her government post, Honey was a leader in the Election Integrity Network, ProPublica has reported, as was McCarthy.

Previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica show that just weeks after Honey started at the Department of Homeland Security, she briefed election activists, a Republican secretary of state and another federal official on a conference call arranged by her former boss, Mitchell.

“We are excited to welcome her on our call this morning to hear about her work for election integrity inside DHS,” Mitchell wrote in an email introducing presenters on the call.

Honey didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the call. Experts said Honey’s briefing gave her former employer access that likely would have violated ethics rules in place under previous administrations, including the first Trump administration — though not this one.

The prior “ethics guardrails would have prevented some of the revolving door issues we’re seeing between the election denial movement and the government officials,” said Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center director. Those prior rules “were supposed to prevent former employers and clients from receiving privileged access.”

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an 3 26

As allies of President Donald Trump are rumored to be urging him to issue an executive order seizing control of elections ahead of the midterm elections, Arizona’s top attorney and election administrator both say doing so would be blatantly unconstitutional and unlikely to happen.

“No president has the constitutional authority to ‘take control’ of elections,” Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. “Elections in this country are administered by states. It is a deliberate feature of our constitutional system designed to prevent the federal government from seizing power over how Americans choose their leaders.”

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a proposed executive order, written and supported by conspiracy theorists, has been passed around the White House with the goal of Trump formally issuing it. It would declare an emergency over alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, and use that as the basis to wrest control of elections from states and make sweeping changes to how Americans register to vote and cast their ballots, and how those votes are then counted.

Mayes said the entire exercise is based on fanciful claims of election fraud that are not backed by any evidence, many of which were rejected by the courts in 2020.

“Arizona’s 2020 election results were investigated, audited, litigated, and certified, even by members of the president’s own party,” Mayes added. “There is nothing to relitigate, and debunked conspiracy theories are not a legal basis for seizing control of American elections.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement to the Mirror that his main concern is focusing on elections in Arizona, not Trump’s actions.

“I don’t have time to be distracted by noise from Washington DC. IF a new (executive order) is forthcoming, and it purports to violate the Constitution like the last one, we will challenge it in Court,” Fontes said. “For now, local and state elections officials in Arizona will stay focused on the task at hand: continuing to provide high quality elections for our voters, as we’ve done for decades.”

The draft executive order that is being shopped to the Trump administration was published by Democracy Docket, a digital news site about elections, and is said to be written by Peter Ticktin, a Trump ally and Florida-based lawyer who represents former Mesa County clerk and election denier Tina Peters.

When asked about the order by reporters on Friday morning, Trump said he had “never heard of it.”

The proposed executive order, an earlier version of which was published in April 2025 by a group led by Trump ally and election denier Cleta Mitchell, includes a number of proposals that have been on the wishlists of election conspiracy theorists for years.

It would require every voter to re-register in 2026; eliminate the use of ballot tabulation machines and force every ballot to be counted by hand; allow anyone to challenge the eligibility of voters; require all races be counted by midnight on Election Day; and create a national voter registration database.

The proposal also would have each ballot require a unique identifier, and each voter would need a unique PIN, which some have noted would erase the secret ballot requirement by Arizona law.

“First Trump said he’d impose new voting rules ‘whether approved by Congress or not’ and now extremists are pushing him to use emergency powers to control our elections,” U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said on X. “That’s not how things work in our country, and a federal takeover of our elections violates our Constitution and the law. The American people will not stand by and let their voting rights be undermined.”

Trump and his allies have been pushing for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, more commonly known as the SAVE Act, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem making a stop in Arizona to stump for it and fueling more baseless election conspiracy theories along the way.

She called Arizona’s elections an “absolute disaster” and made the false claim that there is widespread voter fraud by illegal immigrants. But when pressed by reporters to provide examples, Noem could not provide even a single one.

The proposed executive order is based around many of those baseless conspiracy theories, alluding to interference by foreign actors in machines and claims of widespread noncitizen voting, both of which have been found to be baseless.

The SAVE Act has passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives but faces a roadblock in the U.S. Senate because the GOP majority doesn’t have enough support to get around the filibuster. Trump has said that if it does not pass, he would look for alternative ways to enact it.

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AN 2 26

OMFG VOTER SUPPRESS ICE

Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is sounding the alarm.

Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Richer said that if SB 1570 becomes law, it "would prove a significant disruption."

The law would require federal immigration officials to be on hand at every polling location in the state during the 2026 election. It would also require local officials to arrange for ICE agents to be present, reported AZFamily.com. It does promise that federal officials "shall not interfere with the casting or depositing of ballots except as otherwise authorized by law" and cannot "question, detain or arrest a voter solely for the purpose of determining voter eligibility, except as otherwise allowed under state or federal law."

"And it doesn't even really make sense because ICE, as I understand it, is about naturalization, about whether or not you're a United States citizen, but you don't have to bring proof of citizenship when you show up to vote," said Richer.

Republicans at the federal level have attempted to change that, too, however. The SAVE America Act, which stands for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) America Act. It's a law that the Brennan Center for Justice has called “the most restrictive voting bill ever.”

The new successor claimed that they reviewed 60,000 registered voters in Arizona and found 137 were not U.S. citizens and 60 had voted in previous elections.

Richer said it's important to understand the context. Maricopa County has about 2.6 million registered voters in it. So, he wanted to know more to understand what the new recorder was referencing.

"Every year, we would review our voter rolls, and we would make sure that there were no irregularities and we would forward any cases that deserve more investigation to the county attorney's office and to the attorney general," Richer said.

That has changed, however, he noted.

"Since I left office ... the federal government has unrolled its saved database that purports to allow states to upload their voter registration rolls to see if there are any non-citizens," he explained. "The problem with that, as reported by ProPublica in recent weeks, is that it returns quite a few false positives."

He said that while it can lead to further investigation, "registrants should not be taken off of the rolls simply because they are pinged by the database, and I trust that the county recorder's office under my successor will do further investigation on those voters."

CNN host Boris Sanchez noted that the federal government is also seeking driver's license information, partial Social Security numbers, and other data to connect to voter databases. Sanchez asked Richer what the federal government wanted with that data.

By and large, I think the federal government has sued, now, about 28 states. States are resisting because they feel that it violates both state law and federal law to give up their entire voter registration databases, which include personal identifying information like your Social Security number or your driver's license.

He noted that in all of those cases, so far, the federal government has lost.

"I don't think it's an appropriate request from the federal government. I am, however, sympathetic to wanting to do list maintenance. I'm sympathetic to wanting to make sure that non-citizens aren't participating in our elections," Richer added.

Richer commented that, given the governor of Arizona is the former secretary of state, she is well-informed on voting rights. If SB 1570 passes the legislature, he doesn't believe she will sign it. It's unclear whether there are the votes to override such a veto.

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AN 2 26

Republicans on social media are admitting the truth behind Democratic accusations about the SAVE Act — namely, that they want to pass the SAVE Act requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

“The writing on the wall,” tweeted Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida in a message in which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is tagged. Luna attached a flowchart which showed two paths from “Gain majority”: The first, in which the SAVE Act is not saved, equals “lose majority,” “resist other team’s agenda” and needing to fundraise “back to gain majority.”

The flowchart also shows, as an alternative if the SAVE Act fails, is a “one-party state.” This, perhaps not coincidentally, is what historians and political scientists observe could occur to Republicans’ advantage if Trump nationalizes the 2026 midterms. Because Americans with low incomes, disabilities and other disadvantages often struggle to obtain citizenship documents and photo ID despite being legitimate citizens and voters, scholars are concerned the SAVE Act would disproportionately target Democratic constituencies.

Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren, who once said “I don’t care if someone is a liberal, conservative, an atheist, or whatever: don’t be the mean girl,” tweeted “Yep” in response to Luna’s flowchart post to Thune. In a similar spirit, conservative activist Scott Presler posted on Twitter/X and told Thune that “if you do not bring the SAVE America Act to the Senate floor and ultimately pass the bill into law, Republicans will lose both the House and Senate this November.” After threatening that Republicans will not vote unless the SAVE Act is passed, Presler ordered Thune to “either wield power and be remembered as a hero in the majority or lose it all with a democrat takeover as the minority.”

According to one veteran political journalist, this is Republicans “quiet part out loud.”

“The quiet part out loud,” tweeted New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Karni on Wednesday morning while sharing Luna’s flowchart. “Fail to pass Save Act -> lose majority.”

In a similar vein as Karni, Politico columnist Jonathan Martin pointed out in regard to Presler’s tweet that there were “14K likes for arguing Repubs will lose midterms if they don’t pass a voter ID and citizenship bill. Not, ya know, bc the president is hovering at or below 40% and Dems have a massive off-year turnout advantage in this era.”

He concluded, “Preposterous, sure, but is only gonna put more pressure on Sen Rs bc many of their voters are swallowing this nonsense.”

Martin posted his tweet on Tuesday at 9:18 PM Eastern Time. As of the time of this writing, at 1:10 PM ET on the following Wednesday (roughly 16 hours later), it has 54K likes.

In addition to political journalists, some of Trump’s fellow Republicans are alarmed that the president is planning on stealing the upcoming midterm elections.

“This is the first instance in which I could begin to believe that something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been,” Stephen Richer, a former Republican county recorder of Maricopa County when Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election, recently told The Atlantic’s David Frum.

“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” conservative historian Robert Kagan recently told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”

Former Republican consultant and Pulitzer Prize winner George F. Will summed up Trump’s midterm schemes by comparing them to his failed efforts to prove the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

“Trump’s batting average?” Will wrote “.016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” As such Will wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

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AN 2 26

Republicans on social media are admitting the truth behind Democratic accusations about the SAVE Act — namely, that they want to pass the SAVE Act requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

The flowchart also shows, as an alternative if the SAVE Act fails, is a “one-party state.” This, perhaps not coincidentally, is what historians and political scientists observe could occur to Republicans’ advantage if Trump nationalizes the 2026 midterms. Because Americans with low incomes, disabilities and other disadvantages often struggle to obtain citizenship documents and photo ID despite being legitimate citizens and voters, scholars are concerned the SAVE Act would disproportionately target Democratic constituencies.

Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren, who once said “I don’t care if someone is a liberal, conservative, an atheist, or whatever: don’t be the mean girl,” tweeted “Yep” in response to Luna’s flowchart post to Thune. In a similar spirit, conservative activist Scott Presler posted on Twitter/X and told Thune that “if you do not bring the SAVE America Act to the Senate floor and ultimately pass the bill into law, Republicans will lose both the House and Senate this November.” After threatening that Republicans will not vote unless the SAVE Act is passed, Presler ordered Thune to “either wield power and be remembered as a hero in the majority or lose it all with a democrat takeover as the minority.”

According to one veteran political journalist, this is Republicans “quiet part out loud.”

“The quiet part out loud,” tweeted New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Karni on Wednesday morning while sharing Luna’s flowchart. “Fail to pass Save Act -> lose majority.”

He concluded, “Preposterous, sure, but is only gonna put more pressure on Sen Rs bc many of their voters are swallowing this nonsense.”

Martin posted his tweet on Tuesday at 9:18 PM Eastern Time. As of the time of this writing, at 1:10 PM ET on the following Wednesday (roughly 16 hours later), it has 54K likes.

In addition to political journalists, some of Trump’s fellow Republicans are alarmed that the president is planning on stealing the upcoming midterm elections.

“This is the first instance in which I could begin to believe that something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been,” Stephen Richer, a former Republican county recorder of Maricopa County when Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election, recently told The Atlantic’s David Frum.

“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” conservative historian Robert Kagan recently told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”

Former Republican consultant and Pulitzer Prize winner George F. Will summed up Trump’s midterm schemes by comparing them to his failed efforts to prove the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

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AN 2 26

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke at a press conference in Scottsdale, Arizona on February 13, she echoed President Donald Trump's claim that the Grand Canyon State is a hotbed of voter fraud. But when a reporter asked her for specific examples, Noem couldn't provide any and remarked, "Oh, I'm sure there's many of them."

In an opinion column published on February 17, MS NOW's Steve Benen emphasizes that MAGA Republicans have a pattern of making voter fraud claims but never offer concrete proof to back them up.

"The point of her trip to Arizona was to advance Republican conspiracy theories related to voting and election administration," Benen explains. "In fact, the South Dakotan insisted, during her trip, that Arizona is 'an absolute disaster' when it comes to elections…. When a reporter asked whether she was aware of any examples of voter fraud actually happening in the state, the secretary pointed to nothing."

Benen continues, "This led to ample pushback from state officials, who explained in detail that the state's system of elections is already secure and that they're already doing what Noem says needs to be done…. When a powerful federal official travels across the country to accuse a state of having a system of elections that's become 'an absolute disaster,' she really only has one job: Prove it. The very least Noem could have done is to offer one example of fraud."

The MS NOW columnist and "Rachel Maddow Show" producer notes that similarly, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) claims that undocumented immigrants are voting in U.S. elections in big numbers but never offers substantial proof to support his claims.

"It's worth emphasizing that after the 2020 election," Benen recalls, "Republicans thought they'd finally come up with a real example of voter fraud: A Nevada man named Donald Kirk Hartle claimed that someone had cast a ballot in the 2020 election on behalf of his late wife, who'd died three years earlier…. Except they were wrong."

Benen adds, "Hartle had lied and ultimately pleaded guilty to having cast the ballot himself. The single best example Republicans could come up with wasn't real. Six years later, Noem is 'sure' there are 'many'” such examples — but she just can't tell you about a single one."

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2 26

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-fulton-county-raid

while it may seem like the entire federal government is currently focused on violently attacking immigrants and anyone who supports them, that’s simply not true. A significant part of the federal government is also focused on destroying free and fair elections.

Now, that’s multitasking.

It’s honestly difficult to unpack all the ways in which the administration is undermining the safety, security, and constitutionality of elections in genuinely unprecedented ways. This isn’t intended to minimize the decades-long Republican efforts to dismantle the Voting Rights Act — looking at you, John Roberts. Nor should we overlook that conservatives have long touted nonexistent voter fraud as a way to suppress votes in Democratic-leaning jurisdictions. But the efforts of the Trump administration go far beyond that, into the dumbest and most dangerous places.

[

We are all passengers in Trump’s death cab

[David R. Lurie](https://substack.com/profile/2615625-david-r-lurie)

Feb 12

[Read full story](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-polling)](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-polling)

The FBI’s recent raid on the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, where federal agents descended with a search warrant alleging that 2020 ballots and other election material were evidence of a crime, is one of those things where every way you can describe it sounds overwrought. It’s unprecedented. It’s unbelievable. It’s catastrophic. The federal government seized the county’s 2020 ballots, ballot images, voter rolls, and tabulator tapes as part of President Trump’s ongoing attempt to prove he won the 2020 election.

IFrame Content

The DOJ tried to subpoena Fulton County’s 2020 election records last fall, then filed a civil suit in December when the county didn’t respond to the subpoena. But hey, why go the civil route when you can gin up long-debunked allegations of criminal conduct to get a search warrant?

And speaking of that warrant — it’s genuinely distressing that a magistrate judge signed off on this.

Restart the steal

Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas is no right-wing election denier or newbie. She’s been in the job for 10 years and has a background as a public defender and in legal aid. So, this can’t be automatically chalked up to malice or incompetence. However, the affidavit supporting the search warrant is fatally flawed in three glaringly obvious ways.

First, it relies on long-debunked allegations that have already been thoroughly investigated. These are things like missing ballot images or claims of duplicate ballots, evidence only of regrettable, yet routine, human error, not some nefarious plot to deny Trump the election. Beyond the fact that there were multiple audits and investigations, all of which determined that any errors did not affect the accuracy of the election results, there’s also the whole thing where Fulton County’s 2020 ballots were counted, then recounted, then recounted again, with the same results.

Fun fact: the brain geniuses in Kash Patel’s shop did not reach out to Georgia state investigators to get copies or any information about those past investigations, because they wouldn’t want any facts to get in the way of their conspiracy theories.

Next, election deniers provided much of the “evidence” for the debunked claims in the affidavit. In a normal world, the FBI wouldn’t lean on weirdo conspiracy theorists as support for an unprecedented search warrant that is breathtaking in scope, but we no longer live in a normal world. Instead, what we have is an affidavit explaining that the criminal investigation originated from a referral by Kurt Olsen, the “Presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity.”

Who is Kurt Olsen, you might ask? He’s a Stop the Steal lawyer who was in close contact with Trump on January 6. He served as a special counsel for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton when Paxton filed his unhinged lawsuit trying to invalidate election results in four states Trump lost. And, just so you understand Olsen is a well-rounded election denier, not just a garden variety Trump 2020 election denier, he was sanctioned and fined for repeating “unequivocally false” election claims in court when representing Kari Lake in her failed bid for Arizona governor in 2022. In a normal world, Olsen would be unemployable after his democracy-destroying antics, but instead he is a high-level government employee who has unfettered access to sensitive intelligence data in his quest to prove Trump won in 2020. Great.

[

The Federalist Society's mugshots

[Lisa Needham](https://substack.com/profile/10292-lisa-needham)

August 28, 2023

[Read full story](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/jeffrey-clark-eastman-charges-federalist-society)](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/jeffrey-clark-eastman-charges-federalist-society)

Finally — and this is a biggie — the affidavit does not actually allege a crime took place. Yes, it mentions criminal statutes that allegedly apply, but that’s not the same thing. Instead, it says that “if these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law” and “if these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, the election records” seized are evidence of violations of Title 52 U.S.C. §§ 20511 and 20701.

Section 20511(2), quoted in the affidavit, makes it a felony to “knowingly and willingly” deprive a state’s residents of a fair and impartial election by procuring, casting, or tabulating ballots “that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent.”

Section 20701 makes it a misdemeanor if someone “willfully fails” to comply with the requirement to preserve election records for 22 months following an election.

You’ll see that both of these statutes require an intentional, knowing act. Inadvertent errors don’t count as violations of the law. Even carelessness wouldn’t count. Put another way, an intentional act is a required element of both crimes.

Search warrants require a showing of probable cause that a crime has been committed, but there are no allegations in the affidavit that any specific person did anything intentionally. The government isn’t required, when seeking a warrant, to prove there was an intentional act, but it is required to provide sufficient allegations to show there is probable cause to believe it was intentional.

Oh wait, there’s a fourth problem with the affidavit, which is that the statute of limitations for the alleged crimes has already expired, and there is nothing in the affidavit that would explain why that is not the case.

Besides having the most irregular, BS affidavit to justify this search, there’s the genuinely illegal presence of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

IFrame Content

The agencies Gabbard oversees are restricted from conducting intelligence activities within the United States. Having your spy chief show up for a domestic law enforcement matter — particularly when the affidavit supporting the search did not allege any foreign interference in elections — is not great. Having your spy chief facilitate a call between the president and the FBI agents performing the search so he could praise them for their work? Also not great. But hey, at least the whole thing allowed Gabbard to get back into Trump’s good graces, which is clearly all she cares about.

If seizing Fulton County’s election records was the only thing the administration did, that would be bad enough, particularly because the seizure of the records was incredibly sloppy. Agents did not provide an inventory of what they took, forcing local officials to just ballpark how many boxes were seized. Additionally, removing ballots from the election center and opening any sealed materials breaks the chain of custody.

For this administration, though, these are features, not bugs.

“We have states that I won that show I didn’t win

The administration wants to undermine confidence in elections. More specifically, the administration wants to undermine confidence in the ability of states to conduct elections so that Trump can demand we “nationalize” the vote.

It isn’t really clear what the scope of “nationalizing” the vote means, but Trump let everyone know that at the very least, it should include allowing Republican officials to “take over” voting: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over.’ We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

IFrame Content

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt later tried to clean up these remarks, saying that what Trump was really talking about was the SAVE Act, the voter suppression measure currently hurtling through Congress, having passed the House on Wednesday.

But even the New York Times couldn’t carry water for Trump on this one, noting that Trump never actually referenced the SAVE Act and that SAVE doesn’t federalize elections.

Well, not technically. But SAVE is an attempt to impose Trump’s will nationwide, undercutting the independence of states to set their own election rules. Also, SAVE is terrible on its face. It mandates that voters provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. No, your driver’s license isn’t proof. Not even your REAL ID. Passports or birth certificates are pretty much it. And if you happen to have changed your name when you got married, which may include as many as 69 million women, your birth certificate won’t suffice.

[

Trump's talk of canceling elections is a sign of desperation

[Noah Berlatsky](https://substack.com/profile/2185926-noah-berlatsky)

Jan 20

[Read full story](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-canceling-elections)](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-canceling-elections)

States would also be required to conduct monthly purges of voter rolls by checking against the Department of Homeland Security’s Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements database. Sure, that’s not a database remotely related to voting and sure, creating a centralized database actually makes elections more, not less, vulnerable to attack, and sure, states that have already decided to voluntarily check their rolls against the SAVE database have ended up disenfranchising citizens. But all of this is a small price to pay to combat a nonexistent problem.

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, and occurs in such minuscule amounts that it cannot possibly affect election outcomes. The Brookings Institution reviewed the voter fraud database maintained by the Heritage Foundation, a staunch proponent of the voter fraud myth. For example, in Arizona, Heritage found 36 cases of fraud across 25 years, out of over 42 million ballots cast. That’s a whopping .0000845%.

Voting by noncitizens is also very rare, but red states nonetheless keep trying to remove alleged noncitizens from their voting rolls en masse, only to learn that whoops, they are actually removing citizens.

The SAVE Act is not expected to pass the Senate, but in some ways, it doesn’t really need to. It has already served the same purpose as the Fulton County raid: undermining confidence in elections by amplifying baseless suspicions and lies about fraud.

Finally, there is the administration’s demand that all states hand over their complete voter rolls. Federal courts in Michigan, Oregon, and California have dismissed lawsuits filed by the DOJ against states that did not agree to break their own laws by willy-nilly handing over unredacted voter data, but at least 10 states have voluntarily turned theirs over. Thus far, Texas and Alaska have also signed an agreement that lets the DOJ analyze their voter rolls and order them to remove anyone the DOJ decides should be removed within 45 days.

It’s a backdoor way of giving the executive branch power over elections, despite the fact that the Constitution leaves elections to the states, with only Congress retaining the power to alter regulations. Let’s be frank: it’s also a way for the administration to hoover up ever more data in its quest to create a nationwide surveillance database it can use to target immigrants and those willing to protest on their behalf.

The Internal Revenue Service has already improperly shared confidential taxpayer data for thousands of immigrants with DHS. The Department of Government Efficiency already shared social security data on an insecure third-party server, with one DOGE employee stationed within the Social Security Administration signing an agreement with an unidentified group to “find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain states.”

Nothing that is being done here is at all about ensuring elections are free of fraud, because they already are. State officials know how to run elections and they know how to ensure that only eligible voters get to cast ballots. Trump lost the 2020 election, and it wasn’t because of immigrants or voting machines or Hugo Chavez or Democrats, but since he will never let it go, we’re all stuck here too.

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AN 2 26

It's become accepted religion on MS-NOW political talk broadcasts – and in Democratic circles in and out of Congress — that one way or another, Donald Trump is actively aiming to disrupt the November elections.

The tools for disruption vary from Trump attempts to tilt the balloting rules orpush for gerrymandered districts to full-blown deployment of armed Homeland Security armies around voting precincts in at least 15 jurisdictions, picking up from Trump's own projections about where he intuits widespread voter fraud without a shred of evidence to persuade, say, a judge.

To a certain extent, then, Trump already has proved successful in at once annoying and frightening Americans with his ever-present, evidence-free, authoritarian push.

It is Trump, of course, who is pushing this argument by word and deed. Rather than accept that the slice of voters who decide between wins and losses is a relatively small, fickle group that drifts back and forth between parties, Trump cannot stomach a loss or even the suggestion that his every act is not adored by friend and foe alike. And so, we have White House trumpeting about "nationalizing" elections that are Constitutionally assigned to states, a public seizure of 2020 ballots in Atlanta, involvement of officials who have nothing to do with elections in precincts where Trump has suffered losses, redrawing of districts, and a so-far failing campaign to grab every state's voting rolls for Trump's own review.

It is Trump who is making clear that he wants to interfere and control elections before voting, in the actual submission of ballots, and, naturally, with the counting of votes. The goal in November is to retain majorities in both houses of Congress and the incessant questioning, oversight activities and possibilities of impeachment that could follow a return of a Democratic majority in even one house.

What Evidence?

Much as Fox, Newsmax and other outlets on the right regularly promote deportation efforts and the need to preserve voting from undue, "fraudulent" voting by immigrants, the MS-NOW crowd of regulars sees a different reality in Trump's dedicated march to undercut voting by making the process more difficult and results always questionable.

Both sides repeat their vents over election tactics endlessly, to the exclusion of other public issues also in contention.

The difference, of course, is that the MS-NOW pundits base their thinking on plethora of actions as well as statements that offer warning signs, on scores of court decisions that have found the "fraud" and "rigging" of elections arguments to be without merit, and on current laws in states that already bar voting by non-citizens and voter registration processes in most states that require showing various documents to be eligible to vote even in local elections.

The "pro-democracy" pundits are reacting to welcomed pressure on the White House coming from Steve Bannon, among others within MAGA, to do anything, including deploying military troops or paramilitary border police to surround polls, discourage voting even in person, and, naturally to eliminate such efforts as mail ballots that encourage more voting, not less.

This weekend, Trump promised on social media that he would issue an executive order to require voters to show identification in the midterm elections even if Congress does not do so. Trump posted, "There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!"

Trump has already attempted to use an executive order to alter voting laws last March, but in January, a federal judge threw it out, finding that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally alter election procedures.

Trump is stumping for something called The SAVE Act in Congress, which would require voters to show passport or other documents each time they vote – and would require all states to turnover state voter rolls loaded with personal information to Trump's government, presumably for unspecified checks against citizenship records. For anyone who has worked with data, name checks are the worst possible way to match records because of name or initial changes, spellings, relocations among jurisdictions. Voter rolls do not list who actually voted, just who once registered.

Like most legislation, there is some kernel that makes sense, but partisan disagreement about its effects, about how it would be used, and the broader un-Constitutionality of putting the feds in charge of activity directly assigned to states.

A Campaign Against Voting

Taken together, Trump's activities towards elections past and present show a consistent line: He wants to sow distrust for the results. On some level, it makes no sense. He supported the outcome of the same voting techniques and procedures when he won in 2016 and 2024, but not 2020 – or apparently in the looming November results.

For those who followed the investigations of activities ending in the Jan. 6, 2021, efforts to remain in office despite election results, it feels all too familiar. These are the same drumbeats that Special Counsel Jack Smith was prepared to prosecute as illegal conspiracy to overturn election law.

Trump does not help himself in these matters when, as over the weekend, he takes his tales of election woe to a military base in North Carolina, in a partisan address to Fort Bragg soldiers in blatant violation of military tradition, if not law. Trump does not help his credibility by sending Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence to participate in a search warrant seizure of ballots in Atlanta, or dispatching Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem to Arizona over securing voter rolls. Rather, those come across to the public as sending willing co-conspirators in what seem warning signals that this federal government will intervene in state elections.

Here was Noem in an Arizona interview: "When it gets to Election Day, we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country." Regardless of party, how are we not supposed to take this as between inappropriate and dangerous?

What most ails our voting in this country is that its residents don't vote. A 60 percent turnout is considered high. Only Trump sees widespread fraud – especially when the same exact ballot elects those Republicans in Congress or state legislatures who must carry out Trump's assault on voting focused on minority precincts in states whose outcomes he did not like.

What most ails our Trump administration about voting is that it seeks to depress the vote, and uses the hammer of immigration as a supposed explanation for what seems genuinely widespread unhappiness with most of Trump's policies about tariffs and prices, access to health care and childcare, a vastly growing gap between rich and poor, the abuse of the Justice Department and FBI towards partisan political ends, its opposition to climate concerns and the promotion of self-aggrandizing schemes for Trump's own family, friends and backers, and the attack on democracy itself.

Watch for the actions as well as bluster of Truth Social posts.

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AN 26 NOT PROCESSED

When President Donald Trump pressured state and local officials to intervene in his behalf in the 2020 election, it wasn’t a matter of abstract constitutional theory for the people running elections. It was armed protests outside offices, threats against their families, subpoenas for voter data, and months of uncertainty about whether doing their jobs would land them in legal jeopardy.

*This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Now, Trump says he wants Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” language that evokes the pressure campaigns he and allies mounted during that contentious 2020 period.

Trump’s 2020 effort ultimately stalled when even some Republicans refused to take steps they believed were unlawful. And his call to nationalize voting this week prompted pushback from some GOP members of Congress and other Republican figures.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Trump’s proposal raised constitutional concerns, and he warned that nationalizing elections could make them more susceptible to cybersecurity attacks. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska was more blunt, saying he has long opposed federal control of elections. “I’ll oppose this now as well,” he wrote on X.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s comments referred to his support for federal legislation commonly called the SAVE Act.

Election officials say the lesson of 2020 was not that the system is invulnerable, but that it can be strained in ways that cause lasting damage long before courts step in. While it’s unclear whether Trump’s latest demands — and possible future actions— would lead to the same level of disruption, legal experts say some of the backstops that ultimately stopped him last time are now weaker, leaving election officials to absorb even more pressure.

Memories of 2020 shape the response

Kathy Bernier, a Republican former Wisconsin lawmaker and Chippewa County clerk, was the chair of the state Senate’s election committee following the 2020 election and repeatedly pushed back on Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. As Republicans launched a prolonged review of the results, Bernier criticized the effort publicly, saying Wisconsin’s elections were secure and that “no one should falsely accuse election officials of cheating.”

She faced extensive backlash, including calls for her resignation, and Bernier said the dispute escalated to the point that she carried a gun for protection. She ultimately left the legislature, a decision that she said wasn’t politically motivated.

A key takeaway from the 2020 election for election officials, Bernier told Votebeat, was the importance of radical transparency — not just following the rules, but showing people, in real time, that the rules are being followed “to a T.”

“When there’s a paper jam,” she said, “announce it.”

Still, she said, officials also learned the limits of that approach. After she tried to boost election confidence across Wisconsin, she came to a blunt conclusion: “There’s nothing you can do with ‘I don’t believe you.’”

In the years that followed, Bernier said, a bigger danger than Trump himself were the “charlatans” who took his words and turned them into a business model, spreading conspiracy theories for profit. The misinformation and disinformation those people spread, Bernier said, continue to resonate among the conspiratorial segments of the GOP.

The impact of their campaigns has been felt acutely by election officials. Many received death threats, and some had to relocate and enhance their security protections. Large cities redesigned their election offices to better protect their workers, and election official turnover increased dramatically, reshaping the profession long after the votes were counted.

Stephen Richer, a Republican who became recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, shortly after the 2020 election, had similar advice: Follow the law, tell the truth, and consult attorneys, national associations, and state associations before making key decisions, because “the likelihood that they are dealing with your jurisdiction alone is limited.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is among the Republicans who prominently resisted Trump’s calls to overturn the 2020 election. He and his wife received death threats, and were assigned a protective team by the state. He declined an interview with Votebeat, but in a statement this week, he urged lawmakers to improve state election administration “rather than rehashing the same outdated claims or worse — moving to federalize a core function of state government.”

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, another Republican who pushed back on Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread fraud following the 2020 election and faced similar retaliation, told Votebeat that the state’s elections are freer and fairer than ever before, and that the Constitution stops Trump from unilaterally nationalizing elections.

The Michigan Department of State, similarly, said this was a settled constitutional matter.

On the other hand, Michigan Republicans have asked the U.S. Justice Department for increased federal involvement in elections in the state, calling for monitors — not atypicalin American elections — as well as “oversight,” although GOP leaders didn’t elaborate on what that would mean.

Richer, who lost his reelection bid for recorder in 2024 to another Republican, said Trump’s comments, combined with similar calls for federal involvement, suggest the Republican Party is drifting from its traditional commitment to federalism and local control. He also pointed to increased legislation at the federal level seeking to standardize elections, which has received little pushback from the Republican Party. That’s despite Republicans criticizing an earlier Democratic legislative effort as federal overreach.

“Clearly the federal government is going to do things that it’s never done before,” he said. “The FBI going in and taking materials from an election that happened over five years ago is unprecedented, so maybe we’re destined for additional unprecedented actions."

Election officials and courts the most significant ‘line of defense’

One of the key reasons that Trump failed in his efforts to delay and then overturn the 2020 election was the “men and women of principle” in his administration, said David Becker, an election lawyer who leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research. Becker, a former Justice Department official, said the experience offered an uncomfortable lesson: Those internal guardrails existed because individuals chose to enforce them — and there is less reason to assume they would be there again.

After the 2020 election, Bill Barr, the attorney general at the time, disputed Trump’s claim that there was widespread fraud; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency similarly disputed the president’s claim that swings in unofficial results during election night meant that there was election fraud; and national security officials reportedly warned Trump that he couldn’t seize voting machines.

“That line of defense is largely gone,” Becker said, because “the primary and perhaps only qualification for being hired by this administration — particularly in those key roles in the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security — is loyalty to this man.”

With fewer internal checks, Becker said, the second and most important line of defense this election cycle is courts and state and local election officials. Courts have already stymied many of the election policies Trump has tried to carry out via executive order, and “election officials are holding firm.” But he cautioned that court challenges take time — time in which “untold damage” can be done to erode public trust and to the officials caught in the middle.

That gap between what Trump can say and what he can actually do is where the risk now lies, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University who advised President Joe Biden’s administration on democracy and voting rights. Levitt said Trump does not have the legal or operational authority to unilaterally nationalize elections, even if he were inclined to cross legal boundaries.

He contrasted the president’s ability to control elections with ICE’s use of force in Democratic-run cities. In immigration enforcement, Levitt said, Congress has given the executive branch authority that can be exercised aggressively or improperly, even when courts later find those actions unlawful. In those cases, Levitt said, the president has “his finger on a switch” — the practical ability to act first and answer questions later. “No such switch exists” in elections, said Levitt.

But with fewer administration officials pushing back on Trump’s claims compared with his first term, Levitt said election officials can expect Trump’s messaging to get “much, much, much worse this year,” and for those claims to be given more oxygen by the rest of the federal government.

“It’s up to us to choose to believe him or not,” he added. Obedience in advance isn’t required, and treating Trump’s claims as commands would grant him authority he does not have, Levitt said, adding, “We have agency in this.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander atashur@votebeat.org.

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AN 2 26

President Donald Trump's administration is now inviting election officials from all 50 states to a conference call later this month, where they will reportedly briefed on plans for this fall's midterm elections.

Crooked Media correspondent Matt Berg reported Thursday on an email sent to state officials overseeing elections from an FBI agent identifying themselves as an "FBI election executive." The email invites states to participate in a February 25 conference call with "your election partners at the FBI, DOJ, DHS, USPIS [U.S. Postal Inspection Service] and the EAC [Election Assistance Commission]" where agencies will discuss "preparations" for the 2026 midterm elections. The email also mentioned a separate March 4 call "for members of the EAC's Local Leadership Council."

Berg noted that the purpose of the call "remains unclear," though noted the email was sent after Trump repeatedly called for the federal government to "nationalize the voting" in a podcast interview with former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Berg wrote that he obtained the email via a public records request.

"I asked the FBI for an explanation, but a spokesperson wouldn’t give me one, writing: 'Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment,'" Berg tweeted.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told Berg that in his three years overseeing Nevada's elections, he had never heard of the FBI organizing a call between state election officials and federal agencies. He felt so unnerved by the message that he replied and asked: "Is this real?"

"I was just like, ‘what is this?’ It’s the strangest thing in the world that the FBI is reaching out to us and trying to coordinate election security," Aguilar said. "It's never happened in the past. The casualness which they did ... it was just beyond crazy."

"They’re just sowing this confusion and chaos to try to intimidate us into compliance," he added.

The Nevada elections chief said he is "constantly preparing and strategizing" for potential interference in the Silver State's 2026 election, and that he is taking Trump's threats seriously.

"ne. “We have to prepare for that litigation at a moment's notice, and we will be prepared in Nevada to push back," he said.

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AN 2 26

Concern is mounting over reports that the FBI emailed election officials in all 50 states to invite them to a conference call with multiple federal agencies about the 2026 midterms — an outreach election officials reportedly view as unusual and concerning.

“The exact purpose of the call remains unclear. But it’s raising concerns after President Donald Trump called for state elections to be nationalized,” Crooked Media reported on Thursday. “The email is raising anxiety at a moment when Trump is calling for the federal government to take control of elections in 15 states, and dispatching the FBI to investigate the 2020 election in battleground state Georgia.”

“Election officials from every state received an invitation for the call on Feb. 25th, to be joined by Trump’s FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and U.S. Election Assistance Commission,” according to Crooked Media’s Matt Berg. He added: “The email, which was obtained via public records request, was sent on Tuesday by an official named Kellie Hardiman, who gave her title as ‘FBI Election Executive.'”

Berg published a copy of the email to social media.

“To prepare for the 2026 US midterm elections, your election partners at the FBI, DOJ, DHS, USPIS, and the EAC would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss our preparations for the cycle, as well as updates and resources we can provide to you and your staff,” it read.

“Last week,” NBC News, adding to the story, reported that “at a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State, officials pushed back against a Trump administration official who spoke about supporting election officials’ work.”

Critics expressed deep concern.

Veteran journalist Jay Bookman described it as “extremely alarming,” and wrote: “It sounds like the Mafia declaring itself your ‘partner’ and inviting you to a meeting that you dare not refuse.”

“Trump is very actively planning to rig the upcoming elections,” alleged attorney Aaron Regunberg, a contributing editor at The New Republic. “I guess we better keep funding the terrorist militia force he’s going to use to execute these plans without ever securing a single real concession.”

“The regime is now doing everything in its power to prevent the midterms from being free, fair and independent elections — if they even allow elections to occur at all,” argued MS NOW analyst Fernand R. Amandi.

“Better get ready, and at every level,” claimed professor and historian Steven Seegel. “The incumbent MAGA-GOP party-cult will allege fraud (‘stop the steal’) in advance, use ICE in strategic districts and locales, then escalate from voter intimidation to violence. That’s the basic set-up here for 2026. It’s premeditated.”

“Trump said he wants to nationalize elections and deploy ICE to Blue cities in swing states, which is his way of trying to steal the midterms, and every election after,” alleged health care activist Melanie D’Arrigo. “This is how it begins.”

Historian and associate professor Keith Orejel claimed the “maneuvering to try and steal the midterms is so clumsy and transparent.”

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2 26 AN

With President Donald Trump suffering from weak approval ratings in countless recent polls and Democrats having performed well in a series of late 2025 and early 2026 elections, Democratic strategists are feeling cautiously optimistic about their prospects in this year's midterms. A Texas State Senate special election on Saturday, January 31 in the Ft. Word suburbs was especially encouraging for them: Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss by 14 percent in a district that Trump won by 18 percent in 2024.

But progressive legal scholar Elie Mystal, in an article published by The Nation on February 5, warns that Trump and his allies will do everything possible to rig the midterms against Democrats. And the attorney fears that Trump opponents aren't doing enough to fight back.

"To ignore the threat posed by Trump, to pretend like everything is going to be OK, to assume that upstanding members of the courts will rise to prevent the theft of the election is to stick your head in the sand," Mystal emphasizes. "Trump and the Republicans have no intention of letting the upcoming midterms — in which Republicans are predicted to lose control of the House — proceed fairly. They're attacking the election through legislative, law-enforcement, and political means."

Mystal describes a variety of MAGA tactics.

"Republicans in the House have already passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act)," the legal expert notes. "The bill radically reshapes the voter registration process by essentially repealing the Motor Voter Act. Instead of allowing people to register with a driver's license, the SAVE Act requires them to show additional identification, like a passport or a birth certificate, in order to register…. The SAVE Act isn't even the most dangerous thing Republicans in Congress have cooked up. That dubious honor belongs to the Make Elections Great Again Act (MEGA Act), so named because these people are obviously in a cult."

Mystal continues, "The MEGA Act includes all of the same requirements to register to vote as the SAVE Act, but also, requires these new forms of identification to be shown by voters when they try to cast their ballots…. All of this would be bad enough, but Republicans aren't just hoping for legislation that will allow them to suppress the vote in 2026, they're also putting in place the legal ability to steal the votes that get through these gauntlets. Last week, the FBI raided the Fulton County elections operations center, which covers Atlanta, looking for 2020 ballots…. If the FBI can seize old, 2020 ballots in the name of fishing for 'election fraud,' it's not hard to imagine them seizing ballots and voting machines trying to stop 'fraud' in 2026. Attorney General Pam Bondi has also appointed, essentially, a 'special counsel,' Thomas Albus, and given him the authority to seize ballots."

Mystal points out that Steve Bannon, host of the "War Room" vodcast and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump Administration, is flat-out calling for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to "surround the polls come November."

"Who knows what kind of ICE presence we'’ll see on Election Day?," Mystal warns. "Who knows how much violence they'll use to keep people from voting? But you'd be a rank fool to think the answers to those questions are 'nothing' and 'none.'"

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AN 2 26

Between a series of Democratic election victories in late 2025 and early 2026 and President Donald Trump's weak approval ratings in a long list of recent polls, Republican strategists are growing increasingly worried about this year's midterms —which are a little over nine months away.

Never Trump conservative and New York Times columnist David French fears that Trump and his allies will use militarized U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) raids to "intimidate" non-white voters in November. And Guardian opinion columnist Arwa Mahdawi worries that MAGA Republicans will resort to another tactic to discourage Democratic voter turnout: making it harder for women to vote.

Mahdawi is especially concerned about the SAVE Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility), which, if passed, would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require "documentary proof of United States citizenship" in order to vote. The SAVE Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2025 but is stalled in the U.S. Senate.

In her Sunday, February 1 column, Mahdawi argues, "As the U.S. grows increasingly violent, increasingly cruel, every day brings a legion of new horrors. So I'm very sorry to say that I'm here to ruin your weekend by giving you yet another thing to worry about. That thing is called the Save Act, and if the Trump Administration gets its way, it could have an oversized impact on the November midterms — particularly when it comes to minorities and married women being able to vote."

Mahdawi contends that the SAVE Act's goal is "disenfranchisement" of female voters.

"If it became law, the Save Act would require Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or other citizenship document to register or re-register to vote," the columnist explains. "Per one Brennan Center Study, more that 21 million American citizens, many of whom are engaged voters, do not have easy access to these documents. While just over 8 percent of self-identified white American citizens don't have these documents readily available, the Brennan Center found the number is nearly 11 percent among Americans of color."

Mahdawi adds, "Women who changed their name when they got married may also face a logistical nightmare: reports show that as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse's name don't have a birth certificate that matches their legal name."

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AN 1 26

With Democrats projected to win back control of at least one chamber of Congress in this fall's midterm elections, Republicans are now banking their hopes on legislation that could make it much harder for millions of Americans to cast a ballot.

The New Republic (TNR) reported Thursday that Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), who chairs the House Administration Committee, is behind the new Make Elections Great Again Act. TNR described the legislation as a laundry list of far-right policy priorities "that would actually impose severe restrictions on voting across the country."

Steil's bill would mandate that all voters across the country present a photo ID to be able to vote, require all mail-in ballots arrive for counting no later than Election Day, make voters manually opt in to cast votes by mail and eliminate ranked-choice voting for federal elections, among other restrictions.

"Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity – including commonsense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification," Steil stated. "These reforms will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat."

However, TNR noted that Steil omitted "one of the bill’s most troubling features," in that states would be required to create a single digital database of all registered voters to serve as "the official voter registration list for the conduct of all elections for Federal office in the State."

The Make Elections Great Again Act also requires voters to provide documented proof of citizenship for all federal elections. Voters would also be subjected to periodic eligibility reviews "on an ongoing basis, but in no case less frequently than once every 30 days." The Brennan Center for Justice reported in 2024 that more than 21.3 million people – roughly nine percent of all Americans of voting age — do not have citizenship documents readily available. Roughly 3.8 million don't have those documents at all due to them being lost, destroyed or stolen.

Steil's legislation would also empower Attorney General Pam Bondi to sue individual states if they don't comply with the new federal restrictions on voting, and would also allow private citizens to sue state election officials if they add a new voter to the rolls without verifying their citizenship. While the bill may pass the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, it would need the support of seven Democrats in the U.S. Senate to make it to President Donald Trump's desk.

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an 1 26

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump floated the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, drawing widespread attention and concern even as White House officials later dismissed the remarks as facetious.

*This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.]

But election experts consistently agree that Trump has neither the legal authority nor the practical ability to cancel elections. And state and local election officials consistently say they will carry out the elections they’re legally required to run.

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Stephen Richer, the Republican former recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, said the idea that a president could simply halt or meaningfully cancel an election misunderstands how elections function on the ground. The system, he said, is “made up of so many disparate actors” — thousands of local officials, courts, vendors, and administrators operating under different authorities and timelines. Even if there were a coordinated attempt to get these people not to go through with the election, “you’ve got to figure at least half of those people aren’t big fans of the president, and many of the rest are on autopilot regardless of what they think of the president.”

Some election processes are fixed by law and timing. Military and overseas ballots, for example, must be sent on a specific schedule — a deadline Richer described as “an immutable deadline, like gravity.” Any attempt to disrupt that selectively would quickly become obvious. “How absurd would it be that one county got ballots and the next one didn’t?” he said, predicting “a gazillion lawsuits” and court orders compelling officials to move forward.

Richer also pointed to the scale of U.S. election administration: more than 9,000 jurisdictions and more than 90,000 polling locations nationwide. “You are not going around and shutting those down,” he said. He noted that even voter-intimidation efforts would face immediate legal challenges and injunctions, while plenty of voters would have cast ballots via other means (e.g., early or mail voting) anyway.

That assessment is echoed by David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who speaks regularly with local election officials. (When we spoke, he was driving to a conference for Colorado election officials — and had just come from a conference of 300 officials in Texas.) Becker said nearly 1,500 local officials across 47 states have participated in his monthly informational sessions, which he’s held since Trump put out his executive order last March, and none of them have suggested canceling the election or violating state law.

“Every single one of them is committed to putting on the best election they possibly can,” Becker said. Even under pressure, officials aren’t signaling they’ll stop. “They are getting it done,” he said, adding that if support doesn’t come from the state, “they will band together and do it themselves.”

But state election officials aren’t backing down, either. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, says elections will proceed as planned regardless of what Trump might say. The academics and media stars gaining popularity and attention for saying otherwise are being “disingenuous” and “dangerous,” he said.

Courts have also played a critical role when local officials have threatened to overstep their authority. In 2020, even light suggestions that Trump might delay the election to accommodate COVID were met with outrage. After the 2020 election, judges made clearthat certification is not discretionary and ordered officials to follow election law and move the process forward, even amid intense political pressure.

Those same state and local laws remain in place today. Courts and election offices are also better positioned than they were four years ago, with legal strategies drafted, training in place, and judges already familiar with these arguments. Across the country, clerks and secretaries of state describe updating contingency plans, consulting attorneys, and stress-testing procedures much as they would for a natural disaster or cyberattack.

If you’re worried about what lies ahead, election officials say there are meaningful ways to respond — and that spreading fear isn’t one of them. Richer said the bigger danger now is renewed distrust of election results. That distrust makes it easier for those in power to make bad-faith attempts to twist the math after votes are cast.

His advice is straightforward: “Continue being a repository for facts and truth about election administration, and kindly and sensitively inject those into conversations that you are a part of if you hear something you know to be wrong.” He added, “Don’t be dismissive. It never works.” And, he said, “you are responsible for the false information you spread.”

Aguilar said that academic voices predicting doom “don’t understand the nuances” of state and local law and that voters should be skeptical of them. Those who want better information should go to their local and state elections offices.

There’s also a risk that continually framing elections as likely not to happen — or as already lost — could have the opposite of the intended effect, discouraging participation rather than protecting democracy. If you’re concerned about what might happen in your county, there are concrete ways to help now: sign up to be a poll worker, volunteer to help register voters, offer your business or community space as a polling location, or donate to organizations preparing to defend election laws and certification in court.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

*Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica atjhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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an 1 26

One MS NOW producer is sounding the alarm about a comment President Donald Trump made during his extensive interview with theNew York Timesthat is telling about his 2026 intentions.

Kyle Griffin, executive producer of Weeknight wrote on Xthat the detail was a "BIG FLAG."

"Trump said during his interview with The New York Times that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election. He doubted whether the Guard was 'sophisticated enough' to carry out the order effectively," Griffin said.

The comments come as the Washington Post reported Monday morning "if his party loses," in the 2026 midterm elections, it is expected that Trump will "sow doubt in their validity."

Trump's new plans included forcing Republican state lawmaker to redraw congressional lines in Republicans' favor. That step, however, was only the beginning. Trump is also pushing to make voter registration more difficult and end the use of voting machines and mail-in ballots.

"The administration has gutted the role of the nation’s cybersecurity agency in protecting elections; stocked the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and FBI from top to bottom with officials who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election; given a White House audience to people who, like the president, promote the lie that he won the 2020 election; sued over state and local election policies that Trump opposes; and called for a new census that excludes noncitizens," the Post explained.

"The wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021," the report added.

Stanford Law School Professor Nathaniel Persily, who focuses on democracy and elections-related law, told the Post, “I’m concerned about chaos and uncertainty in the administration of the 2026 election. There is a kind of avalanche of potential changes that are being proposed, and it’s at a time when people have lost trust in the election infrastructure and everybody’s on edge.” 1/11? TRUMP TOLD GOP MOC ALL ELECTIONS ARE RIGGED?! NO PUSHBACK

The White House claims that they're focused on making sure only eligible American citizens vote.

While Trump has joked about canceling the 2026 election, he doesn't have the authority to do it because local and state officials handle elections — not the federal government. That will be the barrier to a lot of Trump's efforts to change mail-in ballots or bar certain voting machines.

Trump issued an executive order that aimed to stop any state from accepting mail-in ballots received after Election Day. In many states, as long as a voter has the ballot post marked by Election Day, it is legal. A lower court has blocked the order, but the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the matter this year.

In another matter, the Justice Department has been in a battle with at least 40 states and Washington D.C., demanding voter rolls with personal identifying information including birth dates and partial Social Security numbers. Ten states have agreed to cooperate with the DOJ.

Read the full list of efforts Trump has made to change the 2026 midterm elections here.

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AN 1 26

Donald Trump and his Department of Justice's efforts to attack voting rights are facing a new legal threat in South Carolina, according to a letter obtained by the Post & Courier newspaper.

The DOJ is in the process of requesting that states purge their voter rolls of individuals flagged for removal by a federal audit, a move the administration says is meant to target voter fraud and to "ensure ineligible people are kept off state voter rolls and that only citizens are voting." Critics, conversely, have decried this as an effort to target lawfully registered voters. The agency has sent draft letters of this agreement to several states, including South Carolina.

On Friday, the Post & Courier reported on a letter sent to South Carolina's office of elections director, Jenny Wooten, from the Democratic National Committee. In it, the DNC warned that such a purge of voter rolls could inevitably lead to properly registered voters being removed, in violation of the National Voter Registration Act, and that it was prepared to sue the state if it agreed to the federal government's demands.

The letter further alleged that conducting a purge of the state's voter rolls "would harm the DNC and its members," and require the committee to "divert resources" intended for voter outreach efforts to identifying and re-registering any unlawfully purged voters.

DNC Chair Ken Martin said that the DOJ's effort amounts to a “big government power grab," attempting to bring control of voter rolls under federal oversight, despite the Constitution allocating that power to the states.

“The DNC won’t stand idly by as the Trump DOJ seeks access to South Carolina voters’ sensitive information and puts eligible voters at risk of being wrongly purged from the rolls,” Martin said in a statement to the paper. “Which is why we are calling on the South Carolina State Election Commission to stand up for South Carolinians and reject the Trump administration’s illegal agreement.”

As of Friday, the South Carolina Election Commission had taken no action in response to the DOJ's request.

"Nothing has happened to this point, and nothing will happen without it going through our commission in a public meeting," spokesman TJ Lundeen said in a statement to the paper.

The Trump administration's attempts to seize election authorities from the states are among the numerous efforts to undermine free and fair elections that experts and pundits have raised alarms over.

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AN 1 26

NO LNX

Inside the GOP plot to end America as we know it

Thom Hartmann January 05, 2026

It’s not just a brand new year; it’s a midterm election year. And the stakes this coming November are mind-boggling, so, of course, Republicans are starting to do everything they can to rig the election.

Just a week ago, for example, Trump’s Postal Service changed the rules about getting your mail-in ballot postmarked so it’ll be counted. Instead of postmarking letters when they’re received, Post Offices will now postmark them when they get “processed,” which may happen days later.

In the 2024 presidential election, the feds estimated that around 104,000 mail-in ballots nationwide weren’t counted because they were postmarked late; with this change, the number this fall and for 2028 could be in the millions.

Meanwhile, Republican secretaries of state are enthusiastically purging voters from the rolls as they get ready for this fall. Remember, reporter and economist Greg Palast found, using official federal and state numbers, that in 2024:

Kamala Harris“Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.“And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.”

You’d think we each have a right to vote, rather than voting being just a privilege that Republican-controlled states could take away in dozens of different ways.

Supreme Court Republicans on the ruled, for example, that we have a right to own a gun. As a result, before a state or local government can take away your gun, they must first go before a judge to prove the necessity of doing so.

But, Republicans on the Court tell us, Republican secretaries of state can eliminate your right to vote without even telling you; how does that make sense?

14th Amendment After all, the to the Constitution references “the right to vote at any election” and even says that any state that violates that right shall lose members of its congressional delegation as punishment.

The 19th Amendment references “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…”

The 24th Amendment starts, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…”

The 26th Amendment is all about, “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote…”

ConstitutionAdditionally, the , in Article I, Section 4, says that Congress can make federal laws that overrule state laws restricting or regulating voting:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations…”

And, sure enough, Congress did just that in 1993 when it passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), sometimes referred to as the Motor Voter Act because, among other things, it provided for the option of instant voter registration when a person gets a driver’s license in every state in the union.

Now known as 52 U.S. Code § 20501, this law of the land opens with:

The Congress finds that -(1) the right of citizens of the United States to vote is a fundamental right

(2) it is the duty of the Federal, State, and local governments to promote the exercise of that right and

(3) discriminatory and unfair registration laws and procedures can have a direct and damaging effect on voter participation in elections for Federal office and disproportionately harm voter participation by various groups, including racial minorities.

And it wasn’t a particularly contentious law when it was passed: every Democrat present in the Senate voted for it (Rockefeller missed the vote) as did all but two Republicans.

So how did we get from the Constitution repeatedly asserting a “right to vote” and Congress passing a law that unambiguously proclaims that right, to the current state of affairs where states regularly and methodically deprive citizens of their “right” to vote and instead claim that it’s merely a privilege?

As I lay out in The Hidden History of the War On Voting, much of the blame rests with the most conservative and regressive of our federal institutions, the Supreme Court.

The first real test of the NVRA came in 2018, when Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, went on a voter-purge binge (that hit Black, student, and elderly neighborhoods particularly hard) and was sued by the A. Phillip Randolph Institute for violating Ohio citizens’ constitutional right to vote.

In a bitter 5-4 decision, the Republican majority ruled in Husted v Randolph that purging voters because they failed to return a junk-mail-like postcard was entirely legal.

It’s a practice that was called “caging” back when Karl Rove’s guy was allegedly doing it and it was illegal then but has, since that Court ruling, spread to pretty much every Republican-controlled state in the nation.

They’ll identify a part of the state that they consider particularly “prone to fraud“ — in other words, filled with a lot of Black and brown people — and mail postcards that look like junk mail into those precincts. When people failed to return them, they are automatically removed from the voting rolls. In most cases they don’t even know they’ve been purged until they show up to vote and are turned away.

Justice Samuel Alito’s decision was particularly biting, claiming that the arguments made by the citizens who’d lost their right to vote were “worse than superfluous” and their argument that they shouldn’t have to regularly check in with the Secretary of State’s office to stay on the voter rolls represented logic “no sensible person” could agree with.

Sensible or not, in his dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that around 4 percent of Americans move every year. Yet, he wrote:

“The record shows that in 2012 Ohio identified about 1.5 million registered voters — nearly 20 percent of its 8 million registered voters — as likely ineligible to remain on the federal voter roll....”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent was even more scathing.

“Congress enacted the NVRA against the backdrop of substantial efforts by States to disenfranchise low-income and minority voters,” she wrote, “including programs that purged eligible voters from registration lists because they failed to vote in prior elections.“The Court errs in ignoring this history and distorting the statutory text to arrive at a conclusion that not only is contrary to the plain language of the NVRA but also contradicts the essential purposes of the statute, ultimately sanctioning the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against.”

She then quoted the “right to vote” NVRA preamble noted above, and, essentially, accused the conservatives on the Court of helping Republicans in the states they controlled engage in massive racial and economic discrimination in the voting process.

“[This decision] entirely ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate. … Our democracy rests on the ability of all individuals, regardless of race, income, or status, to exercise their right to vote.”

The “right to vote” took another hit when the State of Florida’s Supreme Court ordered a recount of the 2000 presidential election but five Republicans on the US Supreme Court ignored the 10th Amendment (“states’ rights”) and stopped the recount.

That was a good thing for George W. Bush because when the Florida vote was later recounted by a consortium of newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post, they found, as the Times noted on Nov. 12, 2001:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won...”

Nonetheless, Chief Justice William Rehnquist dismissed all the nation’s concerns about the Court flipping the 2000 presidential election in that totally partisan 5-4 decision, writing in his opinion:

“[T]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”

Which casts us in a pretty terrible light. As Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) points out:

“The constitutions of at least 135 nations — including our fellow North American countries, Canada and Mexico — explicitly guarantee citizens the right to vote…”

Instead, Raskin notes, because of five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court we’re in the company of countries like Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, and Pakistan.

Republicans are pushing a full-blown authoritarian agenda and they know it’s so unpopular that the only way they can get it through is to suppress the vote and thus rig the system.

That’s why they’ve already successfully passed previously-unthinkable major voter suppression laws in 18 states and have them pending in many more. They’ve changed the law in Georgia and several other states so that they can now throw out the votes from entire neighborhoods or cities where they don’t like the outcome; all they have to do is vaguely assert a “suspicion of fraud.”

Between the massive gerrymandering effort the GOP has launched nationwide and the Post Office’s changes that’ll hit Blue states with high levels of mail-in voting (some only have mail-in voting), the next few elections are going to be a real challenge for Democrats.

Additionally, as you’re reading these words, millions of voters are being purged from the rolls in Red states, particularly in Blue cities with significant minority populations.

As a result, this fall we’re going to have to show up in absolutely overwhelming numbers just to get squeaker victories in these now-heavily-rigged Republican-controlled states.

Unless enough of us stand up, speak up, and get active to regain control of Congress this fall and push legislation protecting American voters, Republicans will continue to eviscerate the voting right they’ve now turned into a privilege until it becomes completely meaningless.

And that will signal the end of America as we know it.

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an sn 11 25

If Ohio was a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump World, faithfully executing the corrupt orders of an unforgiving boss, would Ohioans even blink an eye?

Trumpian taskmasters in the Ohio Statehouse already execute public policy based on the dictates of the MAGA king. So, what is the difference?

Unquestioning obedience to the convicted felon drove Ohio Republicans (with obliging Democrats) to intensify congressional district manipulation and give Trump the gerrymandered advantage he demanded ahead of the 2026 elections.

The boss also ordered red states to make it harder for voters to cast ballots in the midterms. Less turnout is less threatening. Trump fears the results of a referendum on his regime.

The Ohio Senate is in his corner.

State Sen. Theresa Gavarone, as usual, leads the anti-voter brigade on the pretense of election integrity.

She doesn’t even come up with new excuses to erect barriers to voting anymore.

The Bowling Green Republican, behind one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country, longs to get on right-wing radar by going more extreme than MAGA Republicans in Congress to disenfranchise voters with made-up election fraud remedies unsupported by evidence.

Last week, the Ohio Senate passed one of Gavarone’s bills in record time. But Ohio Senate Bill 293 was a rush order from Trump World.

It came with an explicit warning: get rid of mail-in voting or risk the wrath of Trump’s Department of Justice in court.

The only U.S. president who conspired to overturn an election he lost, with lies about widespread mail ballot fraud, is laying the groundwork to delegitimize another election with the same fantastical and false claims about vote-by-mail fraud.

He is again sowing baseless doubts about secure mail-in voting systems used by nearly 1 in 3 Americans in 2024.

All it took for Ohio Senate Republicans to go along was a little federal pressure/extortion.

For no compelling reason, they voted to stop counting legitimate mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day in Trump-friendly legislation that mirrored his legally shaky executive order in March.

The EO decreed ballots received post-election invalid and commanded voters produce birth certificates or passports as proof of eligibility — *to create unwarranted obstacles for millions of Americans who simply want to vote.

Gavarone co-sponsored correlating legislation, Ohio Senate Bill 153, to impose the same burden on Ohioans.

It appears to be on the fast track for passage.

Meanwhile, Ohio Senate Bill 293 is headed to the Ohio House to become another voter suppression law in the state.

It would arbitrarily eliminate the mail-in ballot “grace period” in Ohio and cause legal ballots to be thrown out.

But the eminently absurd Gavarone insisted, “we want all valid votes to count, and the process needs to be done on Election Day” or we will turn into pumpkins at the close of polls.

Republican lawmakers who previously shortened the deadline (from 10 to four days) in which those late-arriving ballots, postmarked by Election Day, were counted now embrace Trump’s edict not to processany ballot received past Election Day — lest unchecked power be checked by incoming ballots.

In 2024, almost 10,000 mail-in ballots from eligible Ohio voters arrived in the four-day window that would be eliminated in SB 293.

That’s 10,000 citizens, enough to flip a race, summarily disenfranchised.

Tough luck if you’re a registered voter in good standing, particularly one who is elderly or disabled or lives in rural areas, and postal delays beyond your control cancel your vote.

It’s crazy. Over a million Ohioans used mail-in ballots to vote in the last presidential election. That’s about 17% of the nearly 5,900,000 votes cast.

More registered Republicans voted by mail in Ohio in 2024, than Democrats did.

Voters 65 and older, Ohio’s biggest age demographic, were far and away the biggest users of mail-in voting, returning roughly 520,000 ballots by mail a year ago.

Why not vote from the convenience of home and bypass lines at the polls?

Voting by mail, which surged to record rates in the 2020 election, is still pretty popular and a majority of Americans favor allowing the option to make it safer, easier and more reliable for people to cast ballots.

They don’t buy Trump’s ravings about mail voting fraud which, in truth, is exceedingly rare.

But after Democratic victories in off-year elections last week Trump again railed baselessly about “rigged” mail voting and called on congressional Republicans to ban it outright “except for military, far away military, and people that are very sick.”

He is seeding the ground for rejection of midterm election results he doesn’t like in a throwback to 2020.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Ohioans should know the part their Statehouse politicians are playing in the Trump sequel, how they dutifully execute legislative assaults on voting rights (or else) to enable rule by fiat not the ballot box.

So is the Statehouse is working for Trump World instead of us?

Mia Lewis, of Common Cause Ohio, asked Trumpian taskmasters directly in recent testimony against SB 293.

“Senator Gavarone often asks, ‘Isn’t even just one instance of fraudulent vote too many?’ Of course. It could theoretically skew the result. Luckily, this is so vanishingly rare it has not had and could not have had any impact. *But if someone who is eligible to vote — who wants to vote, does everything legally to vote — if they have their voted ballot cast aside uncounted, isn’t that too many, Senator Gavarone?”

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see march xo

BAD BEAT 3 STATES AND PA SCOTUS

AN 11 25

'Kamikaze pilots': Trump says Democrats will 'take down the country' after big wins

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AN 11 25

President Donald Trump is drafting an executive order aimed at rolling back voting rights, a measure that may include attacks on mailed ballots, a top administration official said Tuesday.

“The White House is working on an executive order to strengthen our elections in this country and to ensure that there cannot be blatant fraud, as we’ve seen in California with their universal mail-in voting system,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“Like any executive order, of course, any executive order the president signs is within his full executive authority and within the confines of the law,” she added.

Asked by a reporter what is her evidence of electoral fraud in California, Leavitt replied without evidence that “it’s just a fact.”

Leavitt’s remarks came hours after Trump baselessly attacked California’s vote-by-mail system in a post on his Truth Social network.

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“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump alleged without evidence. “All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!”

Trump has previously vowed to ban mail-in ballots, a move legal experts say would be unconstitutional.

The White House’s announcement also came as Americans voted in several high-stakes elections, including California’s Proposition 50 retaliatory redistricting proposal; the New York City mayoral race between progressive Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa; gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia; and a crowded contest for Minneapolis mayor highlighted by democratic socialist state Sen. Omar Fateh’s (D-62) bid to unseat third-term Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey.

The announcement also followed a federal judge’s permanent blocking of part of Trump’s executive order requiring proof of US citizenship on federal voter registration forms.

Democracy defenders have repudiated Trump’s attacks on mailed ballots and claims of voter fraud—a longtime right-wing bugaboo unsupported by facts on the ground.

“Voting by mail as permitted by the laws of your state is legal,” ACLU Voting Rights Project director Sophia Lin Lakin says in a statementon the group’s website about Trump’s order from March.

“In his sweeping executive order, Trump tried to bully states into not counting ballots properly received after Election Day under state law by threatening to withhold federal funding,” she continues. “A federal court has temporarily blocked this part of the executive order.”

“Trump’s effort to target mail-in voting is a blatant overreach, intruding on states’ constitutional authority to set the rules for elections,” Lin Lakin adds. “It threatens to disenfranchise tens of millions of eligible voters and would no doubt disproportionately impact historically excluded communities, including voters of color, naturalized citizens, people with disabilities, and the elderly, by pushing unnecessary barriers to the fundamental right to vote.”

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AN 10 25

Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett notified the president he is referring 42 “potential non-U.S. citizens” to the FBI for illegal votes.

Those potential illegal voters account for 0.0001% of all registered voters in Tennessee.

Responding to a letter from President Donald Trump congratulating him for using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, Hargett thanked the president for improving the system to help Tennessee “protect our voter rolls.”

“The collaborative spirit and speed with which your administration worked to improve SAVE and make it available is unprecedented,” Hargett said in a letter posted on Facebook.

Hargett said his office is referring those who might not be U.S. citizens to the FBI for investigation.

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The SAVE system is designed to help states verify citizenship and immigration status of people seeking government benefits. But states such as Tennessee use it to check people’s citizenship status for voting, even though some groups question its effectiveness.

The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that advocates for democracy and justice, reports that information from SAVE is sometimes incomplete or old, making the program useful but not fully reliable in determining a person’s citizenship.

The institute also said a move by the Department of Homeland Security to expand the amount of information accessible through SAVE increases the risk of states erroneously purging eligible voters from their rolls.

Tennessee had about 4.3 million registered voters as of June after purging some 276,000, according to the Secretary of State’s website.

Trump offered the program free of charge to states in March with an executive order to protect election integrity and make sure only U.S. citizens cast ballots.

“You were one of the first leaders to step up and protect the integrity of our elections by using the SAVE system — and I commend you for your decisive action,” Trump said in his letter to Hargett.

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an 10 25}:

In an article for MSNBC published Wednesday, legal analyst Jordan Rubin argued that conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is driving a dangerous effort to limit voting rights, based on what Rubin calls an “unfounded insistence” that race-based remedies must have an expiration date.

Rubin warned that Kavanaugh’s position, voiced during oral arguments in a major voting rights case out of Louisiana on Wednesday, could pave the way for the Court to further dismantle the Voting Rights Act.

"The Supreme Court is on the verge of further limiting voting rights, thanks in part to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s unfounded insistence that considering race can only be legal for a certain amount of time into the future — regardless of what the law and the Constitution say,” he wrote.

At issue is whether the state’s congressional map, which includes a second majority-Black district, violates constitutional protections against race discrimination.

But Kavanaugh steered the hearing into broader ideological territory by pressing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund attorney, Janai Nelson, on when race-conscious remedies should end — a question not rooted in the actual text of the law or Constitution, Rubin noted.

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Nelson responded that there is no legal time limit, emphasizing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — currently under scrutiny — targets current, provable racial discrimination in voting. That provision has become especially vital since the Court’s 2013 decision, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, which effectively dismantled another key part of the Act.

Kavanaugh first introduced his “time limit” theory in a 2023 case from Alabama, where he and Roberts joined liberal justices in a surprising 5-4 vote upholding a Section 2 claim.

However, Rubin noted that Kavanaugh signaled then that he might not support such remedies indefinitely, writing that “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

Now, Rubin argues, that theory is no longer theoretical.

With the Court’s conservative majority expressing discomfort with race-based considerations, even when aimed at remedying discrimination, Rubin sees the Louisiana case as a potential turning point.

If the Court rules in favor of the state, it could sharply curtail Section 2’s power, a result Nelson called “pretty catastrophic.”

Rubin concluded that abandoning race-conscious remedies not only misreads the law but ignores the ongoing racial realities they were designed to address.

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GMAIL 10 25

pORTLAND, Maine*– Leonard Leo, the conservative operative who built Donald Trump’s radical right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court, is spending big money to make it harder to vote in Maine, ahead of Susan Collins’s crucial reelection fight next year.

Leo is already a divisive figure in the Pine Tree State: His mansion in the Bar Harbor area has been the site of frequent protests ever since the high court’s conservatives overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal right to an abortion. Neighbors and visitors regularly decry Leo’s influence on US politics and the judiciary, much of which flows through his historic $1.6 billion dark-money slush fund.

Upgrade to paid

Serving as Trump’s first-term judicial adviser, Leo helped select three conservative justices, while his dark money network spent millions on PR campaigns supporting them. Those justices were essential in overturning Roe.

As Maine prepares for a competitive and likely ultra-expensive Senate race next year, in which Democrats will again try to unseat Collins, Maine’s Republican senator, Leo’s dark money network and his allies are bankrolling the main donor behind Question 1, a ballot measure that would change how many Maine residents participate in that election.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, tells Zeteo that Question 1 was “written by people that don’t fully understand Maine elections,” and would create “irregularities” that conflict with how elections are currently administered. “It indicates the influence of dark money and out-of-state interests in drafting the statutory changes,” she says.

‘The Core Leo Playbook’...

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The one man who's done more to destroy democracy than Donald Trump

AN COMM DR FRED W 9 25

Chief Justice John Roberts is smart and skilled. He will be remembered, however, as a historic failure.

This is not a claim to make lightly, but his record compels it, because Roberts’ legacy will be defined by two catastrophic roles he played.

First, Roberts has played the lead role in destroying indispensable rules of our democracy.

Second, Roberts has played the lead judicial role in serving as the handmaiden to President Trump’s efforts to turn our democracy into an autocracy. This historic failure will be detailed next week in Part II.

Destroying essential rules of democracy

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Roberts has taken the lead in writing a series of opinions that have destroyed essential rules governing our democracy. They deal with:

The sacred right of every eligible citizen to vote.
The integrity and honesty of the political system.
The right of citizens to have an unrigged opportunity to choose their representatives.
The idea that public officials should not be allowed to sell influence with their office.
The foundational principle that no person is above the law.

The following opinions, written by Roberts and joined in all but one case only by the Republican-appointed majority on the Court, have done unprecedented harm to our democracy.

*Shelby County v. Holder

Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder(2013). It declared key sections of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most consequential voting rights law ever enacted, to be unconstitutional. The Act was reenacted periodically over decades until the Shelby County decision.

*The Roberts opinion unleashed a wave of regressive and discriminatory voting changes by states and local jurisdictions that disadvantaged minority voters and impeded their voting rights and their ability to fully participate in the democratic process.

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission

Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014) which struck down the aggregate limit on all contributions by a donor in an election cycle, a provision previously held constitutional by the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeoin 1976.

InBuckley, the Supreme Court had found that unlimited contributions given to support candidates were inherently corrupt. The McCutcheon *decision, however, eviscerated the limits on individual contributions to candidates by unleashing billionaires, millionaires, and other big money donors to give unlimited, often huge, contributions to Super PACs to benefit specific candidates.

*Rucho v. Common Cause

Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 Court decision in Rucho v. Common Cause(2019),in which the Court decided that it could not act on challenges to partisan redistricting plans. The decision claimed that the Court is incapable of establishing standards for determining when partisan maps become unconstitutional, no matter how extreme.

TheRucho *decision means that there are no constitutional restrictions on partisan gerrymandering, no matter how rigged the plans are. The result is that politicians get to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives.

*McDonnell v. United States

Roberts wrote the unanimous opinion in McDonnell v. United States, (2016), which vacated the conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell for honest services fraud and extortion. In his opinion, Roberts said that McDonnell’s actions did not constitute “official acts” under the applicable laws, including the bribery law.

In its decision, the Court adopted a narrow, unrealistic construction of the term “official act” to exclude various acts of an officeholder that should be covered, even when those acts are done in direct exchange for gifts or other benefits. For all practical purposes, the Court has left the country without effective bribery laws to prevent public officials from selling their office for financial benefits.

*Trump v. United States

Roberts wrote the opinion for a 6–3 majority in Trump v. United States (2024), which gave Trump presidential criminal immunity.

The decision violated a guiding principle of our Founders that no person is above the law. The Roberts opinion placing Trump above the law and also giving him personal control of the Justice Department and FBI can be seen in such outrageous Trump pronouncements as the statement that he has “The right to do anything I want to. I’m the president of the United States,” and “I run the country and the world.”

*It is unlikely that any Chief Justice in history played more of a role in destroying more of our nation’s democracy rules than Roberts. And that is how he will be remembered.

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Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which she’ll help oversee the nation’s election infrastructure.

Honey is a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. In 2024, ProPublica reported that Honey had played a key role in Mitchell’s behind-the-scenes effort to change Georgia’s election rules to allow Republican officials to contest a potential Trump loss in that year’s presidential race. Honey also promoted election conspiracy theories, including one Trump cited in a speech to his followers before they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Though states do the on-the-ground work of running elections, DHS supports them with tasks beyond their capacities, such as protecting IT infrastructure and voter databases from foreign intrusions. The agency, with bipartisan support, took on this role in the aftermath of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Experts on voting and state election officials warned that Honey’s appointment as DHS’ deputy assistant secretary of election integrity could erode trust between state and federal officials, prompting states not to share information with the agency.

“We are witnessing a dangerous trend: the elevation of known bad-faith actors like Heather Honey,” said Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, in a statement, citing Honey’s “well-documented history of spreading election lies that have been debunked in court.”

Fontes called her involvement with DHS “deeply troubling” and said “when the agency gives a platform to individuals who have actively worked to erode public trust, it becomes harder to view DHS as a reliable partner in election security.”

A DHS spokesperson did not answer questions from ProPublica on Honey’s appointment or the exact nature of her responsibilities. Honey didn’t respond to calls or emails. The White House also didn’t respond to a request for comment. Her name is listed on the organization’s leadership structure online, and her appointment was first reported by the website Democracy Docket.

In the first Trump administration, the federal government set up programs designed to shield U.S. elections from foreign interference, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of DHS. But Trump soured on this and other initiatives after the director of CISA publicly rebutted his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Since the start of the second Trump presidency, the administration has gutted those programs, cutting hundreds of employees at CISA. Its director, Chris Krebs, is now under federal investigation, DHS has said; Krebs told CNN that the investigation appeared to be an act of political retribution. The Justice Department has also rolled back a program aimed at combatting foreign influence campaigns. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a memorandum that the Justice Department’s program was disbanded to “free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”

David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit focused on building trust in American elections, said the cuts had dismantled “nearly all” of DHS’ capacity to protect election infrastructure. He said state elections officials feared that Honey’s appointment, combined with the program cuts, signaled the Trump administration’s intent to eliminate bulwarks of fair U.S. elections.

“The hiring of an election conspiracy theorist with no election knowledge or expertise is the culmination of this reversal,” Becker said. “DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies.”

Two sources familiar with Honey’s hiring at DHS said she began working for the agency last week. An organizational chart dated Aug. 18 on the department’s website identifies her as a leader in the agency’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans. Her position wasn’t on a version of the website archived in July, and officials in former administrations said that there’s been no such job previously.

It’s not clear yet what Honey will oversee, but former DHS officials said that deputy assistant secretaries are typically the agency’s top experts in their subject areas. They’re often involved in drafting executive orders and crafting policies. They also serve as liaisons to the White House and the National Security Council.

Since Honey started, Trump has announced “a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines via executive order, though a top aide subsequently said the administration would pursue those goals through legislative action. DHS has also threatened to cut off about $28 million in grants to help states prepare for terrorism and disasters if they don’t change voting rules to conform to the administration’s priorities, NPR has reported.

Honey’s duties likely would include helping to organize the government’s policy responses if foreign actors make intrusions into the nation’s election systems, former officials said. To do this, and to assess the security of election infrastructure, someone in her position would typically have access to classified information, including the government’s election-related intelligence.

Experts expressed concern about Honey’s portfolio, given her history of spreading misinformation.

“Heather Honey’s past misleading claims about vote counts in Pennsylvania, among other things, have helped fuel false conspiracy theories about stolen elections,” said Larry Norden, an election expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a nonpartisan law and policy group.

Before becoming swept up in the “Stop the Steal” movement, Honey had no experience in the federal government or as an election administrator, working as a Pennsylvania-based private investigator.

Amid Rise of RFK Jr., Officials Waver on Drinking Water Fluoridation — Even in the State Where It Started](https://www.propublica.org/article/fluoride-drinking-water-rfk-jr-michigan-cdc-hhs)

After the 2020 election, she became a contractor for a Republican-backed audit seeking proof of fraud in ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona. According to emails between employees working on the review, which ended up reaffirming Biden’s win, Honey helped draft the final report.

Since then, Honey has led at least three organizations devoted to transforming election systems in ways championed by conservatives, such as tightening eligibility requirements for people to be on voter rolls. Members of Honey’s Pennsylvania Fair Elections, a state chapter of Mitchell’s nationwide Election Integrity Network, have challenged the eligibility of thousands of residents to be on voter rolls.

Honey has also been involved in numerous other efforts to transform elections around the country, including a successful push to get many states with Republican leadership to pull out of a bipartisan interstate partnership to share data to make voting more secure.

Do you have information you can share about Heather Honey or elections work being done in the federal government, especially at the Department of Homeland Security? Contact reporter Doug Bock Clark at doug.clark@propublica.org or on Signal at 678-243-0784. If you’re concerned about confidentiality, check out our advice on the most secure ways to share tips.

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Cleta Mitchell’s New Dark Money Elections Group Raised $3.9 Million in Its First Full Year of Operations - EXPOSEDbyCMD

JUL 2025

Insurrectionist and voter suppression advocate Cleta Mitchell formed a new dark money group in 2023 to channel funds to organizations that promote the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election and spread misinformation about the threat of widespread noncitizen voting.

Housed in the offices of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the Foundation for Accountability Integrity & Research in Elections Fund (FAIR Elections Fund) brought in $3.9 million between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, and disclosed $2.1 million in expenses, more than three-quarters of which was disbursed in grants to other organizations.

The FAIR Elections Fund has no website as of publication. A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) analysis of the group’s first tax filing, recently made public, offers the first internal look into Mitchell’s group since she disclosed leading it in biographies and news reports.

The group’s IRS filing says that it made no payments for salaries or other compensation, while claiming Mitchell is working 50 hours per week for the group. This raises the question of who is paying Mitchell for her work.

Mitchell has worked to manufacture a crisis around noncitizens voting and partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to push for model bills and amendments to state constitutions banning it — despite the fact that evidence of noncitizen voting is scarce. “Every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare,” the Brennan Center reported in 2024.

A senior legal fellow at CPI, Mitchell launched her previous project, the Election Integrity Network (EIN), with the help of the right-wing group, which was founded and led by former U.S. senator and congressman Jim DeMint and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows (also an insurrectionist). In 2023, EIN moved out of the CPI constellation of nonprofits and is now “administered and managed by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy with Virginia Institute president Lynn Taylor also serving as EIN’s Chairman as Cleta Mitchell retains an active EIN role as its founder,” according to a 2023 booklet obtained by CMD.

EIN’s latest IRS filing shows that as of December 2023 it was still registered at CPI’s office address, with just $213 left in the bank.

Serving on the FAIR Elections Fund board of directors alongside Mitchell, its president, are Vice President Heather Honey, Vice President Daniel Bean, Secretary Don Workman, and Treasurer Pat Corrigan.

Honey, also an executive director at the Election Research Institute, is a close ally of Mitchell who worked with her to sow doubt about the efficacy and trustworthiness of the nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which has resulted in many states opting out of this interstate effort to help ensure accurate voter rolls.

A 2024 analysis by Votebeat and Spotlight PA found that conclusions in Honey’s report on ERIC “are false, often based on out-of-context examples, and… are frequently not backed by the data she presents.”

The IRS filing shows that the FAIR Elections Fund paid $121,284 to Honey’s organization Verity Vote LLC for “consulting.”

Vice President Daniel Bean is an attorney who represented Trump advisor Andy Surabian when he was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Secretary Don Workman is a partner at Baker & Hostetler and was a partner at Foley & Lardner, the Washington-based law firm that Mitchell was forced to resign from after she participated in the infamous post-2020 election phone call in which Trump urged Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes for him to claim victory in that swing state.

Treasurer Pat Corrigan runs Compass Direct LLC, a fundraising company that works for CPI, where his brother Edward is president. Given Corrigan’s role as treasurer, he is likely the one tasked with raising funds for the organization.

$1.6 Million in Grants

The FAIR Elections Fund distributed $1.6 million in grants in 2023-24 to 10 allied groups.

The FDRLST Media Foundation, which publishes the right-wing web magazine The Federalist, received $400,000, the largest grant. In 2020, The Federalist falsely accused Democrats of trying to steal the election in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania during extended vote counting in the days following the presidential election.

The pro-Trump outlet also published a column EIN’s Kerri Toloczko misinforming readers that noncitizen voting is a crisis that needs to be addressed through federal legislation. Since 2019 it has run nine pieces by Mitchell on noncitizen voting, purging voter rolls, and voting by mail.

EIN’s administrator, the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, received the next largest grant of $325,000. The Institute held its fifth Election Integrity Summit on May 16, and holds “infrastructure trainings” twice a month.

The FAIR Elections Fund funneled its third largest grant of $300,000 to the State Freedom Caucus Foundation, the sister organization of the State Freedom Caucus Network (SFCN). CPI incubated SFCN, which Meadows launched in 2021. From the beginning, the group has touted “election integrity” as a priority.

The network has been deployed to ban noncitizens from voting at the federal level as well as at the state level in places like Missouri.

Mitchell also spoke at the 2024 State Freedom Caucus Network Summit, where Wyoming State Freedom Caucus Chair Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R) said she “shared some shocking statistics about American elections and illegal immigration.”

The Immigration Accountability Project (IAP) received $150,000 from the FAIR Elections Fund, the IRS filing shows. IAP President Chris Chmielenski collaborated with Mitchell and Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, to work a room of 150 attendees at ALEC’s 2024 Annual Meeting to approve an Only Citizens Vote Coalition model bill banning noncitizen voting, The Guardian reported.

The FAIR Elections Fund, Immigration Accountability Project, and Election Transparency Initiative are all members of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, with Mitchell serving as a “co-convener.”

Also receiving FAIR Elections Fund grants between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 were the Tea Party Patriots Foundation ($100,000); Citizen Outreach Foundation ($89,100); John K MacIver Institute for Public Policy ($75,000); Strong Communities Foundation of AZ ($75,000); Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty ($75,000); and Wisconsin Voter Alliance Corp ($25,000).

In November, Wisconsin voters passed a ballot measure to change one word in the state constitution to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in any local, state, or federal election. The right-wing MacIver Institute and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty were proponents of its passage.

Funding is Dark

Despite the new IRS filings, funding information about the FAIR Elections Fund is scarce. The organization is not required to disclose its donors, and a CMD search of the filings only identified a single contribution of $795,000 from CPI, which does not note the original source of the funds. A CMD analysis of CPI’s known funders is available here.

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GGL 10 25

Democracy Docket

Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections

Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections ... Cleta Mitchell thinks President Donald Trump may declare a...

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Plaintiffs Want Cleta Mitchell to Testify on Law to Suppress Student Voting

Voting rights groups in North Carolina are asking a federal court to compel election-denying lawyer Cleta Mitchell to testify in their...

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Critics ask court to compel election integrity activist Mitchell to testify at NC trial

Left-of-center groups challenging a provision of North Carolina election law are asking a federal judge to help them ensure election...

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Researcher who distorted voter data gets election integrity job in Trump’s second term

For those who followed Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, Cleta Mitchell's name probably rings a bell.

1 month ago

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Can Trump use emergency powers to influence federal elections?

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who played a role in President Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said Mr. Trump could declare a...

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Despite Trump's win, 'election integrity' activists still seek sweeping voting changes

Republican voters say they trust the 2024 election was administered well, yet pro-Trump conservatives are pushing some sweeping reforms to...

Jan 13, 2025

ProPublica

She Pushed to Overturn Trump’s Loss in the 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.

Heather Honey has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security. State election officials and voting experts...

1 month ago

The Guardian

She was a firebrand Democrat. Now, Cleta Mitchell is a rising star of Republican election denialism | Donald Trump

Mitchell is now one of the most influential Republicans working to shape election law and policy ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Jul 2, 2024

EXPOSEDbyCMD

Cleta Mitchell’s New Dark Money Elections Group Raised $3.9 Million in Its First Full Year of Operations

The pro-Trump outlet also published a column EIN's Kerri Toloczko misinforming readers that noncitizen voting is a crisis that needs to be...

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dem dock 9 25

Democracy Docket

Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections

Cleta Mitchell thinks President Donald Trump may declare a national emergency to allow him to take control of national elections.

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Since the start of the year, Democracy Docket has expanded its newsroom to keep up with the unprecedented war on democracy being waged under...

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DHS Said to Brief Cleta Mitchell’s Group on Citizenship Checks for Voting

David Jennings, DHS's associate chief of U.S. citizenship and immigration services, was special guest for an Election Integrity Network...

.Jun 12, 2025

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Leading Election Conspiracy Theorist Appointed to DHS Leadership Position

A leading election conspiracy theorist — described by the anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell as a “wonderful person” — has been named to a...

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If Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials can brief an election-denier group on how states are now using its databases to verify...

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DOJ’s New Top Voting Lawyer Worked for Leading Anti-Voting Law Firm

The new top voting lawyer at the Department of Justice was until recently an attorney and activist for a leading anti-voting legal group.

.May 31, 2025

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Georgia Court Allows Election Deniers to Join Fulton Board of Elections

The Fulton County Board of Commissioners rejected Julie Adams and Jason Frazier's nominations in May.

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This case in Georgia is an opportunity to further expose the MAGA anti-voter machine, and affirm that the Voting Rights Act still has teeth.

.May 13, 2025

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Key Architect of Trump’s Plot to Steal 2020 Election Addressed Anti-Voting Activists from White House Complex

In the video, Jeffrey Clark attacks “the globalist forces and the forces of internationalism and of the United Nations."

.Jun 17, 2025

Democracy Docket

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A Georgia judge ruled yesterday that certifying election results is a mandatory duty for county election officials.

.Oct 15, 2024

AN 8 25

The Atlantic reports courts will not likely let President Donald Trump destroy mail-in voting, but that won’t stop him from gumming up elections.

The president appears to have taken his most recent idea for ending mail-in voting from Russian authoritarian Vladimir Putin, who told him “you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” according to a Fox News interview with host Sean Hannity.

Days later, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would ban “MAIL-IN BALLOTS” in an “EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He later said in an Oval Office press conference that: “We’re going to end mail-in voting. It’s a fraud.”

Such an order would have little legal power, writes Atlantic reporter Quinta Jurecic. “The American system for administering elections is highly decentralized: The work of deciding how people should vote and of helping them do so is largely carried out at the state and local levels, with the federal government playing only a minor role.”

IFrame Content

Banning mail-in ballots is a presidential power that doesn’t exist, but Jurecic said Trump can still make an “enormous mess” by “MacGyvering” a clumsy workaround. The Justice Department could threaten state and local election officials with “baseless investigations” in an effort at intimidation.

“Prosecutors would encounter the small problem that no criminal statutes obviously apply to an election official legally handing out mail-in ballots. But the risk of a criminal investigation, even a meritless one, could still frighten election administrators,” Jurecic said.

Trump’s “hatred of mail-in ballots dates back to 2016,” said Jurecic, when he complained of Colorado’s shift to all-mail voting. He also tried to claim that “fraudulent” mail-in votes stole his presidency — an idea that become a key claim of the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

But his animosity is knocking up against Republican voters’ increasing use of mail-in voting in their own elections, and Jurecic, adding that Trump’s advisors “may have to struggle to contain him.”

“The risk created by Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots is less that Trump will actually succeed in limiting access to the franchise and that such limitations will actually tilt the playing field toward Republicans, and more that the president will … kick up enough doubt and confusion that a significant number of Americans no longer trust an election’s results,” Jurecic said.

Read the full Atlantic report at this link.

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an 8 25

Democratic election lawyer, voting rights expert and Democracy Docket publisher Mark Elias is warning that President Donald Trump is determined to "steal the 2026 elections" — and his game plan, according to an, includes a combination of voter suppression, election denial and a mid-decade U.S. Census (which is violating the rules because the next Census isn't due until 2030).

According to The New Republic's Greg Sargent (formerly of the Washington Post), Trump made his intentions for the 2026 midterms clear in a Monday morning, August 18 post on his Truth Social platform.

"President Donald Trump raged at Democrats Monday for supposedly cheating in elections in a long and unhinged Truth Social rant — and buried in his tirade is a clear indication of how he hopes to corrupt the 2026 midterm elections at a time when his agenda is nosediving in polls," Sargent explains. "In his screed, Trump rehashed his familiar lies about how mail balloting is riddled with fraud, and promised to lead a new 'movement' to abolish it."

Sargent warned that the executive order Trump is threatening for the 2026 elections is especially troubling.

IFrame Content

Trump posted, "WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections. Remember, the States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes."

Sargent explains, "Trump already unveiled a similar executive order in March designed to change election rules. It would have barred states from accepting ballots mailed on time but that arrive after Election Day and forced state officials to require documented proof of citizenship for everyone who registers to vote in federal elections…. Trump appears prepared to have a second run at such an executive order. But what's critical about Monday's post is he connected this scheme directly to the midterms, inadvertently revealing the real aim behind it."

The New Republic journalist continues, "Trump's new rant says he’s going to 'lead a movement to get rid of' mail balloting, then later says this 'movement' will begin with his new executive order — a strong indication he will try to ban vote-by-mail by executive order. Voting rights advocates have long expected him to attempt something like this, perhaps by arguing that vote-by-mail is a threat to national security."

Attorney Pooja Chaudhuri of the Democracy Defenders Fund warned that Trump could commit an "enormous abuse of power" with the 2026 midterms.

Chaudhuri told The New Republic, "It sounds like he will try to ban all mail-in balloting through executive order, and he's going to have to find some other rationale for such a sweeping presidential action."

Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy at the Center for American Progress, told The New Republic, "If they are going to try to stand for election integrity, it hurts them to point out that this is directly related to the 2026 elections. It exposes that this is not about election integrity and national security, it's about election rigging."

*Greg Sargent's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.

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maddow 3 scams on election. putin says no mail in votes. texas gerry, census BS again?

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-putin-voting-machines-mail-ballots-executive-order-rcna225608

Aug. 19, 2025,

By Ryan Teague Beckwith, Newsletter Editor

President Donald Trump is talking about changing voting laws again, citing a recent conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After a summit in Alaska last week, Trump said Putin talked with him about election integrity. He then posted on Truth Social about plans to change voting machines before next year's midterms and again raised the issue on Monday while meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House — ostensibly to talk about peace in Ukraine.

But what exactly did Putin tell Trump, and what is Trump now trying to do? And were either man's claims accurate? Here are some answers.

What are Russian elections like?

Multiple outside groups have labeled Russian elections as illegitimate. In 2023, Russian Election Monitor, a group of European scholars, former and active politicians and public officials, found "a serious deterioration" in voting rights in Russia. The group cited last-minute changes to laws, attempts to complicate election observation, a lack of free debate, pressure on candidates and voters and a lack of independent election commissions. Some parts of Russia use electronic voting systems, which have been found to be vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. The European Parliament condemned Russian elections as "illegitimate and undemocratic."

Why would Putin, of all people, lecture the U.S. on voting?

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We don't know for sure. But as a former KGB agent, Putin was trained on how to emotionally manipulate people he's dealing with. (He famously brought his black Labrador to a meeting with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is afraid of dogs.) Telling Trump that the 2020 election was rigged against him seems like an obvious way to get on his good side.

What did Putin say?

According to Trump, "he said 'your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.' He said, 'Mail-in voting, every election —no country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.' And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said, 'You won that election by so much.'"

Is any of that true?

No.

According to a 2024 count by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 34 countries have mail-in voting, including Canada, Denmark and Germany.

:{:{An analysis of all known voter fraud cases in the U.S. from 2000 to 2012 found only 491 cases of mail voter fraud — during a period in which literally billions of ballots were cast.}:

Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Judges found various claims made by Trump and his allies to be without merit in more than 60 cases, and a statistical analysis by researchers from Harvard and Cambridge University found no evidence to back up the claims.

What did Trump say he would do next?

Trump said he was going to "lead a movement" to get rid of mail-in ballots and what he called "Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election." He said he would sign an executive order to "help bring HONESTY" to the 2026 midterm elections.

What does he mean, exactly?

Honestly, it's hard to say. At one point he said he was required to give his license plate number to vote, which is not true. But in past remarks, Trump has called for nearly all voting to be done on paper ballots, counted by hand, on Election Day, with the winner declared on election night.

There are few problems with those proposals:

Nearly all U.S. voters already vote on paper or receive some kind of verified paper receipt. The 1.3% who don't live in Louisiana or parts of Indiana, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas, according to Verified Voting.

Hand-counting ballots is slower, less accurate and more expensive than using machines. All U.S. voting machines have to pass rigorous tests that show they can accurately count at least 10 million votes.

Early voting, whether by mail or in-person, is now legal in all but three states (Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire). In the 2024 election, more than 85 million votes were cast before Election Day, a little more than half of all ballots.

It would be extremely difficult to count all ballots cast on election night since there are nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each with its own races for everything from the school board to the state legislature.

How flattery plays a role in Trump’s foreign affairs after Putin summit

06:47

Could Trump really change voting laws by executive order?

The answer here should be a clear no, but we live in unprecedented times. Under the U.S. Constitution, elections are handled at the local levelaccording to state laws, though Congress can set minimum national standards for elections. The federal role typically involves giving guidance to elections officials and offering grants to upgrade equipment.

At a practical level, making the kinds of massive changes to election law that Trump envisions would be expensive and take time to set up, even if every local and state official went along with it. The midterms are in about 14 months, which means there's a very narrow window for any changes to be made, as officials would need to buy, install and test machines and hire and train appropriate staff.

Trump did not say he would ask Congress to pass a law, which would be the only way to appropriate money, so it appears that he may simply try to order the states to make these changes by executive order, which would mean a flood of political pushback and lawsuits that would only shorten the amount of time available. As an example, one reason Louisiana has not replaced its outdated voting machines is that it would cost $105 million.

In his Truth Social post,Trump argued that states are "merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government" in counting votes and "must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them." Suffice it to say that this is not the traditional mainstream view of the U.S. Constitution, checks and balances or federalism.

Are there any problems with U.S. voting that could be addressed?

Sure. State and federal lawmakers could help replace those voting machines in Louisiana and parts of other states that don't have a voter-verified paper trail. More states could join a consortium of 25 states plus D.C. that shares voter registration information to track people who moved. State lawmakers could change laws that prevent officials from prepping early ballots to be counted, which would speed up results on election night.

Any other changes?

A major political figure could stop using his bully pulpit to baselessly attack the integrity of the U.S. voting system.

Ryan Teague Beckwith

Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MSNBC. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline.

8 25

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an 7 25

A sweeping new report from the Brennan Center for Justice warns that the Trump administration, backed by Republican legislators and allied state actors, is mounting what one civil‑rights coalition calls a “coordinated scheme” to rig voter rolls and control election machinery to stay in power regardless of how the public votes.

In an article for*People's World*published Monday, journalist Mark Gurenberg highlighted the key elements of this strategy that surfaced in an executive order signed March 25 titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”

It mandates documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or naturalization certificate, for any voter registration using the federal form, and bars counting mail‑in ballots if they arrive after Election Day, irrespective of postmark date. States that do not comply risk losing federal election funding and may face enforcement actions by the Department of Justice or other agencies.

The article highlighted the Brennan Center report's finding that more than 21 million eligible U.S. citizens — many low‑income voters, married women, seniors and people of color — lack ready access to the documentation required. This means that the order and its legislative counterpart in Congress, the proposal known as the SAVE Act, would likely prevent millions from ever registering to vote.

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The center's report said: “A president has no right to rewrite the country’s election rules or regulate federal elections on his own."

“As a federal court recently put it, ‘The Constitution vests none of these powers in the president.’ In issuing the order, the president claimed extraordinary unilateral authority to regulate federal elections and usurp the powers of Congress, the states, and the (U.S.) Elections Administration Commission, an independent, bipartisan federal agency," it added.

“It’s a solution in search of a problem,”said one civil‑rights leader in April who testified before the Senate Rules Committee.

“The SAVE Act is a direct attack on our freedom to vote and a dangerous attempt to silence the voices of millions—particularly voters of color, low income families, women, and young people … It is not about safeguarding elections. It is about stripping power from the people and undermining our democracy," the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a statement in March.

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AN 7 25

Six years after Trump demanded Geogia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” him enough votes to win in 2020, Republicans are still trying to find him votes.

“Now, he’s calling on Texas Republicans to find five congressional seats — before a single vote is cast in the 2026 midterms. And the GOP is answering that call,” said MSNBC co-host Symone Sanders Townsend.

Townsend referenced Texas Republicans proposing a heavily gerrymandered congressional map this week that gives Republicans control of 30 out of 38 House seats, despite 42 percent of the state voting for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.

If enacted, Townsend said the Republican map would “erase Democratic power in one of the most diverse states in the nation.”

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“We’ve seen this kind of maneuver before,” said Townsend. “After the 2010 tea party wave election, Republicans launched a nationwide campaign called the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) to win control of state legislatures ahead of the 2011 redistricting cycle. That effort paid off. Republicans gerrymandered themselves into durable congressional majorities in states like North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. A decade later, we’re still living with the consequences.”

The map, she said, “slices up Black and Latino communities,” particularly in urban centers like Dallas and Houston and gives an advantage to a white population that only comprises about 40 percent of the state’s population. The Texas Tribune reportsat least 54 percent of lawmakers were white in 2023, and half are white men.

“Now, Trump is attempting a mid-decade REDMAP 2.0 in Texas, a state that already had one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country and has a long history of using racial gerrymandering to suppress voters of color,” Townsend said.

This is part of a broader Republican Party strategy, said Townsend, which targets not only congressional maps but also state legislative lines.

“And that matters, because America’s policy doesn’t begin in Washington,” she said. “It starts in state capitols. Bathroom bills. Book bans. Voter roll purgers. Attacks on trans children. These policies are born in Republican-controlled legislatures and then bubble up to the national level.”

She added that Republicans know this, and "have been playing the long game," unlike Democrats

The public is already fighting back with hundreds of protestors showing up at redistricting hearings in Texas this week, but Townsend said Democrats need to get serious about investing in and flipping state seats or they could “lose a fair shot at the House not just in 2026, but until 2032. A full decade of minority rule.”

Read the full MSNBC report at this link.

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no lnx

Trump won't need to cancel the midterms if this Republican plot succeeds

Thom Hartmann July 08, 2025

James Carville isn’t a man prone to panic, but when he says, “I would not put it at all past [Trump] to try to call martial law or declare that there’s some kind of national emergency,” around next year’s elections, it’s time to sit up straight.

Speaking to NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, Carville warned that as Donald Trump sees a political shellacking coming in the 2026 midterms — particularly in states like New Jersey and Virginia — he may try something extreme to hold onto power.

“The hoof prints are coming,” Carville said, and he’s not wrong.

This isn’t hyperbole. This is history — the history of nations that have lost their democracies like Hungary and Russia — threatening to repeat itself.

Trump has already laid the psychological and structural groundwork to undermine or suspend elections; he just may not need to declare martial law if his fixers pull off what’s happening already this year.

Award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast, a committed non-partisan, has laid it out in painful detail. And what he’s uncovered should terrify every American who believes in democracy.

Palast argues that Trump’s GOP doesn’t have to wait for November 2026 to win. They plan to win it in 2025, through something he calls The Great Purge, authorized by five corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.

That’s right: before you even cast a vote, millions of names may already be scrubbed from voter rolls. If you’re Black, Latino, a student, a woman who changed her name at marriage, a military service member, or simply someone who moved apartments, you’re already a target.

Let’s break it down:

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported over 19 million names purged from voter rolls. While many were valid (deceased or moved), at least 4.47 million were blocked from voting due to bureaucratic tricks like “failure to return confirmation notices,” a tactic voting rights lawyers call “caging.”

In Georgia, Palast’s team working with the ACLU found that 63.3% of voters purged via caging were wrongly removed. Many were African-American.

Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State proudly doubled down in 2023, targeting 875,000 voters, and that’s just one state.

Thirty states now use an error-ridden system called ERIC for voter purging. Not accurate enough? Trump’s legal henchwoman, Cleta Mitchell, is pushing for a new program called EagleAI, the modern version of the GOP’s 1960s “Eagle Eye” voter intimidation operation.

If that wasn’t enough, Republicans have introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would force every newly registered or updated voter to present proof of citizenship in person. And if the name on your birth certificate is different from your passport or driver’s license, you can’t register or vote.

According to Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center, over 21 million Americans don’t have those documents readily available. And 69 million women don’t have their married name on their birth certificate. Many Americans don’t know where their passport or birth certificate is, especially those living in poverty, moving frequently, or serving overseas.

And let’s be clear about the excuse for this law: A racist myth. The Heritage Foundation, pushing the SAVE Act, claims millions of undocumented immigrants vote. But even Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who made it his mission to arrest illegal voters, found exactly zero in court. In fact, his law blocked 36,000 legal Kansas voters and was thrown out for being unconstitutional.

And now they’re bragging that they just purged 5 million new names so far this year, according to Judicial Watch.

Still, these tactics persist. Why? Because they work.

In 2000, George W. Bush won Florida by just 537 votes after tens of thousands of Black voters were falsely labeled as felons and purged by George’s brother, then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Today’s tactics are far more sophisticated and widespread, and with a Trumpified Supreme Court, far harder to stop.

Under Trump, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division — once the bulwark against voter suppression — has become complicit. Don’t expect any help from the feds if your name goes missing from the rolls.

In fact, Georgia’s Secretary of State has already requested access to DHS’s SAVE database — a tool used to track deported immigrants — to cross-reference voters. When Florida tried this in 2012, they removed 172,000 voters but only found one actual non-citizen: an Austrian Republican. But thousands of Hispanic voters were wrongly barred because they had common names like Jose Garcia.

That’s not election security. That’s systemic suppression.

While official channels do their damage, Trump’s allies are also organizing a private MAGA militia of self-appointed “fraud hunters.” In 2024, these vigilantes challenged over one million ballots. In 2026, Palast reports, they’re gearing up to challenge even more, targeting key swing states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.

And if state officials don’t comply with Trump’s purge lists, Mitchell promises her army will go door-to-door, one voter at a time.

Remember, all of this happens before a single vote is cast.

And if that doesn’t work? Now that Congress has funded ICE to become the largest (secret, masked) police agency in America with a network of concentration camps across the country, answerable only to Donald Trump, pretty much anything is possible.

Carville may sound alarmist when he talks about martial law, but let’s remember: Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, summoned a mob to the Capitol, and flirted with using the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against protestors, who he had asked his generals to “shoot in the legs.”

He’s mused to his followers, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” That’s not subtle. That’s a warning.

And while right-wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly chuckle and offer “18 muffalettas” in mockery, the groundwork for a democratic backslide is already laid, through legal loopholes, voter suppression, intimidation of Republican legislators like we saw yesterday, misinformation, and judicial capture.

Martial law may not arrive with tanks. It may come in the form of a national emergency declaration, a manufactured riot, or the pretense of mass fraud. Trump doesn’t have to cancel the election; he just has to delegitimize it enough to override it.

So what do we do?

As Palast warns: don’t despair. “They can’t steal all the votes all of the time.” But they sure as hell can steal enough.

We need:

Massive voter education on how to confirm your registration and re-register early.

Lawsuits and court challenges in every state adopting suppression tactics.

Federal action, if not from the Justice Department, then from an organized, relentless citizenry.

Election monitoring from independent and international groups.

And, when Democrats are again in power (G-d willing), a law that explicitly says we have a right to vote. It’s insane that government has to get a court order (thanks, Supreme Court) to take away your gun, but doesn’t even have to notify you when they take away your vote.

If Trump succeeds in today’s massive purge of largely Democratic voters and delegitimizing results, he won’t need martial law. The authoritarian train won’t arrive with a bang; it’ll glide in silently, on rails we failed to see being laid down this year.

So yes, James Carville is right to sound the alarm. And Greg Palast has done the reporting to prove it.

Now it’s up to us to stop it. Pass it along.

NOW READ: The Supreme Court just made it so that you can no longer look away

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the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a lawsuit filed by nearly a dozen Michigan Republican lawmakers seeking to roll back voting rights measures passed by voters in 2018 and 2022.

The suit, filed in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, argued that because the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, found in Article I, Section 4, provides for state legislatures to regulate the times, places, and manner of holding federal elections, measures passed by citizen-led petition initiatives are unconstitutional as they infringed on the state Legislature’s role within state election law.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to take the case was the third, and now final, rejection after the lawsuit was initially dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Jane Beckering, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, in April 2024 for a lack of standing, a decision which was then affirmed by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2024.

The lawsuit was sponsored by Michigan Fair Elections and the Great Lakes Justice Center and named Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Michigan Director of Elections Jonathan Brater as defendants.

Benson hailed the decision not to take up the case as a “victory for the people of Michigan,” saying the U.S. Supreme Court had correctly upheld the right of Michigan voters to amend the state constitution.

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“In recent years, voters in Michigan have overwhelmingly supported ballot initiatives to create a citizen-led independent redistricting process, to guarantee at least nine days of early voting for every statewide election, and to make voting more accessible for every eligible citizen. Today’s action ensures that the will of the voters will stand on these and other issues important to the people of our state,” Benson said.

Proposal 3 of 2018 and Proposal 2 of 2022 both passed with at least 60% of the vote and guaranteed the rights to same-day voter registration, nine days of early voting, absentee voting, among other rights. After voters approved the constitutional amendments, the Legislature passed legislation implementing the measures.

The suit sought not only to halt the changes brought on by the voter-passed initiatives, but also prohibit the future use altogether of citizen-led petition initiatives when they pertain to state election law.

“We also have procedures in place at the state level to amend election law,” state Sen. Jonathan Lindsey (R-Coldwater), one of the 11 lawmakers who filed the suit, said at the time. “However, these processes were violated in 2018 and 2022 when an alternative amendment process was used without regard to federal constitutional requirements. This lawsuit challenges recent attempts to subvert our constitutional process and will protect against such actions in the future.”

The legal argument behind the lawsuit, known as the independent state legislature theory, was mostly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2023 when it ruled in Moore v Harper.

In that case’s 6-3 majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that there were limits to state legislative power in such matters, effectively repudiating the claim that only state legislatures had the power to make election rules, thus providing state and federal courts, and by extension, state constitutions, a role in that process.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.

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NC scotus purge vets

'What it looks like to fight': NC judge demands justice for military and overseas voters

an 4 25

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'Really scary': Experts sound alarm on new GOP threat to military and other mail-in voters

A sweeping executive order from President Donald Trump would overhaul the administration of U.S. elections and upend how they’re run in Colorado, but election experts in the state say the measure is unconstitutional, and it already faces several legal challenges.

The order, issued late last month, requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and vote, requires all ballots be counted on Election Day, and threatens federal funding for states that don’t comply, among other changes. On Thursday, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser filed a lawsuit alongside other Democratic states challenging the order, saying it will cause imminent and irreparable harm to states and voters.

“This elections executive order is an overreach by the White House and it threatens to undermine Colorado’s well-established gold standard for free and fair elections,” Weiser said in a statement. “That’s why we are challenging this illegal action and protecting our freedom to vote.”

Voting rights advocates and the Democratic National Committee have filed separate lawsuits challenging the legality of Trump’s order too. Doug Spencer, a professor at the University of Colorado who specializes in election law, said legal challenges to the order “will prevail.” He said the executive order is similar to others Trump has issued in that it attempts to take actions that are beyond the president’s authority.

“Some of the executive orders I think raise some interesting questions or novel questions, and some of them are just blatantly wrong, like if you’re born here, you’re not a citizen. That’s just blatantly wrong,” Spencer said, referring to Trump’s attempt to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. “That the president can dictate how states run their elections, even for federal offices, is just wrong. The Constitution has clear language: Congress has authority to do this, and Donald Trump is not Congress, so those lawsuits will be successful.”

Spencer said Colorado would have to change numerous aspects of how it conducts elections under Trump’s executive order, but he doesn’t see that becoming reality. He said the order may still have the political consequences Trump is looking for, though, in that it signals to Republicans in Congress and the states what he wants from them.

Aly Belknap, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, a nonprofit that works to defend democracy and voter rights, said Congress has already passed laws detailing what is required to register to vote in federal elections, and Trump cannot simply decide there are new requirements with an executive order.

“States really just need to resist these attempts to override state and federal law through the ongoing legal challenges, and we just really need states to reassert their right to control their own elections and the core of what our democracy is,” Belknap said.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said the order “goes well beyond” the constitutional powers of the presidency.

“Here in Colorado we’ve been very innovative and are one of the best states in the country in how we conduct our elections, and so federal overreach like this is not welcome,” Crane said.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said the order is unlawful and would prevent eligible voters from casting a ballot.

“The Trump administration is weaponizing the federal government and trying to make it harder for voters to fight back at the ballot box,” Griswold said in a statement when the order was first issued. “The United States has always led the world in conducting free and fair elections, and we cannot let Donald Trump end that legacy.”

Burden on voters

Spencer said verifying citizenship when registering to vote “has the potential to stop non-citizens from voting. The problem is, non-citizens aren’t voting, so there’s not really a problem to be solved.” He said it’s not easy to prove citizenship, and requiring everyone who wants to vote to do so could lead to citizens not being able to vote.

“There’s not really any evidence that there’s a problem in the first place, but you’re going to risk disfranchising people because of the challenges of the documents,” Spencer said.

Belknap said millions of Americans who are eligible to vote don’t have the proper form of ID the executive order would require from a voter, such as a passport or a birth certificate.

“This is just really scary because it basically takes the responsibility to verify a person’s citizenship status from election officials — who do that now to ensure that non-citizens aren’t voting — and puts it on American voters, making them have to convince the government that they’re eligible to exercise the right to vote,” Belknap said.

Denver Clerk and Recorder Paul López said Colorado already has systems in place to ensure only eligible voters cast a ballot in an election, with many opportunities to catch anything suspicious. He said the state verifies a voter’s registration information with various state agencies using their ID number, and once verified within Colorado’s voter database, they’ll use the Electronic Registration Information Center to compare with other states around the country.

“It is really nothing more than an attempt to discourage and undermine voters of all stripes and of all backgrounds, especially people of color and naturalized citizens and even women, from engaging in the right to vote,” López said of the executive order. “This would dramatically impact folks whose name doesn’t match their original birth certificate because of marriage or divorce or anything else.”

López said instances of people who are not eligible to vote attempting to vote are very rare “because the system that we use works,” and if someone does try to vote illegally, they will be prosecuted. He also said undocumented immigrants are not trying to illegally participate in U.S. elections as Trump claims.

“On its face there’s really just this baseless claim of fraud, especially amongst undocumented immigrants who are somehow voting in these elections,” López said. “It’s a false narrative and frankly it only serves to turn Americans against each other.”

Crane said if the order were enacted, Colorado voters would have to show proof of citizenship when registering for the first time, as well as every time they update their registration. The process would also have to take place in person, removing online registration as an option, and lines to vote in person would take much longer as election workers would have to verify documentation.

Most Colorado voters already need to have their ballot to their county clerks office by 7 p.m. on Election Day to have it counted, but for military and overseas voters, their ballot can be counted up to eight days after Election Day so long as it’s postmarked on Election Day. Trump’s order would preclude ballots to be counted after Election Day.

“We believe our military voters deserve every opportunity to have their voice heard and so this executive order would walk that back, which seems insane,” Crane said.

Belknap said the order could also hinder Colorado’s automatic voter registration process, as Division of Motor Vehicles employees would have to “assess customer citizenship status” during every interaction they have.

“We’ve had this automatic motor registration at the DMV for many years now,” Belknap said. “It’s how so many Coloradans get registered to vote originally when they get their permit or their drivers license, or when they move and have to update.”

SAVE Act

Republicans in Congress reintroduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would require proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote nationwide. The bill poses a more substantial threat than Trump’s executive order because Congress actually has the power to legislate certain requirements for federal elections. Spencer said the SAVE Act includes some provisions Trump tried to address with his executive order related to citizenship and voting machine verification, but it’s not quite as far reaching.

Two Colorado Republicans in Congress, Reps. Lauren Boebert of Windsor and Jeff Crank of Colorado Springs, are sponsors of SAVE Act.

The CCCA has taken a formal position against the SAVE Act. Crane said the measure is “poorly written” and would increase costs of conducting elections without providing the funding for those costs.

With the potential for civil or criminal charges for election workers who unintentionally register an ineligible voter in the SAVE Act, Crane said it would also deter people from working as an election judge because they wouldn’t want to risk prosecution.

“Nobody is out there right now — no clerk, no election judge — purposefully registering somebody who shouldn’t be registered,” Crane said. “If it does happen, it’s certainly on a very, very small scale now. But if you make a mistake, you could face five years in prison and you could be sued civilly. Who in their right mind is going to want to work in that environment?”

Crane said while it is important to ensure only citizens are voting, the Trump administration is looking to do so in a way that isn’t efficient without seeking alternative means.

“They aren’t interested in having conversations with experts who do this work to figure out those better ways,” Crane said. “They’d much rather be informed by people who have been spreading disinformation for the last four years and spreading lies and legislating based on disinformation rather than fact, and that’s a very dangerous place to be.”

López said Trump intentionally spreads misinformation — particularly the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — to undermine voters and create distrust to the point that eligible voters won’t want to vote. Ultimately, López said he thinks that’s Trump’s main goal.

“He doesn’t like who’s coming out to vote, so let’s stifle it rather than fighting a fair fight in a fair election and talking about the facts,” López said.

Claims of widespread fraud in recent U.S. elections have been debunked by elections officials, experts, media investigations, law enforcement, and the courts.

López said “in the age of misinformation,” he encouraged all voters to go “straight to the source” and ask their local elections officials any questions they have about their voter registration or how their vote is counted.

“Our voters can expect the same level of excellence from their clerk and recorder’s office, from the elections division, as they are used to — the same fair, secure and accessible model that leads the nation,” López said.

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. SUPPORT

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.

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an no lnx

The Supreme Court has a new playbook — and Democrats need to adapt before it's too late

Thom Hartmann February 25, 2025

Imagine that the NFL made a rule change that allowed every team to have an extra three men on the field during the game — but half of the NFL teams, protesting the new rule as “wrong” and “too much of a deviation from fairness and norms” refused to add the three players to their own lineups.

Who’d be winning almost every game? Who’d be going to the Superbowl?

This is an almost perfect analogy to what Democrats are doing today with electoral politics.

In 2013, five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court changed the rules for our elections, gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They ruled, over liberal justice’s objections, that it was just fine to allow states to gerrymander based on presumed political affiliation and on race (with a tiny fig leaf required) and to throw millions of people off the voter rolls, again based on race or their living in an area that votes heavily for one party or the other.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her Shelby County v Holder dissent:

“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

This was followed by two other corrupt all-Republican decisions, Rucho v Common Causeand Alexander v NAACP, that expanded the ability of states to gerrymander their political districts to favor one political party over another to consolidate control over state legislatures and the US House of Representatives.

Additionally, the all-Republican 2018 Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute decisionmade it easy for states to target voters with postcards that look like junk mail and throw them off the voting rolls if they failed to return them.

As a result of this rapid-fire series of corrupt voting-related decisions Republican-controlled states have:

— Passed hundreds of laws making it harder to register to vote, particularly for poor, Black, female, disabled, and elderly voters,

— Thrown, just last year, 4.2 million mostly Democratic voters off the rolls or refused to count their votes, leading, as journalist Greg Palast documented last month, to the 2024 election of Donald Trump and Republicans seizing control of the House and Senate, and,

— Gerrymandered their states even more heavily and surgically to give Republicans a solid hold on the House of Representatives and multiple state legislatures.

Democratically controlled states, meanwhile, have done nothing.

Actually, Democratic controlled states have done worse than nothing; many, citing “fairness” and “the way it should be done” have stopped gerrymandering altogether. None have engaged in any sort of voter suppression; to the contrary, most have expanded mail-in voting and other options to make voting easier for both Democrats and Republicans.

The result is plain and reflects the obvious goal of the rightwingers on the Supreme Court: Republicans today control the House, Senate, White House, and a handful of state houses that otherwise would have gone to Democrats.

North Carolina is a great example; it’s politically a roughly 50/50 state, which is why a statewide office like Governor has repeatedly gone to a Democrat. Nonetheless, Republicans hold 10 out of the state’s 13 seats in the US House of Representatives because of gerrymanders. If North Carolina hadn’t been gerrymandered, the US House would today be in Democratic hands.

Ditto for Alabama, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, and Utah, providing Republicans with seven additional House seats that would have gone to Democrats without gerrymandering.

Meanwhile, in 2008 California did away with gerrymanders because they were “unfair,” handing as many as 4 mostly permanent House seats to Republicans. Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Virginia are moving in the same direction.

But that’s just the beginning.

Another strategy that the GOP has rolled out in a big way to suppress the vote in Blue areas of Red states is “strict signature matching.” They primarily use this against voters who’ve succeeded in obtaining vote-by-mail ballots, which are authenticated by comparing the signature on the envelope with the voter’s registration card.

Because signatures change over time and often vary a lot when people are in a hurry, this is low-hanging fruit for the GOP. Last year they rolled out a program to field an “army” of 50,000 “poll watchers,” including interviewing candidates from among white supremacist militia groups, for the 2024 election.

Democrats, on the other hand, generally go out of their way to allow for small variations, noting that “people’s signatures often change as they age or if they’re in a hurry.”

And then there are the voter roll purges that used to be illegal.

In multiple Republican states, particularly Georgia, Ohio, Florida, and Texas, mailing out postcards into urban areas to purge people from the voting rolls has become a routine practice. (It was Ohio that took the issue to the Supreme Court in the Husted case.)

This is because purging voters — by the tens of millions every election cycle — is where Republicans find their best result. As a Demos report notes:

“Between the close of registration for the 2020 general election and the close of registration for the 2022 general election, states reported removing 19,260,000 records from their voter registration rolls. This was equal to 8.5% of the total number of voters who were registered in the United States as of the close of registration for the 2022 general election.”

Additionally, 17 million voters were purged in the two years leading up to the 2018 election, fully ten percent of America’s voting population, according to the Brennan Center.

Given that the most radical purges took place among Black and youth voters in Blue cities in Republican-controlled Red states, those 8.5 percent and 10 percent “national averages” could well be two or three times that percentage in the states where these purges were concentrated.

Remember George W. Bush’s 537-vote “victory” over Al Gore in 2000? Just a few months before that election, as the BBC documented and reported, Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris purged over 90,000 Black voters from the rolls because, Harris alleged, their names were “similar” to the names of felons in Texas.

More recently, the Brennan Center found that just between 2014 and 2016, in the two years leading up to the Hillary/Trump presidential election, over 14 million people were purged from voter rolls, largely in Republican-controlled states. Then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp purged over a million voters in Georgia alone in 2018, leading up to his 50,000-vote win that year against Stacey Abrams.

Calling the findings “disturbing,” the Brennan Center noted:

“Almost 4 million more names were purged from the rolls between 2014 and 2016 [just after the Supreme Court legalized large-scale no-oversight voter purges in 2013] than between 2006 and 2008. This growth in the number of removed voters represented an increase of 33 percent—far outstripping growth in both total registered voters (18 percent) and total population (6 percent).”

It’s time for Democrats to start fighting back: They need to put their three extra men on the field.

— Democratic states, instead of rejecting gerrymanders, should start to aggressively gerrymander like Republican states have done; it could produce a near-permanent Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

— Democratic states should start mailing postcards into rural Red areas, purging Republican voters who fail to return them from the rolls.

— Democratic election judges should, as Republicans often do, aggressive challenge mail-in voter’s signatures in GOP-heavy areas, leading to the rejection of their ballots.

None of these things are “fair” but all are “legal.” It’s called fighting fire with fire.

And if Democrats were to do these simple things, in addition to winning more seats in the House and state legislatures, it would evoke howls of “unfair” from Republicans. Those protests, in turn, may even lead to Republicans working with Democrats to reform our voting system to make it easy for everybody in America to vote. (Not holding my breath, but just saying…)

Instead, Republicans are on the verge of passing the SAVE act that will prevent millions, perhaps tens of millions, of married women who haven’t gone to court to change their names after marriage from voting in 2026 and 2028. And Democratic leadership isn’t even making a concerted effort to let Americans know about it!

As distasteful as it may be, Democrats need to suck it up and fight Republicans on the field by using the new rules the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has defined over the past decade.

Otherwise, prepare for even more losses in the next two election cycles.

NOW READ: That Trump 'backlash' may not be real — here's why

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thom 3 an 2 25

— GOP bill bans prosecutors from going after officials who refuse to certify elections..say what?! Republican legislators in Arizona are pushing legislation that would let a single crank with a “sworn statement” shut down counting or certifying votes in Blue counties of the state. Currently, it’s illegal for a county clerk or other official to refuse to certify an election without a seriously good reason, but this bill would end “legal liability for balking at certification if they have any ‘documentation or other evidence’ that suggests ‘potential irregularities or errors in the election process,’” including “not just official reports but also sworn affidavits and ‘expert testimony.’” So, if you wanted to shut down the certification of, say, Maricopa County (Phoenix) and only count ballots from the Red regions of the state, all you’d have to do is submit a “sworn affidavit” that you believe there’s something hinky going on. Increasingly, it appears there’s no limit to what Republicans will do to rig elections…

aha a 3 fer?

punish CA for not voting for him, gov and AG fight/sue call him out, beat up on immigrants dem gt replace theory BS; // dems did not want to help NC hurricane?

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'Not good': Trump proposes 'getting rid of' FEMA and conditioning California aid on voter ID

Trump intensified his attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency during a visit to Hurricane Helene-damaged parts of North Carolina on Friday, announcing he is planning on reforming or “getting rid of FEMA,” and proposed an unprecedented move to condition disaster relief on the passage of a voter ID law by California’s lawmakers, “as a start.” Trump’s trip, which will include travel to California later Friday, appears designed to target the emergency management agency, which he has been criticizing for months.

In what appeared to be scripted remarks, Trump later elaborated that he would “sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think frankly, FEMA’s not good. I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go and, uh, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time.”

“Calling FEMA and then FEMA gets here and they don’t know the area,” Trump claimed. “They’ve never been to the area and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about, they wanna bring people that aren’t as good as the people you already have,” he alleged.

“FEMA turned out to be a a disaster. And you could go back a long way, you could go back to Louisiana, you could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. And it turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. It just complicates it. I think we’re gonna recommend that FEMA go away. And we pay directly and we pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix it.”

In his wide-ranging remarks, President Trump also claimed that “rather than going through FEMA,” disaster relief aid to California and North Carolina “will go through us,” meaning, through his administration. FEMA is a federal government agency under the wide umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The president nominates the HHS Secretary, a cabinet level official, and the FEMA administrator.

IFrame Content

And Trump appeared to say that he will assign Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley to manage financial aid to North Carolina, removing FEMA from the state.

“Trump also said FEMA would not be involved in further relief efforts and instead suggested that Whatley, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein (D), and a trio of Republican House members would be working with the White House directly because the agency ‘hasn’t done the job,'” The Independent reported.

“I wanna see two things in Los Angeles,” Trump also told reporters late Friday morning, “voter ID so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state. Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California ever has ever seen.”

“I want the water to come down and come down to Los Angeles and also go out to all the farm land that’s barren and dry,” Trump claimed. This week the President appeared to suggest that water runs only north to south.

“So, I want two things,” Trump repeated, “I want voter ID for the people of California. They all want it. Right now you have no, you don’t have voter ID. People want to have to voter identification. You wanna have proof of citizenship. Ideally, you have one-day voting, but I just want voter ID to start, and I want the water to be released, and they’re gonna get a lot of help from the U.S.”

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Louisiana argues parts of Voting Rights Act are unconstitutional

an 1 15

NEW ORLEANS – Attorneys representing Louisiana in a lawsuit against the state legislative redistricting plans passed in 2022 are arguing that a key piece of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and should not be applied to the state.

The case could produce a bellwether decision that impacts Black voting strength in several states where similar challenges have arisen.

Arguments were presented Tuesday to a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case Nairne v. Landry,in which Black voters are challenging the most recent legislative redistricting maps as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

Last February, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana ruled that maps Louisiana lawmakers drew two years ago to update the boundaries of their own districts do not give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect their own representatives. Dick’s ruling came after the 2023 elections, when a new class of lawmakers were elected, yielding a Republican supermajority in both chambers.

While Dick’s ruling blocks legislative elections from being held in every district while the lawsuit plays out, plaintiffs in the case agreed to let special elections for two vacant Louisiana Senate seats go forward in February.

The state has appealed Dick’s decision. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group.

“Conditions that originally justified those measures no longer apply to Louisiana,” Deputy Solicitor General Morgan Brungard argued. “We ask the court to reverse and hold Section 2 unconstitutional as it applies to Louisiana.”

Brungard argued that Black voter turnout in Louisiana is sufficiently high enough that Section 2 is no longer necessary.

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The three 5th Circuit judges presiding are James Dennis, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, Catharina Haynes, an appointee of President George W. Bush, and Irma Ramirez, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

For over a decade, conservative attorneys and officials have sought to whittle down the Voting Rights Act. Nairneis one vehicle politicians have sought to use as a test case against Section 2.

Last year, Republican attorneys general from 14 states filed an amicus brief in the case arguing Section 2 is unconstitutional. That action followed a 2023 decision in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that only the federal government can seek an enforcement ruling under the Voting Rights Act, rather than individuals.

The federal government and voting rights advocates have pushed back on that stance.

Every case brought under Section 2 is likely to be used as a test case for those that seek to have that portion of the Voting Rights Act overturned, advocates have said.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in Nairnein response to the state’s arguments against Section 2 but remained neutral on the other aspects of the case.

Noah Bokat-Lindell, a DOJ civil rights attorney, argued states cannot get a carveout from a generally applicable statute. For example, they cannot become exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act because a state argues it doesn’t discriminate against disabled people, he said.

In a press conference after the hearing, Attorney General Liz Murrill argued that if Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was ruled unconstitutional, Black voters could still count on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“Those are legal arguments that we wanted to preserve so that they eventually might make it up to the United States Supreme Court,” Murrill said. “They’ve also been percolating in a number of other cases related to the scope and continuing application of Section 2 to states under current conditions.”

If Dick’s decision is upheld, legislators will have another opportunity to redraw the boundaries of their districts. Dick, an Obama federal court appointee, did not specify in her ruling the number of majority Black districts necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Plaintiffs have said the state should add six in the Louisiana House and three in the Senate. Currently, 28 out of 105 House districts are majority Black, as are 11 of 39 Senate districts.

State Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, who is Black, said he intends to file a bill with a new redistricting plan in the upcoming legislative session, which begins April 14.

Also at issue in Nairneis whether Dick erred in blocking the entire redistricting plan. Attorneys for the state argue the plaintiffs only have standing to challenge the districts where they live.

It is not known when the 5th Circuit panel will rule on the state’s appeal.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

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At the request of GOP Judge Jefferson Griffin, Republicans on the state Supreme Court have prohibited the state Board of Elections from certifying Democratic Justice Allison Riggs’ election.

Riggs, the incumbent, leads Griffin by 734 votes in the election for a seat on the state’s highest court.

Griffin, an Appeals Court judge, wants to discount more than 60,000 votes on the belief that throwing them out will allow him to win.

After the state Board of Elections dismissed his election protests last month, Griffin asked the Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a 5-2 majority, to step in.

The state Board had the case transferred to federal court, but on Monday, U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II sent it back to state court.

Tuesday’s order for a temporary stay said the state Supreme Court received notice that the state Board plans to appeal Myers’ decision, but “in the absence of a stay from federal court, this matter should be addressed expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election.”

Democratic Justice Anita Earls dissented, writing that the standards for a temporary stay have not been met.

Riggs has recused herself from participation in the case.

Most of the votes Griffin wants thrown out are those his campaign claims were cast by people who did not include a driver’s license or partial Social Security number on their voter registration applications. People who did not include those numbers on their applications are not legally registered, Republican lawyers have argued. Many of those voters have been voting regularly for years. The Republican Party used the same argument last year in a lawsuit seeking to have more than 225,000 voters purged from the registration rolls or to be forced to cast provisional ballots. Myers partially dismissed that suit.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com.

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// NC state scotus?

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Georgia's state legislature is about to gavel into session next week, and there are already several proposed new voting restrictions on the docket for lawmakers to consider.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday that Republican lawmakers emboldened by Trump's 2024 election victory in the Peach State are now hoping to have several GOP wish-list items signed into law that would make the voting process even more cumbersome in the critical swing state. Some of the bills include language mandating hand-counting of ballots and eliminating no-excuse absentee voting.

Some conservative activists are also reportedly advocating for legislation that makes it easier to challenge voters' eligibility, and for new rules to be put in place regarding county-level certification of election results. The renewed push for election changes comes after a fraught election cycle in which Georgia's Republican-controlled State Election Board attempted to ram through several last-minute changes that would have significantly delayed the counting of ballots.

“It was total nonsense what they were doing. It was a show unlike anything we’ve ever seen as election officials." Heard County election supervisor Tonnie Adams told the Journal-Constitution. "We’d like to see the entire rulemaking process changed.”

Democratic state representative Saira Draper is also pushing for an election-related law. Her legislation would make it illegal for the State Election Board to make changes to election laws during election years, arguing that election workers need time to be trained on how to follow and implement existing laws. She also wants to allow for parents with small children to be moved to the front of voting lines.

“The problem we’ve seen over and over again in election policy is responding to fears or made-up stories as opposed to actual facts,” Draper told the paper. “By playing to concerns of voter confidence, you’re basically changing policy for problems that don’t exist. I would like to see policies that are tethered to real issues as opposed to made-up issues for political purposes.”

Georgia Republicans have been pushing for sweeping changes to election laws ever since 2021, when President Joe Biden flipped the state blue after nearly 30 years. In 2022, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) was elected to a full six-year term, making it the first time since the 1990s that Georgia has been represented by two Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

Click here to read the Journal-Constitution's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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no lnx

alternet-

Revealed: The secret Republican plot to disenfranchise millions of voters

Thom Hartmann December 30, 2024

For over a century, most states used biometrics to verify voter identity. Signatures done in front of a witness are nearly impossible to fake (unlike IDs, which can be easily faked). Polling place workers would compare the original registration signature with the signature of the person signing in to vote, and if they didn’t match, the worker would disqualify the voter.

When the Motor Voter Act was passed in 1993, not a single state required proof of citizenship to vote, and there was no national problem of voter fraud. The threat of a few years in jail is more than enough to discourage even the most ardent partisan from trying to double-vote or fraudulently vote.

If somebody wanted to travel internationally, he or she got a passport; the purpose of a driver’s license prior to 2006 was merely to make sure that incompetent people weren’t moving 3,000 pounds of steel at 60 miles per hour across the nation’s roads, and to be able to track down and hold to account people who abused the privilege.

With passage of Motor Voter in 1993, though, the “Illegals will now be registered to vote!” screech immediately came bubbling up from the throats of Republican consultants and politicians.

ALSO READ: It's New Year's Eve 2040 in the land of idiocracy

The Washington Post reflected the newspaper’s position in a 1995 editorial:

A group of Republican governors that includes California’s Pete Wilson, who has already sued to have the law overturned, objects . . . that it [the Motor Voter law] is also a ploy by Democrats to strengthen the party’s electoral chances, since many of those whom easier registration might add to the voter pool are groups inclined to vote against the GOP; and . . . that the law could facilitate voter fraud.

The editors of the Post added dryly, “As for fraud, registration at motor vehicle offices and by mail already works fine in many parts of the country, including in the District [of Columbia]. The governors ought to reconsider.”117

But the torch had been lit, and a quiet movement began within the GOP to sound the alarm, fueled by Motor Voter, that there could be millions upon millions of noncitizens who were or soon would be registered voters. And if those millions of “illegal aliens”—a perennial Republican boogeyman— were to turn out at the polls, particularly those brown people from south of the border, they’d flip the nation into the hands of the Democrats.

Bush and Cheney came into the White House shaken and widely viewed by the American electorate as having marginal legitimacy; they certainly couldn’t even claim a mandate to govern, after having lost the popular vote.

Karl Rove helped organize publicity about the “crisis” of “illegal voting” as a possible explanation for Bush’s losing the popular vote by a half-million, and Attorney General John Ashcroft launched the 2002 Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative in the Justice Department, requiring all 100 US federal prosecutors to “coordinate with local officials” to combat the scourge of illegal voting and bring to justice the millions of presumed malefactors who made the election so close.118

Over the next three years, at a cost of millions of dollars, and after examining tens of millions of voters and more than a billion votes, Ashcroft was able to document and successfully prosecute only 24 people nationwide for voting illegally—and none of them had committed in-person voter fraud of the kind that would be stopped by voter ID. (Most were people double voting, and the majority of those were wealthy white Republicans who had homes in two states and voted in person in one and mailed in a ballot to the other state; such folks got a fine, typically around $2,500. There were also a few felons who voted and didn’t know it was illegal.)

Karl Rove put on the pressure; they had to find a few people (ideally black or brown people with fake IDs) who could be made into national examples of the evils of in-person voter fraud, if they were ever to convince Americans that stronger ID laws were necessary to stop noncitizens from voting.

So the Bush White House demanded that all 100 of the nation’s federal prosecutors—all Bush appointees—move investigating voter fraud to the front of their agendas, sidelining other federal crimes. Eight of the prosecutors objected and were summarily fired.

In Washington state, prosecutor John McKay was fired because he refused to intervene in the 2004 election with fraud charges when Republican Dino Rossi lost that state’s governor’s race by a mere 129 votes. McKay told the Seattle Times that after a thorough investigation by his office, “there was no evidence, and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury.”119 That was a career ender.

In New Mexico, prosecutor David Iglesias resisted GOP pressure to create a show trial around two teenage boys who somehow got onto the voting rolls even though they were both under 18 and neither had voted. In a 2007 op-ed in the New York Times titled “Why I Was Fired,” he wrote, “What the critics, who don’t have any experience as prosecutors, have asserted is reprehensible—namely that I should have proceeded without having proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The public has a right to believe that prosecution decisions are made on legal, not political, grounds.”120

The firings were a major scandal in the Bush administration, although time has faded the public recollection of them. But the GOP was just getting started. By the end of 2004, 12 states had passed laws requiring ID to vote.

Coincidentally, a comprehensive study by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University found that, overall, requiring ID to register to vote reduced the registered voting population in the states that did so by around 10 percent. In the 2004 election, “Hispanic voters were 10 percent less likely to vote in non-photo-identification states compared to states where voters only had to give their name.” Among African Americans, they found that the “probability of voting was 5.7 percent lower for Black respondents in states that required non-photo identification.”121 Requiring photo ID raised it into the 10 percent region.

Even the vote of Asian Americans, another group more inclined to vote Democratic than Republican, was suppressed by around 8.5 percent by the ID requirement.122

Again, none of these nonvoters were ever found to be noncitizens; it’s just that among these populations there were larger numbers of people who lived in cities where they didn’t need a driver’s license because they didn’t own a car, or were too poor to own a car, and thus lacked the picture ID required by the new state laws. Among white people, the effect was to suppress the vote of college students, the working poor, and retired people.

The story of how voter ID laws suppress minority and poor people’s votes hadn’t yet hit the news in a big way, but it was electrifying Republican politicians and consultants. And their billionaire donors.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nationwide nonprofit that brings together Republican state legislators and lobbyists to consider mostly lobbyist-written legislation for the Republican state senators and representatives to take back home and introduce. (Democrat Mark Pocan, when he was a Wisconsin state representative, registered for an ALEC meeting in that state and attended it. He called in to my radio show as they were throwing him out of the place, once they’d figured out he wasn’t a Republican. “It was pretty bizarre,” he told me.)

Via the largely Koch-funded ALEC, the GOP distributed what ALEC refers to as “model legislation” (in fact, they’re prewritten laws that are often submitted by legislators verbatim) that would make it harder for minorities to vote, including requiring ID—and proof of citizenship—to register to vote, along with repeated requirements to show ID at the time of voting. Willing Republican state legislators added their own twists to the model legislation offered by ALEC by, for example, increasing penalties for voter fraud.

As reporter Ari Berman wrote for Rolling Stone in 2011,

In Texas, under emergency legislation passed by the GOP-dominated legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Perry, a concealed-weapon permit is considered an acceptable ID but a student ID is not. Republicans in Wisconsin, meanwhile, mandated that students can only vote if their IDs include a current address, birth date, signature and two-year expiration date—requirements that no college or university ID in the state currently meets. As a result, 242,000 students in Wisconsin may lack the documentation required to vote next year.123

State by state, Republicans were making it harder for young people, poor people, low-income working people, minorities, and retired people to vote. But the issue still hadn’t caught on nationally.

Then came Kris Kobach.

ALSO READ: Merrick Garland's last task and the explosive evidence that could save America

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As lawmakers across the country consider requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, Arizona’s voter roll provides clues as to which voters will struggle to provide it.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Voters living on Native land, on college campuses, and at the state’s main homeless campus are all disproportionately represented among voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship, according to a Votebeat analysis of the list of eligible voters who hadn’t provided proof of citizenship for the presidential election. Such voters also were three times less likely to vote this past November than voters who had provided proof of citizenship, the analysis found.

The data shows that, while GOP lawmakers pushing for a documentation requirement say they are attempting to prevent noncitizens from voting — a rare occurrence, according to all available evidence — the requirement in Arizona appears to be disenfranchising some Americans.

Arizona is the only state in the country currently limiting voting for those who don’t prove citizenship by providing a birth certificate or another qualifying document. Such voters can cast ballots in federal elections, but not state and local elections.

The voters who don’t provide such documents are marked as a “federal-only” voter and receive a ballot with just presidential and congressional contests. This applied to less than 1% of the state’s voter roll, or 34,933 out of around 4.4 million active voters eligible for this past November election.

In all other states, voters simply attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. They don’t have to provide documents proving it.

Voters living on tribal land, college campuses, and at the state’s largest homeless campus frequently tell advocacy organizations that they aren’t able to provide documents proving their citizenship because they don’t have easy or immediate access to them when registering. And many college students and Native voters first register to vote at third-party registration drives away from home when they hadn’t necessarily planned to do so, and don’t follow up later to provide additional documentation.

Allie Redhorse Young, director and founder of Navajo advocacy group Protect the Sacred, said it’s just another barrier for Native voters who have long faced challenges voting.

“It’s pretty outrageous for the first people who lived in this country to have these challenges trying to vote,” Young said.

Here’s everything we know about who Arizona’s federal-only voters are, and where they live.

Federal-only voters are unlikely voters in Arizona

The vast majority of federal-only voters are on the list because they didn’t provide documentation of citizenship. But a minimal number are on the list because they haven’t provided proof of residency required under a new state law.

Together, the voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship or residency make up a tiny portion of the state’s voter roll.

These federal-only voters also voted far less often than registered voters in general.

Turnout from active voters who hadn’t provided documents proving citizenship in Arizona was about 19% in the November presidential election, compared to 79% turnout among other active registered voters.

Federal-only voters are spread out pretty evenly across the state with the vast majority of precincts having just a dozen or fewer.

But there are some places where they are more concentrated.

Many federal-only voters live on tribal land

Voters living on tribal land are more likely to find themselves on the federal-only list.

Of all active federal-only voters, 7.3% live in precincts on or close to reservations, whereas voters on tribal land make up only 2.5% of all registered voters, according to a Votebeat analysis. And only 3.6% of the voting-age population in the state is Indigenous, according to U.S. Census voter population estimates. Many of those people do not live on tribal land.

In particular, some precincts on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona saw higher per-capita rates of federal-only voters, compared to precincts in the rest of the state.

There are a few reasons why Indigenous voters may not provide proof of citizenship as often, according to Native voting advocates.

For one, there’s been a big push in recent years to get Indigenous voters registered to vote, so many organizations host voter registration drives at community events or at chapter houses on tribal land. If the voter doesn’t have documentation with them at those events, Young with Protect the Sacred said, it’s a long way back home to get it.

Young’s group hosts voter registration events on the Navajo Nation, including her highly publicized get-out-the-vote horseback rides.

“If they show up without this documentation, it’s likely they aren’t going to drive the 40 minutes and back again,” she said.

Young said the organizations hosting the drive must be clear to residents, before and during the event, that they need to provide this documentation. But she said she knows that some groups conducting voter registration drives on the Navajo reservation turn in incomplete or inaccurate forms.

Young also said many elders living on the reservation may not have documentation proving citizenship at all. Votebeat’s analysis confirmed that the federal-only voters in precincts containing tribal land are generally older than those elsewhere. In fact, 16% of federal-only voters on precincts containing tribal land were 65 and older, compared to 10% in the rest of the state.

Some of these older residents may not have an Arizona driver’s license, which can be used to prove citizenship if issued after 1996, and also may not have a birth certificate. They could potentially have a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, which can also be used to prove citizenship. But, Young said, “it’s one of those documents you don’t have in your wallet.”

Of the federal-only voters who cast ballots in November, at least 8% live on or near tribal land, according to the analysis.

Many federal-only voters are on college campuses

There are just seven precincts, out of roughly 1,700 in the state, where more than 5% of voters cast federal-only ballots in November. They all either include parts of, or are adjacent to, college campuses.

At least 6% of people relegated to the federal-only voter roll live in just three precincts at the center of each of the state’s three public universities’ main campuses. That percentage doubles if expanded to include nearby precincts that include student housing.

Federal-only voters make up 29% of the voters in those three precincts, compared with 0.8% of the overall voter roll.

Student advocates believe they know why college students are landing on the list: Like tribal land, college campuses are targeted by organizations trying to register new voters in the state.

Kyle Nitschke, the organizing director of the Arizona Students’ Association, helps run some of those voter registration drives. Data from his past registration drives found that around 1 in 3 of the students registering have not been able to provide an in-state driver’s license or other form of citizenship proof on the spot at such events.

Nitschke said that’s because many students are originally from out of state, and these drives take place when they first move to Arizona to attend college. So they’re eligible to vote there, but may not have an Arizona-issued driver’s license or have their birth certificate handy.

Changes that went into effect this summer, under a new law requiring proof of residency and requiring state registration forms to be rejected outright if citizenship is not provided, made it even more complicated to get a new student full ballot status, Nitschke said.

Nitsche cautions other states against passing proof of citizenship laws, because he’s seen its impact on the college student population.

“It’s not about citizenship, like they say it is,” he said. “It’s an attack on student voters, and voters from out of state. It just doesn’t solve a problem.”

In the November election, around 7% of federal-only voters who cast ballots live in the three precincts at the center of the main college campuses.

Federal-only voters are often young and unaffiliated

In a potentially related finding, the data show that federal-only voters are generally younger than the voting-age population in the state.

People 18 to 24 years old are roughly 3.6 times as likely to be federal-only voters than people 25 and older.

The federal-only voters who voted in November also followed this pattern.

They’re also more likely to not belong to a political party, compared to all registered voters. That makes sense because these voters are younger, which means they are newer voters, and newer voters are generally less often affiliated with a major party.

But unaffiliated voters, generally, vote at lower rates, and the same was true for those on the federal-only list. Therefore, the political makeup of federal-only voters who actually cast ballots in November looked more like the political makeup of the general voting population.

Arizona doesn’t collect race or ethnicity information from voters when they register, so Votebeat was unable to analyze either.

But in testimony given during a trial on Arizona’s citizenship laws in 2023, Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, told the judge that his analysis found that federal-only voters live in communities that are more diverse, compared to full-ballot voters. The average community for a registered voter in Arizona is 62.9 percent non-Hispanic white, he said, but the average community of a federal-only voter is 47.3 percent non-Hispanic white.

A hot spot on a homeless campus

The other hotspot precinct in the state containing a larger number of federal-only voters includes the state’s main homeless campus, Keys to Change, in downtown Phoenix. The campus has mailboxes that people can use as a mailing address.

There are 510 voters registered at the address, and around half of them, or 269, are federal-only voters, according to Maricopa County data.

Those 269 voters make up 40% of the 669 federal-only voters in the precinct.

Rick Mitchell, executive director of the Phoenix-based Homeless ID Project, said there are several reasons why someone experiencing homelessness might not have a state ID or birth certificate. His organization helps people get new documents, and store them.

Mitchell said people who have recently been evicted, who are aging out of foster care, or who are fleeing domestic violence are among those he helps obtain new identification. He also sees some people who have lost their documents as they move around or live on the street.

In 2023, his organization helped around 20 individuals a day get a birth certificate, and around 40 a day get a new state identification card.

When people come looking for help, they are often trying to get a new job, get housing, or get into school. While getting an ID, they will be asked through the Motor Vehicle Division if they want to register to vote.

Those people might then land on the federal-only list.

But only 19 people of the 669 on the list voted in the November election from the precinct where the homeless campus is located. It has one of the lowest federal-only voting rates in the state, despite having the fourth highest share of federal-only voters.

The people who Mitchell helps have other priorities, he said.

“If I have nothing, and I’m trying to get reestablished, voting isn’t one of them.”

Kae Petrin is a data reporter for Votebeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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mma

Fox News repeatedly misled viewers about Virginia’s last-minute voter purge

Fox figures are falsely claiming the Biden administration is “pushing for noncitizens to vote in the 2024 election”

Written by Casey Wexler

Published 10/31/24

In separate segments, Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn and network contributor Jonathan Turley both falsely suggested that the Biden administration is fighting against Virginia’s purge of 1,600 voters to push for noncitizens to vote. In reality the administration and civil rights groups sued to protect Virginia citizens who are legally allowed to vote — not to allow noncitizens to cast ballots — and objected to the state’s move to purge voter rolls less than 90 days before an election, which violates federal law.

Since August 7, state officials have removed 1,600 Virginia voters who were supposedly suspected to be noncitizens from the voter rolls. However, subsequent reporting found “the program has also erroneously ensnared U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote.” From NPR:

Civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice had sued Virginia over the program earlier this month. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled Friday the state program violated federal law by systematically removing voters too close to a federal election.

Under the National Voter Registration Act, during the 90 days before an election, states must pause certain kinds of voter list maintenance programs that systematically remove voters to ensure mistakes aren't made too close to the election.

On October 30, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that Virginia did not have to restore those 1,600 people to the voter rolls before Election Day.

Discussing the previous lower-court decision on October 29, Urbahn did not acknowledge the missed 90-day time frame or the citizens removed from the rolls. Instead, Urbahn suggested “the Biden administration [is] pushing for noncitizens to vote in the 2024 election” and called the lawsuit to prevent citizens from being purged “bizarre” and “a bad look for DOJ,” adding that “it could have been to send a message.”

Video

CitationFrom the October, 29, 2024, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom

On The Story with Martha MacCallum, Turley claimed that the Biden administration was actively suing specifically to allow noncitizens to vote: “You have people saying I'm not a citizen and I want to vote and we're saying we can't do that, and now the Biden-Harris administration is saying you will do that with the help of these federal courts.”

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an 10 24

Sometimes you need to step back to see what’s right in front of you.

That alarming fact struck me last week as I watched firsthand how institutional forces conspire to deny Kansans the ability to vote for the candidates of their choice. I don’t believe the parties involved all gathered in some smoke-filled room to make their decisions, but they have nonetheless aligned themselves against pluralistic democracy and encouraged creeping authoritarianism.

On Wednesday, Facebook deleted our post referring to freelancer Grace Hills’ simple story explaining how Kansas can vote in the upcoming election. With Oct. 15 as the deadline for voter registration, the story was a timely reminder of how Kansans could participate in the political life of their state.

But Facebook didn’t want you to see it, claiming that “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.” Not only could we not post the article but Kansas Reflector followers couldn’t either. The platform has at various points shut down pages belonging to the League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County and Kansas Reflector. Meta, the parent company behind Facebook, apparently has been deploying an artificial intelligence bot that mistakenly targets innocuous political material.

On Thursday, a press briefing from the Alliance for Youth Organizing featured Loud Light president Davis Hammet in a roundtable discussion with youth voting advocates from across the nation. Hammet recounted how the Kansas Legislature passed the bill that essentially shut down voter registration drives formerly carried out by Loud Light, the League of Women Voters and other groups. Those carrying out such drives could theoretically be prosecuted if someone mistook them for government officials, leading to uncertainty and legal exposure. A judge finally blocked the law’s enforcement this summer.

“The reason this really matters is that when you register someone to vote when they’re 18 or 19, they become more likely to vote for the rest of their life,” Hammet said on the call. “And the inverse is true. When they are deprived of that opportunity to get registered, to get engaged, they are less likely to participate. Not just in elections, but in civic life in general for the rest of their life. So voter suppression, but particularly voter registration suppression, causes irreparable harm, not just to young voters but to our entire country and to the idea of democracy.”

I didn’t want to just write about Facebook taking down links to our article. And while youth voting advocacy matters a great deal, Kansas Reflector reporters have covered that story. (Columnists have taken it on, too.)

But then it struck me: This is the same story. This is one and the same story.

This is a story about powerful institutions on the state and national levels who have decided that they want to make it more difficult for people to participate in the political process. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apparently soured on the entire political process and reconciled with former president Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Kansas legislators have routinely found themselves in thrall to charlatans who claim voter fraud is a pressing threat.

Rather than steel their nerves and push forward with what is obviously the right course of action — engaging people of all ages in the democratic process — the Kansas Legislature and social media oligarchs have decided to shut it all down. Or come as close as they can.

We have no idea how many Kansas youths missed the opportunity to register through a drive conducted by Loud Light or other civic organizations. They may be silenced for decades to come. Likewise, we have no idea how many people browsing Facebook last week might have seen a link to Hills’ story and clicked, learning more about engaging with the political process. Facebook didn’t just suppress the story but actually took it down, leaving them without the opportunity.

In the background, Trump and his poisonous partisans have continued to claim without basis or justification that the 2020 election was stolen and that the 2024 election may be tampered with as well. The first didn’t happen, and the second won’t happen either.

But that’s not the point. These political actors hope to use confusion and anti-democratic messaging to suppress voter turnout and advance their own political project. It’s an absolute scandal. No matter your party, no matter your ideology, no matter your age, or background, please recognize the threat.

Our individual rights do not come from Facebook. They are not granted by shortsighted Kansas legislators. They do not issue forth from one campaign office or another. Our rights belong to us and us alone, as Kansans and Americans. We have the right to guide our government. We have the right to speak against those who would silence us.

We will only be suppressed if we allow ourselves to be.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,[here

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.

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MMA

Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky defends voter purges weeks before Election Day

10/23/24

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Tess OwenPolitics Oct 11, 2024 wired no lnx

Leaked Docs From Far-Right Militias Show History of Voter Intimidation Plans

“All the state leaders should be getting their people out … to watch for ballot stuffing,” wrote the leader of the American Patriots Three Percent militia. “Our nation depends on this."

Leaked Docs From FarRight Militias Show History of Voter Intimidation Plans

A trove of leaked internal messages and documents from the militia American Patriots Three Percent—also known as AP3—reveals how the group coordinated with election denial groups as part of a plan to conduct paramilitary surveillance of ballot boxes during the midterm elections in 2022.

This information was leaked to Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a nonprofit that says it publishes hacked and leaked documents in the public interest. The person behind these AP3 leaks is an individual who, according to their statement uploaded by DDoSecrets, infiltrated the militia and grew so alarmed by what they were seeing that they felt compelled to go public with the information ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

Election and federal officials have already voiced concern about possible voter intimidation this November, in part due to the proliferation of politically violent rhetoric and election denialism. Some right-wing groups have already committed to conducting surveillance of ballot boxes remotely using AI-driven cameras. And last month, a Homeland Security bulletin warned that domestic extremist groups could plan on sabotaging election infrastructure including ballot drop boxes.

Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, says that AP3’s leaked plans for the 2022 midterms should be a warning for what may transpire next month. “Baseless election denial conspiracies stoking armed militia surveillance of ballot drop boxes is a dangerous form of voter intimidation,” Burghart tells WIRED. “The expansion of the election denial, increased militia activity, and growing coordination between them, is cause for serious concern heading into November. Now with voter suppression groups like True the Vote and some GOP elected officials targeting drop boxes for vigilante activity, the situation should be raising alarms.”

The leaked messages from 2022 show how AP3 and other militias provided paramilitary heft to ballot box monitoring operations organized by “The People’s Movement,” the group that spearheaded the 2021 anti-vaccine convoy protest, and Clean Elections USA, a group with links to the team behind the 2000 Mules film that falsely claimed widespread voter fraud. In the leaked chats, People’s Movement leader Carolyn Smith identifies herself as an honorary AP3 member.

AP3 is run by Scot Seddon, a former Army Reservist, Long Islander, and male model, according to a ProPublica profile on him published in August. That profile, which relied on the same anonymous infiltrator who leaked AP3’s internal messages to DDoSecrets, explains that AP3 escaped scrutiny in the aftermath of January 6 in part because Seddon, after spending weeks preparing his ranks to go to DC, ultimately decided to save his soldiers for another day. ProPublica reported that some members went anyway but were under strict instruction to forgo any AP3 insignia. According to the leaked messages, Seddon also directed his state leaders to participate in the “operation.”

“All of us have a vested interest in this nation,” Seddon said in a leaked video. “So all the state leaders should be getting their people out and manning and observing ballot boxes, to watch for ballot stuffing. This is priority. This goes against getting your double cheeseburger at mcdonalds … Our nation depends on this. Our future depends on this. This ain't no bullshit issue. We need to be tight on this, straight up.”

A flier using militaristic language shared across various state-specific Telegram channels lays out how this operation would work. With “Rules of Engagement” instructions, “Volunteers” are told not to interfere with anyone dropping off their ballots. If someone is suspected of dropping off “multiple ballots,” then observers are told to record the event, and make a note of the individual's appearance and their vehicle's license plate number. In the event of any sort of confrontation, they’re supposed to “report as soon as possible to your area Captain.”

“At the end of each shift, Patriots will prepare a brief report of activity and transmit it to [the ballot] box team Captain promptly,” the flier states.

The person who leaked these documents and messages says that these paramilitary observers masquerading as civilians will often have a QRF—quick reaction force—on standby who can “stage an armed response” should a threat or confrontation arise.

The goal of the “operation,” according to that flier, was to “Stop the Mules.”

“These are the individuals stuffing ballot boxes,” the flier says. “They are well trained and financed. There is a global network backing them up. They pick up fake ballots from phony non-profits and deliver them to ballot boxes, usually between 2400 hours and 0600 hours.” (This was the core conspiracy of 2,000 Mules; the conservative media company behind the film has since issued an apology for promoting election conspiracies and committed to halting its distribution).

Fears about widespread armed voter intimidation during the 2022 midterms—stemming from online chatter and warnings from federal agencies—never materialized in full. However, there were scattered instances of people showing up to observe ballot drops in Arizona. These individuals, according to the statement by the anonymous leaker in the DDoSecrets files, were not “lone wolves”—they were part of “highly organized groups who intended to influence the elections through intimidation.”

In one widely-publicized incident, two clearly armed people wearing balaclavas and tactical gear showed up in Mesa, Arizona, to conduct drop box surveillance. They were never identified, though a Telegram video on DDoSecrets shows AP3’s North Carolina chapter head Burley Ross admitting that one of them was part of his unit. Ross says that the individual was Elias Humiston, who had previously been conducting vigilante border surveillance. “I was well aware they were doing drop box observations,” said Ross. “I was not aware they were doing so in full kit.” Ross added that Humiston had since resigned from the group.

Seddon also addressed the “little incident in Arizona,” stressing the importance of maintaining clean optics to avoid scrutiny. “We had pushed for helping to maintain election integrity through monitoring the ballot boxes,” said Seddon, in a video message on Telegram. “We never told anyone to do it like that.”

:{:{The militia movement largely retreated from public view in the aftermath of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol in 2021. The high-profile implication of the Oath Keepers in the riot, which at the time was America’s biggest militia, thrust the broader militia movement into the spotlight. Amid intense scrutiny, stigma, and creeping paranoia about federal informants, some militias rebanded or even disbanded. But as WIRED reporting has shown, after a brief lull in activity, the militia movement has been quietly rebuilding, reorganizing, and recruiting. With AP3 at its helm, it’s also been engaging in armed training.}:}:

Election conspiracies have only continued to fester since 2022, and AP3 has been aggressively recruiting and organizing. Moreover, the rhetoric in the group has also intensified. “The next election won’t be decided at a Ballot Box,” wrote an AP3 leader earlier this year in a private chat, according to ProPublica. “It’ll be decided at the ammo box.”

“Every American has a right to go to the ballot box without fear and the authorities need to urgently learn the lessons of 2022—and the lessons contained in these documents—so they can prevent something even worse from happening in the coming weeks,” the infiltrator wrote in the DDoS statement.

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an 10 24

Republican election officials are currently being sued in multiple states for purging eligible voters just before Americans go to the polls in November. Now, one watchdog group fighting back argues the purges are part of a larger GOP strategy.

According to the Independent, voters in both Alabama and Tennessee are suing their respective secretaries of state after finding out they had been removed from voter rolls for being "non-citizens." One of the plaintiffs, 49 year-old Alabama resident James Cozzad, is a registered Republican who voted in the 2016 and 2020 elections without incident. In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Cozzad said he had been "racking my brain to try to figure out how I ended up on the list of purged voters, but I have no clue."

"It feels like they are trying to make me think I’ve broken the law — just for trying to exercise my right to vote. While I hope it was just a mistake, I think if they were just trying to verify something, they would have done so long before the election," he continued. "Now I can understand why some people feel as though their vote isn’t worth casting."

The Independent further reported that thousands more voters have been purged from the rolls in states with Republican election chiefs — including Virginia, where the Department of Justice alleges Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Gee has also removed thousands of voters. Even though there is no evidence that non-citizens have tried to vote in the Old Dominion State, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin bragged about kicking approximately 6,000 voters from the rolls for allegedly being illegal immigrants.

These voter purges are notably taking place during the so-called "quiet period," in which states are barred from making drastic changes to their election systems and voter rolls within 90 days of an election. Watchdog group Protect Democracy attorney Anna Dorman is arguing that Republican secretaries of state — along with GOP groups filing frivolous lawsuits in the courts — are acting in "bad faith" and that their arguments are "not strong on the merits."

"Their sole purpose is to use the legitimacy of the court system to launder conspiracy theories and make them feel more legitimate, so that if the election results don’t go the way these people want in November, they have some additional conspiracies to put forward to try to undermine peaceful transfer of power," Dorman told the Independent.

The outlet reported that GOP-aligned groups have filed nearly 100 election-related lawsuits in 2024 alone, which are largely what Protect Democracy calls "zombie lawsuits." The group uses that term to describe litigation that will almost certainly get thrown out at first glance due to there being no factual basis to plaintiffs' claims of fraudulent activity.

“They’re part of a messaging strategy, not a legal strategy,” a Protect Democracy report read. “Regardless of whether this legal strategy will get anywhere, in any courtroom, it telegraphs a clear intent to subvert the election if Donald Trump loses.”

Earlier this year, both former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago to announce an initiative aimed at curbing non-citizen voting. Johnson unsuccessfully tried to include legislation that would require voters show proof of citizenship (like a birth certificate or a U.S. passport) upon registering to vote in the latest must-pass government funding bill. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated there are several million U.S. citizens who would not be able to meet that burden of proof due to difficulty locating or obtaining citizenship documents, meaning they would be disenfranchised.

Click here to read the Independent's report in its entirety.

READ MORE:['They're just coming after us': Project 2025 org is now harassing voter registration groups

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doj sued illegal alien BS

msnbc 10 24

two states dumping sweater vest gov youngkin if discrepnancy in dmv recs; only possible b/c scotus gutted voting rts act which req pre-clearance of fuckery

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an 10 24

A complaint was filed Sunday against Michigan US congressional candidate Tom Barrett, a Republican, over a full-page campaign ad that appeared to suppress voter turnout, The Washington Post reports.

Per the report, over what Barrett spokesman Jason Roe claims to be "a proofing error," the GOP candidate is now "facing calls for an investigation" after the ad incorrectly listed Election Day as November 6 in the Michigan Bulletin — one of the Great Lake State's Black-owned newspapers earlier this month.

Election Day is November 5.

Roe told the Post "'this was nothing but a proofing error' that is inconsistent with the campaign’s other advertisements aimed at Black voters — including mailers that were sent on Oct. 2 and Oct. 9 that include the correct date for the election."

He then added, "The goal is to earn more support from Black voters."

The Post reports that the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus — the coalition that filed the complaint — remains unconvinced by Roe's claim, calling it an "insidious campaign tactic [that] unfortunately appears to be part of a national trend' of election disinformation targeting Black voters."

The group emphasized that "it strains credulity that this was a simple mistake. Tom Barrett and his Campaign placed two nearly identical ads in two different newspapers within a week of each other. The ad placed in the newspaper read predominantly by Black voters has the wrong election date; while the ad placed in the newspaper not read predominantly by Black voters has the correct election date."

"At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing," the group added. "And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to ‘deter’ Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”

*The Washington Post's full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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mma 10 24

On War Room, “Fight Voter Fraud” founder offers MAGA audience voter data for mass eligibility challenges in Georgia

Linda Szynkowicz: “You can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting”

Written by Madeline Peltz

Research contributions from John Knefel

Published 10/07/24

On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Fight Voter Fraud founder Linda Szynkowicz encouraged her MAGA audience to request voter data so they can challenge the eligibility of people they believe should not have ballot access in Georgia.

Szynkowicz’s call to action comes amid a wave of harassment against election officials — and could potentially turn this tactic on the general voting public.

Video

CitationFrom the October 7, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

“Go to our website, download the request data so you can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting in your county, and you can actually hang on to those,” Szynkowicz said during the October 7 episode. “Do your due diligence. We’ll even teach you how to do it.”

Szynkowicz specifically singled out Georgia, where county election boards across the state are dealing with large batches of these voter challenges. From The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Mass voter challenges have become a new front in the battle between partisan activists and local election boards. State laws passed in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election have empowered activists to contest an unlimited number of voters within the same county.

But a majority of challenges are rejected by county boards. Election officials often say the challenges lack credible evidence to prove that the challenged voter moved to a new state or jurisdiction, died or broke some other rule making them ineligible to vote.

“Over 350,000 voter challenges have been lodged since 2020,” the article continues. “County election officials have rejected the vast majority.”

Voter challenges in Georgia have been a tactic of national election denial groups. Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump lawyer and founder of the Election Integrity Network, developed software called Eagle AI that empowers “MAGA activists to generate mass voter challenges.” According to Documented, “Activists affiliated with EIN in states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida are already testing the Eagle AI system, and setting up meetings with election officials to normalize the program and encourage them to accept voter challenges generated by the platform.”

The Brennan Center for Justice notes that these types of challenges can be “intimidating” and “spread disinformation” when they are cited “as ‘proof’ that ineligible people are voting.” Former President Donald Trump, right-wing media, and GOP Congress members have fearmonged about the imaginary threat of mass noncitizen voting to create a cloud of doubt around November’s presidential election results.

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AN 9 24

Inside Trump and Johnson's shocking new bid to suppress women's votes

Thom Hartmann September 20, 2024

Republicans don’t want women to vote. They now think they may have a strategy that could help make that happen.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and former president Donald Trump were pushing the SAVE Act (Safeguard American Eligibility Act), demanding it be part of must-pass legislation to fund the federal government for another year (the funding runs out at the end of this month and then the shutdown begins).

It died in the House last night, but, like a bad penny, you can bet it’ll return. Now they’re pushing for it in the Senate, with a version authored by Joe Manchin, his final goodbye kiss to — or future bet on — the Republicans.

Trump, on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site, ranted Tuesday that Republicans must get “every ounce” of the SAVE Act passed or shut down the government “in any way, shape, or form.” He said it was necessary because Democrats are “registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS, as we speak,” ranting the vicious lie that, “They will be voting in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

Trump, Vance, and Johnson claim that the SAVE Act is necessary to prevent people who aren’t citizens from voting, but are entirely unable to prove that any meaningful number of noncitizens have ever illegally voted in any American election. After all, it’s a felony for a noncitizen to vote, and few are stupid enough to take that sort of a chance.

Republicans love to point out that occasionally noncitizens end up on the voting rolls of various states. Oregon, for example, just found that 306 noncitizens were on the voting rolls because they were incorrectly added when they renewed their drivers’ licenses; two had voted because they were mailed ballots and didn’t know better. The state has fixed this error.

But Republicans have absolutely no evidence of any election, anywhere in America, at any time in our history that was ever changed by noncitizens voting. Or of any conspiracy to encourage noncitizens to vote.

In other words, their entire argument is bullshit.

I’m generally reluctant to use profanity in my writing, but this argument deserves a strong word. Descriptors like dissimulation, deceptivity, blagging, dupery, prevarication, jiggery-pokery, supercherie, counterfeisance, misdescription, suggestio falsi, humbuggery, dissemblance, flimflammery, calumny, meretricity, or even the good old-fashioned word “lie” just won’t do: this is bullshit.

As NBC News noted:

“The Brennan Center found just 30 suspected noncitizen votes amid 23.5 million votes in 2016, suggesting that suspected noncitizen votes accounted for 0.0001% of votes cast. Trump’s own election integrity commission disbanded without releasing evidence of voter fraud, even though he’d claimed 3 million undocumented immigrants had voted in 2016 costing him the popular vote.”

Not only that will illegal voting get you years in prison, but it’s one of the most easily discovered crimes. Sean Morales-Doyle, a lawyer for the Brennan Center, laid it out:

“This is a crime where not only are the consequences really high and the payoff really low — you’re not getting millions of dollars, it’s not robbing a bank, you [just] get to cast one ballot. But what also makes this somewhat unique is that committing this crime actually entails the creation of a government record of your crime.”

So, why is this the hill Republicans are willing to die on? Why would Johnson, Trump, and Vance (and so many other Republicans) put so much effort into a lie that will, if acted on, create chaos for American voters?

And why try so hard to force it into a must-pass bill when it has already passed the House of Representatives on a standalone vote? The question contains the seed of its own answer.

The SAVE Act is a proposed federal law, so, first off, it would put a future president (say, Trump) in charge of enforcing it, taking that power away from the states. Millions of voter registrations in any states the president decides are problematic could be removed until those voters “cure” their registrations, and state authorities would have no say in it.

That alone could flip a few blue states red, and make purple states permanently red.

And what will the law require citizens who want to vote do? Lacking a passport or other proof of citizenship with their married names, they must produce both a birth certificate (with the seal of the state where it was issued; no copies allowed) and a current form of identification — both with the exact same name on them. That could instantly disqualify about 90 percent of all married women without passports or other proof that matches their birth certificates or proof of a legal name change.

For women in that situation, they can still register to vote if they can prove that they went to court to change their name when they got married, but most women just start using their new married name without ever going through all those formalities (although a few states recognize marriage as a legal name change).

As a result, as the National Organization for Women (NOW) details in a report on how Republican voter suppression efforts harm women:

“Voter ID laws have a disproportionately negative effect on women. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, one third of all women have citizenship documents that do not identically match their current names primarily because of name changes at marriage. Roughly 90 percent of women who marry adopt their husband’s last name.

“That means that roughly 90 percent of married female voters have a different name on their ID than the one on their birth certificate. An estimated 34 percent of women could be turned away from the polls unless they have precisely the right documents.”

Just by coincidence, Republicans will suggest, at this moment in history millions of American women are seriously pissed off at the GOP.

And, Republicans will tell you, that has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump and Mike Johnson threatening to shut down the government if Democrats don’t go along with these draconian new requirements for women to vote.

I’ll say it again: this effort by Republicans to blackmail Democrats into disenfranchising millions of women just in time for a critical election — just like their claim that legal Haitian immigrants are eating white people’s pets — is complete, utter, unmitigated bullshit.

And the press should do a much better job of calling it exactly what it is.

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January 6 supporters champion Georgia State Election Board rule changes

The same crowd of right-wing pundits who attempted to overturn the 2020 election results are now meddling with Georgia’s certification procedures to potentially deny Democrats a win in 2024

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Payton Armstrong

Published 09/05/24 mma

Several right-wing media figures tied to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election have supported changes to Georgia’s election certification process that could be used to question or deny the state’s vote totals this November.

These figures include Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin; Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, an election denialist group; mother-daughter “Stop the Steal” activists Amy and Kylie Jane Kremer (the former is also a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots); and former Trump adviser and attorney Cleta Mitchell, founder of the Election Integrity Network.

Notably, Mitchell is also a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, which — along with Tea Party Patriots — is one of the more than 100 organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025, a sprawling effort to provide a second Trump administration with policy and staffing proposals. Project 2025 is also run through with election deniers.

Several of the outside groups pushing the changes appear to hold at least some real power in Georgia as well. In May, Fulton County election board member Julie Adams — who is reportedly affiliated with the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network — refused to certify the primary election results. ProPublica further reported that a former board member brought one of the new rule changes forward at the “behest” of Adams, a “regional leader” in the Election Integrity Network who joined the Fulton County election board in February.

Adams isn’t the only new, hard-right election official. In May, the Georgia House speaker appointed Janelle King, a right-wing media personality, to the State Election Board, where she has supported the August rule changes. King has a history of spreading election denial conspiracy theories; in March 2021, she wrote on Facebook that “Republicans produce real proof of voter irregularities and fraud in some cases; stuff like, voting twice, voting from another state, stuff like that to name a few.”

The Georgia State Election Board’s hard-right turn

In early August, the Georgia State Election Board made changes to its certification process that would “require county election officials to make a ‘reasonable inquiry’ before certifying election results to the state,” as reported by The Associated Press. Voting rights advocates worry that the vagueness of the new rule will provide a pretext to delay or deny potential Democratic wins in November.

Later that month, the board made an additional change providing county election officials with the authority to access “all election-related documentation” and resolve any discrepancies prior to certification — another potential avenue to sow doubt and confusion about vote totals. State Democrats have since brought a lawsuit challenging the board’s new rules.

At a rally in Atlanta on August 3, Trump praised the Republican members of the State Election Board by name, including King, calling them “three pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.” Trump’s comments appear to signal that the board’s changes could be a crucial part of his strategy to undermine confidence in the vote totals if the Republican nominee loses the state in November.

Jenny Beth Martin and Tea Party Patriots

Martin is a significant figure in the election denial movement. Her organization, Tea Party Patriots, sponsored a Trump rally in D.C. ahead of the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, and Martin herself was outside the Capitol that day. According to Talking Points Memo, Martin “helped connect the political, legal, and activist elements of the push to keep Trump in power” and even communicated with Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff and an instrumental figure in the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Meadows faces charges in Arizona and Georgia for his role in Trump's scheme, and he is also a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

On August 10, Martin appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's War Room podcast to celebrate the Georgia State Election Board’s rule changes.

“They are clarifying what certification means, which is very important, especially if you are on an election board and you have questions and don’t quite know that — don’t think what you’re certifying is actually the final vote,” Martin said. “They need to get it right before certification.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 10, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Martin returned to War Room on August 27 to further praise the state board’s new policies and baselessly sow doubt about recent election results.

“These are not strange, draconian, hard things to enact,” Martin said. “Why doesn’t the left want these common sense changes to happen? That’s the real question.”

She later added: “We need to have elections we can have faith and trust in, and that’s what these board members are trying to accomplish.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 27, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Martin also hosts a podcast, The Jenny Beth Show, where she recently interviewed Salleigh Grubbs, the head of the Cobb County Republican Party. Grubbs gained some notoriety in right-wing media circles in 2020 after “following a truck she suspected of being used in a plot to shred evidence,” according to ProPublica. She later attended Trump’s January 6 event, and would continue to spread conspiracy theories about “irregularities in the election,” as reported in The Washington Post.

During the September 4 interview, Martin and Grubbs discussed the new Georgia rules. State and county election officials “are there to be a check and balance,” Martin said.

“That’s right,” Grubbs responded.

Martin added, “This is just another place to make sure that you’ve got another set of eyes and that you’re checking that everything really is what the report says it is.”

Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote

Martin was joined on War Room’s August 27 episode by Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote and another prominent election denialist. Engelbrecht and her business partner, Gregg Phillips, served as primary sources for 2000 Mules, a discredited conspiracy theory film from Dinesh D’Souza that falsely claimed there had been mass voter fraud in the 2020 election. In addition to participating in the film, True the Vote challenged Georgia’s 2020 election results, claiming it had obtained evidence of a mass ballot stuffing operation. When a judge later asked for the evidence, the group admitted it had none.

Like Martin, Engelbrecht praised the Georgia State Election Board, and she was even more explicit in her baseless accusations that Democrats were attempting to rig the election system.

“The Democrats are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that the fraud we’ve seen coming out of Georgia over these last few years, that that remains institutionalized,” Engelbrecht said. “I applaud the State Election Board, and even more than that I applaud the people of Georgia who have fought tirelessly to try to bring elections back to some semblance of common sense in their state, and they’re doing a great job.”

“The Democrat Party is opposed for all of the obvious reasons, but I’ll state the obvious, and that is that they intend to manipulate and exploit the weaknesses wherever they can,” she added.

### Cleta Mitchell and the Election Integrity Network

Prior to founding the Election Integrity Network, Mitchell served as a campaign adviser to then-President Trump while he was attempting to overturn the 2020 election. She participated in a call during which Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,000 votes, enough to throw the election to him. A grand jury later recommended indicting Mitchell for her role in Trump’s efforts to stay in power, though prosecutors in Fulton County declined to charge her.

Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network has issued at least two formal press releases in favor of the Georgia election changes.

On August 13, EIN issued a statement urging the passage of new rules that would “demand accurate counts before certifying elections.” Following adoption of the new policy, EIN said the State Election Board had “stood up to left-wing pressure groups and voted to ensure vote-tallies reconcile before certification.”

Mitchell has been a vocal supporter of the Georgia election board meddling. On August 3, she celebrated Trump’s speech singling out the three State Election Board members who later voted in favor of the new rules.

CitationFrom Cleta Mitchell's account on X/Twitter, accessed August 30, 2024

Since then, Mitchell has written at least five other posts in favor of the changes or criticizing opponents of the moves — including praising Trump-aligned board member Janelle King.

“GA State Election Board Member Janelle King is smart, tough, and conservative,” Mitchell wrote. “She stands for the rule of law and election integrity - leftists hate that. We are with you Janelle!”

Amy and Kylie Jane Kremer

Longtime tea party activist Amy Kremer helped organize the January 6, 2021, rally where Trump instructed the crowd to “fight like hell” and march to the U.S. Capitol. Her daughter, Kylie Jane, created a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group following the 2020 election that ballooned to 350,000 members over the course of a day. The duo previously founded the pro-Trump group Women for America First in 2019.

Following Joe Biden’s inauguration, Amy Kremer pushed for an “audit” of the Georgia vote totals, similar to a sham audit Trump allies pursued in Arizona. More recently, she successfully ran for a seat on the Republican National Committee in a campaign that was supported by Steve Bannon.

Both Amy and Kylie Jane Kremer have repeatedly supported the Georgia State Election Board rule changes. On August 19, Amy Kremer accused Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Attorney General Chris Carr, and Gov. Brian Kemp — all Republicans — of “standing in the way &/or running interference to stop the GA State Election Board from securing GA’s elections & investigating election fraud.”

CitationFrom Amy Kremer's account on X/Twitter, accessed September 3, 2024

Amy Kremer has repeatedly cast doubt on Georgia’s election systems throughout August, and responded to the Democrats’ lawsuit challenging the changes by asking Carr, “What are you going to do about this?”

Kylie Jane Kremer has similarly criticized Kemp, Raffensperger, and Carr, writing on August 3 that they’re “like the three amigos who steal elections.” On August 26, she praised Trump-aligned State Election Board member Janelle King. One day later, she urged her followers to show the board “the support they deserve as they stand strong for Georgians against attacks from Governor Kemp, SOS Brad Raffensperger, AG Chris Carr and Democrats!”

Raffensperger, who famously declined Trump’s request to “find” enough votes to overturn Georgia’s election results in 2020, has now spoken out against the State Election Board rule changes. As of late August, Kemp hadn’t publicly commented on the changes, though his office referred an ethics complaint against the pro-Trump board members to the attorney general’s office. Carr released an official opinion stating that the State Election Board can’t force him to reopen an investigation into the vote totals in Fulton County in 2020, as requested by Trump’s allies on the board.

===

an com dr 8 24

The “Party of Lincoln,” as Republicans call themselves, seems intent on undermining just about everything President Abraham Lincoln lived and died for. This includes Republican efforts to upend the way elections are run, by restricting who gets to vote, how voting is conducted, and how votes are counted and certified.

The outcome of the tight presidential race between former U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will hinge on the votes in a handful of swing states. From Georgia to Arizona, Nevada to Michigan, Republicans are mounting an all-out assault on the election process that journalist Ari Berman refers to as a “five-alarm fire for democracy.”

“It appears that Georgia Republicans are laying the groundwork not to certify the presidential election if Kamala Harris wins,” Berman said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “They’re doing exactly what Trump wanted them to do in 2020. Trump made Georgia the epicenter of the attempt to try to overturn the election. He asked local and State Board of Elections and election officials not to certify the election. They refused to do so; they followed the law. It seems like in 2024 they’re going to extraordinary lengths to try to implement the measures that failed in 2020, to try to rig the election for Trump.”

The Republican Party of today, desperate to suppress the votes of people of color, could not be further from the Party of Lincoln.

Georgia Republicans altered how counties count and certify votes. The Democratic Party of Georgia, the Democratic National Committee, and 10 Democratic county election officials from across Georgia have sued, seeking to roll back the changes. Their lawsuit argues, “Georgia’s State Election Board has passed a host of last-minute rules that threaten to sow chaos and impede the vote-canvassing process.”

Berman warns: “These state and local election boards have been taken over, in some cases, by election deniers, by MAGA extremists…The administration of elections matters so much because you can cast a vote, you can have your vote counted, but it doesn’t actually matter until votes are certified.”

In Texas, the Republican-controlled state government has for years tried to restrict voting in districts where Democratic candidates do well. Donald Trump won Texas by over five percentage points in 2020, but President Joe Biden won the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and El Paso as well as the Rio Grande Valley.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced this week that he has purged over 1 million voters from Texas voter rolls. This increasingly common tactic inevitably removes legally-registered voters, often through faulty data screens that target likely Democratic voters.

Meanwhile, Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s currently agreed to do community service to avoid a felony criminal securities fraud trial, and survived an unrelated impeachment trial in the Republican-controlled state senate, has been raiding nonprofit organizations that provide services to immigrant and Latino communities.

Last week, under Paxton’s orders, the homes of a dozen members of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, were raided and searched by Texas authorities, including SWAT teams. One activist’s door was broken down. Texas House candidate Cecilia Castellano, running for an open seat to represent Uvalde, the town devastated by one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, had her home raided. Government agents took her cell phone and, weeks ahead of election day, threw her campaign into chaos.

LULAC said in a statement, “Attorney General Paxton’s actions clearly aim to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.” LULAC has called on the Justice Department to investigate Paxton over the raids.

Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, said on Democracy Now!, “In the last U.S. Census, they reported 12.1 million Latinos in the state of Texas. For the first time, Latinos actually outnumber non-Hispanic whites, which is at 12 million. When you take into account not just the Latino population in the state of Texas, but the African American and Asian population… the minority community in Texas now stands at over 60%. Texas is and has been a majority-minority state. So, we see these, effectively, as tactics for the Republicans to actually stay in control of the government in Texas.”

If further evidence of Republican attempts to subvert the will of the voters were needed, Pluribus News, a nonprofit news organization, reports that Republican-controlled state governments are altering language on progressive state ballot initiatives to confuse or mislead voters. Arizona, for example, inserted “unborn human being” in place of fetus or embryo in the ballot initiative intended to guarantee the right to an abortion. Voters in Florida and Ohio will face similar confusing language in their ballot initiatives.

In President Lincoln’s final public address, three days before his assassination, Lincoln advocated that the right to vote be granted to formerly enslaved Black men (as only men could legally vote, until 1920). The Republican Party of today, desperate to suppress the votes of people of color, could not be further from the Party of Lincoln.

---

trib

The League of United Latin American Citizens plans to request a federal investigation into raids Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted this week as part of what he called an “ongoing election integrity investigation.”

Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC’s state director, said in a statement that Paxton carried out the raids 11 weeks before the 2024 elections “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.”

Agents raided the home of Cecilia Castellano — the Democrat running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde — and confiscated her phone as part of the search, according to Rosales. Republicans see that seat, which Gov. Greg Abbott carried by nearly 6 percentage points, as their best potential state House flip in November.

Law enforcement also searched the homes of at least five other Latino individuals, all of whom were working on Castellano’s campaign and three of whom are members of Texas LULAC, Rosales added. LULAC is a non-partisan, volunteer-based Hispanic civil rights organization headquartered in Washington.

The group is in the dark about the details of any accusations, Rosales said, “but there's none that we’ve been privy to that merits an investigation like this that wastes taxpayers’ money.”

“It is disgraceful and outrageous that the state of Texas, and its highest-ranking law enforcement officer is once again using the power of his office to instill fear in the hearts of community members who volunteer their time to promote civic engagement,” Rosales said in a statement.

Paxton announced on Wednesday that his office executed “multiple” search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties the day prior as part of an investigation into allegations of “election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” A two-year investigation, Paxton said, provided “sufficient evidence” to obtain the search warrants.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in a statement. “We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

Paxton’s office did not reply to a request for additional information. His announcement did not detail the targets of the raids, the number of raids, or the reason specific homes were searched.

“It’s still very vague,” Rosales said in an interview. “That’s what’s really unnerving about the whole situation.”

According to one person whose home was raided, Rosales said, law enforcement suggested that he was accused of possessing “illegal voter information” — a claim that he denied and called politically motivated, saying voter information is publicly available.

“There’s no there, there,” Rosales said. “They’re using every tool in the toolbox to intimidate our people from coming out to the polls.”

The Texas Tribune

Rosales said he was working with the group’s national leaders and attorneys to draft a formal complaint with the U.S. Justice Department requesting a federal investigation into Paxton’s raids.

The attorney general’s office was asked to investigate the allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting during the 2022 elections by 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis, a Republican whose district includes Frio and Atascosa counties.

---

===

guard

one of the United States’ oldest Latino civil rights organizations is raising alarm after several of its members had their homes raided as part of a voter fraud investigation by the Texas attorney general’s office.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (Lulac) wants the Department of Justice to investigate raids on at least three of its members in Texas. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement last week his office had executed multiple search warrants in Bexar county, which includes San Antonio, as well as neighboring Frio and Atascosa counties as part of an ongoing, two-year investigation. The office did not provide details of the investigation or respond to a request for comment.

No one has been arrested and the exact nature of the investigation remains unclear. But the searches themselves were designed to intimidate, Lulac officials said.

‘A different level than 2020’: Trump’s plan to steal election is taking shape

Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/trump-overturn-result-presidential-election-vote)

“They’re trying to intimidate our folks that are out registering people,” said Lulac’s president, Roman Palomares. “What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to intimidate, and then that has repercussions down the line here, where folks read about that and they go, ‘God, I mean, if they’re doing that to her and I’m a registrar, God, how are they going to go after me?’”

A justice department spokesperson said the agency was aware of the matter and declined to comment further.

Lidia Martinez, 87, said nine officers from the attorney general’s office showed up at her front door at 6am last Tuesday and spent hours searching her home as she watched in her nightgown. She said they told her they were there because she had filed a complaint that senior citizens were not receiving their ballots.

Martinez was taken outside in front of her neighbors while officers searched the house, she said. Eventually, the officers left with her laptop, planner and cellphone.

View image in fullscreen

Lidia Martinez, center, a volunteer and great-grandmother whose home was searched, center, speaks at a news conference for Lulac on Monday. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

“I asked them why are you all doing this? And he said because there was fraud,” she said. “I said I’m not doing anything illegal. All I do is help the seniors.”

Texas has extremely strict rules around mail-in balloting. Only those who are sick, out of the county on election day, confined in jail, giving birth within three weeks of election day, or aged 65 and older are authorized to request a mail-in ballot. Anyone who assists someone in requesting a ballot must fill out a form indicating they assisted. Anyone who assists the voter in returning the actual ballot, other than a family or household member, must sign the envelope with the ballot noting their assistance.

Texas leans on new voting law to reject thousands of ballot applications

Efforts to change Texas’ legal landscape

Kevin Brown can still vividly remember learning how to vote in his government class as a high school student in San Marcos in the mid 80s. A nonprofit brought a voting booth into his classroom and taught students how to punch in their selections. Students ran a mock election, and the tally was shared the following day in the morning announcements.

Brown, who now serves as the executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators, said administrators took civics education seriously when he later became a public school teacher. They wanted to develop citizens who would be engaged with the world and the issues around them.

Now, he has trouble imagining a school running a mock presidential election without raising concerns that doing so might create controversy. Senate Bill 3, the same 2021 law that limits lessons about racism in American history, also prohibits teachers from giving students class credit for any public policy advocacy.

“That produced a really big chilling effect on anything related to civics education,” Stern said. “It has really deterred a lot of schools who used to be doing this work from having any sort of conversation with students around voting and civic participation.”

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/dUhBbm3g9u9iuePFpM3pa-Wf8lU=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/9e3b4d04e4c8158c4986b03909ec2a0a/0405%20DeBakey%20HS%20Voting%20JB%20TT%2010.jpg)

TaKasha Francis, who won the Democratic nomination for judge of a state district court, speaks to DeBakey Civics Club students on the importance of voting. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune

SB 3 requires the Texas Education Agency to create a civics training program that will outline the knowledge and skills students are expected to have. The program is supposed to be implemented no later than the 2025-2026 school year. A TEA spokesperson said the agency is in the “planning phase” for developing the program.

:{:{Although public school students in Texas are required to take a government class to graduate, many students say they do not learn about civic engagement or voter registration in the course. That’s despite the fact that the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills states that students who complete the class should be able to “describe the voter registration process and the criteria for voting in elections.”}:}:

“It’s a daunting task to learn what is a primary, what is a general election and who are all the candidates running,” said Ashton Sanchez, a senior at Sam Houston Math, Science and Technology Center High School in Houston. “We need to find a way to integrate that into the classroom.”

Voting rights advocates argue that the state should do more to ensure students are registered to vote, for example, by documenting compliance with the high school voter registration law.

Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, noted that some states reward schools that register students. Tennessee acknowledges schools that reach a certain voter registration threshold, and Pennsylvania has a governor’s civic engagement award to celebrate schools that register 85% of eligible students to vote, for example.

:{Common Cause also recommends that the secretary of state’s office mail each school voter registration applications, instead of requiring schools to request them twice a year. Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, introduced a bill in 2021 that would require the secretary of state to mail the applications directly to all high schools, but the bill never got a hearing before the House Elections Committee.}:

Alicia Pierce, spokesperson for the secretary of state, said mailing applications is expensive and that it might not address noncompliance.

“I’m not sure you would get much better results,” Pierce said. “If it just shows up at their door and they weren’t already planning to use them, then you just have these registration forms sitting there.”

Student action

Some students have taken matters into their own hands. Rice University has partnered with the League of Women Voters to create an internship program where students, most of whom are in the Houston Independent School District, organize voter registration drives at their high schools. The goal, according to Rice University professor Melissa Marschall, who leads the program, is to get students to take ownership of the activity and encourage their friends to register.

“I’ve never heard of a school where the principal takes charge of the event, because technically, most of them are not trained as deputy voter registrars,” Marschall said. “We prioritize events with peer to peer civic education.”

About 130 students applied to the internship and 10 are participating, Marschall said. She said she hopes the program makes it easier for organizations like the League of Women Voters to enter schools. The organization has historically relied on relationships with administrators, who are not always amenable to welcoming outside organizations. Administrator turnover, which has increased this year due to the state’s takeover of HISD, creates additional hurdles.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/0qUjbEZzLRYowg4L4pxlLaJ-onY=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/660305a9d339f3b5a26576fc65e72db5/0405%20DeBakey%20HS%20Voting%20JB%20TT%2017.jpg)

DeBakey Civics Club Vice President Mihir Relan fills out a voter registration form. Some Texas high school students have organized voter registration drives to increase the participation of younger voters. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune

At Round Rock High School, a student chapter of Junior State of America has taken the lead on organizing a voter registration drive. Junior Indira Moparthi recalled an uphill battle to create a drive during her freshman year. She said administrators rejected the idea because they thought the event would be partisan.

“Seniors and parents got involved, and a petition went around saying we weren’t supporting a particular political party,” Moparthi said. “Finally the administration signed off.”

For some students, school is the only place where they can gain critical information about voting. Among immigrant families who have historically been marginalized for voting, civics participation is rarely talked about in the household.

For Dzul, whose parents did not grow up voting in the U.S., it was frustrating to see 18-year-olds who could vote fail to take advantage of their right. That motivated him to create a civics club, which has continued to hold registration drives since he graduated.

“We need to get more power to marginalized communities, and voter registration is the first step to getting people that power,” Dzul said

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pt man on voter suppression 2024?

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Trump campaign says it plans to change tactics from 2020 when Joe Biden beat the then-incumbent president by more than 7 million votes, and this time go on “offense” by having “soldiers” and “poll watchers” at polling places.

Despite the Trump campaign’s relentless claims of voter fraud, more than 60 court rulings found those claims to be unsupported by facts: there was no significant voter fraud. Last year The Brookings Institution cited an extensive report from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which found, for example, voter “fraud in Texas amounted to 0.000096% of all ballots cast.”

Vowing to “to play offense this time around,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday, appearing on “The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show,” said they are “investing a lot of money into voter integrity efforts to ensure that every American knows their ballot will be cast and counted and matter.”

“We’re not going to play defense, like we unfortunately did in 2020. We’re going to have soldiers, poll watchers on the ground who are making sure that there are no irregularities and fraud like we saw in the last election.”

Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr., was at the January 6, 2021 rally at the Ellipse, and helped organize and fundraise for the event. Propublica that year reported she had “boasted to a GOP operative that she had raised $3 million for the rally that helped fuel the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”

“Guilfoyle’s texts, reviewed by ProPublica, represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family circle were directly involved in the financing and organization of the rally. The attack on the Capitol that followed it left five dead and scores injured.”

“I love it,” Guilfoyle told Leavitt. “I cannot wait.”

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with less than six months before voting begins, the legal jousting over the rules for the 2024 election is already underway. And former President Donald Trump’s campaign is getting support from allies who have stayed mostly under the national radar: red-state attorneys general.

In court filings made in recent months, these chief state legal officers have advanced a string of arguments — some strikingly far-reaching — that appear designed to lay the groundwork for Republican legal victories in the event of a contested presidential vote, or to otherwise boost Trump and the GOP.

Often led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a loose coalition of Republican-led states has submitted briefs urging judges to throw out certain mail ballots.Weaken long-standing protections against racial discrimination in voting.

“These are all setting up an argument, potentially, to say that the 2024 election was flawed because of all these state practices that are questionable,” said Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee who has written in depth on the role of state AGs. “The AGs just have been critical in pushing these arguments.”

Marshall’s office did not respond to a request to comment for this story. But last month Marshall also led a coalition of red states in submitting an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to pause Trump’s election subversion trial tied to the events of Jan. 6, 2021 — a stance that aligned the group perfectly with the interests of the Trump campaign.

And in 2020, many of these same state AGs, including Marshall, sought to have the courts overturn Trump’s election loss.

An election decided in the courts?

The danger of outright election subversion this year appears to have receded somewhat, election law experts have said, thanks to important federal legislation and the results of the last midterms. But the chances that the election will be contested, and ultimately settled in the courts, remain very high.

In that scenario, advocates and experts say, these Republican AGs look well-placed to provide the kinds of conservative legal arguments that could prove pivotal, both by directly influencing court decisions and by infiltrating the broader public debate.

But many of these claims, democracy advocates warn — especially those that support new voting restrictions, reduce the power of minority voters, or undermine courts’ authority to set election rules — could threaten fair elections.

“A huge part of the overall anti-democracy movement is really based on continuing to find ways to use legal tactics as a jumping-off point to spread the election denier message,” said Lizzie Ulmer, senior vice president of strategy and communications for States United Democracy Center, a pro-democracy group.

“There are good and pro-democracy state AGs on both sides of the aisle. But the truth is there are AGs in office right now that have the potential to do real harm. And we’ve seen that in the past and we’re seeing it today.”

Growing politicization

The involvement of the Republican AGs in elections cases with national stakes marks the latest step in a decadeslong trend toward AGs taking on more politicized roles.

In less polarized times, experts say, state AGs mostly presented as apolitical prosecutors, and frequently teamed up across party lines to tackle issues of public concern.

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That began to shift in earnest during the George W. Bush administration, when Democratic AGs used a series of splashy lawsuits against Wall Street firms and corporate polluters, among others, to advance national policy and political goals — and to boost their own national profiles.

But in the Trump era, the shift has intensified. Several close observers said a key moment came in 2017, when Republicans sought to oust then-Virginia AG Mark Herring, a Democrat — ending a long-standing custom in which neither party spent money targeting incumbent AGs of the other party. Herring ultimately won reelection, but that cycle saw record campaign spending on AG races.

In Republican-led states, the politicization of AG offices reached its height around the 2020 election, centered around the Republican Attorneys General Association, an advocacy group for Republican AGs. In the leadup to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the group’s fundraising arm, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent robocalls urging people to gather for a march to the U.S. Capitol to “stop the steal” and “protect the integrity of our elections.”

Marshall, the Alabama AG, served as chair of RLDF at the time, and has said he was unaware of the robocalls. He has declined to say whether RAGA or RLDF staff were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and his office has denied public records requests by the Alabama Political Reporter for his calendars covering the period.

Along with other Republican AGs, Marshall sought to cast doubt on the 2020 election results, telling Newsmax not long after the vote: “We obviously have concerns about some of the issues, specifically of irregularities and fraud in other places.”

On Dec. 10, 2020, Marshall and other Republican AGs joined Trump for a meeting at the White House. A day earlier, Marshall had announced that Alabama would join a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to overturn the results in Pennsylvania and three other states narrowly won by Joe Biden. Seventeen Republican-led states ultimately signed on to the Texas case.

Idaho AG disagreed

One state that didn’t join the suit was Idaho, whose AG at the time, Republican Lawrence Wasden, saw the Texas lawsuit as an improper attempt to use the AG’s office to make policy — and to interfere in other states’ business.

“The policy-making function under both the state and federal constitutions is clearly put in the hands of the legislative branch of government,” Wasden told States Newsroom. “The AG is an executive officer, and does not have those powers. That’s not how we should make public policy.”

After 20 years in office, Wasden lost his 2022 reelection bid in the Republican primary to former U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador — a defeat Wasden attributes to GOP voter anger at his decision not to join the Texas case. But he hasn’t wavered in his view that it was the right call.

“If Texas can control or influence the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania, then California can influence the election in Idaho,” Wasden said. “And that is not how federalism works.”

Labrador was elected attorney general later that year, and has signed Idaho on to several of the elections cases brought by Republican AGs.

Raúl Labrador, who won his race for attorney general in 2022, has signed Idaho on to several of the elections cases brought by other Republican AGs. Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun

As for Marshall, in 2021, he withdrew Alabama from the bipartisan National Association of Attorneys General, saying the group had “moved too far to the left.” The next year, Texas, Missouri and Montana followed suit.

In 2022, Marshall declined to say, when asked under oath while testifying before Congress, that Biden was “duly elected,” answering only that “he is the president of this country.”

Months later, Marshall was elected chair of RAGA. Now, he’s leading the charge among Republican AGs on election cases with an eye on 2024.

Weakening voting protections

Marshall has battled on behalf of strict voting laws in his own state.

His office energetically, and successfully, fought off a 2020 court challenge to an Alabama law that bars people with past convictions from casting a ballot. In that year’s election, he also succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to block an effort to allow curbside voting, which voting advocates said could offer easier access for elderly and disabled voters.

But it’s Marshall’s work on behalf of Republicans looking to influence election rules far beyond the Yellowhammer State that could have an even greater impact.

In January, Marshall led a coalition of 17 red states that submitted an amicus brief supporting a bid by national Republicans to require Pennsylvania to reject mail ballots with incorrect or missing dates.

In Pennsylvania’s 2020 election, there were over 10,000 such ballots, and how the case is resolved could help determine the winner of this pivotal swing state, if the result is very close. Democrats have voted by mail at significantly higher rates than Republicans in recent elections.

But the impact could be broader still. A district court found last year that the missing or incorrect dates are irrelevant to establishing a vote’s legitimacy.

That means, the court ruled, that under the materiality provision of civil rights law — first included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, then extended to cover non-federal elections in the Voting Rights Act the following year — a missing or incorrect date can’t be used as a reason to reject a vote.

In their brief, Alabama and the other states called the district court’s ruling “seriously misguided.”

They argued that the materiality provision should be read more narrowly, and doesn’t bar states from imposing reasonable ballot integrity measures. And, they claimed, the provision contains no “private right of action,” meaning it can be enforced only by the U.S. Justice Department, not by the civil rights groups involved in the Pennsylvania case.

By itself, making the materiality provision harder to use would likely have only a limited impact, since it hasn’t been among the tools most commonly used to protect voting rights, noted Cameron Kistler, counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy group.

But, he said, it comes in the context of other ongoing conservative legal attacks on voting protections — including attempts to weaken the Voting Rights Act, and suggestions by the Supreme Court that it may lower the level of scrutiny it applies to voting laws that are accused of harming voters.

“The tools that you’d use to ensure free and fair elections are slowly being pulled away,” said Kistler. “When you take them all together, that’s when it starts to get really problematic.”

Voting Rights Act

As if to prove the point, a separate amicus brief submitted in December by Marshall’s office argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the law’s most important plank, since the Supreme Court neutered Section 5 a decade ago — also contains no private right of action.

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Marshall and his allies were urging a federal appeals court to reverse a ruling striking down Louisiana’s congressional map as a racial gerrymander under Section 2.

The notion that Section 2 contains no private right of action had until recently been seen by many advocates as outlandish. But a federal judge endorsed it in a separate 2022 case involving an Arkansas redistricting plan, brought by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, who has signed his state on to several of Marshall’s amicus briefs. That decision was upheld on appeal in December.

The issue is likely to come before the Supreme Court. A ruling for Arkansas could dramatically limit the power of the VRA to stop racial discrimination in voting.

Separately, Marshall has sought to defend Alabama’s own redistricting plan. In arguing that the state should not have to draw a new map with an additional majority-Black district, his office adopted an interpretation of the VRA that, experts said, would have made it all but impossible to use for stopping racial gerrymanders.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a prominent election law scholar at Harvard Law School, has called Alabama’s approach to the question “directly contrary to 40 years of precedent.”

The claim was too extreme even for the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which ultimately ordered Alabama to create a new map.

In response, Marshall signaled an agenda that went well beyond Alabama.

“There should be nothing more offensive to the people of our great state than to be sidelined in 2023 by a view of Alabama that is stuck in 1963,” he said in a statement. “This racial agenda is pressed by left-wing activists, not just in Alabama, but in any Republican state where it might advantage Democrats.”

And he compared the ruling, which aimed to empower Black voters, with Jim Crow.

“If this brazen and divisive commandeering is permitted without even a whisper of concern from other quarters, America’s congressional elections as we know them will never be the same,” Marshall continued. “We will be grouped together by race alone, with counties and cities split down the middle—the same way that we were so wrongfully segregated once before.”

Marshall also led a coalition of 18 GOP-led states that filed a 2021 amicus brief supporting Arizona’s defense of a law requiring voters who don’t sign their mail ballots to do so by 7 p.m. on election night.

The issue may seem minor, but Marshall’s brief invoked a far more fundamental question, arguing that state legislatures, not the courts, are in charge of setting election rules.

“The U.S. Constitution is unambiguous about the right of state legislatures to determine the manner of holding elections within their respective states,” wrote Marshall. “Accordingly, state legislatures, not federal courts, are vested with the legal authority to determine state election laws. Court attempts to micromanage election laws duly passed by state legislatures conflict with our constitutional structure and legal precedent.”

When North Carolina brought a version of this claim — known as the Independent State Legislature Theory — to the Supreme Court last year, experts warned that it could radically reshape election law, giving partisan state lawmakers almost unfettered power to make the rules. The Justices ultimately rejected the argument.

Why AGs enjoy influence

Advocates say it’s difficult to assess whether, and to what extent, courts are swayed by amicus briefs. But, they add, the role of state AGs as their state’s chief legal officer gives their claims an invaluable sheen of authority.

GOP backs voting by mail, yet turns to courts to restrict it in battleground states

IFrame Content

“State AGs are taken seriously because of the governmental role they play, in a way that parties, who do not have a governmental role, typically are not,” said Dax Goldstein, a senior counsel at States United Democracy Center. “So there’s a real difference between a sitting AG filing a brief and [Donald Trump lawyer] John Eastman filing a brief.”

In addition, since a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in a case where a group of states led by Massachusetts sued the George W. Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, states have enjoyed more power than individual plaintiffs to bring lawsuits on public policy issues.

“States have a greater ability to bring legal challenges than private citizens do,” said Kistler. “So when you have these super active state officials with a greater ability to bring cases than private parties and a judiciary that’s willing to entertain the cases, it makes a difference.”

Nolette, the Marquette political scientist, noted that if the AGs’ series of briefs in election cases appear coordinated, it’s no accident.

“There’s a lot of strategy that goes into planning these far-reaching arguments,” Nolette said, adding that AGs of both parties use their partisan organizations — the Republican Attorney Generals Association, and the Democratic Attorney Generals Association — to align their efforts and figure out the venues where they might have the most chance of success.

“It’s almost like buying a lottery ticket, trying to boost the chances of those arguments taking hold somewhere,” Nolette continued. “And once they get one district court judge to agree with it, then it moves them to a different state of respectability. It’s like, well, a federal judge has agreed with us, so this is a legitimate argument, even if it was considered totally out there in previous years.”

*Ralph Chapoco contributed to this report.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network

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seems to be voter suppr but some Jan 6?

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Why this South Texas county closed half its early voting sites for 2024 - Alternet.org

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John Roberts’ conservative SCOTUS majority 'rigging the docket' against voting rights: analysis

Chief Justice John Roberts / US Supreme Court

Carl Gibson

November 10, 2023

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is selectively accepting cases to the Court's docket in a long-term project to weaken democracy, according to a recent analysis.

In an essay published recently by Slate, legal activist Sarah Lipton-Lubet argued that the Roberts Court is marching down a path that leads to the overall erosion of voting rights in selecting the cases it chooses to hear in a given term. Lipton-Lubet tracked the number of cases the Court has heard concerning "core democracy issues" like gerrymandering, redistricting, voting rights enforcement, and campaign finance since the Roberts Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that gutted portions of the Voting Rights Act pertaining to racial discrimination.

She found that out of 32 such cases, the Roberts Court agreed to hear 26 in which it had an opportunity to overturn a lower court ruling in favor of democracy, and only six in which it could potentially overturn an anti-democracy ruling (the Supreme Court can decide to hear a case if four of nine justices agree to issue a *writ of certiorari*).

"It’s not quite 'Heads I win, tails democracy loses,' but it’s pretty damn close," Lipton-Lubet wrote.

One of those six anti-democracy rulings was Allen v. Milligan, in which the Court ultimately ruled that Congressional redistricting maps that disenfranchised Black voters in Alabama were unconstitutional. Both Roberts and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the Court's three liberal justices that Alabama's legislature needed to redraw at least two of its seven Congressional districts to allow greater representation by Black voters, who make up 26% of the state's voting population.

However, Lipton-Lubet argued this decision was an anomaly amid the Roberts Court's larger pattern of weakening democracy over time. She pointed to both the Court's decision to stay the lower court ruling in Allen while it heard the case, allowing the illegal maps to remain in place for the 2022 midterms, which may have been the deciding factor that helped Republicans retake the House of Representatives with a razor-thin majority last year. She also pointed to the Court's 5-4 ruling in the Rucho v. Common Cause case in 2019, in which the conservative majority agreed that matters of partisan gerrymandering were not in the jurisdiction of federal courts. This paved the way for Republican-controlled legislatures like North Carolina's to aggressively gerrymander maps that would virtually guarantee impenetrable Republican majorities for the foreseeable future.

"Roberts and Kavanaugh are shrewd political operatives who have dedicated decades of their personal and professional lives to electing Republicans," Lipton-Lubet wrote. "They are not afraid to play the long game. Unlike some of their less patient colleagues, they recognize the power of cloaking their anti-democratic project in a veneer of moderation."

"By rigging the docket, Roberts and Kavanaugh can have their cake and eat it too," she added.

Read Lipton-Lubet's full essay by clicking here.

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tpm

Kate Riga (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/profile/kate_riga)

December 27, 2023

In their endless quest to further defang the Voting Rights Act and gerrymander their way into permanent control, Republican officials have launched a double-headed attack on the landmark civil rights law.

The new attacks emerge as Republican politicians attempt to wriggle out of judges’ orders requiring that they draw additional, majority-minority, likely Democratic districts in their states, which could imperil their party’s thin majority in the House of Representatives.

The attacks on the already-weakened VRA take two forms: arguing that the law doesn’t protect districts controlled by coalitions of multiple minority groups, and that only the U.S. attorney general — not individual voters represented by good government groups, as is most common — can bring lawsuits under the section of the law concerning illegal vote dilution.

Individuals’ Ability To Sue Under Section 2

Arkansas

In perhaps the most stunning voting rights decision this year, a split 8th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/appeals-court-voting-rights-act) that only the U.S. attorney general can bring VRA lawsuits under Section 2 — a wild break with precedent, decades of VRA cases, legislative intent and Supreme Court writing on the subject.

At least two Supreme Court justices — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — had telegraphed (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-judges-voting-rights-act-supreme-court) their skepticism about the validity of suits brought by voting rights groups and other non-Department of Justice actors, called private rights of action. That likely prompted a Donald Trump-appointed district judge hearing an Arkansas gerrymandering dispute to raise questions about the mechanism (which neither party had) in the first place. Two 8th Circuit judges pounced on appeal.

If the 8th Circuit decision stands, VRA litigation would plummet even under Democratic administrations due to the simple reality that the DOJ cannot replace the volume of lawsuits, aimed at protecting the vote, brought each year by civil rights groups around the country. Such litigation would likely end altogether under Republican administrations.

The plaintiffs in that case, led by the Arkansas state conference NAACP, have asked for the case to be reheard en banc, in the hopes that the full circuit will overturn the ruling of two of its judges (both of whom made the Supreme Court shortlist during the Trump administration).

“The full Court should grant rehearing to reaffirm that a private right of action exists to enforce Section 2 of the VRA,” they wrote. “For almost 60 years — across hundreds of federal cases, including in the Supreme Court and this Court — the uniform answer has been ‘yes.’ By a 2-1 vote, the divided panel abruptly fractured this line of unbroken precedent.”

They noted that since 1982, more than 400 Section 2 cases have been litigated, almost all of which were brought by individuals. “Of the 182 successful Section 2 cases in that time,” they added, “only 15 were brought by the Attorney General alone.”

The court has ordered a response to the petition for the full circuit to hear the case by December 26.

Louisiana

Sensing an opportunity, Louisiana Republicans — perhaps the most energetic of all in their attempts to avoid drawing an additional majority-minority district — quickly glommed on to the Arkansas case. They invoked the 8th Circuit decision in an unsuccessful attempt to get en banc rehearing of their own case, where a 5th Circuit panel upheld a lower court’s finding that the congressional maps likely violate the VRA.

“New and important precedent has been handed down after the panel’s decision was published, which creates a definitive circuit split as to whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Acts (“VRA”) confers a private right of action,” they wrote last month. “Just two days ago, the 8th Circuit ruled that Section 2 does not confer a private right of action. The State tendered the same argument with this Court, but it reached the opposite conclusion.”

They argued that the new circuit split strengthens their case for a more rigorous rehearing.

Voters and the NAACP retorted that a reversal in the Louisiana case would not remedy the circuit split the 8th Circuit created and reminded the court that they’d also brought their challenge under a separate law, covering their bases.

The panel ultimately rejected the Louisiana officials’ bid for a full circuit hearing — a convenient method of delay, the voters and NAACP pointed out — and the legislature is expected to produce a new map during a special session (https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2023/12/19/louisiana-legislature-will-open-year-with-special-sessions-on-congressional-map-crime/71916761007/) in mid-January.

Multi-Minority Group Coalitions

Georgia

Federal district judge Steve Jones wasn’t coy when he ordered Georgia lawmakers to draw an additional Black-majority district: “The State cannot remedy the Section 2 violations described herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans,” he wrote (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/georgia-map-redistricting-judge).

But Republican lawmakers did just that, shuffling Black voters around and decimating Rep. Lucy McBath’s (D-GA) district — where a coalition of Black, Asian and Latino voters typically elect Democrats — in the process of drawing the court-ordered new district. Plaintiffs immediately lodged their objections to the new map, fuming that it “makes a mockery” of the judge’s order.

At a Wednesday hearing, Jones reportedly said (https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/12/21/final-arguments-made-georgias-voting-maps-before-decision-early-next-year/) that he’d take until late January to decide whether the new maps are in compliance. If he decides that they’re not — ruling that these kinds of coalitions are protected by the VRA the same way single-minority group districts are — he’ll appoint a special master to draw remedial maps. Republican officials would almost certainly try to challenge that finding, hoping to get the question before a VRA-hostile Supreme Court.

Texas

Another case out of Galveston County, Texas pushes on this same question. There, a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel reluctantly upheld a lower court’s finding that the county commissioner map was a violation of the VRA. It also asked the full 5th Circuit to overturn its own precedent.

“The court’s decisions in this respect are wrong as a matter of law,” the judges wrote. “The text of Section 2 does not support the conclusion that distinct minority groups may be aggregated for purposes of vote-dilution claims.”

Earlier this month, the conservatives on the Supreme Court allowed the maps — found by two courts to be illegal — to stand without comment. The liberal dissenters were less taciturn.

“In imposing a different map, acknowledged to violate current law — on the theory that the Circuit might someday change that law — the Court of Appeals went far beyond its proper authority,” chided (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme-court-texas-map-voting-rights-act) Justice Elena Kagan.

The full 5th Circuit will hear the critical case in May

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tpm

Kate Riga

December 27, 2023

Individuals’ Ability To Sue Under Section 2

Arkansas

In perhaps the most stunning voting rights decision this year, a split 8th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that only the U.S. attorney general can bring VRA lawsuits under Section 2 — a wild break with precedent, decades of VRA cases, legislative intent and Supreme Court writing on the subject.

At least two Supreme Court justices — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — had telegraphed their skepticism about the validity of suits brought by voting rights groups and other non-Department of Justice actors, called private rights of action. That likely prompted a Donald Trump-appointed district judge hearing an Arkansas gerrymandering dispute to raise questions about the mechanism (which neither party had) in the first place. Two 8th Circuit judges pounced on appeal.

If the 8th Circuit decision stands, VRA litigation would plummet even under Democratic administrations due to the simple reality that the DOJ cannot replace the volume of lawsuits, aimed at protecting the vote, brought each year by civil rights groups around the country. Such litigation would likely end altogether under Republican administrations.

The plaintiffs in that case, led by the Arkansas state conference NAACP, have asked for the case to be reheard en banc, in the hopes that the full circuit will overturn the ruling of two of its judges (both of whom made the Supreme Court shortlist during the Trump administration).

The court has ordered a response to the petition for the full circuit to hear the case by December 26.

Louisiana

Sensing an opportunity, Louisiana Republicans — perhaps the most energetic of all in their attempts to avoid drawing an additional majority-minority district — quickly glommed on to the Arkansas case. They invoked the 8th Circuit decision in an unsuccessful attempt to get en banc rehearing of their own case, where a 5th Circuit panel upheld a lower court’s finding that the congressional maps likely violate the VRA.

They argued that the new circuit split strengthens their case for a more rigorous rehearing.

Voters and the NAACP retorted that a reversal in the Louisiana case would not remedy the circuit split the 8th Circuit created and reminded the court that they’d also brought their challenge under a separate law, covering their bases.

Multi-Minority Group Coalitions

Georgia

At a Wednesday hearing, Jones reportedly said that he’d take until late January to decide whether the new maps are in compliance. If he decides that they’re not — ruling that these kinds of coalitions are protected by the VRA the same way single-minority group districts are — he’ll appoint a special master to draw remedial maps. Republican officials would almost certainly try to challenge that finding, hoping to get the question before a VRA-hostile Supreme Court.

Texas

Another case out of Galveston County, Texas pushes on this same question. There, a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel reluctantly upheld a lower court’s finding that the county commissioner map was a violation of the VRA. It also asked the full 5th Circuit to overturn its own precedent.

Earlier this month, the conservatives on the Supreme Court allowed the maps — found by two courts to be illegal — to stand without comment. The liberal dissenters were less taciturn.

The full 5th Circuit will hear the critical case in May

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an 12 23 ah?

after veteran Democratic strategist James Carville compared far-right Christian nationalists to al-Qaeda, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) demanded an apology. But Carville hasn't backed down, maintaining that Christian nationalists are pushing a form of religious extremism that is not unlike al-Qaeda's ideology in Islamist fundamentalism.

In a report published by The Guardian on December 24, journalist Alice Herman focuses on the links between Christian nationalism and far-right "patriot" groups such as the Patriots of Ozaukee County, Patriots United and Patriot Academy.

"Many, including the Ozaukee County organization, openly embrace Christian nationalist rhetoric and ideology, arguing that the laws of the U.S. government should reflect conservative Christian beliefs about issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights," Herman explains. "Their religious interpretation of the U.S.'s founding has propelled these groups not only into fights over elections administration, but also, against vaccine requirements and protections for transgender people."

Christian nationalists, Herman notes, are pushing "numerous bills to restrict voting access."

"Many patriot groups in (Wisconsin) are animated by the Christian nationalist viewpoint," Herman reports. "Patriots of Ozaukee County declares, on its website, that it views as fundamental 'truths' that 'God is our creator' and 'Jesus is our savior.' The Ozaukee County group has also hosted Constitution Alive! events touting the claim that the U.S. constitution is a Christian document, led by the Patriot Academy organization, a Christian nationalist group that also offers weapons courses."

Herman adds, "They're not alone. Patriots United, a group in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, exemplifies the typical rhetoric of the Christian Right, describing its membership as 'constitutional conservative Christians who seek to glorify and honor God' with the explicit aim of increasing 'Christian influence' in local government."

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12 23 an

a new analysis of Republican-led "election integrity" prosecutions of alleged voter fraud found not only an extremely low success rate, but a common theme of prosecutions disproportionately targeting Democrats and minority voters.

This week the Washington Post published a report analyzing voter fraud prosecutions in six different Republican-led states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — dating back to the 2020 presidential election. The Post found that out of tens of millions of ballots cast in those states since then, there were only 47 confirmed convictions out of 136 total prosecutions. Additionally, 76% of defendants in those cases were either Black or Hispanic, compared to just 24% of defendants who are white.

"At best, these 'election integrity' units are for show, designed to placate far-right election denialists in the conservative base," Heather Sawyer, executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, told the Post. "At worst, they are used to justify new voting restrictions and to intimidate people — especially racial minorities — from exercising their right to vote."

The Post's report additionally found that all of the 47 voter fraud-related convictions occurred in Florida, Ohio and Texas with Arkansas, Georgia and Virginia's prosecutions not yielding a single guilty verdict despite spending millions of tax dollars. And out of the 115 cases resolved as of December, the Post found that 42 of those prosecutions ended in dismissal, acquittal or dropped charges.

In addition to the investigations overwhelmingly targeting racial minorities, the publication found that 58% of defendants were registered Democrats while only 23% were registered Republicans. The remaining defendants weren't registered with any political party. And contrary to former President Trump's claims that he was unfairly disadvantaged by widespread cheating, the bulk of prosecutions were over minor mistakes, like falsifying a registration form or voting despite being barred from doing so due to a felony conviction.

"They did not have a record of fraud that they needed to go and create these investigative units," Rutgers University professor Lorraine Minnite said. "The fact that they have not produced evidence of fraud is support for their lack of necessity."

The Post's findings in its most recent report are similar to another deep dive into alleged voter fraud by Loyola University-Los Angeles law professor Justin Levitt. In a 2014 analysis for the Post, Levitt found just 31 credible instances of voter fraud out of more than one billion ballots cast since 2000.

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an 12 23

marc Elias — the election attorney who represented the Democratic National Committee in court for more than a decade — is warning that Republican state lawmakers are planning to deploy a "bogus legal theory" to challenge election results in a must-win battleground state.

In a post to his website Democracy Docket, Elias called attention to a Michigan lawsuit Republican legislators filed as a challenge to two constitutional amendments voters in the Mitten State approved in 2018 and 2022. The 2018 amendment expanded voter registration efforts and made it easier for voters to obtain ballots and vote by mail. The 2022 amendment expanded early voting in Michigan and further protected the validity of mail-in ballots.

"GOP plaintiffs and their attorneys want to lay a predicate now to contest the 2024 election. Just as former President Donald Trump and his allies did after the 2020 election, Republicans are planning on blaming the voting rules for why they lost," Elias wrote. "They will couple it with an attack on the courts and false claims of fraud."

The lawsuit against those two amendments is based on the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory, which the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) already rejected in the 2022 Moore v. Harper case. That theory posits that state legislatures alone have the power to govern federal elections and and that state-level judges don't have the power to rule on anything pertaining to federal elections, including redistricting maps.

Elias wrote that even though SCOTUS already rejected the ISL theory, Republicans are hoping to have the case "remain pending and unresolved by Election Day 2024," in order to have a "cynical tool to claim election fraud and illegal voting rules robbed them of a fair outcome."

"It would give them a basis to contest the outcome of the Michigan results once again in court and Congress. When they fail, it will fuel their pathological election denialism," he wrote.

The 2018 and 2022 elections were particularly consequential for Michigan — voters in 2018 elected Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel (the state's first Democratic governor and attorney general, respectively, since 2011). In 2022, Michiganders reelected both Whitmer and Nessel, and also gave Michigan its first Democratic-controlled legislature in decades. Michigan proved decisive in the last two presidential elections with its 15 electoral college votes going to Donald Trump in 2016 and to Joe Biden in 2020.

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an 12 23

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters are setting their sights on a relatively unknown and mundane target, but election integrity experts say the results could have disastrous consequences in 2024.

On Friday, Rolling Stone reported that Trumpworld is coming after the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which dozens of states have used to organize voter registration data that was previously kept on paper. ERIC was created by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and has been used by both Democratic and Republican-controlled states without incident since 2012. However, the ex-president has railed against ERIC on his Truth Social page, calling it a "terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up."

Trump has called on Republican secretaries of state to pull out of ERIC, and MAGA-aligned attorney Cleta Mitchell has baselessly asserting that it was created and funded by Democratic billionaire George Soros (a rep for Soros' foundation told CNN it has "never funded" ERIC). Following the far-right's attacks on the system, ERIC has gone from being used by 33 states to just 24 as of December 2023.

According to Rolling Stone, ERIC allows states an easy way to purge voter rolls of deceased or ineligible voters, and offers a secure way for different secretaries of state to confidentially share voter info, like driver's license numbers and the last four digits of a voter's Social Security number "to eliminate any confusion about who a voter is and whether they’re eligible to register."

ERIC co-founder and former executive director David Becker — who resigned this year amid a GOP-led pressure campaign — said the far right's anti-ERIC campaign can lead to voter lists being "significantly less accurate" as more states pull out. He added that the problems that will inevitably arise from states not using ERIC could help fuel false narratives about supposedly stolen elections.

"There will be old records on the voter lists of people who are no longer eligible in the state that will fuel false claims of potential voter fraud. And there will be inaccurate records [of those] who are eligible in the state who moved within the state that they will likely not catch," Becker said. "Faulty voter files create long lines on Election Day, delays in getting mail-in ballots, an increase in provisional ballots, and delays in determining a winner."

“The more problems at the polls, the more lines, the more provisional ballots, the longer it takes to count overall ballots and get an unofficial winner, those all feed into the potential for chaos and even incitement to violence by election losers," he continued.

Voting software company EagleAI, which was developed by a healthcare CEO from Alabama, is being fielded as a MAGA alternative to ERIC. However, Georgia director of elections Blake Evans criticized an EagleAI presentation as "confused," and said it could "steer counties towards unlawful list-maintenance activities." Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said the software's pattern of using property tax records to determine voter eligibility was "utterly unreliable" and could result in litigation from voters being falsely removed.

"There’s any number of spouses who do not show up on property–tax records. No one who rents an apartment will show up on property-tax records," Schmidt said.

Click here to read Rolling Stone's full report.

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wisc gop qanon coach mel

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Matt Walsh: “The most effective way to undermine our democracy is to let people -- is to let too many people participate in it” | Media Matters for America

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December 4, 2023 rww

Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck @ CNN: Speaker Johnson wrote foreword for book filled with conspiracy theories and homophobic insults

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote the foreword and publicly promoted a 2022 book that spread baseless and discredited conspiracy theories and used derogatory homophobic insults.

Tim Alberta @ Politico: The Bogus Historians Who Teach Evangelicals They Live in a Theocracy.

They had come out by the hundreds, decked out in patriotic attire this October evening in 2021, to hear from a man who was introduced to them as “America’s greatest living historian.” They had come for David Barton.

John Fea @ Current: Chad Connelly: Those who criticize David Barton do not possess true Christian wisdom and “hate freedom.”

It reveals the deep-seated anti-intellectualism present among conservative evangelicals. It shows how politics has torn the church apart. As long as Connelly is able to secure funding to travel around the country with David Barton and tell lies about the American past in service to his “Christian” political agenda, the more anti-intellectualism and the political captivity of the evangelical church will persist.

Bob Smietana @ Religion News Service: Warren Throckmorton takes on David Barton and ‘Christian nationalists’ revisionist history.

Despite past controversy, Barton’s influence has found an eager audience with the rise of Christian nationalism in the age of Trump.’

Robert Downen @ The Texas Tribune: Texas GOP executive committee rejects proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.

Some members of the committee said such a ban, proposed two months after a prominent conservative activist was caught meeting with a famous white supremacist, might be a “slippery slope” or too vague.

Michael Kaplan, Major Garrett, and Sheena Samu @ CBS News: Eligible voters are being swept up in conservative activists’ efforts to purge voter rolls.

Voters eligible to cast ballots are already being swept up in a grassroots effort to purge the nation’s registration rolls ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a CBS News investigation has found.

Joe Jervis: Ex-Employee Says Ousted “Ex-Gay” Church Militant Founder Was Living An “Active Homosexual Lifestyle.”

I don’t think it’s too salacious to come out and say that the accusations against Voris are of a sexual nature.

Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Kirk Cameron wants schools to ditch Scholastic book fairs for a right-wing alternative.

Enter Kirk Cameron, whose entire post-Growing Pains career has centered around trying to replicate his success in the secular world and failing in bigger and bigger ways. His latest gambit is to offer a right-wing alternative to Scholastic book fairs.

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an 1123

Legal experts are sounding the alarm over Monday’s Appeals Court ruling they warn “decimates” the Voting Rights Act and will be “brutal” for minority voters.

In a 2-to-1 ruling, the highly-conservative Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled private plaintiffs, for example, voters and civil rights groups, do not have the right to sue to have section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) enforced. Only the U.S. Dept. of Justice, the court ruled, can sue under section 2.

“It will be a devastating near-death blow to the Voting Rights Act if it remains the law,” Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told The New York Times. “Radical theories that would previously have been laughed out of court have been taken increasingly seriously by an increasingly radical judiciary.”

The ruling appears to only apply to the Eight Circuit’s jurisdiction, which is Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, NBC News reports.

“It’s hard to overstate how important and detrimental this decision would be if allowed to stand,” warned UCLA professor of law Rick Hasen, the pre-eminent voice on election law and campaign finance. He added, “the vast majority of claims to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are brought by private plaintiffs, not the Department of Justice with limited resources. If minority voters are going to continue to elect representatives of their choice, they are going to need private attorneys to bring those suits.”

In his headline Hasen wrote the ruling “Would Decimate the Rights of Minority Voters; Supreme Court Review Almost Certain.”

Professor of law Steve Vladeck, a CNN contributor, noted that not only has the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed section 2 case from private plaintiffs before, it has specified the Voting Rights Act is still operable because private plaintiffs have the ability to sue under section 2. Until now.

IFrame Content

“The 8th Circuit has gutted the last remnants of the Voting Rights Act,” declared MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, a professor of law and former U.S. Attorney.

NPR called suing under section 2, “a key path for enforcing the Voting Rights Act.” Similarly to Hasen, they wrote the ruling “may set up the next U.S. Supreme Court fight that could further limit the reach of the Voting Rights Act’s protections for people of color.”

“Private individuals and groups, who did not represent the U.S. government, have for decades brought the majority of Section 2 cases to court,” NPR added. “Those cases have challenged the redrawing of voting maps and other steps in the elections process with claims that the voting power of people of color has been minimized.”

Indeed, Marc Elias, the top Democratic attorney who won all but one of more than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies in the 2020 election, explained: “In past 40 years, there have been at least 182 successful Section 2 cases–only 15 were brought solely by DOJ.”

Professor of law Eric Segall, author of “Originalism as Faith,” and “Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court Is Not a Court and Its Justices Are Not Judges,” issued a dire warning.

“Terrible, wrong and brutal for minorities,” Segall called it, noting that in that ruling the Eight Circuit was “trying to finish what Justice Roberts and Judge Bill Pryor wanted for decades: the eventual judicial repeal of the entire VRA.”

Monday’s ruling was written by a Trump-appointed judge, and upholds a lower court ruling also written by a Trump-appointed judge.

“Jesus Christ,” exclaimed The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal. “This is THE WAY the Voting Rights Act works. It’s THE WAY we enforce the 15th freaking amendment. I think [Chief Justice John] Roberts and [Justice Amy Coney] Barrett will join the liberals to reverse this when it gets to SCOTUS, but my God, letting Trump judges on the federal bench was a terrible plan.”

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Newsmax host: "Joe Biden is mandating government agencies spend their time and spend your money seeking to register as much of America's dead weight as they possibly can to vote" | Media Matters for America

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Right-wing media launch anti-democratic attacks on Pennsylvania’s automatic voter registration | Media Matters for America

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mma 1123 no lnx

Right-wing media launch anti-democratic attacks on Pennsylvania’s automatic voter registration

Right-wing media continue their election misinformation crusade as another state makes it easier for residents to vote

WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE

:{:{PUBLISHED 11/03/23 }:

Automatic voter registration, a secure process used to increase voting accessibility and maintain accurate voter rolls, is being attacked by right-wing media after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that the state will begin automatically registering voters at the DMV.

On September 19, Shapiro announced that Pennsylvania will start automatically registering eligible residents to vote when they get a new driver’s license or ID card at the DMV, rather than asking if they want to fill out a voter registration form. The practice, known as automatic voter registration or AVR, allows potential new voters to “opt out” rather than “opt in.” [NBC News, 9/19/23; Spotlight PA, 9/19/23]

Automatic voter registration, which is now used by 24 states, has been found to decrease fraud, make voter rolls more accurate, and increase the accessibility of voting. Research shows that “in making voting lists more complete and accurate, states may make it easier for some population groups, especially minorities and poorer citizens, to vote.” [The Washington Post, 9/23/22]

Pennsylvania’s system will not provide non-citizens or other ineligible residents the option to register to vote. Republican Secretary of State Al Schmidt stated that “he’s confident that the system is fixed to ensure that those ineligible to vote will be internally flagged and will not be offered the voter registration screens.” [The Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/19/23]

Former President Donald Trump blasted Pennsylvania’s decision to implement AVR on Truth Social, claiming that it “will be a disaster for our Nation, which is being destroyed by these Lunatics, Marxists, & Fascists, whose only real ability is to CHEAT on Elections.” He also wrote that AVR will be “a disaster for the Election of Republicans, including your favorite President, ME!” [Truth Social, 9/25/23]

Right-wing media falsely claimed that AVR could increase voter fraud and that Democrats are using it to rig elections

On Elon Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter), Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton posted, “Leftist Pennsylvania governor decides to ‘automatically’ register ‘voters’ -- a legally-dubious and surefire way to make it easier for ineligible individuals to vote illegally.” [Twitter/X, 9/19/23]

Right-wing podcaster Kyle Becker posted, “This is unconstitutional. It is 2020 all over again. Either fight this now or be prepared to lose another election!” He also quoted Trump’s claim that “the Democrats are trying to steal Pennsylvania again by doing the ‘automatic voter registration’ scam.” [Twitter/X, 10/1/23]

Just the News reported that Pennsylvania embracing AVR “triggers new integrity fears.” The subheadline quoted the executive director of a conservative group advocating for restricted voting laws, who falsely claimed that “recent history proves that automatic voter registration is inherently problematic.” [Just the News, 10/1/23; NPR, 8/12/22]

The Gateway Pundit published an article claiming, “The steal is on in Pennsylvania. … Pennsylvania turned blue in 2020 after the Democrats violated the state’s constitution and allowed vote by mail.” The article concluded, “Democrats can’t win unless they cheat.” [The Gateway Pundit, 9/19/23]

Interviewing Republican Senate candidate David McCormick, right-wing radio host Mark Levin called Shapiro’s announcement of AVR “an edict which is intended to harm your election chances.” Levin also told McCormick that “the Democrat ruling class in Pennsylvania is frightened of you.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 9/29/23]

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles agreed with Trump’s Truth Social post, saying, “I think Trump’s point is correct … that we have got to focus on making sure that the libs don’t rig the election again.” He then claimed that AVR will cause “a lot of people in this country who don’t care about our form of government” and “shouldn’t therefore weigh in” to cast ballots, and that opposing automatic registration will “protect the right to vote” of the “kind of person that I do want voting.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 9/27/23]

Fox host Laura Ingraham called Pennsylvania’s implementation of AVR “an insurance policy” for Democrats and “a Joe and Kamala job protection plan.” The chyron during the segment read “WINNING, NOT GOVERNING, IS DEMS’ ONLY CONCERN.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/20/23]

Townhall published an article titled “Automatic Voter Registration Opens Door to Voter Fraud,” which falsely claimed that AVR’s history is “filled with many documented problems.” The article compared AVR to “ordering a sundae, and having the store employees just decide you want sprinkles and nuts without asking you. … Messing with my ice cream is bad enough, but for heaven’s sake, don’t mess with my freedom to choose when or if I register to vote.” [Townhall, 10/28/23]

Right-wing media cited the implementation of AVR to push bigoted rhetoric and claim that the system will allow undocumented immigrants or other ineligible residents to vote

Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former White House press secretary, incorrectly suggested that AVR will result in “illegal immigrants … checking the box” to register to vote. Host Jesse Watters also referred to eligible residents who have not yet registered as “low-information voters.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 9/19/23]

Newsmax's Greg Kelly called automatic voter registration “un-American” and said that striving for universal voter turnout is bad because “Saddam Hussein had universal voter turnout. That wasn't good.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 9/19/23]

The day after Shapiro’s announcement, right-wing grifter Tomi Lahren posted, “Beware of any state that gives drivers licenses to illegal immigrants and also has automatic voter registration. This is a tool used to auto send mail in ballots willy fricken nilly and then just ‘hope’ for the best.” [Twitter/X, 9/20/23]

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Lara Logan posted, “Automatic voter registration is one of the easiest ways to cheat … If you are acting as if 2024 will be a real election, you are both delusional and deceived.” She also suggested “states that allow illegal immigrants to get a drivers license have another way to beef up the voter rolls - is that what the open border is for?” [Twitter/X, 9/19/23]

On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity asked McCormick, “What do you make of the governor, Josh Shapiro's plan to enact this automatic registration — is it possible, a lot of states have this, that illegal immigrants can get a license in Pennsylvania?” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/21/23]

Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk posted, “More mass mail-in ballots for Dems in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Meanwhile PA Democrats have been working for years to give illegals drivers licenses. Connect the dots.” [Twitter/X, 9/19/23]

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A lingering legal battle that was poised to settle this summer, leading to a clearer pathway for tens of thousands of Tennesseans to restore their voting rights, has instead reignited into a contentious court fight with no certain outcome ahead of the next presidential election.

One in five Black voting-age Tennesseans lacks the right to vote due to a past criminal conviction — likely the highest rate of African-American disenfranchisement in the nation, according to the Sentencing Project. Overall, nearly 10% of the Tennessee electorate — 470,000 people — have lost their right to vote due to convictions.

In a lawsuit filed in December 2020, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP and five residents denied the right to vote alleged Tennessee officials failed to follow state laws that allow individuals to legally restore their voting rights after serving their sentences and completing parole. Instead, the state implemented inaccessible and opaque processes that impede legal pathways for restoring rights, the lawsuit claimed.

Close to settling key claims in the case over the summer — potentially ahead of high profile local elections in Nashville, Memphis and for state office — attorneys for the state abruptly broke off talks in late July, catching lawyers for the NAACP by surprise, legal filings show. Then, on August 2, lawyers for the Tennessee Attorney General filed motions asking a judge to reject the claims entirely.

Tennessee Supreme Court rules in felony voting rights case

“The Elections Division, TDOC, and Governor’s office had the opportunity this summer to create accessible, transparent, and uniform procedures to allow the over 470,000 disenfranchised Tennesseans a fair shot at getting their voting rights restored and rejoining their communities as full citizens,” Blair Bowie, an attorney representing the NAACP with the DC-based Campaign Legal Center, said Friday.

“Instead, they blew up the voting rights restoration system entirely and imposed effectively permanent disenfranchisement on July 21,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General did not respond to emailed questions on Friday.

The breakdown in the federal case came shortly after a June 29 ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court against Ernest Falls, who was denied the right to vote in Tennessee in 2020 after receiving clemency in Virginia for a decades-old crime.

The Supreme Court ruled that Falls, also represented by the Campaign Legal Center, was required to show he had paid all outstanding court costs, restitution and child support obligations in Virginia to establish his voting rights — in addition to proof of the Virginia clemency.

Secretary of State Mark Goins then issued a memo that incorporated expanded requirements for all state residents seeking to restore their voting rights — regardless of where their conviction took place. In addition to the process of demonstrating they, too, had paid court costs and other financial obligations related to their crime, in-state residents must now show they also “have been pardoned by a Governor, U.S. President, or other appropriate authority of a state or have had their full rights of citizenship restored as prescribed by law.”

The memo wasn’t shared with attorneys for the NAACP who had been involved with them in settlement negotiations for months, legal filings said.

“Plaintiffs learned from publicreporting that Defendant Goins had that day issued guidance to county election officials changing his interpretation of the State’s requirements for individuals with felony convictions to restore their voting rights,” court records said.

In seeking a ruling dismissing major elements of the case, state lawyers have argued in motions for summary judgement that the five individuals names in the suit lack standing in court.

Tennessee does have a process in place for restoration of rights, one that provides a pathway to restoring rights while preserving election integrity, they argued.

“Tennessee does not reject all voter registration forms on which the applicant affirmed that they have a felony conviction,” the state’s filings said. “Moreover, Tennessee’s practice is rationally related to its legitimate interest in combatting voter fraud, safeguarding voter confidence, and ensuring accurate record keeping.”

The Sentencing Project’s national voting rights study found that that 3,415 Tennessee voting-age citizens have been granted Certificates of Restoration since 2016 — fewer than 1% of those with prior felony convictions estimated to be eligible to vote under Tennessee law.

The NAACP lawsuit argues that the current administration of voting right restoration certificates violate the U.S. Constitution’s due process and the equal protection rights.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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Pro-Trump influencer Douglass Mackey is now headed to federal prison to serve a seven-month sentence after being convicted by a federal jury in March. Prosecutors asked for Mackey, who was arrested in 2021, to serve between six months and a year behind bars.

Mackey, a West Palm Beach, Florida resident who went by the name "Ricky Vaughn," was found guilty on one count of conspiracy against rights for trying to defraud Hillary Clinton supporters in the 2016 election. According to the New York Times, Judge Ann M. Donnelly, of the Eastern District of New York, said while sentencing Mackey that he was "one of the leading members" of the conspiracy to prevent Clinton supporters from voting, adding that it was "nothing short of an assault on our democracy."

The conspiracy in question stemmed from a series of posts, meant to look like they were from the former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, encouraging Black and Latino supporters to vote by text message or through social media, knowing that those votes would not actually be counted. One of those posts showed a Black woman holding a sign, and another post was in Spanish, and included the Clinton campaign logo with fine print attached that read "Hillary for President."

One of the fake Clinton ads created by Douglass Mackey a.k.a. "Ricky Vaughn." Screenshot: Twitter via BuzzFeed News

At the time of the conspiracy, Mackey's "Ricky Vaughn" Twitter account had approximately 58,000 followers, and was labeled by the M.I.T. Media Lab in February of 2016 as the 107th most powerful influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election. While Mackey's attorney argued during the trial that his client's actions accounted to just a few clicks on a computer, prosecutors countered that Mackey's "true power was his ability to spread messages to convert his clicks into tens of thousands more."

Notably, former President Donald Trump is also facing the same charge of of conspiracy against rights that Mackey was just sentenced under. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on that charge, among several others, in his August indictment pertaining to Trump's role in the January 6 insurrection. Trump is scheduled to stand trial on those charges on March 4, 2024, just before the pivotal Super Tuesday primaries.

---

Lawsuit alleging Trump 'tried to disenfranchise Black voters' handed to Judge Chutkan: report - Alternet.org

brendan f shakedn gmail 8 23

former Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell and her network of election conspiracy theorists are secretly backing a new project to help MAGA activists generate mass voter challenges, anew investigation by Documented reveals.

This endeavor hints at how right-wing vigilantes—supported by powerful institutions and millions in dark money—could pose a threat to free and fair elections in 2024.

“Eagle AI” looks to fill the void left by Mitchell and her network’s successful campaign to pressure state officials to cut ties with the bipartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as ERIC.

As NBC News first reported, based on material provided by Documented, Eagle AI draws from public data sources like voter files and newspaper obituaries to build a dashboard for activists to conduct their own “list maintenance” and generate potentially thousands of challenges to voter eligibility with a few clicks.

“While a handful of individuals in Georgia and Texas have taken in recent years to filing mass voter challenges,” NBC reported, “EagleAI could turn that steady stream into a nationwide flood.”

The resulting flood of conspiracy-driven voter challenges, drawn from questionable data, could inundate overworked and under-resourced election offices and lead to eligible voters being purged from the rolls. In many states, challenged voters will have to jump through additional hoops to have their vote counted.

Eagle AI is being deployed through Mitchell’s “Election Integrity Network” (EIN), which was launched by the $45 million Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). Activists affiliated with EIN in states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida are already testing the Eagle AI system, and setting up meetings with election officials to normalize the program and encourage them to accept voter challenges generated by the platform. Platforms will also be rolled out soon in Arizona, Nevada and Texas.

Eagle AI’s funding sources are murky, but a planning document co-authored by Mitchell reveals plans to receive private donations from sources including Donors Trust, known as the “dark money ATM of the right.” A legal firm associated with Mitchell—and housed within CPI—also set up Eagle AI's tax-exempt arm, "Valid Vote," which told the IRS that it plans to raise $2.1 million in advance of the 2024 election.

Mitchell’s participation in the Georgia-based project comes as Fulton County prosecutors bring criminal charges against Trump and 18 co-conspirators for their efforts to block Biden’s win in that state. Mitchell was not indicted, but she did support Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including joining the infamous call when the president urged Georgia’s top election official to “find” 11,780 votes.

Dive deeper into Eagle AI—and view videos, documents, and other material—at Documented’s website.

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Pro-Trump Republicans aiding Georgia company seeking to 'aggressively cancel voter registrations': report

Brandon Gage August 14, 2023

A private company aided by Republican "election integrity activists" is "attempting to sell software to Georgia election officials and residents that would enable them to aggressively cancel voter registrations," Mark Niesse reports in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.

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EagleAI's "software could be used by local governments as well as individuals who have challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters since the 2020 presidential election," Niesse explains. "EagleAI's sales pitch has alarmed voting rights organizations that say it could be abused to attempt to disenfranchise legitimate voters."

Niesse finds that those efforts are compounding on former President Donald Trump's unsuccessful attempt to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 victory in the Peach State. "Since then," Niesse reveals, EagleAI "filed challenges to nearly 100,000 Georgia voters' eligibility, in some cases forcing legitimate voters to defend their right to vote."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Niesse points out that despite Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defending "Georgia's voter lists" as "the cleanest in the nation,'" EagleAI's "presentation alleges the state's voter rolls are bloated with people who have died or moved away."

Raffensperger's spokesman, Mike Hassinger told Niesse that "EagleAI data offers zero additional value to Georgia's existing list maintenance procedures," adding, "We already utilize the most accurate death data through our Department of Public Health and the Social Security death master list. We already check for duplicates."

Moreover, Niesse questions EagleAI's non-partisanship because Chief Executive Officer Rick Richards "frequently speaks during Zoom calls hosted by Cleta Mitchell,an attorney who supported efforts to overturn Trump's loss and participated in the former president's call to Raffensperger asking him to 'find' enough votes to reverse the outcome."

Niesse notes that "the Zoom calls, which bring together members of Mitchell's Election Integrity Network group, also included Jason Frazier, a Republican Party nominee to the Fulton County election board who has challenged the registrations of almost 10,000 people since last year."

READ MORE: Fani Willis’ 'entire career has been preparing her' to prosecute Trump: report

EagleAI "is negotiating with Columbia County's election board and has discussed working with a dozen more Georgia counties, according to emails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the state's open records law," Niesse writes.

Meanwhile, Niesse continues, "EagleAI says it plans to start its voter registration list efforts in Georgia, then expand to other states, including Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas."

READ MORE: Trump’s 'demographic war' is 'far more dangerous' than 1930s American fascism: report

Niesse's report is at this link (subscription required).

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https://www.alternet.org/texas-gop-lawmakers-control-elections/

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Revealed: The shocking voter purge crisis of democracy

Thom Hartmann

andRaw Story

August 14, 2023

If you live in the Blue part of a Red state, Republicans don’t want you to vote. And their latest strategy is their most brute-force method: simply remove you from the voting rolls.

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A shocking new study from Demos lays out the dimensions of this voter purge crisis of democracy brought to us by an increasingly desperate GOP.

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Republicans are doing this because they know that their policies are unpopular: most Americans aren’t fans of tax cuts for billionaires, more pollution, deregulation, high-priced drugs, privatizing Medicare, ending Social Security, criminalizing abortion and birth control, student debt, hating on Black and queer people, and the GOP’s war on unions and working people.

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So, the GOP does everything they can to make voting difficult or even impossible, particularly for people in heavily Democratic neighborhoods (which are usually college towns, big cities, and Black neighborhoods).

When Republicans run elections in such areas (typically Blue cities in Red states), they’ll close or change polling places at the last minute to sow confusion and cause people to give up when they show up at their normal polling place and find it closed.

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For example, in this week’s election in Ohio the state changed polling places for mostly Blackvoters in Cuyahoga and Summit counties just five days before the election, as Newsweek noted in an article titled:

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“Ohio GOP Changing Polling Locations Days Before Election Raises Questions”

Ohio voters were outraged, and that outrage spread across X (formerly Twitter) with comments like this:

“The Ohio GOP is playing ‘Your polling place has moved’ with 47,000 voters in the largest African American voting county in Ohio—just five days before the election. Making it harder to vote—in the crucial August 8th special election (deciding if a majority of voters still can amend Ohio's state constitution)—is wrong.”

Another X user noted:

“Ohio Republicans are so damn shady! … This stinks to high heaven. At the last minute, before Ohio’s special election, polling locations were changed in Cuyahoga and Summit counties. More than 47,000 voters are affected by changes to 50 voting precincts.”

The fact that this little trick in Ohio this week got virtually no national press coverage guarantees Red states will be doing more of it in the upcoming 2023 and 2024 elections.

But that’s just the beginning.

Knowing that working-class people are less likely to vote Republican than white upper-class suburbanites, Republicans also engineer polling situations so people paid by the hour will have to wait for hours in line just to vote, losing out on income.

Every year, we’re treated to pictures and videos of hours-long lines to vote in Blue cities in Red states, while lines in white suburbs typically run less than 10 to 15 minutes.

Similarly, many Red states have imposed draconian penalties on people conducting voter registration drives for making even the smallest mistakes, or for failing to “properly register” themselves with the state. This has shut down many voter registration programs, including some from long-term organizations like the League of Women’s Voters.

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As The Kansas Reflector newspaper noted, the penalty for even a minor, inadvertent error is now 17 months in the state prison and a $100,000 fine:

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“The League of Women Voters of Kansas and other nonprofits are suspending voter registration drives for fear of criminal prosecution under a new state law.”

The League has sued Florida, Tennessee, and Texas for their criminalization of voter registration drives as well.

But purging voters — by the tens of millions every election cycle — is where the GOP finds their best result. As the Demos report notes:

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Additionally, seventeen million voters were purged in the two years leading up to the 2018 election, fully ten percent of America’s voting population, according to the Brennan Center.

Given that the most radical purges took place among Black and youth voters in Republican-controlled Red states, those 8.5 percent and 10 percent “national averages” could well be twice or three times that percentage in the states where these purges are concentrated.

They added, most of the purge activity was taking place in former Confederate Red states that — before five Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in their 2013 Shelby County decision — had to have purges pre-cleared by the federal government:

“The median purge rate over the 2016–2018 period in jurisdictions previously subject to preclearance was 40 percent higher than the purge rate in jurisdictions that were not covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”

More than a quarter of those purged during this period from 2016-2022 were removed from the rolls either because they failed to vote in the previous election or because they failed to return a postcard mailed out by a Republican secretary of state (that is usually designed to look like junk mail).

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This is called “caging” andused to be illegal, but Sam Alito broke the tie and wrote the 5-4 decision in their 2018 Husted v A Phillip Randolph Institute when the five Republicans on the Court ruled that Ohio Republican Secretary of State Husted could continue his practice of mailing the postcards into Ohio cities with the largest Black populations.

In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that only around 4 percent of Americans move out of their county every year. Yet, he wrote:

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“The record shows that in 2012 Ohio identified about 1.5 million registered voters—nearly 20% of its 8 million registered voters—as ineligible to remain on the federal voter roll because [Husted said that] they changed their residences.”

The Brennan Center found that just between 2014 and 2016, in the two years leading up to the Hillary/Trump presidential election, over 14 million people were purged from voter rolls, largely in Republican-controlled states.Then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp purged over a million in Georgia alone leading up to his 50,000 vote 2018 election win against Stacey Abrams.

Calling the findings “disturbing,” the Brennan Center noted, “Almost 4 million more names were purged from the rolls between 2014 and 2016 [just after the Supreme Court legalized large-scale no-oversight voter purges in 2013] than between 2006 and 2008. This growth in the number of removed voters represented an increase of 33 percent—far outstripping growth in both total registered voters (18 percent) and total population (6 percent).”

Another strategy that the GOP has rolled out in a big way to suppress the vote in Blue areas of Red states is “strict signature matching.” They primarily use this against voters who’ve succeeded in obtaining vote-by-mail ballots, which are authenticated by comparing the signature on the envelope with the voter’s registration card.

Because signatures change over time and often vary a lot when people are in a hurry, this is low-hanging fruit for the GOP. Last year they started a program to field an “army” of 50,000 “poll watchers,” including interviewing candidates from among white supremacist militia groups, for the 2024 election.

While some of thesepoll watcherswill be on hand to try to intimidate or challenge Black and young voters (a practice that’s legal in most Red states), many will be overseeing the counting of mail-in ballots, which are generally more Democratic than Republican.

All they have to do is claim that, in their opinion, a signature doesn’t match and the ballot goes into the “provisional” pile and won’t be counted until or unless the voter shows up in person at the county elections office. Most people never even know their ballot was challenged and not counted.

Meanwhile, the GOP in Texas is quietly recruiting 10,000 white volunteers “courageous” enough to go into Black and Hispanic polling places and confront people trying to vote.

As Jessica Corbett reported for Common Dreams:

“Common CauseTexas on Thursday shared a leaked video of a Harris County GOP official discussing plans to ‘build an army’ of 10,000 election workers and poll watchers, including some who ‘will have the confidence and courage’ to go into Black and Brown communities to address alleged voter fraud that analyses show does not actually exist.”

Voting in Red states has become difficult, and registering voters is now treacherous since five Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized all these little tricks and strategies to purge or discourage Democratic voters.

If you live in a Blue area of a Red state, get ready: the GOP plans to pull out all the stops for the 2024 election.

Double-check your voter registration every month or two, and be sure to double-check it in the weeks just before the deadline for registration, as Republican Secretaries of State prefer to purge people in this window so by the time people discovered they’re purged it’s too late to re-register.

Forewarned is forearmed. Pass it on to your friends in Red states.

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Alabama produces new maps with the same problems

Alabama is on a path to approve new maps before Friday's deadline. But the new maps do not comply with the district court order and continue to dilute the Black vote. Specifically, the legislature has failed "to craft a second majority-Black district" or "something quite close to it." Instead, the new map only still includes one district, District 7, which is majority Black. It looks like this:

...

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a federal judge on Monday blocked a provision of a recently enacted Florida law that the ACLU characterized as a "clear and brazen attack on civic participation in our democracy."

S.B. 7050, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in May, would have imposed $50,000 fines on community organizations for every noncitizen individual who collected or handled voter registration forms for the groups—even if the people were legally authorized to work in the United States.

In a scathing 58-page order granting rights groups' request for a preliminary injunction, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida called the law "Florida's latest assault on the right to vote" and agreed that the voter registration provision would have "substantially interrupted" community groups' outreach efforts.

"Tomorrow, Floridians across the state will commemorate our nation's birthday," Walker wrote. "They will endure the heat of the Florida summer to celebrate the Fourth of July with family and friends at barbecues and picnics. They will gather with their communities at public parks for music and fireworks. They will cheer and sweat at parades and block parties. And amid these patriotic festivities, some may feel moved, for the first time, to embrace their solemn privilege as citizens by registering to vote."

"That's where plaintiffs come in," the judge continued, pointing to the testimony of Veronica Herrera-Lucha, a lawful permanent resident who works as the Florida state field director for Mi Vecino, a nonprofit voter registration group.

"Absent the challenged provisions at issue in these cases, individuals like Ms. Herrera-Lucha and [third-party voter registration organizations] like the Florida NAACP and Hispanic Federation would be engaging with their communities and registering new voters," Walker wrote. "Ms. Herrera-Lucha, a noncitizen who, herself, lacks the right to vote, has spent years registering and encouraging citizens to exercise that solemn right. She may, at least for now, continue to do so andadd more voices to the millions of others singing a more perfect union into existence."

Frankie Miranda, president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation, celebrated Walker's ruling as confirmation of "what we knew from the very beginning: Florida's latest voter registration law was unconstitutional and served no other purpose than to silence our communities."

"This ruling is a win for all Floridians—especially for underrepresented communities who rely on nonpartisan organizations like us to help make their voices heard," said Miranda. "We applaud this ruling, and will not rest until everyone's right to participate in our democracy is protected."

The Hispanic Federation was one of several groups that sued the state of Florida over the provision targeting noncitizen voter registration advocates, part of a broader voter suppression effort by the state's governor and dominant Republican Party.

In addition to its sweeping attack on voter registration groups and restrictions on mail-in voting, S.B. 7050 includes a provision that allowed DeSantis to run for president without resigning as Florida's governor.

Walker wrote in his order Monday that Florida's political leaders in recent years have struggled to govern "within the bounds set by the United States Constitution."

"When state government power threatens to spread beyond constitutional bounds and reduce individual rights to ashes, the federal judiciary stands as a firewall," Walker added. "The Free State of Florida is simply not free to exceed the bounds of the United States Constitution."

Daniel Tilley, legal director at the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement that Walker's ruling "fortifies the idea that all Floridians have a right to participate in building a stronger democracy through civic engagement."

"While this is a step in the right direction, our work is not finished," said Tilley. "People in our communities, including noncitizens, work tirelessly to assist in voter registration efforts to empower Floridians to vote on issues that impact their daily lives. We applaud the court's decision, but we must ensure this harmful law is struck down altogether."

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[[===

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https://www.alternet.org/gop-megadonor-citizen-ballot-initiatives/

https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/23/foundation-government-accountability-democracy

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This GOP megadonor is funding efforts to 'derail citizen-led ballot initiatives': report

Alex HendersonJune 23, 2023

Over the years, Illinois-based shipping magnates Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have been major donors to the Republican Party. And these days, they have a preference for far-right MAGA candidates, including 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano (who lost by double digits to Democratic now-Gov. Josh Shapiro).

In 2023, The Guardian reports, Richard Uihlein has been a major funder of a Florida-based group known as theFoundation for Government Accountability (FGA) — who are trying to make it more difficult to get initiatives on ballots.

The Guardian's Brendan Fischer, in an article published June 23, reports, "These efforts are designed to derail citizen-led ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights, raise the minimum wage or expand Medicaid. In effect, FGA and its allies seek to give 41 percent of the voting population an effective veto over the wishes of the other 59 percent."

READ MORE: 'A stark illustration of our broken campaign finance system': Here's how rich mega-doners hacked US politics

Fischer notes that in "at least four states," FGA has "lobbied or testified in favor of changing ballot initiative rules to enshrine minority rule."

He then explains, "The latest fight is in Ohio, where Republican lawmakers last month passed a measure requiring future constitutional amendments to receive at least 60 percent support from voters — rather than a simple majority — and that would make it harder for proposed amendments to make it on to the ballot. Ohioans will now vote in August on whether to approve the higher thresholds…. FGA's tactics in Ohio echo those used previously — and unsuccessfully — in Arkansas and South Dakota."

In 2021, Fischer reports, FGA "issued a legal memo arguing for the constitutionality of a 60 percent requirement for enacting ballot initiatives, and a report decrying how voters in red states like Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska had approved Medicaid expansion through the ballot initiative process."

READ MORE: Appeals court dismisses GOP megadonor’s lawsuit against Beto O’Rourke: report

The Guardian's full report is available at this link.

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Florida group primarily funded by an Illinois billionaire is driving the recent attacks on direct democracy in states such as Ohio, Missouri, South Dakota and Arkansas.

The Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based group affiliated with the alliance of conservative thinktanks called the State Policy Network, has played a key role in recent efforts to raise the threshold for passing citizen ballot initiatives from a simple majority to a supermajority, and to make it harder to place measures on the ballot in the first place.

These efforts are designed to derail citizen-led ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights, raise the minimum wage or expand Medicaid. In effect, FGA and its allies seek to give 41% of the voting population an effective veto over the wishes of the other 59%.

In at least four states, FGA and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, have lobbied or testified in favor of changing ballot initiative rules to enshrine minority rule, and in some cases have financed ballot committees advocating for those changes. FGA has also issued reports, legal memos, op-eds and polling that advocate for gutting direct democracy.

The latest fight is in Ohio, where Republican lawmakers last month passed a measure requiring future constitutional amendments to receive at least 60% support from voters – rather than a simple majority – and that would make it harder for proposed amendments to make it on to the ballot. Ohioans will now vote in August on whether to approve the higher thresholds.

The controversial plan is designed to derail an abortion rights initiative expected to be on the ballot in November.

Deuel Ross, center, plaintiff’s counsel in Allen v Milligan, speaks with members of the press after oral arguments outside the supreme court on 4 October 2022.]

‘Historic and significant’: key lawyer’s verdict on Alabama supreme court ruling

When Ohio Republicans first proposed the supermajority requirement last year, a representative of FGA’s lobbying arm was the only person who testified in favor. FGA’s lobbying arm again testified in support of the proposal earlier this year, in hearings before the House and Senate. FGA argued that the proposal was necessary to“make it more difficult for out of state billionaires and dark money groups” to change Ohio law.

As the measure moved through Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature, the Illinois billionaire Dick Uihlein gave $1.1m to the newly created “Save Our Constitution PAC”, which ran ads pressuring state lawmakers to support the measure; Uihlein is expected to contribute more as the August vote approaches.

A foundation controlled by Uihlein is also the largest known source of FGA’s funding, giving $17.6m since 2014. Uihlein has also been one of the key funders of election denial. Among other things, Uihlein has poured tens of millions into his “Restoration of America” network that promotes ludicrous election conspiracy theories and which created a controversial database that published voters’ personal information online in the name of uncovering election fraud. In the 2022 cycle, Dick Uihlein and his wife, Liz, were also top donors to election-denying candidates like the Pennsylvania gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano and Nevada secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant.

FGA itself began to focus on “election integrity” in 2021, and boasted that it “achieved more than 70 election integrity policy wins across 19 states” last year.

FGA has also been promoting a supermajority requirement in Ohio and other states since at least 2021.

That year, FGA issued a legal memo arguing for the constitutionality of a 60% requirement for enacting ballot initiatives, and a report decrying how voters in red states like Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska had approved Medicaid expansion through the ballot initiative process. FGA and its lobbying arm also began testifying in support of state efforts to make it harder to enact ballot measures, andits in-house polling firm released Ohio polling showing voter support for a 60% threshold and for placing other restrictions on the initiative process.

FGA’s tactics in Ohio echo those used previously – and unsuccessfully – in Arkansas and South Dakota.

In Arkansas last year, FGA’s lobbying arm produced a fact sheet, an op-ed and social media posts advocating for Issue 2, which would have raised the ballot initiative threshold to 60%. As the billionaire-backed dark money group warned of “shady groups funded by billionaires you’ve never heard of” pushing ballot measures in Arkansas, it also gave $65,000 to the ballot committee advocating for the supermajority requirement. Arkansas voters defeated the measure by 19 percentage points.

In South Dakota, a representative of FGA’s lobbying arm testified in February 2021 in support of HJR 5003, which would require 60% approval for constitutional amendments. The legislation passed and was placed on the June 2022 ballot, with a goal of thwarting a Medicaid expansion initiative slated for the November 2022 ballot. FGA’s lobbying arm then gave $50,000 to the ballot committee advocating for the supermajority requirement – but voters rejected the measure by 35 points. Later that year, South Dakota voters approved Medicaid expansion.

FGA has also pressed Missouri lawmakers to create new hurdles for the initiative process.In 2021, FGA’s lobbying arm released polling claiming to show public support for “initiative integrity”, then sent a letter to Missouri legislative leadership arguing for a supermajority requirement and other changes to the initiative process. “Without reform,” the letter warned, “[o]ut-of-state billionaires will continue to pump millions of dollars to [promote] destructive, leftist policies like Medicaid expansion.” The group testified in support of Missouri HJR 22 that year, which would have created new requirements for putting measures on the ballot.

FGA’s lobbying arm would go on to testify in support offour different Missouri proposals to erect barriers to the ballot initiative process in 2022, and four more similar proposals this year. The Missouri house passed a measure to raise the initiative threshold, but it unexpectedly failed in the state senate.

This article was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. Brendan Fischer is deputy executive director with Documented

LNX

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win ~ supermaj

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state Senate on Wednesday approved a wide-ranging overhaul of the ways ballots are cast in Michigan, carrying out a constitutional amendment that voters put in place in November. Senators voted 22-16 in favor of the main proposal in an eight-bill package, which would require at least nine days of early voting across Michigan and allow clerks to work together to provide sites where ballots could be filled out and fed into tabulators before Election Day. Traditionally, Michigan voters have had to cast ballots in person on Election Day in their precincts or turn in absentee b...

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chief Justice John Roberts reportedly surprised everyone and went against his own personal mission when he authored a ruling finding that Alabama likely violated the Voting Rights Act's prohibition on racial gerrymandering by packing most of the state's Black voters into a single congressional district.

The ruling, which was joined by all three liberal members of the court along with a partial agreement from the conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was a surprise to legal observers, who had expected the country's top court to weaken the Voting Rights Act protections and find Alabama's map satisfactory.

That was the expectation in part because of Roberts' "40-year battle to whittle down racial equality protections enshrined in the crowning glory of the civil rights movement," according to a report from The Guardian's Ed Pilkington on Saturday.

"The chief justice’s decision to cling closely to precedent and avoid a sweeping reframing of voting rights law took supreme court observers by surprise," Pilkington wrote. “'Speechless!' was how Robyn Sanders, an elections lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, described her reaction. 'An amazing victory for voting rights, Black voters, and the Voting Rights Act.'"

The report continues:

"The chief justice has demonstrated a consistent desire to dilute or destroy elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in so doing has opened the floodgates to a torrent of voter suppression measures from Republican states that continues today. This time, though, Roberts reined himself in."

Roberts was able to do so by focusing on the Court's precedent, as opposed to trying to rewrite the law, Pilkington added. And his intentions are reportedly more about the long game.

"A key to understanding Roberts’s intentions is that he plays the long game," the article states. "He likes to present himself as a bridge-builder who represents the moderate center of American jurisprudence. He is also highly sensitive to the slump in public trust in the supreme court that has followed embarrassing revelations about Clarence Thomas’s luxury holidays paid for by a Texan billionaire."

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'Please, Jesus, not Georgia': Jasmine Crockett fact-checks GOP colleagues over voter fraud claims

Maya BoddieJune 07, 2023

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), during a congressional hearing Wednesday, called out her Republican colleagues over their continued allegations of voter fraud.

Led by Committee on House Administration and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the joint hearing called "American Confidence in Elections: The Path to Election Integrity in the District of Columbia," was held overlawmakers' claim that "election laws in DC lead to fraud."

During her speech, Crockett said, "Every time we seemingly have a hearing on voting rights, we talking about the fact that people are cheating. So let's talk about who's cheating. I got a few articles."

[READ MORE: Fox News’ 'vitriolic lies' are a threat to US democracy: ex-DHS official

She asked the witnesses, "Uh, are you familiar with the fact that there was recently a settlement with this little news company called Fox News?"

Vice President of Democracy at The Brennan Center, Wendy Weiser, answered, "Yes."

Crockett replied, "Ok, there we go. I'm running out of time so I'ma keep going. There also was this article — because I don't want us to base anything on Georgia at all — please, Jesus, not Georgia — because Georgia purged 87,000 votes."

Greene interrupted the Democratic congresswoman saying, "Will the gentlewoman yield? I think Georgia matters."

READ MORE: Here’s how Trump accidentally helped Pennsylvania’s attorney general destroy his election fraud lies

Crockett emphasized, "I will not yield, I'm reclaiming my time," adding, "There were 87,000 people that were purged that were legitimate voters, so no we don't wanna copy off of Georgia."

She then noted, "Also, another GOP voter admits he committed fraud. Another one in Pennsylvania, man who admits he voted for Trump with his dead mom's name because he listened to too much propaganda."

According to The New York Times, last month, Fox News was yet again hit with a defamation lawsuit from Nina Jankowicz, former director of the "short-lived Department of Homeland Security division assigned with coordinating efforts to monitor and address disinformation threats to national security."

Jankowicz claims the right-wing network "promoted lies about her that generated serious threats to her safety and harmed her career prospects."

Furthermore, former President Donald Trump could be prosecuted by Georgia's Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the coming months over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Fani Willis’ latest moves strongly indicate a Trump indictment in Georgia is coming this summer

The New York Times' full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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6 23 DC election integrity BS AA

https://www.alternet.org/unworthy-of-this-body-raskin/

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former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, during a Fox News appearance Sunday, claimed "Democrats have a passion for stealing" elections, The Hill reports.

Gingrich comments come as the right-wing network agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems for spreading lies about the 2020 election — mostly through recently fired host Tucker Carlson.

Per The Hill, Gingrich was asked by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo "about whether Republicans were doing enough to 'ensure a free and fair election in 2024."

The former speaker replied, "Well, I think it's probably almost impossible under current law to ensure an accurate election," Gingrich said, adding, "And I think the only Republican strategy in the long run is to pick issues and win by margins so big that they can’t steal it. If you have a very close election, Democrats have a passion for stealing them."

He continued, "And we have — we're gradually in the Republican states beginning to tighten up the election law. But in states dominated by Democrats, like New York, Illinois, California, you just have to assume that the machine willsteal as much as it can."

Reuters reports, "The top U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud in the" 2020 election, adding, "Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, the nation's top law enforcement official under Trump, said on Dec. 1, 2020, that he had not seen any evidence of fraud that would have changed the election results."

Furthermore, The Brennan Center's seminal report shows "most allegations of fraud turn out to be baseless and that most of the few remaining allegations reveal irregularities and other forms of election misconduct."

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bill allows gop guy to negate only biggest cty = dem; 2nd bill any cty?

https://www.alternet.org/republicans-texas-sweeping-power-grab/

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-nationalist-political-operative-david-lane-is-targeting-2024-early-voting-states/

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boast voter suppress

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/**john-cornyn

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/federal-judge-guts-ballot-restrictions

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https://www.alternet.org/terrified-of-gen-z-voting/

no lnx twt

republican attorney, Cleta Mitchell, urged fellow GOP members to join together in an effort to "limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters," The Washington Post reports.

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Mitchell encouraged a room of conservatives to unify under enforcing these restrictive voting measures in a presentation titled "A Level Playing Field for 2024," during a recent Republican National Committee donor meeting in Nashville.

Executive Director of America Family Voices, Lauren Widsor, tweeted, "EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Trump coup attorney Cleta Mitchell wants to 'combat' voting on college campuses, citing North Carolina and Wisconsin, and says that when Republicans win the state Senate in Virginia, they can eliminate 45 days of early voting and same day voter registration."

READ MORE: These GOP-sponsored bills would 'restrict voting' by imposing harsh 'criminal penalties': report

According to The Washington Post, which obtained audio from the attorney's presentation, the lawyer's report "focused on campus voting in five states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin — all of which are home to enormous public universities with large in-state student populations."

In the audio, Mitchell can be heard asking the audience, "What are these college campus locations? What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed."

The MAGA lawyer added, "The Left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side … theirs. Our constitutional republic's survival is at stake."

Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, who The Post reports "has sued Republicans over their efforts to tighten student and youth voting laws," argued, "Mitchell's efforts appear aimed at making it harder for young people, who tend to vote Democratic, to cast their ballots."

READ MORE: Georgia GOP admits its voting restrictions 'backfired' and helped Dems win Senate runoff

Elias told The Post, "Imagine if in every place in this presentation where she references campuses, she talked about African Americans...Or every place she says students, she instead talked about Latinos. There is a subtle but real bigotry that goes on when people target young voters because of their age."

The Post reports:

Mitchell told her RNC audience that her organization, the Election Integrity Network, 'is NOT about winning campaigns,' according to the text of the presentation. But the slides gave little other rationale for why campus or mail voting should be curtailed. At another point in the presentation, she said the nation's electoral systems must be saved 'for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.'

Mitchell became known for supporting former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election by joining "the ["perfect?] call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 when Trump asked Raffensperger to 'find' enough votes to overturn the result."

Social media users shared their concerns regarding Mitchell's speech.

READ MORE: The Republican voter suppression nightmare

MeidasTouch: "The Republican Party is terrified of Gen-Z. And they should be."

Gavin Newsom: "The @GOP don't even try to hide their voter suppression goals."

clinton williams: "So the GOP don't want early voting, absentee voting and now they don’t want college kids to vote…. Soooo, they are actually afraid of ppl voting.. I wonder why?"

Markos Moulitsas: "Republicans hate democracy"

@TheSGTJoker: "The @GOP plan to engage voters under 65yo is to block them from voting."

Rex Chapman: "They're terrified of young voters."

@DempseyTwo: "Nothing quite says Election Integrity like doing everything you can to disenfranchise those who would vote. Also, listen for the slight, yet still perceptible, disdain she has in her voice for young voters in a recent Supreme Court race in Wisconsin."

READ MORE: 'We can do better': Raphael Warnock schools Brad Raffensperger on voter suppression

Jamie Lockhart: "Quite the admission that the Republican Party is out of touch with voters and needs to restrict access to the ballot to win elections and advance their extreme agenda."

Stu: "This is unbelievably corrupt GOP recognizes it isn't viable in the future as it's structured unless it essentially cheats"

@SpaceForceCad: "I hope #GenZ is paying attention. #MAGA does not want you voting. They know their days are numbered."

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Republicans are bleeding voters who helped Trump break the 'blue wall' in 2016: elections expert

The Washington Post's full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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as Republican-led states pull out of a multistate voter roll program in response to Gateway Pundit-pushed conspiracy theories about the organization, a conservative nonprofit was apparently also part of fanning the flames.

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Judicial Watch, a far-right legal advocacy group, published a white paper in early March boosting erroneous claims about the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a bipartisan program designed to maintain voter rolls across state lines.

The paper, which the non-profit reupped on their website Friday, sought to legitimize debunked claims made by the far-right website Gateway Pundit last year, which falsely argued that ERIC was founded by “left-leaning attorney David Becker” and funded by George Soros.

Judicial Watch claims that Becker had a “history of left-wing activism and unethical conduct,” and that ERIC “shares the vast amount of sensitive personal data it receives from member states with another liberal non-profit, the Center for Election Innovation and Research,” which they linked to the “Zuckerbucks” controversy, another election-related conspiracy theory.

Becker did help a handful of states launch the non-partisan program with a group called the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2012, but Soros never directly contributed to ERIC.Becker has sat on ERIC’s board as a non-voting ex-officio member since its founding, but on March 14 he announced that he would be vacating the position due to the conspiracy theories about his role that were being pushed by the right-wing media.

The Judicial Watch report was originally published on March 9, three days after Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) announced that his state would be withdrawing from the program alongside Missouri and West Virginia. That afternoon, former president Donald Trump attacked ERIC on Truth Social as well:

“All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up,” he wrote. “It’s a fools game for Republicans…”

On March 10, Texas officials also signaled their interest in leaving the program, and they’ve since drawn up legislation to do so. Ohio and Iowa announced their departures on March 17.

ERIC executive director Shane Hamlin posted an open letter on March 2 trying to bat down misinformation about the program, but it didn’t stop what would become a wave of red state officials cutting ties with the program.

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three of the most prominent rightwing groups which spread election denial lies and advocate for restrictions on voting rights in the US

have joined forces in a secret attempt to woo top election officials in Republican-controlled states.

Led by the Washington-based conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, the groups have created an incubator of policies that would restrict access to the ballot box and amplify false claims that fraud is rampant in American elections. The unstated yet implicit goal is to dampen Democratic turnout and help Republican candidates to victory.

Details of the two-day “secretaries of state conference” held in Washington in February were obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian.

Officials from 13 Republican-controlled states, including 10 top election administrators, participated in the event. Attendees discussed controversial “election integrity” ideas of the sort weaponized by Donald Trump.

Among the participants were nine secretaries of state and Virginia’s election commissioner, all of whom preside over both statewide and federal elections in their states including next year’s presidential contest. A list of attendees namechecks the chief election officials of Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

Documented also obtained the conference agenda which lists a number of Trump associates among the speakers. They include Ken Cuccinelli who, as acting deputy secretary for homeland security, played a key role in setting elections policy for the Trump administration.

Cuccinelli now runs the Election Transparency Initiative which is fighting Democratic efforts in Congress to shore up voting rights, and has been active in pushing state-level vote restriction measures.

Heritage Foundation Secretaries of State Conference Agenda, obtained by Documented.

The keynote speech was given by Ken Blackwell,former secretary of state in Ohio. He was an early adopter of Trump’s lie about rigged elections, championing the idea in the 2016 presidential race which Trump won.

Blackwell now chairs the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute,a rightwing thinktank led by former Trump officials. The center has been touting election-related model legislation.

Heritage was careful to organize the conference amid tight secrecy. Among the records obtained by Documented is an email from Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer at the foundation who leads their election work.

Responding to a query about the event from a Texas official, Von Spakovsky said: “There is no livestream. This is not a public event. It is a private, confidential meeting of the secretaries. I would rather you not send out a press release about it.”

Email to Texas Senator Paul Bettencourt's staff from Hans von Spakovsky, obtained by Documented

Von Spakovsky has long been at the forefront of efforts to undermine US elections by claiming falsely that fraud is endemic. He helped spearhead the attack on voting by mail during the pandemic, holding private briefings with Republican state election officials – a drive that became a core part of Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

Heritage and its political arm, Heritage Action for America, have spent tens of millions of dollars promoting their own model bills that impose strict restrictions on voting. They have targeted the investment on key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan that could hold the balance of power in the 2024 presidential race.

Heritage began hosting annual gatherings of Republican secretaries of state at the start of the Trump presidency in 2017. February’s in-person conference was the first to be sponsored by three rightwing powerhouses of election denial and voter suppression – Heritage, together with the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and the Honest Elections Project (HEP).

Pilf is a conservative legal group that sues election officials to force them to purge voter rolls, a process that has affected eligible US voters. The group is led by J Christian Adams, a former justice department lawyer who tried to use the Voting Rights Act to claim voting discrimination against white people.

Trump’s former lawyer Cleta Mitchell also sits on the Pilf board.

HEP is a conservative dark-money group closely tied to the Republican operative Leonard Leo who was instrumental in engineering the current conservative supermajority on the US supreme court. Reporting by ProPublica and the New York Times last year revealed that Leo has received control of a staggering $1.6bn to advance rightwing causes.

Concern about the potential of top election officials to subvert democracy intensified during the 2022 midterm elections when a number of individuals committed to Trump’s stolen election lie also ran for office. They formed the “America First Secretary of State Coalition” which became a conduit of far-right conspiracy theories linked to QAnon.

Most of those candidates failed in their bid to take over the reins of election administration in their states. But the Heritage conference suggests that the desire to deploy Republican secretaries of state as channels of voter suppression and election misinformation remains very much alive.

Though chief election officials are tasked with ensuring that ballots are fair and impartial, the Heritage conference was attended only by Republican secretaries of state.

The Guardian asked Heritage to explain why its conference was held in secret and with only Republican attendees. The group did not answer those questions.

Von Spakovsky said that the event was an “educational summit intended to provide information on current issues in elections and ensure that our election process protects the right to vote for American citizens by making it easy to vote and hard to cheat”.

He disputed the argument that security measures at the ballot box such as voter ID suppressed turnout. “The claim that secure elections somehow promote greater restrictions is outrageous and has been clearly disproven,” he said.

Von Spakovsky also pointed to Heritage’s election fraud database, which he said sampled “proven instances of election fraud from across the country”. The database records 1,422 “proven instances of voter fraud” stretching back to 1982 – a 41-year period during which billions of votes have been cast in the US.

Several of the participants at the conference have election denial and voter suppression track records. They include Florida’s secretary of state, Cord Byrd,who, soon after beingappointed by Governor Ron DeSantis last spring, refused to say whether Joe Biden had wonthe 2020 presidential election.

Byrd runs Florida’s “election integrity unit” that was set up by DeSantis last year to investigate election crimes, even though there is scant evidence of substantial voter fraud. More than a dozen citizens accused of illegally voting have been arrested at gunpointunder DeSantis’s crackdown on supposed voter fraud.

Another attendee – Jay Ashcroft, secretary of state of Missouri – has been a leading proponent of that state’s new restrictive voting law. His office has been named in numerous lawsuits in the last year for imposing extreme constraints on voter registration, including a recent lawsuit accusing Ashcroft of illegally blocking a ballot measure.

Tennessee’s secretary of state, Tre Hargett, another listed participant, has been accused by Democratic leaders in Tennessee of purging thousands of voters from the official rolls.

Panel discussions laid out in the agenda were held on several of the core talking points of the current Republican party. The opening discussion, moderated by Von Spakovsky, was on “Auditing Expertise”.

The main speaker was Paul Bettencourt, a state senator in Texas who has sponsored several bills making it harder to vote including a measure that would deploy armed “election marshals” to oversee polling stations.

Before the conference-goers attended a cocktail reception and dinner held at an upscale restaurant in downtown Washington, day one ended with a session entitled: “Realistic Eric Fixes and Reforms”. Eric – the Electronic Registration Information Center – is a non-profit group run collectively by 28 states which is used to finesse the accuracy of state voter rolls.

In recent months it has become the target of rightwing conspiracy theories fueled by Trump who claimed falsely that it was rigged to benefit Democrats.

Ashcroft, the Missouri secretary of state, was one of the speakers in that session. Earlier this month he announced that he was pulling Missouri out of Eric, making it one of the first Republican-controlled states to quit the organization along with Alabama, Florida and West Virginia.

A guest post by

Ed Pilkington

Ed Pilkington is chief reporter of the Guardian in the US

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social media influencer was convicted Friday in connection with a plot to undermine

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice said.

Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted of conspiracy against rights for a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” the agency said.

Mackey faces up to 10 years in prison.

“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a news release.

"Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”

Mackey amassed some 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked as the 107th most important influencer ahead of the presidential election in February, 2016, by the MIT Media Lab.

Prosecutors alleged that Mackey in the months leading up to the 2016 election conspired with other influential Twitter users, among others, to spread disinformation encouraging Clinton supporters to cast invalid votes via text message or social media, the DOJ said.

In the days leading up to the election, Mackey sent tweets suggesting the importance of limiting “black turnout,” tweeting an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign.

The ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”

The fine print at the bottom of the deceptive image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.”

The tweet included the “#ImWithHer” hashtag.

At least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or some variant of the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators.

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Republicans in Arizona suffered a string of brutal defeats this past fall after a string of hardline Trump-backed MAGA candidates flamed out against Democratic opponents.

However, Politico reports that the Arizona GOP isn't responding to this by trying to rehabilitate its image and is instead getting even angrier and doubling down on the election denialism that cost the party winnable races in 2022.

To illustrate this, the report notes that the party recently considered resolutions to censure Republicans who were involved in past elections on the grounds that those Republicans were part of a conspiracy to help Democrats win.

One particularly angry attendee stood up at the meeting and said traditional censures did not go far enough.

"We should duct tape people to a tree in a dog park, so the dogs can pee on them," the man declared. "And then, when they’re there for a few hours and they have to crap in their pants, they can wallow in their own sh*t.”

Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelly Ward, who herself has dabbled in conspiracy theories about chemtrails, similarly saw no need for reflection and insisted that "things are going great" with a party that lost a governorship, a Senate race, and a secretary of state race in the same election cycle despite having a favorable political environment.

Barrett Marson, an Arizona GOP strategist, told Politico that he wasn't sure how many more losses his party would have to take before they reckoned with the fact that running on election denialism is a loser strategy.

"The party may have to die to be reborn," he said.

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Clarence Lusane: The Nightmare of Republican Voter Suppression

Elections? What are those?

Our previous president was almost unimaginably deep into voter suppression. After all, a Georgia grand jury has, among other things, been investigating his direct involvement in a wild scheme to create his very own slate of bogus “electors” in that state who would — giant surprise! — vote for The Donald for president, even after he’d been declared the loser of the 2020 election. And that was but one of the states where he and his crew tried to create slates of fake electors who would be (or so they came to believe) recognized as the real thing by Vice President Pence on January 6th.

That, in turn, was but one way in which a Republican Party with an urge for ultimate domination at both the state and federal levels, not to say outright autocracy, has been trying to stack the deck in its favor for years. That was particularly true in states across the country where they held power and focused on suppressing the right of Black voters to go to the polls. As newly elected Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock put it in his first Senate speech two months after the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021, “We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we’ve ever seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim Crow in new clothes.”

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that most Republican laws to suppress votes were passed, according to the Guardian‘s Ed Pilkington, “in precisely those states that became the focus of Trump’s Stop the Steal campaign to block the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.” And as a Brennan Center report found in 2022, “Representatives from the whitest districts in the most racially diverse states were the most likely to sponsor anti-voter bills.”

Today, Clarence Lusane, author of the recently published book Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy, a penetrating look at the legacies of slavery and white supremacy in this country, considers what that ongoing record of suppressing the Black vote means as 2023 begins. Tom

The Votes That Weren’t Cast:Racial Justice, Voting Rights, and Authoritarianism

The fundamental right to vote has been a core value of Black politics since the colonial era — and so has the effort to suppress that vote right up to the present moment. In fact, the history of the suppression of Black voters is a first-rate horror story that as yet shows no sign of ending.

While Democrats and progressives justifiably celebrated the humbling defeat of some of the most notorious election-denying Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms, the GOP campaign to quell and marginalize Black voters has only continued with an all-too-striking vigor. In 2023, attacks on voting rights are melding with the increasingly authoritarian thrust of a Republican Party ever more aligned with far-right extremists and outright white supremacists.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the insurrection of January 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington was also an assault on minority voters. In the post-election weeks of 2020, insurrection-loving and disgraced President Donald Trump and his allies sought to discard votes in swing-state cities like Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. Those were all places with large Black, Latino, or Native American populations. It was no accident then that the overwhelmingly white mob at the Capitol didn’t hesitate to hurl racist language, including the “N” word, at Black police officers as that mob invaded the building.

For years, Republican lawmakers at the state level had proposed — and where possible implemented — voter suppression laws and policies whose impacts were sharply felt in communities of color nationwide. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “At least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting,” laws invariably generated by Republican legislators. These included bills to limit early voting, restrict voting by mail, and even deny the provision of water to voters waiting for hours in long lines, something almost universally experienced in Black and poor communities.

While normally pretending that such laws were not raced-based but focused on — the phrases sound so positive and sensible — “voter integrity” or “election security,” on occasion GOP leaders and officials have revealed their real purpose. A recent example was Republican Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell, one of three GOP appointees on the six-person commission that oversees that state’s elections. He openly bragged that the “well thought out multi-faceted plan” of the Republicans had resulted in a dramatic drop in Black voters in the 2022 midterm elections, including in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, which is about 40% African American. He wrote: “We can be especially proud of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”

How Far Might Voter Suppression Go?

You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that, rather than develop policies attractive to voters of color, the GOP and conservatives generally have chosen the path of voter suppression, intimidation, and gaming the system. And if anything, those attempts are still on the rise. In 2023, less than a month into the new year, according to the Guardian, Republicans across the country have proposed dozens of voter-suppression and election-administration-interference bills in multiple states.

Republican state legislators in Texas alone filed 14 bills on January 10th, including ones that would raise penalties for “illegal” voting, whether committed knowingly or not. More ominously, one Texas proposal would fund the creation of an election police force exclusively dedicated to catching those who violate voting or election laws. That unit would be similar to the draconian election-police unit created in Governor Ron DeSantis’s Florida as part of what is functionally becoming a regime dedicated to a version of right-wing terror. Symbolically enough, for instance, Black ex-felons were disproportionately targeted by DeSantis. Although the campaign was launched with great fanfare, only a few generally confused ex-felons were arrested and most of them had been given misinformation by state officials about their eligibility to vote and were convinced that they had the right to do so.

But DeSantis never really wanted to stop the virtually nonexistent crime of voter impersonation or fraud. His goal, and that of the GOP nationally, has been to strike fear into the hearts of potential non-Republican voters to ensure election victories for his party.

In states like Alabama, Mississippi, and 20 others where the GOP controls both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, intimidating voter-tracking police squads could be the next play in an ongoing effort to undemocratically control elections. Such policing efforts would without question disproportionately target communities of color.

While the expected midterm “red wave” of Republican victories didn’t occur nationally in 2022, the same can’t be said for the South. As documented by the Institute for Southern Studies’ Facing South, the GOP actually outperformed expectations, expanding its hold on multiple state legislatures in the region. Prior to the election, analysts had predicted that the Republicans might gain 40 seats across the South; in fact, they gained at least 55. Not only did they take control of at least 25 state legislative chambers — the lone exception, Virginia’s state senate where Democrats retained a two-seat majority — but they also built or maintained supermajorities in legislative chambers in Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia. This means that even if a Democratic governor is in office, Republican legislators can pass extremist bills into law despite a gubernatorial veto.

None of this is spontaneous, nor is it random. Tens of millions of dollars or more from super-rich conservative donors and right-wing foundations have poured into voter-suppression and election-manipulation efforts. Heritage Action for America, a conservative legislative-writing group linked to the Heritage Foundation, spent upwards of $24 million in 2021 and 2022 in key swing states to help Republicans write bills that would restrict voting, targeting Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, and Texas. Consider it anything but a coincidence that the language in voter-suppression bills in those states and elsewhere sounded eerily familiar. As the Guardian reported, at least 11 voter suppression bills in at least eight states were due, in part or whole, to advocacy and organizing by Heritage Action. A *New York Times* investigation found thatin Georgia, “Of the 68 bills pertaining to voting, at least 23 had similar language or were firmly rooted in the principles laid out in the Heritage group’s letter” that offered outlines and details for how to limit voting access.

Contemporary voter suppression efforts, however, go significantly beyond just trying to prevent people from voting or making it harder for them to do so. Credit that, at least in part, to the determination of so many Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans to vote despite restrictions imposed by the states. Consequently, Republican legislators now seek to control — that is, manipulate — election administration, too.Their tactics include the harassment of election workers, far-right activists seeking positions as election officials, and various other potentially far-reaching legal maneuvers.

In fact, in recent voting, attacks on election workers, officials, and volunteers have become so prevalent that a new national organization, the Election Officials Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), was formed to protect them. EOLDN provides attorneys and other kinds of assistance to such officials when they find themselves under attack.

Meanwhile, a flood of far-right activists has applied for positions or volunteered to work on elections. Neo-fascist Steven Bannon and other extremist influencers have typically called for such activists to take over local election boards with the express purpose of helping Republicans and conservatives win power.

Finally, GOP leaders in multiple states have been pushing an “independent state legislature” doctrinethat argues such bodies have the ultimate power to determine election outcomes. They contend that governors, state supreme courts, and even the U.S. Supreme Court have no jurisdiction over non-federal elections. Their fanciful and erroneous reading of Article 1, Section 4 and Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution suggests that state legislatures can not only overturn the will of voters in a given election but select electors of their choice in a presidential contest, no matter the will of the voters.

In past decisions, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia indicated that they were at least open to such a reading. A firm decision on this matter may occur in that court’s current session in the case ofMoore v. Harper. Court watchers are split on whether the court’s conservative majority might indeed embrace that “doctrine” in full, in part, or at all in ruling on that case later this year.

Missed Chances

Much of this dynamic of voter suppression is the result of the failure of congressional Democrats to carry two voting rights bills across the finish line. Black activists are all too aware that the Democrats blew the opportunity to pass such legislation during the last two years when they controlled both chambers of Congress, even if by the slimmest of margins in the Senate.The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (JLVRAA) and the For the People Act (FtPA)were each game-changing bills that would, in many ways, have blunted the massive efforts of Republicans at the state level to institute voter restrictions and other policies that result in the disproportionate disenfranchisement of African Americans, Latinos, young people, and working-class voters generally, all of whom tend to vote Democratic.

The JLVRAA would have restored the power of the Voting Rights Act to prevent the very passage of voter suppression laws taken away by the Supreme Court in 2013 in the case of Shelby County v. Holder. The FtPA would have banned partisan gerrymandering, expanded voting rights, and even supported statehood for Washington, D.C. Those bills were aimed specifically at countering the hundreds of voter-suppression proposals in Republican-controlled state legislatures.

In its final report, the January 6th committee actually blew a chance to highlight the attacks on Black voting rights. That report’s full-scale focus on the role of Donald Trump, who certainly was the key instigator of the insurrectionary events at the Capitol and its chief potential beneficiary, ended up obscuring the role of racism and white nationalism in the stop-the-steal movement that accompanied it and was so crucial to Republican election deniers. It should be remembered, though, that Trump’s central argument and the biggest lie of all was that Black, Latino, and Native American votes should be thrown out in Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, and other urban areas in states like Arizona and Nevada where he was rejected by overwhelming numbers.

Unfortunately, the January 6th report didn’t sufficiently identify white supremacy as a driver of the “stop the steal” movement.Despite the prominence of certain Black faces among the Trump camp, including conservative organizer Ali Alexander, Trump campaign aid Katrina Pierson, and former Georgia legislator Vernon Jones, January 6th, in fact, represented the culmination of months of attacks on Black campaign workers, especially in Atlanta and Detroit. President Trump explicitly fired up white nationalists by name-checking and endangering individual African American election workers as spoilers of his alleged victory.

The movement in some democratic states to follow Trump’s autocratic playbook is now also metastasizing globally. In Brazil, on January 8th, thousands of followers of the defeated far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro attacked government buildings in Brasilia. Newly elected President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva has had to confront a surging wave of election deniers in the early days of his administration. And it’s important to note that Lula’s voters were disproportionately from the north and northeastern regions of Brazil, areas with deep concentrations of Black and indigenous communities.

In theUnited Kingdom, in 2022, the Conservative Party pushed through legislation thatrequires photo identification**to vote in future elections beginning in May 2023. As with Republican legislation in Texas, student IDs will not suffice, creating a new obstacle for a constituency that tends to vote for the Labour Party. In a country where many working-class people don’t have drivers’ licenses and the state does not easily provide acceptable IDs, voter suppression is operative.

A democracy agenda that recognizes the racial elements of voter suppression and election denial is sorely needed. At the federal level, President Biden and Congressional Democrats should prioritize keeping the issue alive, while forcing Republicans to divulge their undemocratic hand, until the Democrats (hopefully) fully take back Congress in 2024.

At the state level, Democrats who have momentum from their victories in 2022 need to consolidate and strengthen voting-access laws and policies. In Michigan, for example, where the GOP had for years used its control of the state legislature to pass outlandish, racist laws that generated significant harm for Black communities, the recent Democratic sweep should mean a new voting day.

Former President Trump and the rest of his crew, as well as state versions of the same, are sadly enough in a significant, if grim, American tradition. Isn’t it time to focus more energy on how to stop their urge to suppress the Black vote?

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an 2 23

Clarence Lusane: The Nightmare of Republican Voter Suppression

Elections? What are those?

The Votes That Weren’t Cast:Racial Justice, Voting Rights, and Authoritarianism

How Far Might Voter Suppression Go?

Missed Chances

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https://www.wisdc.org/news/commentary/7271-robert-spindell-disgraces-himself-again

by Matthew Rothschild, Executive Director

Robert Spindell, the GOP hack who was one of the 10 false electors from Wisconsin and a sitting member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has disgraced himself again by bragging about Republican efforts to suppress the Black and Latino vote in Milwaukee.

In an excellent story at Urban Milwaukee, Bruce Murphy disclosed the contents of an email that Spindell sent out to fellow Republicans in the Fourth Congressional District, which Spindell chairs for the GOP. It’s also the district that contains almost all of the city of Milwaukee.

Citing the work of local, state, and national Republican groups, Spindell said, “In the Black and Hispanic areas, we can be especially proud of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”

He added: “This great and important decrease in Democrat votes in the city” was due to a “well thought out multi-faceted plan.”

Spindell claimed that “Biting Black Radio Negative Commercials” helped discourage the turnout, as did “a substantial & very effective Republican Coordinated Election Integrity program resulting with lots of Republican paid Election Judges & trained Observers & extremely significant continued Court Litigation."

I don’t know what’s worse: Engaging in racist voter suppression or boasting about.

But Spindell has done both.

And why this man still gets to sit on the Wisconsin Elections Commission is beyond me.

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/13/heritage-foundation-voter-suppression-lobbying-election-action-plan

guk

tax filings reveal advocacy arm of Heritage Foundation spent $5m on lobbying in 2021 to block voting rights in battleground states

Brendan Fischer and Ed Pilkington

Fri 13 Jan 2023

The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative thinktank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.

Previously unreported 2021 tax filings from Heritage Action for America, which operates as the foundation’s activist wing, shows that it spent $5.1m on contracting outside lobbying services. The outlay comes on top of $560,000 the group invested in its own in-house federal lobbying efforts that year, as well as registered lobbying by Heritage Action staffers in at least 24 states.

The 990 tax filing was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian. It points to the pivotal role that Heritage Action is increasingly playing in shaping the rules that govern US democracy.

The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of restrictive voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.The Brennan Center reported that more voter suppression laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since it began monitoring voting legislation more than a decade ago.

The expenditures also signal a dramatic increase in Heritage Action’s advocacy activities. In 2020, Heritage Action had reported no spending at all on outside lobbying.

[An attendee at the Poor People's Campaign march on Washington on 18 June 2022.

Republicans filed record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022 – report

Constellation of Anti-Voting Groups Threaten Democracy

By Marc Elias

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August 18, 2022

https://www.democracydocket.com/news/a-constellation-of-anti-voting-groups-threaten-democracy/

republican leaders of the anti-voting movement recently held a “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” to discuss my voting rights litigation. The event was billed as the inaugural leadership dinner for a group called the Honest Elections Project. I was not invited to attend.

There is a constellation of well-funded, right-wing groups that use the legal and political system to make voting more difficult and free and fair elections less likely. They range from mere vote suppressors to full-on election deniers. Most oppose expanding voting rights and support strict voting laws. Many seek to gut the Voting Rights Act entirely; others want it interpreted so narrowly as to be ineffective. None of these organizations supported Congress’ efforts to enact new pro-voter legislation.

These right-wing groups work closely with the RNC and with state legislatures to advance anti-voting legislation.

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The American Constitutional Rights Union, Foundation for Government Accountability, Judicial Watch, Lawyers Democracy Fund, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections are just a few of the groups fighting against voting rights in court. America First Legal Foundation, Election Integrity Network, Heritage Foundation and True the Vote also support anti-democracy legal efforts. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council advances model anti-voting legislation for state legislatures.

We recently got a preview of how these groups will operationalize their legal efforts in court in the future. Earlier this year, a Florida federal judge struck down most of the state’s “Big Lie” voter suppression law. In doing so, the court found that Florida Republicans had intentionally discriminated against Black voters and had violated the constitutional rights of Floridians seeking to participate in the democratic process. On appeal, six national anti-voting groups filed separate “friend of the court” briefs opposing the lower court’s decision — in addition to the briefs by the state defendants and the Republican Party.

For many years, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was legally barred from participating in election monitoring or voter suppression efforts as a consequence of the GOP’s ugly history of targeting minority voters in the 1980s. When that bar was lifted in 2017, the RNC picked up where it had left off and ran so-called “election integrity” programs with state parties.

These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support.

Now, in the post-Trump era, the RNC directly partners with voter suppression groups and efforts that two years ago would have been unthinkable. The party’s dismal court results following the 2020 election coupled with MAGA supporters’ distrust of the party establishment has left the GOP operating in the penumbra of the current stars of the election denier and voter suppression movement.

It’s not just what these groups do, but who runs them.

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On PILF’s board of directors, for example, are Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, both of whom served as lawyers for former President Donald Trump. Mitchell participated in the infamous telephone call during which Trump demanded that the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) find 11,000 votes and declare Trump the winner. Eastman, who has been in the news recently for having a search warrant executed against him, helped craft the January 2021 insurrection plan.

The Honest Elections Project — the host of the secret dinner — was formed in February 2020 and is connected to Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo.

The newest of these groups, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, was co-founded by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr (R) and Karl Rove, who served as former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. Casino billionaire Steve Wynn provides the organization’s financial backing as its finance chair.

This group is notably more competent and well-resourced than the legal buffoonery who led Trump’s post-election antics. Though I am no fan of Barr, he is unlikely to hire lawyers who claim Hugo Chávez rigged elections from the grave or threaten to release the mythological Kraken. With Rove on its board as well, Barr is almost certainly not going to hold press conferences in a landscaping parking lot.

Notably, the infrastructure on the right is eclipsing the organizations on the left.

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Historically, most organizations and resources dedicated to protecting the right to vote were connected to the left. Today there are still many important civil rights and voting rights organizations that bring litigation to protect the right to vote. Their work is invaluable. But most of those groups have broader portfolios that extend beyond voting rights and have insufficient resources to meet their growing needs.

What is notable about the right wing’s approach is the scope and interconnected nature of their legal efforts to undermine voting rights and free and fair elections.

Right-wing legal groups work in tandem with Republican legislatures dominated by election deniers. These organizations can help generate the most effective voter suppression policies that Republicans turn into laws. When those laws are challenged in court, the conservative legal groups then help defend them.

This brings me back to the “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” that I was not invited to attend. The right wing holds these events and funds these groups because they know that they cannot win fair elections. These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support. They know that they lost in 2020. They are embarrassed that Trump was routed in post-election litigation. Some are upset that his coup failed on Jan. 6.

They set up new groups, hold secret dinners and create new voter suppression laws hoping that we will give up. I’m not sure what gave them that impression. After Trump was defeated in 2020, his team fought dozens of times in court — and lost. We didn’t give up then, and we certainly aren’t giving up now.

NEXT UP

Conservatives Have Been Packing the Courts for Years

We deserve a forward-thinking judiciary filled with movement lawyers who want to see progress for our nation.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/florida-law-discriminates-against-black-voters-to-gain-partisan-advantage-doj-filing/

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indirect voter suppress /indep legis BS?

an raw 8 22

Axios reminded readersof Sen. Marsha Blackburn's (R-TN) 2020 effort to block bills that could ensure US elections are more secure on Monday.

The bills were Sen. Mark Warner's (D-VA) plan to ensure that after the Russian interference in the 2016 election, a foreign country could never do it again. According to Blackburn, however, they're a "federal power grab."

One of the bills would make campaigns call the FBI if they were ever approached by a foreign power and offered election assistance. During the 2016 election, Trump's campaign was offered "dirt" on opponent Hillary Clinton, and operatives met with the person offering the information in Trump Tower.

A different bill would fund the Election Assistance Commission, which would ensure that voting machines weren't connected to the internet. Republicans claimed after the 2020 election that the machines were being hacked and that was how foreign countries were able to decide U.S. elections.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released the third section of their report on the security of the election in 2016 and noted that it was "not well-postured" to counter it again. At the same time, the intelligence community has been warning that there aren't the necessary protections in place to ensure American elections are as secure as they could be. FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress that Russia continues its "informational warfare" campaign as the midterm elections approach.

"[Democrats] are attempting to bypass this body’s Rules Committee on behalf of various bills that will seize control over elections from the states and take it from the states and where do they want to put it?" Blackburn complained. "They want it to rest in the hands of Washington, D.C., bureaucrats."

Most state and local election offices don't have the staff or resources available to protect against international hackers or foreign spies.

ALSO IN THE NEWS: [Details in latest DOJ filing could 'drive Trump to be even more worried’: legal expert

Read the full report at Axios.

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amy w put blk woman in jail for trying to reg to woke after 2 agy told her she cd, 80x days in jail, proved inno "suffiecient"

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/republican-voter-suppression-loses-reelection/Tenn memphis

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/voter-fraud/

ProPublica

His last night as a prisoner in North Florida, Kelvin Bolton couldn’t sleep. Fifty-five years old, with a wispy goatee the same color as the gray flecks in his hair, he was about to get out after serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for theft and battery. The last time he’d seen his brothers and sisters at a big family gathering, he’d marched onto the dance floor ostentatiously, turned away and wrapped his arms around himself to caress his own back. As he swayed goofily to the music, everybody laughed.

Now Bolton was so close to being free and seeing his family again. The next morning, a bright Wednesday in April, he was already dressed in his street clothes and cleared to go when the woman processing his paperwork stopped him.

“The lady said, ‘Hold on, you can’t go anywhere,’” Bolton remembered in a recent phone call.

Confused, he asked her what was going on, he recalled. There was a warrant out for his arrest for incidents in 2020, she explained gruffly. But that was impossible. He’d been in jail at the time, awaiting his prison stint.

Guards loaded Bolton into a van, then drove an hour and a half south to deposit him in Alachua County Jail.

There, he found out what he’d done wrong.

He’d voted.

In 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 4, in a historic ballot initiative that restored the right to vote to most state residents with felony convictions. Until then, Florida had been one of only four states — the others were Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — where people who had committed felonies needed to petition the governor to have their voting rights restored. It was a grim legacy of 19th-century laws passed after the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.

Supporters applauded the law as restoring voting rights to what experts estimate is over 1 million people in Florida, about 5% of the population of the state.

But the state’s dominant Republican lawmakers quickly installed a financial hurdle to those new rights. The following year, they passed a law to clarify that people convicted of felonies could only vote if they first paid off any money they owed for committing their crimes. The penalty for registering or voting without doing so: a felony charge for voter fraud.

On the surface, the mandate seemed reasonable: Even advocates for Amendment 4 agreed that requiring paying off fines and restitution to victims was just. In Florida, however, that task proved a sometimes insurmountable challenge — one that disproportionately hit Black people. Florida has no centralized database to allow people to figure out what legal financial obligations they owe to the state. Instead, its 67 counties and various state agencies each maintain their own databases. The state also does not track information for federal or out-of-state convictions, which people are also required to pay off before voting.

On top of the fines and restitution, Florida layers on court fees that can run into the hundreds of dollars. Together, a voter’s debt can run into the thousands, a financial hole that some may never climb out of.

“That’s kind of the bottom line of the absurdity of this — it’s Kafkaesque,” said Dan Smith, chair of the political science department at the University of Florida. “It’s very troubling that we would have state attorneys prosecuting individuals who did not know their status, and there was no way for them to determine their status.”

Florida’s voting hurdles are part of a national pattern. For years across the country, Republican state lawmakers have been implementing new restrictive voting laws, including reducing access to vote-by-mail ballots, stricter voter identification rules and limits on early voting. These efforts have accelerated since Donald Trump promoted the false claims that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election. Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to expand voting access.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted that in 2020, Florida, a swing state with a history of contentious elections, “held the smoothest, most successful election of any state in the country,” while he also signed a flurry of voting law changes that he said would further strengthen the integrity of future votes. And DeSantis has tacitly endorsed prosecuting people convicted of felonies for voter fraud. In April, he signed a bill establishing the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which will investigate alleged election violations.

Despite the increased scrutiny, voting fraud remains so rare in Florida that it hasn’t come close to altering election outcomes. The Florida Department of State in 2020 received 262 election fraud complaints, just 75 of which were referred to law enforcement or prosecuting authorities, according to the agency.

“Florida is an outlier, because the intentional targeting of citizens with felony convictions as a way to undermine democracy has been a throughline in that state,” said Nicole Porter, senior director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project. “And the attempt to address that, by popular vote, has been undermined by the legislature.”

In 2020, a representative of the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections conducted a series of outreach efforts at the local county jail to let inmates know of their new rights and offer to help them add their names to the voter rolls.

During three visits to the jail, the official helped sign up at least 10 inmates, including John Boyd Rivers, Dedrick Baldwin and Bolton.

Rivers, 44, felt a visceral thrill at the prospect. Sitting in his cell in February 2020 facing a battery charge for hitting his wife, he was told by the county representative that he could register to vote. The official, he said, told him that he could disregard the check box on the form that asks whether the applicant has a felony conviction because he didn’t have a disqualifying felony. That seemed odd to Rivers, since he had a previous felony conviction. (He subsequently was sentenced for the battery charge.) No one told him anything about needing to pay off his financial obligations before registering to vote, Rivers said, and the jail didn’t give him an accounting of those debts when he was later released.

Back at home, Rivers was excited when his voter registration card arrived in the mail. He’d lost his right to vote at 18, he said, after voting just once. Now he could vote in a presidential election. He and his wife went to their polling place, and he cast his vote for Donald Trump.

Bolton, too, was excited to sign up. He also said no one told him he’d need to pay off his debts before casting his ballot. Although he registered as a Republican, he said he decided to vote for Biden.

In all, 10 of the men who the official helped register to vote have been charged with voter fraud on the grounds they were ineligible.

Their alleged illegal voting was first spotted by a citizen who analyzed Florida’s voting rolls and then shared the information with the state. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement subsequently launched an eight-month investigation, after which it identified the 10 inmates.

State investigators found that some jail employees remembered the elections official giving clear directions to inmates about having to pay off financial obligations, while others did not. The investigation concluded that the jail visits were “lacking in both quality and longevity” and “showed a haphazard registration of inmates.” But the state prosecutor nevertheless proceeded with charges, although not against county officials.

Officials at the Alachua Supervisor of Elections office declined to comment to ProPublica. But Supervisor of Elections Kim Barton denied any wrongdoing in a statement released in June.

Brian Kramer, the state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, defended his office’s prosecutions to ProPublica, saying he believed the 10 men knew they were committing fraud. “I’m not going to say I will prosecute or not prosecute because it’s politically popular or unpopular,” he said.

Four of the 10 have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced to between 364 days and three years in prison. Bolton and three others have vowed to go to trial, while the remaining two await arraignment. They face charges that carry a penalty of up to five years in prison, five years of probation or $5,000 in fines. Eight of the men are Black, and two are white.

Critics say the charges are unjust and, at a bare minimum, excessive. In nearby Lake County, the state prosecutor declined to bring charges against sex offenders who had registered to vote despite the law prohibiting voting rights restoration for those charged with sex offenses or murder. In April, two white men living in The Villages in Sumter County, an overwhelmingly white county in central Florida, pleaded guilty to each casting two ballots for Donald Trump during the 2020 election. Rather than face prosecution, they entered a pretrial intervention program, under which they must serve 50 hours of community service and attend an adult civics class, among other requirements. Because the men in Alachua County have prior felony convictions, they are ineligible for pretrial intervention and face harsher sentences.

“I’m thinking I’m doing something good for the community, so that’s why I chose to try to do it,” Bolton said. “It was not malicious — I was not trying to commit a felony of voting fraud. I never would have voted.”

Baldwin, 47, who is in prison on a manslaughter conviction, was sentenced to an additional 364 days. He felt “set up,” he said, since nobody told him he wasn’t eligible.

“There’s no way Biden was that important to me to vote for him,” he said in an email to ProPublica from prison. “We were flat out tricked into voting.”

The elections official who visited the jail denied telling the men that they could disregard the check box and said he warned them that they’d need to pay off their financial obligations, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named because he feared reprisals. The elections official declined to comment to ProPublica on the record.

The voter fraud charges were especially bitter for Rivers. By the time they were filed, Rivers said, he had already used part of his federal stimulus check to pay off more than $3,000 in costs related to his criminal record so he could reinstate his driver’s license and return to work.

“I should have known there would be some kind of catch,” Rivers said.

Florida’s history of felon disenfranchisement dates back to 1838, when the state’s first constitution prohibited people convicted of bribery or assorted “high crimes and misdemeanors” from voting. After the Civil War, faced with the prospect of formerly enslaved Black men voting, the state expanded the law so that anyone convicted of a felony lost the franchise. But in 2018, 64% of Florida voters approved Amendment 4, allowing people convicted of felonies, except for murder or sexual offense convictions, to vote.

This embrace of new voters became more complicated the following year when the state legislature passed its law. It required that people convicted of felonies must determine their own eligibility before registering to vote. The Florida Department of Corrections and county detention facilities are required to provide notice to inmates at the time of their release of their outstanding financial obligations.

But it is unclear if all of the facilities do so.

Florida charges those convicted of crimes with an array of fines and fees, some of which statutorily cannot be eliminated or reduced. Defendants facing felony charges are assessed $100 to use a public defender, as well as a $100 prosecution fee. At least one person already sentenced in the Alachua County cases has been charged an additional $671 for his voting fraud charges on top of the financial obligations he already owed.

Finding out what someone owes is time-consuming and expensive. An analysis led by Traci Burch, a political science professor at Northwestern University, tried to determine the legal financial obligations owed by a random sample of 153 Florida residents convicted of felonies and found consistent information for only three of them. Counties often keep poor records, have cumbersome websites and employ unhelpful clerks.

What’s more, it can cost money merely to find out how much money you owe. Four in 10 Florida counties charged either a payment or processing fee to look at their databases, and 15% charged a fee to access certain records, according to Burch’s research.

In 2020, Smith, the Florida political scientist, estimated that just over 1 million people would be eligible to vote under Amendment 4. Of that number, about 77% had outstanding legal financial obligations, rendering them ineligible to vote under Florida’s new law until they paid their debts. Four out of five Floridians with felony convictions owed at least $500 in fines and fees, Smith’s analysis found. More than 59% owed more than $1,000.

The state legislature immediately disqualified about 750,000 people from being able to vote when it passed its law requiring people convicted of felonies to pay their debts first, Smith estimated. And the new law’s impact was felt much more harshly by Black people, who faced greater fines and fees: 26% of white Floridians with a felony conviction would be eligible to get their voting rights restored under the new requirement, but only 18% of Black people, according to Smith.

In May 2020, a district court judge ruled that parts of the law were unconstitutional and that the law had established a pay-to-vote system. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling the following September, saying it was in the state’s power to require the payoffs and the law didn’t violate people’s rights. The state Supreme Court has also issued an advisory opinion that deemed the law legitimate.

Unsurprisingly, the number of people with felony convictions who have registered to vote has fallen far short of what supporters hoped. More than 85,000 such people registered in Florida ahead of the 2020 election.

Supporters of the law say that it’s only fair to have people fulfill their full sentences, including paying any crime-related debts. Some state attorneys, including Kramer, the attorney prosecuting the Alachua cases, have also developed processes within their jurisdictions by which people with felony convictions can verify their voting eligibility or request to reduce their fines and fees.

Felons who have not yet registered to vote can also appeal to the state to have certain fees reduced or eliminated, said Republican State Sen. Jeff Brandes, the sponsor of the law demanding the payoffs before voting rights restoration.

“We truly believe there are people who are indigent that will just simply never be able to pay,” he said. “The court only collects a fraction of what is given out anyways. And so there should be a way for the state to grant some grace or for the court to grant some grace and provide people flexibility.”

Kelvin Bolton has been sitting in the Alachua Council Jail since April, waiting for his case to proceed.

He’s been in and out of the system since he was 16, piling up a long record of mostly nonviolent crimes, most recently for stealing a car, groping a woman in a store and taking cigarettes from a Dollar General.

He aims this time to keep a vow he made to his family and himself to stay straight. He said he is frustrated that the prosecutor subsequently created a program for people convicted of felonies to check their voting eligibility while he and the others are still facing charges.

“Why would they want to keep charging us for something that they’re in the wrong for?” he said. “The state is in the wrong for what they did to us.”

===

FOIA TO DOJ OSG SEEKING ‘BURROWED’ OFFICIAL’S COMMUNICATIONS WITH RIGHT-WING GROUPS

02/02/2022

https://www.americanoversight.org/document/foia-to-doj-civil-division-seeking-burrowed-officials-communications-with-right-wing-groups

https://www.americanoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/DOJ-CIV-22-0121.pdf

Requested Records

American Oversight requests that your office produce the following records within

twenty business days:

All email communications (including emails, email attachments, complete email

chains, calendar invitations, and calendar invitation attachments) and text

messages or messages on messaging platforms (such as Slack, GChat or Google

Hangouts, Lync, Skype, Twitter direct messages, Facebook messages,

WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, or Parler) between (a) Director of the Federal

Programs Branch Alex Haas both or anyone communicating on Haas’ behalf,

such as a Chief of Staff, scheduler, or assistant, and (b) any of the external parties

listed below:

External Parties

1. Any person communicating on behalf of Heritage Action, including but not

limited to Jessica Anderson, Garrett Bess, or any person communicating

from an email address ending in @heritageaction.com

2. Any person communicating on behalf of the Heritage Foundation, including

but not limited to Ed Meese, Bridgett Wagner, Hans von Spakovsky, or any

person communicating from an email address ending in @heritage.org

3. Kris Kobach (including, but not limited to, communications with the email

kkobach@gmail.com or kris@kriskobach.com)

4. Anyone communicating on behalf of the Public Interest Legal Foundation

or the Election Law Center, including but not limited to J. (John) Christian

Adams, Maureen Riordan, or any person communicating from an email

address ending in @publicinterestlegal.org or @electionlawcenter.com

5. Anyone communicating on behalf of FreedomWorks, including but not

limited to Cleta Mitchell, or any person communicating from an email

address ending in @freedomworks.org or @foley.com

6. Anyone communicating on behalf of True the Vote, including but not

limited to Catherine Engelbrecht, Courtney Kramer, or any person

communicating from an email address ending in @truethevote.org

7. Anyone communicating on behalf of Susan B. Anthony List, American

Principles Project, or the Election Transparency Initiative, including but not

limited to Ken Cuccinelli, or any person communicating from an email

address ending in @sba-list.org, @americanprinciplesproject.org, or

@electiontransparency.org

8. Anyone communicating on behalf of the Federalist Society or the Honest

Elections Project including but not limited to Leonard Leo, Jason Snead, or

any person communicating from an email address ending in

@honestelections.org, @fed-soc.org, or @jasonsnead.com

9. Anyone communicating on behalf of the State Policy Network, including but

not limited to Tracie Sharp, Kathleen O’Hearn, or any person

communicating from an email address ending in @spn.org

10. Anyone communicating on behalf of the American Greatness Fund or the

Thomas Moore Society, including but not limited to Jenna Ellis, or any

person communicating from an email address ending in

**@americangreatnessfund.com or @thomasmoresociety.org

11. Phill Kline (phillklineva@gmail.com), Luis Cornelio

(lcornel001@citymail.cuny.edu), or anyone communicating on behalf of the

Amistad Project or the American Voter’s Alliance (@got-freedom.org)

12. Anyone communicating on behalf of ALEC, including but not limited to

Michael Bowman, Bill Meierling, or any person communicating from an

email address ending in @alec.org

13. James Bopp, or any person communicating from an email address ending in

@bopplaw.com

14. Will Consovoy, Michael Connally, or any person communicating from an

email address ending in @consovoymccarthy.com

15. Jason Torchinsky or any person communicating from an email address

ending in @hvjt.law

16. Stefan Passantino, Justin Clark, or any person communicating from an email

address ending in @michaelbest.com

17. Sidney Powell, and anyone communicating on behalf of Sidney Powell, P.C.,

including anyone communicating from an email address ending in

@federalappeals.com

18. Mike Lindell or anyone communicating from an email address ending in

@mypillow.com

19. Kurt Olsen (kurtols@protonmail.com)

20. William Olson (williamolson@lawandfreedom.com, wjo@mindspring.com)

21. Patrick Byrne (including, but not limited to patrick@deepcapture.com), or

anyone communicating on behalf of the America Project, including anyone

communicating from an email address ending in @americaproject.com

22. Colonel Phil Waldron (phil@onewarrior.com, JWRLLC@gmail.com, or

p@bonfiresearch.org), Russell Ramsland (ryuks9sq@alliedspecialops.us or

yrku9sqs@protonmail.com), James Keet Lewis III (keet@jkeetlewis.com), or

anyone communicating on behalf of Allied Security Operations Group

(@alliedspecialops.us)

23. John Eastman (including but not limited to, from the email address

jeastman@claremont.org or jeastman@chapman.edu), or anyone

communicating on behalf of Constitutional Counsel Group (@ccg1776.com)

24. Anyone communicating on behalf of the America First Policy Institute,

including Brooke Rollins, Chad Wolf, or anyone communicating from an

email address ending in @americafirstpolicy.com

25. Anyone communicating on behalf of America First Legal, including Stephen

Miller, Gene Hamilton, Russ Vought, or anyone communicating from an

email address ending in @aflegal.org

:{:{}:

Please note that American Oversight does not seek, and that this request

specifically excludes, the initial mailing of news clips or other mass-distribution

emails. However, subsequent communications forwarding such emails are

responsive to this request. In other words, for example, if Director Haas

received a mass-distribution news clip email from a listed domain, that initial

email would not be responsive to this request. However, if Director Haas

forwarded that email to another individual with his own commentary, that

subsequent message would be responsive to this request and should be produced.

Please provide all responsive records from November 3, 2020, through the date

the search is conducted.

see stephen miller 3

https://www.americanoversight.org/?s=american+first+legal

11 pp

Displaying results from across AmericanOversight.org. For a more detailed search of government records, FOIA requests, and court filings, click here to visit our Documents Library. To search within documents please try your search on Document Cloud.

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FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO FLORIDA SENATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING HB 1557 SENT BY LEGISLATORS TO SPECIFIC ENTITIES

05/23/2022

Public records request to Florida legislators and their aides asking for communications with homophobic groups concerning the "Don't Say Gay Bill."

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO THE FLORIDA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING HB 1557 SENT BY LEGISLATORS TO SPECIFIC ENTITIES

05/23/2022

Public records request to Florida legislators and their aides asking for communications with homophobic groups concerning the "Don't Say Gay Bill."

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO FLORIDA DOH FOR COMMUNICATIONS WITH SPECIFIC ORGANIZATIONS ABOUT ANTI-GENDER AFFIRMING CARE GUIDANCE

05/10/2022

Records request to Florida Department of Health asking for communications with key terms related to anti-gender affirming care guidance and for communications with homophobic organizations.

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO FLORIDA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE FOR COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING ANTI-GENDER AFFIRMING CARE GUIDANCE

05/10/2022

Records Request to Florida Governor's Office asking for communications with key terms related to anti-gender affirming care guidance and for communications with homophobic organizations.

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO THE SOUTH CAROLINA OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR COMMUNICATIONS CONCERNING AMERICA FIRST LEGAL

05/03/2022

Records request to the South Carolina Office of the Attorney General seeking communications with and about America First Legal

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO THE OKLAHOMA OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR COMMUNICATIONS CONCERNING AMERICA FIRST LEGAL

05/03/2022

Records request to the Oklahoma Office of the Attorney General seeking communications with and about America First Legal.

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO THE TEXAS OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR COMMUNICATIONS CONCERNING AMERICA FIRST LEGAL

05/03/2022

Records request to the Texas Office of the Attorney General seeking communications with and about America First Legal

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO THE ARKANSAS OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERALFOR COMMUNICATIONS CONCERNING AMERICA FIRST LEGAL

05/03/2022

Records request to the Alaska Office of the Attorney General seeking communications with and about America First Legal.

FOIA Request

RECORDS REQUEST TO THEMISSOURI OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR COMMUNICATIONS CONCERNING AMERICA FIRST LEGAL

05/03/2022

Records request to the Missouri Office of the Attorney General seeking communications with and about America First Legal.

News

EMAILS SHOW TRUMP ALLY PUSHING FEDERAL OFFICIALS TO AUDIT VOTING MACHINES IN THE WEEKS AFTER THE 2020 ELECTION

04/12/2022

The records obtained by American Oversight show that Trump allies’ attempts to get the federal government to help them reverse election results went even broader than previously known,” reported Politico.

===

https://www.azmirror.com/2022/05/20/emails-show-ginni-thomas-asked-gop-lawmaker-shawnna-bolick-for-help-overturning-bidens-arizona-win/

dillon

the prominent wives of a U.S. Supreme Court justice and an Arizona Supreme Court justice were involved in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, tried in the days after the election to convince two Republican state legislators to help her overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona and instead award the state’s presidential electors to Donald Trump.

One of the legislators Thomas emailed was state Rep. Shawnna Bolick, a Phoenix Republican who is now running for Arizona Secretary of State. The Bolicks and Thomases are close:Bolick’s husband, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick,is a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas, and the U.S. Supreme Court Justice isgodfather to Bolick’s son.

Thomas also emailed House Speaker Rusty Bowers,who repeatedly told Trump and others in his orbit in the weeks after the 2020 election that he would not help in their efforts to overturn the results. Bolick, on the other hand, sponsored a bill just a few weeks later that would...

“Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,” Thomas wrote in a Nov. 9 email to Bolick, the Post reported. “Please take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”

Records show Bolick responded by directing Thomas to refer any complaints of fraud to the attorney general. Less than two months later, Bolick sponsored House Bill 2720, a wide-ranging election bill that included a provision giving the state legislature sweeping authority to disregard voters’ choice for president. In a key provision, the measure would have given lawmakers the power to “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a majority vote at any point before the president is inaugurated.

Bolick at the time protested that critics were twisting her bill’s intent, which she said was an effort to make the process more bipartisan and call the legislature into a special session.

Bolick declined to comment for this story, but pointed the Arizona Mirror to a statement she posted to Twitter that attacks the media.

“The dishonest media wants to distract attention from election fraud & our efforts to secure elections. Let’s cut through the conjecture & put this to bed,” she wrote. Bolick also singled out local journalists for sharing the Washington Post story or other stories on the emails.

If Bolick wins her four-way Republican primary in August and then defeats her Democratic opponent, as the state’s chief elections official she would be tasked with certifying all election results for both the 2024 and 2026 elections.

Bolick also was named as a chair for a working group created by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that crafts model legislation for state legislatures to pass similar laws.The working group –– where Bolick served as chair leading up to the 2020 election –– partnered with GOP election attorneys, including Cleta Mitchell, one of themost prominent figures involved in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results.

Their objective, according to reporting by Documented, was to start a letter campaign, emailing secretaries of state “questioning the validity of an election.” The effort sought to engage state legislators nationwide and allow them “to kind of exercise their political muscle” by raising unfounded questions about the election.

ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson told the group during one of its meetings, “obviously we all want President Trump to win and win the national vote. But it’s very clear from all the comments and all the suggestions up front that really when it comes down to is the states and the state legislators.”

Bolick told the ArizonaMirror she did not attend that meeting in question.

In addition to Mitchell, the group worked alongside Hans Von Spakovsky, an attorney for the Heritage Foundation, which crafts election legislation for states and has bragged about its voter suppression efforts in the past. Trump named Von Spakovsky, who has for decades falsely claimed there is widespread voter fraud among Democrats, to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

===

https://www.ajc.com/politics/what-2000-mules-leaves-out-from-ballot-harvesting-claims/

no lnx pix

What ‘2000 Mules’ leaves out of ballot harvesting claims

POLITICS

By Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 10, 2022

Proof missing from Georgia videos and cellphone data

A new movie spreading suspicions of voter fraud, “2000 Mules,” shows surveillance video of Georgia voters dropping off multiple ballots.

Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza says that’s a crime, suggesting that a network of unnamed “mules” rigged the presidential election for Democrat Joe Biden and against Republican Donald Trump.

Based on these unproven allegations, the documentary-style movie jumps to the conclusion that the election was stolen.

The hour and a half-long film leaves voters uninformed about precautions that help prevent mass absentee ballot fraud, instead encouraging them to believe elections were subverted by a shadowy cabal of nonprofit organizations.

The movie hinges on the theory that 2,000 people in five states, including 242 in metro Atlanta, collected and delivered multiple absentee ballots, a practice called “ballot harvesting.” Georgia law prohibits voters from delivering anyone’s ballot besides their own, with exceptions for family members and caregivers of disabled voters.

The movie "2000 Mules" includes video surveillance of a Fulton County ballot drop box that shows a man delivering ballots at night during the 2020 presidential election.

Credit: 2000 Mules

While it’s possible that some of the alleged perpetrators shown in the movie actually committed a crime, video surveillance of drop boxes alone doesn’t prove anything. Voters might have been delivering ballots for their relatives, which is allowed.

Even if there were a ballot harvesting scheme, it wouldn’t invalidate legitimate ballots just because they were turned in by unauthorized individuals. Verified ballots of registered voters still count, regardless of how they were delivered.

Election investigators have reviewed several videos included in “2000 Mules” and found no illegal behavior, including a video that showed a Gwinnett County man inserting ballots into a drop box, according to the secretary of state’s office.

“We investigated, and the five ballots that he turned in were all for himself and his family members,” said Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffenspergerduring a debate last week.

In the movie, D’Souza promotes allegations made by True the Vote, a Texas-based organization that gathered drop box surveillance video and cellphone location data in parts of Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All were swing states where Biden won.

True the Vote hasn’t cooperated with Georgia’s election investigations, refusing to disclose the names of people who allegedly harvested ballots. The State Election Board issued subpoenas on the organization last month to seek documents, recordings and names of individuals involved.

The organization also doesn’t explain how ballot harvesting could have occurred.

Every absentee ballot is assigned to the voter who requested it, and voters can only cast one ballot each.

Returned ballots must be included in an envelope that includes the voter’s registration information, signature, and a bar code. Ballots delivered without an envelope aren’t counted, meaning ballot-stuffing wouldn’t work.

True the Vote claims that cellphone location records show that “mules” visited multiple drop boxes in a day, but publicly available location data often aren’t accurate enough to prove that people actually stopped at drop boxes. They could have been driving by drop boxes on busy streets as they travel to and from work.

None of the surveillance videos in the movie shows anyone visiting more than one drop box in a day.

A map of downtown Atlanta displays cellphone travel patterns, but few of them intersect with drop boxes, which were required to be located on government property such as the Fulton County Government Center.

[Explore

From AJC investigation: Five fraud claims from the Georgia 2020 election and what investigators actually found]

A map from the movie "2000 Mules" shows cellphone signals in downtown Atlanta, but most of these paths don't intersect with drop boxes or indicate ballot harvesting.

Credit: 2000 Mules

True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht said in the movie that her organization tracked cellphones that were near both drop boxes and unidentified nonprofit organizations, which she believes coordinated the ballot harvesting operation.

“What does this even mean if this is happening in broad daylight and nobody’s doing anything to stop it?” Engelbrecht said. “It won’t stop unless we stop it.”

The GBI reviewed True the Vote’s allegations last fall and found they lacked sufficient evidence to merit a law enforcement investigation.

“What has not been provided is any other kind of evidence that ties these cellphones to ballot harvesting,” wrote GBI Director Vic Reynolds in a Sept. 30 letter. “As it exists, the data, while curious, does not rise to the level of probable cause that a crime has been committed.”

While the movie blames drop boxes for enabling ballot harvesting, it ignores the fact that multiple ballots could more easily be returned through the Post Office or home mailboxes, where there isn’t video surveillance. There’s no indication of ballot harvesting in mailed ballots during the 2020 election.

D’Souza, the filmmaker and narrator, has produced several movies and books that promote conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda, including “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left” and “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.”

D’Souza pleaded guilty to a felony campaign finance violation in 2014 for using straw donors to exceed contribution limits to a Republican candidate running for a U.S. Senate seat in New York. Trump pardoned D’Souza in 2018.

The movie, which costs $29.99 to stream online, ends with a QR code that directs voters to a website where they can donate money to True the Vote.

About the Author

ajc.com

Mark Niesse

Mark Niesse covers voting rights and elections for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also reports on the Georgia House of Representatives and government. He has been a reporter at the AJC since 2013 following a decade at The Associated Press in Atlanta, Honolulu and Montgomery, Ala.

===

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-dark-money-machine-america-first-policies-gets-a-makeoverand-new-owners

no lnx

Trump’s Dark-Money Machine Gets a Makeover—and New Owners

BILL OF GOODS

The dark-money machine that has funded Donald Trump’s political operation for years has almost completely turned over and was “sold.” Experts say that doesn’t really make sense.

Roger Sollenberger

Political Reporter

Updated Dec. 13, 2021 6:00AM ET / Published Dec. 12, 2021

EXCLUSIVE

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

While ex-President Donald Trump spent the last year licking his election wounds and consolidating power in the Republican Party, his allies were busy reconfiguring a constellation of outside spending groups that have helped bankroll his political movement for years.

Trump’s influential “dark money” machine appears to have almost entirely turned over, capping the overhaul off with the apparent sale of a pro-Trump nonprofit earlier this year, The Daily Beast has learned.

The changing of the guard at the nonprofit, formerly known as America First Policies, illustrates how difficult it is to get a clear picture of the outside money fueling Trump’s movement. It reflects a turbulent year within the circle of Trump’s top advisers and fundraising chiefs, but also casts another layer of opacity over millions of dollars in already obscured donations the group made to controversial far-right causes in 2020, as Trump fought to cling to the White House.

“Whatever your views of so-called ‘dark money’ may be, these groups are further obscuring money flows.”

— Lloyd Mayer, University of Notre Dame

Lloyd Mayer, an expert in nonprofit law at the University of Notre Dame, cast these anti-transparency developments as “troubling,” saying they strike at the heart of federal sunshine laws.

“Whatever your views of so-called ‘dark money’ may be, these groups are further obscuring money flows,” he said.

How the money flows was already in little danger of becoming too clear.

America First Policies, a nonprofit which does not have to disclose its donors, was the core of a pro-Trump dark money network, with an organizational scheme that seems confusing by design.

If you were looking for an illustration of how difficult it is to track how these groups operate, America First Policies offers a prime example.

According to IRS records first obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, America First Policies filed to change its name to America First Works in October. But on Friday, a spokesperson for America First Works told The Daily Beast it wasn’t a name change—America First Policies had been “sold” to America First Works “in a private deal” earlier this year, he said.

“This is a different organization, under completely new ownership,” the spokesperson said. He declined to reveal the selling price.

Asked about the sale, Mayer said he did not understand exactly what the spokesperson was trying to say.

“Nonprofits generally do not have owners as a matter of state law, so I am not sure what they mean by ‘sold,’” Mayer said. “Nonprofits can sell their assets, including their name, as long as they do so for fair market value,” he explained, but pointed out that in this instance, “the nonprofit itself would have received the proceeds.”

“Control of a nonprofit can change, but the persons originally in control generally cannot sell control, as they do not own an equity interest,” he continued, noting that the rules would also depend on where the nonprofit was incorporated and what its governing documents provide.

The sale also shows that the byzantine pro-Trump dark money machine is reconfiguring itself ahead of the 2022 midterms, as well as Trump’s possible candidacy in 2024.

[The GOP Dark Money Group Giving Big to White Supremacists

UNWORTHY CAUSES

Roger Sollenberger]

According to tax records, Ashley Hayek is president of America First Works. Hayek’s LinkedIn page says she is also the “chief engagement officer” for the America First Policy Institute—another Trump-aligned group that sprung up earlier this year, and boasts a number of former administration and campaign officials on its roster.

It appears that the walls between the groups are thin. Last month, CNBC reported that America First Works has joined forces with AFPI, which is backing Trump’s lawsuit against social media companies.

Over the course of the year, these groups appear to have fully replaced the old infrastructure.

America First Policies was co-founded in 2017 by some of Trump’s top administration and campaign officials. It soon gave rise to a sister super PAC called America First Action, and the two entities were so close that they shared office space and even employees.

But in August, The Daily Beast reported that America First Action was also winding down, throwing its resources to the new Make America Great Again Action super PAC—a move which appears to have reflected the changing allegiances among Trump’s inner circle at the time.

All the confusion has one immediate upshot: It makes it even more difficult to understand who exactly is responsible for millions of dollars in shady grants that America First Policies doled out last year.

Those grants appeared in the tax report covering America First Policies’ activity last year, which was filed by America First Works and first obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. Some of the listed recipients have been tied to voter-suppression activity, and one of them is a hotbed for bigoted anti-LGTBQ rhetoric.

But paper trails vanish almost immediately, with some entities appearing to have evaded scrutiny after failing to file tax reports for several years—a pattern which raised concerns among experts in nonprofit law.

Robert Maguire, who tracks outside spending groups at government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the filing illustrates how political machines like the Trump network can shield controversial affiliations from public view.

“The nature of what they’re doing is legal, but they’re also absorbing the expenses and establishing distance from the actions of groups that could be seen as controversial. It gives the party and the campaign plausible deniability,” Maguire told The Daily Beast.

[Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons

BEG YOUR PARDON

Roger Sollenberger]

Take one recipient—Vision America Mobilized, a nonprofit which got half a million dollars from America First Policies last year, according to its tax filing.

Despite that donation, no group called “Vision Mobilized America” appears in the IRS database. That’s because the entity changed its name several years ago, to Million Voices Inc, a faith-based organization headquartered in Texas which does not appear to have filed with the IRS since 2016, according to the agency’s public database.

Mayer explained that groups sometimes change names to slough off negative publicity, allowing them “to distance themselves from bad press.” He noted that white supremacist groups—such as Identity Evropa—have tried this strategy.

And it turns out that Vision America Mobilized does indeed carry a dark past. But by listing the wrong name, America First Works blew the group’s cover—and possibly its own.

Vision America’s founder, Texas-based pastor Rick Scarborough, has a history of bigoted anti-LGBTQ statements. In 2013, he floated the idea of a class-action lawsuit against the gay community for “subjecting people to becoming AIDS sufferers.” Two years later, Scarborough—who once threatened to light himself on fire if the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage (spoiler: he did not)—called AIDS “God’s judgment on a sinful generation,” according to video posted by Right Wing Watch.

Scarborough is listed as a board member on the disclosure thatMillion Voices filed in 2016. He’s also a director for another nonprofit at the same address, called Vision America Action, whose last available tax return is from 2018.

However, Million Voices hasn’t filed a tax return since 2016. The IRS automatically revokes a group’s tax status if they fail to file returns for three years. Still, the disclaimer on its donations portal claims the group is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

“I don’t know why this organization hasn’t had their status revoked,” Mayer said, upon reviewing the filings. “The IRS has over the years revoked hundreds of thousands of groups based on the three-year statute. The only speculation is that the IRS is so overwhelmed and under-resourced that, together with the demands of getting money out the door for COVID relief last year, it has fallen behind on this task.”

The America First Works spokesperson declined to comment on the grants, and, upon divulging the recent sale, referred questions back to America First Policies.

The Daily Beast reached out to Brian Walsh, former head of America First Policies, who declined comment. Million Voices did not respond to a request for comment.

“The IRS is terrible at keeping track of entities supposed to be filing tax returns,” Maguire said. “You can have these shell groups where, if the IRS did conduct some analysis, they might find they’re in violation. But when they do go after them, the IRS often gets accused of some sort of political witch hunt, so it shies away from that activity.”

The group’s largest gift, about $4.8 million, went to a conservative dark-money clearinghouse called Donors Trust. It appears to have been earmarked for something called the “Honest Elections Project,” a dark-money group which has been tied to voter suppression efforts. (Its website domain was at one point apparently quite open about this goal: hardtovote.honestelections.org.)

Last year, the Honest Elections Project also filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court laying out a scheme in which state legislatures could unilaterally overturn election results.

[How Right-Wing Dark Money Is Trying to Kneecap the Biden DOJ

TIME TO FIGHT

Sheldon Whitehouse]

However, the Donors Trust filing does not show contributions adding up to anything like America First’s $4.8 million—the Honest Elections Project only got $170,000, per the filing.

Asked about this discrepancy, the America First Works spokesperson replied, “Huh.”

But this trail twists again. Donors Trust reported that all its grants to the Honest Election Project had actually gone through another group first, The 85 Fund. But even that relationship is misleading—documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics show that The 85 Fund actually is the Honest Elections Project.

That relationship is a cakewalk compared to another voter-suppression group America First Policies supported last year—a flat $2 million contribution to an “election integrity” group calledBe Counted, with almost no public footprint whatsoever.

Outside of a CREW report from 2016, which details a voter-shaming campaign which individuals and local officials described at the time as “creepy” and “a form of intimidation,” Be Counted appears in hardly any press. The group appears tied to the Republican Governors Association, according to its most recent IRS filing, from 2019, which lists a slate of directors affiliated with the RGA.

But it turns out that, like Million Voices, Be Counted also appears to have changed its name. In 2019, it became Be Registered LLC, but with no 2020 tax filing on the books for either group, it’s unclear whether America First Policies contributed yet again to a group under an incorrect name.

Yet another beneficiary, Ohio-basedMoms for America, has also not filed a return since 2018. Moms for America held Trump rallies ahead of the election, and helped organize the “Save the Republic” rally by the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5. It got $100,000 from America First last year.

Of course, the Trump money machine has never been easy to follow. But the connections appear even blurrier now that Trump is out of office. And thanks to IRS filing deadlines, voters may not know what these groups are currently up to until next November, after the midterms.

“Timing matters,” Mayer said. “The longer it takes for the information to come out, the less it’s on the public’s mind. And by delaying flings and obscuring who these groups are, that information only gets older and colder and staler. Even if it all comes out accurately and on time in 2022, it still may not make the news.”

===

conservative partnership inst funded AAF ~ biden noms:

## CPI's Voter Suppression Network Holds Statewide Summits

Starting in February 2022, CPI's Election Integrity Network organized and held statewide voter suppression summits in the states. CPI's Election Integrity Network is chaired by voter suppression advocate and GOP attorney Cleta Mitchell.

The Center for Media and Democracy tracked the summits as they were announced. As of April 4, 2022, below are the statewide events held/announced:

Georgia

CPI held the Georgia Statewide Election Integrity Summit on February 18 & 19, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia. The summit featured a number of breakout sessions on elections and a "special" keynote from Mark Meadows, “What Happened in 2020 and What We Must Do to Protect Future Elections in Georgia."^[6]

Arizona

CPI held the Arizona Statewide Election Integrity Summit on March 11 & 12, 2022 in Phoenix, Arizona. The summit featured a number of breakout sessions on elections and a "special" keynote from Mark Meadows,“What Happened in 2020 and What We Must Do to Protect Future Elections in Arizona." The summit also held a "bonus session" on "Special Grassroots Training / Building the Citizens Campaign to Win the Fight for Voter ID in Arizona."^[7]

Sponsors of the Arizona event included: AMAC Action,America First Policy Institute, America Pack, Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Election Transparency Initiative, EZAZ.org, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action for America, Public Interest Legal Foundation, Tea Party PatriotsAction, Virginia Institute for Public Policy, and Voter Reference Foundation.

Florida

CPI held the Florida Statewide Election Integrity Summit on March 25-26, 2022 in Orlando, Florida. The summit featured a number of breakout sessions on elections and a "special" keynote from Sen. Jim DeMint and a speech from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The summit also held Florida specific sessions, "How Floridians Vote: Mail, Machines, and Role of the USPS – How to Be Citizen Watchdogs", and "What We Must Do to Enhance Florida’s Election Code."^[8]

Sponsors of the Florida event included: AMAC Action, Citizens United Foundation, Defend Florida, Foundation for Government Accountability, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action for America, James Madison Institute, Tea Party Patriots Action, and Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

According to a report from AMAC Action, over 400 Floridians attended and other speakers included Cleta Mitchell, Florida state Rep. Cord Byrd, Chair of the Floria Election Commission Nick Primrose, Republican National Committee's Josh Findlay, and Virginia Policy Institute's Lynn Taylor.^[9]

Pennsylvania

CPI held the Pennsylvania Statewide Election Integrity Summit on March 31, 2022 in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. The summit featured a number of breakout sessions on elections, a sneak preview of “Rigged": a "New Citizens United Documentary" and a speech by Kristen Eastlick from the Capital Research Center titled “The Real Kraken — How Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg Manipulated the 2020 Election." The summit also held a Pennsylvania specific session, "Understanding Absentee Voting, Recent Court Decisions about No Excuse Absentee Voting in PA, & the Role of US Post Office in Election Mail"^[10]

Sponsors of the Pennsylvania event included: AMAC Action, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action for America, Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, Tea Party Patriots Action, and the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

Virginia

CPI scheduled a Virginia Statewide Election Integrity Summit for April 22-23, 2022 in Williamsburg, Virginia. The summit will feature a number of breakout sessions on elections, and a specific session on Virginia titled, "What Did the Virginia Legislature Do this Year? What Remains to Be Done?"^[11] A special screening of "Rigged: The Zuckerberg-Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump", the new documentary from Citizens United will be held. Speakers are not listed for this event.

Sponsors of the Pennsylvania event included: AMAC Action,Heritage Action for America, Middle Resolution, T**ea Party Patriots Action,Virginia Fair Elections, and the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

[Trump joined hundreds of MAGA luminaries, supporters of Citizens United and cast members of the documentary [Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump, which exposes how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent $400 million to rig the 2020 election against Trump, at its April 5, 2022 premiere.

David Bossie, the president of Citizens United and one of the executive producers of the film, told the crowd that completing the film and having it premiere at the president’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort Mar-a-Lago was a dream come true.]]

Michigan

CPI scheduled a Michigan Statewide Election Integrity Summit for May 13-14, 2022 in Detroit, Michigan. The summit will feature a number of breakout sessions on elections, and a specific session on Michigan titled, "Building the Michigan Election Integrity Infrastructure".^[12] A special screening of "Rigged: The Story of How Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg Manipulated the 2020 Election", the new documentary from Citizens United will be held. Speakers are not listed for this event.

Sponsors of the Michigan event included: AMAC Action, Heritage Action for America, Michigan Election Protection Team, Tea Party Patriots Action, and the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

Ties to the Council for National Policy

CPI's Senior Director of Policy, Rachel Bovard, is a member of the Council for National Policy and Cleta Mitchell is a Board of Governors member as of September 2020. CPI's founding chairman, Jim DeMint, is a member of CNP and served on the organization's Executive Committee as of 2020.

an 422

Extremist groups and lawmakers are engaged in an "insidious and coordinated” plot to undermine American democracy. That's according to a newly issued report from the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League (NUL).

The report, titled "Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy," documents the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”. NUL specifically notes four key tactics in the effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.

In 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census data to redraw congressional maps, it noted. It labeled the new maps proposed by Republican state lawmakers “no more than modern-day gerrymandering that strips voting power away from communities with Black and brown voters."

By NUL's count, 34 laws were passed in 19 states between January 1 and December 7 2021 that make it more difficult for people to vote.

In addition to shortening the window to apply and deliver mail ballots, it says, those laws limit absentee voting lists, restrict assistance in returning a voter’s mail ballot, reduce the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, and increase barriers for voters with disabilities, among other restrictions.

"The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.

“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the United States has seen a steady rise in disenfranchisement practices giving one party an edge over the other. But never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of ‘one person, one vote’ from the political process.”

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/ron-desantis-black-congressional-seats/

gerry is // voter suppression/steal

recall felony disenfranchisement florida

===

voter suppr plus legal suppr

jeez: we need to be able to intimidate officials (who are defacto part of gubmint?) so we must deprive them of the means to defend themselves against BS authoritarian attacks? legal aid is an entitlement that only poor guilty blk ppl need?!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/florida-gop-ban-legal-assistance/ to election officials

===

// heartland reverse engr: we will be destroyed by evil dems, so therefore they did not win/will not rule? thus voter suppression is unfair (unAmerican in trad sense) but necessary ; mypillow guy sent gunmen to polls?

an 3 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/far-right-biden-presidency/

a Georgetown University history professor is shedding light on the real reason why far-right Republicans still believe the unfounded claim that President Joe Biden's presidential win was illegitimate.

While its no secret that election conspiracy theories and false claims of widespread voter fraud have run rampant since former President Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election, there is a reason why Republicans "are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities."

In an analysis published via The Guardian, Thomas Zimmer, a Georgetown University history professor with a concentration on the United States' democracy, referenced a controversial essay written from the perspective of a far-right conservative.

The essay, titled “ ‘Conservatism’ is No Longer Enough,” was penned by conservative writer Glenn Ellmers for The Claremont Institute's right-wing publication, American Mind.Zimmer notes:

"It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was 'stolen' – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted."

Zimmer then highlighted another key takeaway from Ellmer's piece:

"Ellmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that 'authentic Americans' have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won."

Zimmer's analysis also delved into the disturbing ideology behind the majority of Republican voters' thinking in regard to Biden being an illegitimate president.

"What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted," Zimmer wrote. "It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an 'un-American' project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism."

Zimmer added, "Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of 'real' America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism, and wokeism."

He went on to explain Republicans' beliefs of the Democratic Party. "Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction — and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well."

===

omfg shelby title V was hit/scalp

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/news-outlets-unearth-more-donors-trust-recipients/

donors use charity to push free-market policies in states

By Paul Abowd

February 14, 2013

Charity acts as screen for conservative foundations that feed network of state-based think tanks, media outlets.

Virginia-based charity Donors Trust has promised anonymity to donors who seek to fund “sensitive or controversial” issues.

A Center for Public Integrity report last week lifted that veil — at least partially — revealing dozens of conservative foundations that together in recent years have given tens of millions of dollars to Donors Trust .

Donors Trust, in turn, has funded a nationwide network of free-market think tanks, media outlets and university programs to the tune of nearly $400 million since 2002.

Recently, much of that funding has gone toward state-based policy efforts. For example, Donors Trust provided 95 percent of the funding for a conservative media clearinghouse called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which runs a network of state-based blogs.

While many of the charity’s 193 donors remain anonymous, a variety of media reports have shown where Donors Trust money ends up:

Climate change-denial

In late February, The Guardian GUK reported that 46 percent of Donors Trust grants in 2010 went to groups opposing climate science. Between 2002 and 2010, the group gave $118 million to about 100 such groups.

A detailed 2012 report published on DeSmog Blog ties Donors Trust to a vast climate science denial machine through its generous support for theHeartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that mobilized support for the tobacco industry before shifting its focus to climate change. BUCHHOLTZ?]

An October episode of PBS Frontline said Donors Trust has become “the number one supporter” of climate denial groups like Heartland and the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity after industry giants such as ExxonMobil curtailed funding to Heartland following public protest.

Islamic radicalism

Donors Trust made its largest grant in 2007 to a New York-based group called Clarion Fund. The $17 million donation went toward the production of a documentary called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”

Seven weeks before the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president, Clarion distributed millions of copies of the movie, which stirred fear about Islamic radicalism, by inserting DVDs as ads in daily newspapers nationwide.

Reports later suggested that Chicago businessmanBarry Seid may have passed the $17 million through Donors Trust to Clarion. Seid and Donors Trust director Whitney Ball co-chair another foundation called Chicago Freedom Trust.

Academic coups?

In 2010, a free-market professor of economics whose research is funded through Donors Trust laid out his “Free State” plan for libertarians to migrate to and take over the state of New Hampshire.

In 2009, Donors Trust passed about $600,000 in donations to Shimer Collegewhile conservative Chicago businessmen, including Seid, attempted unsuccessfully to take control of the small liberal arts school.

‘Fair representation’

A Donors Trust subsidiary called the Project for Fair Representation has led legal challenges to affirmative action programs and, more recently, to the Voting Rights Act, according to reports by Reuters and The New York Times.

The project sought out and tapped the majority-white Shelby County, Ala., as plaintiffs in a challenge to Section 5 of the Act,which gives the U.S. Department of Justice power to approve or reject changes to electoral laws in 16 states, mostly in the south. The case will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

===

"Partisan tactic by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s campaign delays thousands of requests for mail-in ballots from Texas voters" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Thousands of applications for mail-in ballots submitted by Texas voters have been delayed — and some voters may ultimately not receive ballots — because Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's campaign instructed eligible voters to send requests for absentee ballots to the Texas secretary of state’s office instead of their local elections offices.

A mass mailing by Patrick went out to Republican voters across the state in January, ahead of the March primary, and included a two-page letter emblazoned with the seal of his office encouraging voters to submit the requests following “three easy steps.” The problem was the third step, which instructed voters to return the applications in an enclosed reply envelope that was addressed to the state.

The lieutenant governor’s campaign said it used the secretary of state's address because “many Republican voters are rightly suspicious of Blue County election officials.”

“The decision to direct return mail to the Secretary of State (SOS), someone who is trusted and respected, gave voters an added layer of comfort,”Allen Blakemore, a campaign consultant for Patrick, wrote in an email.

But the campaign’s approach forced the secretary of state, which had a stated policy of rejecting applications erroneously sent its way, to sort and forward the Patrick-inspired forms to the counties where they should have been sent originally.

The delayed delivery could put voters’ requests for mail-in ballots at risk as counties continue to see higher-than-normal rejection rates of applications under new ID requirements enacted by Republicans last year. Any issues with defective applications must be resolved by Friday so voters can receive a mail-in ballot.

State workers have been forwarding the waylaid applications to respective counties, which this week were still receiving packages containing hundreds of misdirected applications.

The fiasco has further muddled the first election held since Patrick, as head of the state Senate, presided over last year's passage of new laws tightening voting processes, including a measure making it a crime for local election officials to send out applications for mail-in ballots to people who did not request them.

“Everyone age 65 and older has earned the right to vote early by mail. As Republicans, we have fought to make it easier to vote while protecting election integrity, so we need to make sure we increase our turnout by taking full advantage of this convenient and secure voting option,” Patrick wrote in a letter dated Jan. 20 that was attached with the applications.

Though the letter contains the official state seal for the lieutenant governor, as allowed by law,the materials were labeled as being sent out by Patrick’s campaign and not at taxpayer expense.

The mailing went out to voters in Harris County and central Texas, with Patrick endorsing area Republican candidates in different versions of his letter obtained by The Texas Tribune. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently reported the mailer also reached Tarrant County residents.

Unsolicited mailing campaigns from candidates and political parties are not uncommon. But Republicans’ penchant for encouraging voting by mail for their voters has come under scrutiny as they've worked to limit expansions of mail-in voting during the pandemic and criminalized the mailing of applications by county election administrators to voters who did not request them.

Republican lawmakers last year made it a state jail felony for local election officials to send out unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots, even to voters 65 and older who automatically qualify under the state’s strict eligibility requirements. They also prohibited local officials from even encouraging people to vote by mail.

The full scale of Patrick’s mailing efforts is unclear; his campaign did not answer a question about the reach of the mailings. But the secretary of state’s office previously told some county officials that it had received at least two pallets of applications, and some local election officials have indicated they were receiving hundreds of delayed applications.

“The SOS has always accepted ABBMs and quickly and efficiently routed them to the proper local offices,” Blakemore said, referring to applications for a ballot by mail. “We believe that this will ensure that Blue County election officials are more likely to properly handle our ABBMs when they know they are being watched and monitored by the SOS.”

In an email responding to questions about the misdirected applications, a spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state did not address the mailing campaign by the lieutenant governor.

“Generally speaking, we request that voters do not mail, fax, or email completed applications for Ballot by Mail to the Secretary of State Office,” wrote Sam Taylor, the spokesperson, noting that the office would forward applications to early voting clerks “as a courtesy to help the voter.”

“It is not the voter’s fault if a third party put the incorrect return address on an ABBM, so we want to ensure voters are not adversely affected by that,” Taylor said.

This appears to be a departure from the office’s previous stance on applications wrongly sent to its office. The secretary of state’s website previously warned voters against sending applications to its office, noting that “all applications received by this office will be rejected.” That language was removed from the website at the beginning of the month, according to a screenshot of the same page archived by the Wayback Machine.

County election officials receiving the waylaid applications this week are now under a time crunch to process them and reach out to voters if their applications are defective. Hundreds of applications to vote by mail in the primary have been initially rejected in recent weeks after voters did not fill out new ID rules that require them to provide a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number.

Voters can correct the issue but must do so by the Friday deadline for counties to receive applications for the primary election. Otherwise, their application will be finally rejected.

Taylor said the secretary of state’s office had been working to “expedite” the forwarding of applications it received and planned to label those that came to them before the deadline to request mail-in ballots.

The unsolicited mailings come as the Texas attorney general argues in federal court that the restrictions on county election officials in regard to voting by mail are intended to limit “official encouragement” of voting by mail. In a hearing for a related case, a lawyer for the attorney general indicated to a federal judge last week that the state preferred people vote in person even if they qualify to vote by mail.

On Thursday, Blakemore defended the new prohibitions as “guard rails” established by the Legislature following Harris County’s unsuccessful attempt to send applications for mail-in ballots to all of its registered voters in 2020.

“It was that overreach, as well as drive-thru-voting, that brought about SB1,” Blakemore said.

In 2020, Patrick referred to vote-by-mail expansion efforts as a “scam by Democrats to steal the election,” saying there was no reason anyone under 65 should be “able to say I am afraid to go vote” during the pandemic. Patrick himself has used the voting option, opting to vote by mail in a 2007 Houston municipal election and an ensuing runoff.

===

===

an 2 22

...There are also some less familiar pieces of evidence, such as the 50-person Christian choir singing about swords and taking possession of the land while the attack was underway. Multiple rioters recounted how God's hand or voice had urged them to enter the capital. One avowed white supremacist had convinced his parole officer to let him travel to Washington that week to hand out Bibles. And then there's the man who broke down Nancy Pelosi's office door, believing that "the crowd would tear her 'into little pieces,'" and later testified in court that God had been on Trump's side: "And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it's God's will."

Seidel also describes how the events of the previous two months — including the Million MAGA March in November, and the Jericho March events on Dec. 12 and Jan. 5 — served as test runs for Jan. 6 and a broader "permission structure that gave the insurrectionists the moral and mental license that they needed," through the promise that they were doing the Lord's work.

There's an exhaustive list of such examples. Paula White, "faith adviser" to the Trump White House, recorded nightly prayer videos calling on God to smite Trump's enemies. The Proud Boys prayed in the street and were "hailed as God's warriors." Evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau told his massive following, "Fighting with Trump is fighting with God," and said that angels were looking for some "risk takers" and "wild cards that are gonna go start something up."

"They marched around government buildings in state capitals and in D.C., including the Capitol and the Supreme Court, blowing on shofars and claiming to know God's will," said Seidel. "Sometimes I wonder how could we possibly have been surprised by the violence that day."

More than a year later, said the panelists, Christian nationalists continue to march under slightly new banners, leading efforts to suppress voting rights through gerrymandering and new legislation that would require everything from lifetime disenfranchisement of convicted felons to Jim Crow-style civics tests for would-be voters. Jemar Tisby, president of the Black Christian organization The Witness and author of "The Color of Compromise," said Christian nationalism is also animating numerous state and local fights, including culture-war battles like the manufactured debate over critical race theory, as well as efforts to silence dissenting Christians.

"Even the religious voices within the church are being labeled as critical race theory, as too liberal or progressive to be trusted, and even the communist and Marxist labels are being used," said Tisby....

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/texas-voting/

mail in suppress

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/qanon-followers/

no lnx twt

QAnon followers are focused on 'a new project' in swing states

Meaghan Ellis February 11, 2022

QAnon enthusiasts, who believe former President Donald Trump represents some form of new world order, are now focusing on a different plot in hopes of regaining control of the White House.

According to The Guardian, QAnon advocates have turned their attention toward Secretary of State election races in various swing states.So, why do these races have the attention of QAnon followers? They believe these particular races could be the key to ensuring there is not a repeat of the 2020 presidential election. In many swing states, Republican election officials refused to assist Trump in overturning the presidential election.

Now, QAnon believers and far-right extremists are adamant about putting people in place who align with Trump's beliefs. Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at Media Matters for America who has studied the evolution of conspiracy theories, explained how QAnon's actions could create more problems in the very near future.

“This is the way that QAnon could trigger a constitutional crisis,” said Kaplan. “QAnon is linked to an effort to recruit and elect candidates to positions directly controlling election administrations, and given their ties to harming democracy, that is very concerning.”

Per The Guardian, QAnon's agenda and their strategic plot to control the outcome of elections was detailed by former Republican lawmaker and Trump loyalist, Jim Marchant who is currently running to become a high-ranking election official inNevada. Marchant revealed the moment he was propositioned by QAnon advocates and QAnon influencer Juan Savin aboutrunning for Secretary of State. It was at that moment when he realized those particular election races could be a key to controlling elections.

“I knew right then that they had figured out that we need to take back the secretary of state offices around the country. Not only did they ask me to run, they asked me to put together a coalition of other like-minded secretary of state candidates. I got to work, Juan O Savin helped, and we formed a coalition.”

Savin has also spoken out about the QAnon agenda. In January, Savin also shared details about the supposed "project" the movement had in place. Marchant explained, “We have a project that we are doing helping candidates across the country that we started here in Nevada that has prospered pretty well, with a number of Trump endorsements."

On Sunday, Savin also weighed in on “the secretary of state stuff”, as he boasted that “across the country we are gaining strength rapidly to get back into this game in an effective way. A lot of those offices that they thought they held and weren’t going to matter, we are going to flip those.”...

===

===

an salon 2 22

only real am not POC shd vote:

There are also some less familiar pieces of evidence, such as the 50-person Christian choir singing about swords and taking possession of the land while the attack was underway. Multiple rioters recounted how God's hand or voice had urged them to enter the capital. One avowed white supremacist had convinced his parole officer to let him travel to Washington that week to hand out Bibles. And then there's the man who broke down Nancy Pelosi's office door, believing that "the crowd would tear her 'into little pieces,'" and latertestified in court that God had been on Trump's side: "And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it's God's will."

Seidel also describes how the events of the previous two months — including the Million MAGA March in November, and the Jericho March events on Dec. 12 and Jan. 5 — served as test runs for Jan. 6 and a broader "permission structurethat gave the insurrectionists the moral and mental license that they needed," through the promise that they were doing the Lord's work.

More than a year later, said the panelists, Christian nationalists continue to march under slightly new banners, leading efforts to suppress voting rights through gerrymandering and new legislation that would require everything from lifetime disenfranchisement of convicted felons to Jim Crow-style civics tests for would-be voters. Jemar Tisby, president of the Black Christian organization The Witness and author of "The Color of Compromise," said Christian nationalism is also animating numerous state and local fights, including culture-war battles like the manufactured debate over critical race theory, as well as efforts to silence dissenting Christians.

"Even the religious voices within the church are being labeled as critical race theory, as too liberal or progressive to be trusted, and even the communist and Marxist labels are being used," said Tisby.

===

Dem Gov wi Evers told Kroll, “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment here. If I weren’t able to veto bills without the Republicans overriding my veto, we’d be Georgia right now. We’d be Texas. We’d be Arizona.”

===

ok gerry again?!

2nd or 3rd time pro gerry?!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/scotus-voting-rights/

in 2013 Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts effectively declared racism in America was over, as he penned the majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, a case that neutered the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On Monday Chief Justice Roberts sided with the Court’s three remaining liberals in a case that pounded yet another nail in the coffin of the Voting Rights Act.

University of Michigan Law School Asst. Law Professor Leah Litman, commenting on the just-released Supreme Court decision writes: “One way of understanding how radical this step is: It is a position on voting rights/the voting rights act that is SO EXTREME, the author of Shelby County v. Holder (the decision invalidating the preclearance regime) did not join it. They _lost John Roberts_ on voting rights.”

On Monday conservatives (except Roberts) on the Court decided to allow a racially unfair congressional district map “even though a lower court said it violated the Voting Rights Act by denying Black voters a new district,” as NBC News reports.

The Economist’s Steven Mazie, who covers the Supreme Court writes:

===

an 2 22

no lnx twt

John Eastman wrote another 'election subversion memo' — this time for Wisconsin: report

Alex Henderson February 08, 2022

Throughout much of U.S. history, the types of things that Republican attorney and Donald Trump ally John C. Eastman did following the 2020 presidential election would have been unthinkable. Eastman wrote an infamous memo in which he laid out a plan for overturning the election results and keeping now-President Joe Biden, who legitimately won the election, out of the White House.

Now, according to Rolling Stone’s Washington, D.C bureau chief, Andy Kroll, Eastman is arguing for decertifying the election results in Wisconsin. And one of the far-right MAGA Republicans who is very much in favor of that is Wisconsin State Rep. Timothy Ramthun.

In an article published by Rolling Stone on February 6, Kroll reports, “Nowhere is this crusade to subvert the 2020 election result more on display than in Wisconsin. Even though Republicans there do not control all the levers of power — thegovernor, Tony Evers, is a Democrat— they have launched a multi-front effort to cast doubt on the 2020 election, intimidate local officials, and, in Ramthun’s case, throw out the state’s presidential-election result.”

Kroll notes that Ramthun is not universally loved by Republicans in Wisconsin.

“In Wisconsin, as in other states, the energy in the conservative movement burns hottest among those voters who believe the Republican-controlled Legislature should empower people like Ramthun and throw out Biden’s 2020 victory,” Kroll explains. “Moderate Republicans have responded by ostracizing Ramthun or blasting their party’s descent into a post-fact cult of conspiracy theorists.”

But Ramthun, according to Kroll, has an ally in Eastman.

“Ramthun…. received an eight-page analysis from John Eastman, the same lawyer who wrote the infamous memos arguing for how (Vice President Mike) Pence could overturn the election result on January 6, 2021,” Kroll writes. “Eastman’s memo for Ramthun, dated December 30, 2021, argues that if there was ‘acknowledged illegality’ in an election, then the result of that election was rendered null and the State Legislature had the power to pick the electors ‘as it sees fit.’”

Kroll interviewed Evers for his article, and the Democratic Wisconsin governor lamented that MAGA Republicans in his state have been tireless in their assault on voting rights.

Evers told Kroll, “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment here. If I weren’t able to veto bills without the Republicans overriding my veto, we’d be Georgia right now. We’d be Texas. We’d be Arizona.”

Kroll warns that the MAGA campaign against voting rights in Wisconsin will only grow worse if Evers isn’t reelected in the 2022 midterms.

“The threat to democracy in Wisconsin isn’t coming from a lawless election commission, hacked voting machines, or illegal ballots coming out of nursing homes,” Kroll writes. “It comes from a political party that united around suspicions and lies, and sought to bend reality to its will. Wisconsin is more than a laboratory for new policies and bold ideas; it’s a trial for whether democracy can survive at all.”

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how MAGA Republicans are 'purging' Democrats from local election boards in a ruthless power grab: report

Alex Henderson

January 31, 2022

The voter suppression bills that Republicans have been pushing in state legislatures all over the U.S. are dangerous not only because of the ways in which they make voting more difficult, but also, because they see...

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chris hayes WITH good series on loss of democ 12/21 incl linear step by step lock-picking of trump coup

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an 12 21

aha bek says koch network ~ vax to fwd goal of gubmint?! netflix unnat slection libtard rhet fuels all?!

yale history professor Joanne Freeman has a stern warning for the United States: the worst may still be yet to come for America. In a new op-ed posted by The Washington Post, Freeman noted how “tempting" it is "to conclude that the insurgency failed" nearly one year after former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

But she is making it clear that Trump's failure does not mean the attack on the American government is over. Freeman also explained why the situation is so much more critical now.

“Our government is still under attack. The offensive is quieter now but no less menacing, eroding the government from within,” the professor noted. "The fundamental right to vote is under siege. The regulation of elections is being corrupted. Andfaithin the electoral process is fading; the “big lie” about Donald Trump’s supposed victory in 2020 has staying power for just that reason."

In addition to the attack on the government, Freeman also highlighted how Trump's strategic attack has also impacted Americans' ability to trust and rely on its government in other areas such as law and public health.

"Americans question the role and reliability of the Supreme Court and wonder whether they can trust health and safety institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration — during a pandemic," Freeman wrote. "For too many, the old idea that government is the enemy has a newly magnified appeal."

From Republican-led bills to restructure America's election systems and erode election integrity to their attacks on other critical issues such as abortion, Freeman went on to note other factors that are problematic. Congress' lackluster response, according to Freeman also “virtually guarantees more of the same."

“With no clear line in the sand, the attack on democracy will continue," Freeman said, adding, "unchecked and empowered, with the worst yet to come.”

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‘nebraskaguardians.com’.

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an 12 21

why videotpe? who voted for not hard to figure?

election vigilantes still pushing former President Donald Trump's "big lie" are reportedly going door-to-door filming their interrogations of homeowners as they ask about their vote in the 2020 presidential election.

Speaking to The Daily Beast, Matt Longley, a registered Democratic voter, recalled his encounter with election vigilantes when three women knocked on his door back in September. According to Longley, they asked multiple questions about his household and how many individuals residing in the home actually voted.

“They reiterated, several times, that they did not want or need to know who [we] voted for,” Longley said. “They were asking for how I voted (by mail) and were interested to know if I thought my vote was actually counted (I did). I told them that there was a website that one could go to confirm receipt of their vote. I got a look at one of their clipboards and saw an e-mail address that ended in ‘nebraskaguardians.com’. I thought it was odd and it was pretty obvious what kind of agenda they had, but they did seem nice enough, and they seemed oddly insistent that they not know who I voted for.”

While voters find election vigilantes to be weird, they believe their is purpose in their efforts.

After multiple, bizarre conspiracy theories and repeated failed attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election, Trump loyalists believe their latest canvassing tactic could produce the results they are seeking, according to The Beast. However, critics suggest otherwise.

During an interview with the publication, Sean Morales-Doyle, acting director at the Brennan Center For Justice’s Democracy Program, weighed in on the problematic aspects of vigilantes' efforts.

“This lie that the election was rigged has already done a great deal of damage and continues to do damage in a number of different ways,” Morales-Doyle said. “Going around door-to-door and continuing to spread this misinformation can only do more harm.”

He went on to discuss the broader perspective of the threats that this type of canvassing imposes. “What's most frightening to me is not that it's a rallying cry for people to go out and vote for a certain candidate, but that it's a rallying cry for actions that undermine democracy,” he said.

He added, “This is the lie that justified a wave of passages of restrictive voting laws across the country, the likes of which we haven't seen in generations. This is the lie that motivated people to go attack the Capitol on January 6.”

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note WI was blue wall

republicans in Wisconsin have upped the operational tempo in their ongoing war on free and fair elections. Trump stalwart United States Senator Ron Johnson is exhorting state GOP legislators in his home state to illegally seize control of federal election administration over the objections of the governor. Johnson's plan is contravened not only by a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, but also by a ruling of the US Supreme Court. But who's counting?

Johnson is buoyed by a fringe constitutional theory popularized by Trump lawyer John Eastman in his notorious coup memos. Eastman asserted that state legislatures had ultimate power over election administration, including the right to cast aside the popular vote for Biden and choose Trump electors instead, provided a Republican yells "fraud" loudly enough.

A long-awaited report commissioned by the Republican state legislature found no evidence of election fraud in 2020. Instead of reflecting on the life choices that have led their state to the brink of one-party rule, the Wisconsin GOP has redirected its rage towards the non-partisan Wisconsin Elections Commission. These legislators are looking for a pretext to abolish the WEC and usurp its powers.

The report alleged a handful of picayune violations of election law by the WEC, including sending absentee ballots to nursing homes. WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe defended her commission's work and said the report contains errors. These errors could have been resolved if the WEC had been allowed to review the report before publication, as audited agencies typically are. But the first rule of endlessly re-litigating the 2020 election is never to let the facts get in the way of a good smear.

Republican vindictiveness knows no bounds. It's not enough to slander Wolfe and her colleagues, and demand their resignations. Earlier this month, the Republican sheriff of Racine County asked the Republican district attorney to file felony charges against five of the WEC's six members. Their alleged crime? Helping little old ladies vote in nursing homes while protecting them from Covid.

If Racine County DA Patricia Hanson agrees to go along with this charade, these dedicated public servants could each be charged with two Class 1 felonies, which, in the vanishingly unlikely event they are convicted, could carry up to three and a half years in prison apiece.

Wisconsin law requires pairs of officials known as "special voting deputies" to visit every nursing home in the state twice to help residents vote. However, during that phase of the pandemic, most nursing homes banned all visitors, including the deputies. And for good reason. It didn't seem very safe to send these officials and their various hangers-on traipsing from one nursing home to the next, interacting with patients, and possibly spreading the virus.

Therefore, the WEC voted to stop trying to send deputies to nursing homes (where they were already banned) and instead to send absentee ballots to nursing homes. The sheriff alleges that illegal votes were cast because cognitively impaired residents were assisted in voting. This despite the fact that people with cognitive disabilities retain their right to vote in Wisconsin unless a judge determines that they are incompetent. A family member's gut feeling that Mom is too senile to vote is legally worthless.

Wolfe insists the decision to send absentee ballots was not only legal but required by state law: "The law says if you cannot accomplish those two visits by special voting deputies, if a voter cannot vote during those two visits, that you have to send the ballots to the voters in those care facilities," Wolfe explained. She also noted that if they hadn't sent absentee ballots, these elderly and disabled voters would have been disenfranchised.

Elections officials across the country have been subjected to death threats from voters who have been duped by the Big Lie of election fraud. The threat of felony charges is taking the terror campaign to the next level.

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guk

...In another radio segment, Mitchell said that last September she told Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, there was a “massive effort to steal the election”.

More recently, Mitchell told the AP that she and Trump have been in contact “fairly frequently”, but declined to provide details.

Meanwhile, other right leaning groups with which Mitchell has had good ties are engaged in campaigns that seem to overlap those of FreedomWorks and CPI to limit voting rights.

For example, Mitchell told the AP: “I’ve been working with state legislatures for several years to get them to pay attention to what I call the political process.”

To be sure, Mitchell prior to the election served as outside counsel and helped coordinate a major voting law initiative for the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), an influential group of conservative state legislators which promotes model bills for states. Alec has reportedly been increasingly active this year in pushing its ideas for changing voting laws.

Known as well connected in conservative big money circles, Mitchell also serves on the board of the deep pocketed Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, a top donor to many rightwing groups including Alec to which it gave $750,000 dollars in 2020, records show.

Further, Mitchell has attended meetings of the famously secretive Council for National Policy, an influential rightwing group that boasts top donors, evangelical leaders and prominent conservatives like FreedomWorks’ Brandon.

At a CNP national meeting in mid November one panel featured Mitchell, Christian Adams the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and other lawyers discussing “Election results and legal battles: What now?”

Mitchell, who also chairs Pilf, which received $300,000 in 2020 from the Bradley foundation, has indicated it could get active in the legal battles over the new Georgia law....

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/**2021/11/**16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/

an “Academy” for state lawmakers on voter suppression strategies run by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in July featured a veritable who’s who of the right-wing leaders behind this year’s disinformation campaign about voter fraud and assaults on voting rights across the country, documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show.

While the July 26-28 session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson, that the group does not work on voting issues.

Nelson provided the formal welcome at the conference’s opening session, ALEC staff organized turnout, and ALEC provided two nights of accommodations at the five-star Grand America Hotel, five meals, and a $450 travel reimbursement for attendees. ALEC’s annual meeting was held at the same hotel immediately after the Academy.

An invite published by CMD in July stated that “13 legislators from across the country” would be in attendance, but the materials acquired by CMD do not include an attendance list.

Rather than email materials to ALEC lawmakers that may be subject to open records laws, ALEC distributed hard copies of the agenda at registration along with a “zip drive containing a resources document and a one-pager on your state’s election policies,” according to an email from Sarah Wall, ALEC’s manager of legislative outreach and coalitions, obtained by CMD. Wall’s email also lists Michael Bowman, president of ALEC Action, as a key contact for the event.

Nelson tipped her hand about ALEC’s voter suppression subterfuge in May at a meeting of the far-right Council for National Policy. of the event obtained by CMD shows Nelson speaking frankly about ALEC’s work on voting and revealing its plans to outsource model policy on the controversial topic to avert the spotlight. “We don’t have model policy. We will be developing that at the Honest Elections Project [Academy], through them,” Nelson said.

Honest Elections Project, the group ALEC chose to carry the ball on its voting agenda, is a dark money operation formed in February 2020 to push for voting restrictions and spread baseless and dangerous claims about election fraud, laying the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is a project of The 85 Fund, the new legal name for the Judicial Education Project, a group linked to Leonard Leo that played a central role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges.

Speakers at the Academy featured many of the key strategists and leaders on the Right spreading misinformation around voter fraud, promoting Trump’s lies around the 2020 election, and pushing sweeping new voting restrictions.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita gave the keynote address. A proponent of Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, Rokita recently testified in front of the U.S. Senate against strengthening the federal Voting Rights Act.

Rokita was one of only four state attorneys general to not sign a National Association of Attorneys General letter condemning the Jan. 6 violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA was a member of the “March to Save America” coalition that organized the Jan. 6 rally, and its policy arm, Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robocalls urging supporters to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”

Agenda Focused on Election Legislation

Most of the Academy sessions focused on legislation, giving legislators a chance to discuss bills to restrict voting that have already been introduced and passed in their states this year and hear from Republican-aligned leaders about what more they think needs to be done.

By the timeALEC held its voter suppression Academy in July, 18 states had already passed 30 laws this year making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Honest Elections Project’s Executive Director Jason Snead, who worked with ALEC to organize the event, laid out “priorities for election integrity across the states” and polling results in a breakfast session and appeared on another panel on how to “shore up” legislative control over election processes with Jason Torchinsky and Lee Goodman.

The Honest Elections Project has aggressively promoted a radical legal theory called the “independent state legislatures doctrine,” which holds that state courts don’t have the authority to review state election laws and would empower heavily gerrymandered state legislatures to determine election outcomes.

Republican legislators have already introduced and passed bills in 2021 “interfering with nonpartisan local election administration and consolidating power to administer and determine elections results themselves,” the Voting Rights Lab reported.

Snead is a former senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation where he developed its Election Fraud Database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says “grossly exaggerated” the extent of voter fraud.

Torchinsky is general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust and has been defending ALEC against CMD’s state complaints alleging that ALEC illegally gave sophisticated voter management campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee to its legislative members.

Goodman is an elections attorney and a former Republican chairman and commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2013 and 2018.

Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, and Ken Blackwell, executive director of the MAGA voter suppression center at America First Policy Instituteled another legislative session on “securing absentee ballots.”

Anderson bragged to Heritage donors in April that policies, “severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes” and “preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters” were among recommendations Heritage gave Georgia for its massive voter suppression bill.

Blackwell’s Center for Election Integrity recently published a “Top 25 Common-Sense State Election Integrity Reforms” fact sheet that includes these Heritage recommendations alongside other extreme voter suppression wish-list items, such as eliminating no-excuse absentee ballots and requiring an affidavit for absentee applications.

Blackwell also moderated a panel at the Academy with state legislators “discussing election challenges they’ve faced in their own states.”

Another panel over breakfast covered “things to consider with implementation of laws” related to election day voter registration, “election observer protections,” and organizing seniors to work the polls. Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Donald Palmer, a Trump appointee, and Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Conservative Partnership Institute’s Election Integrity Network, led the session.

Mitchell is a Big Lie fueler and Trump legal advisor who lost her job at Foley & Lardner following news that she participated in a January call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to make him the winner of the state’s electoral votes.

“On Dec. 30, Cleta Mitchell wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud,” The Washington Post Magazinereported. Meadows is now a colleague of Mitchell’s at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Three Republican secretaries of state, Tennessee’s Tre Hargett, Kentucky’s Michael Adams, and West Virginia’s Mac Warner, spoke on a panel about “what policies the states need to employ to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

“Easier to vote and harder to cheat” has been a favored talking point of Republicans in recent years.

All three are active in the R**epublican Secretaries of State Committee(RSSC), with Hargett serving as chair and Adams as vice chair. Republican secretaries of state produced a report on “Best Practices for Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat” for the Republican State Leadership Committee, obtained by CMD.

The RSSC holds monthly calls that Commissioner Palmer often attends. Secretary Warner and Palmer also participated in an “off-the-record” Election University session on June 21 as part of the U.S. House GOP’s “Faith in Elections Project,” as first reported by CMD.

ALEC Lawmakers Consider Litigation

ALEC’s Academy featured two panels on litigation. The first dealt with “anticipating challenges to the Voting Rights Act in Arizona,” legal challenges mounted by Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias, and redistricting fights, and was led by with Republican lawyers Torchinsky, Michael Thielen, and Brian Barnes.

Thielen is the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association and served on the national board of Lawyers for Trump in 2020. Barnes was involved in legal challenges to changes in voting procedures in North Carolina and Pennsylvania last fall.

Goodman and Utah’s former Solicitor General Tyler Green led the second panel on “operationalizing litigation challenges.” Noted in the description of the panel are “ways to challenge the scope of litigation attacks on new election integrity legislation (defense) as well as advance the ball on election integrity (offense).”

As of Oct. 3, “at least 43 voting cases have been filed in 12 states, and Georgia and Texas lead the way with ten new lawsuits each in 2021,” the Brennan Center reports.

Training Sessions on “the Left”

Two trainings focused on “the Left” filled out the remaining agenda at the ALEC Academy. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s “Election Reform Initiative,” and Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump staffer and chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, led a session focused on “the Left’s attack on our election system” through “state-level attacks on election integrity legislation” and HR 1, the sweeping voting rights and campaign reform bill pending in Congress.

Spakovsky, who was appointed by Trump to his ill-fated Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity, has been a major mouthpiece of the voter fraud myth from the Right for well over a decade.

President of the Capital Research Center Scott Walter gave the keynote for a “Mapping the Left Lunch.” Walter and CRC received funding from the Bradley Foundation to develop an “Online Encyclopedia of the Left,” inspired by CMD’s SourceWatch, called “Influence Watch.” The site was “constructed in partnership with Berman and Company,” run by PR spin doctor Richard Berman, and in collaboration with ALEC.

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