ELIAS 2 DEMOCRACY DOCKET
see mainfor older
merri ok
see gop steal election
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AN 9 26
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he will do everything in his power to prevent Democrats from reclaiming either chamber of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. Now Marc Elias, an election attorney who founded the voting rights organization Democracy Docket, is warning that Trump has already guaranteed the 2026 election will be historically unfair — even if Democrats do ultimately prevail.
"It is easy to look at the individual pieces," Elias told MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday. "We have a big victory, as you mentioned, in the Supreme Court, preventing an illegal gerrymander from going into effect in Missouri. There was a setback involving the ability of the SAVE database to be rolled out, halted in the Supreme Court. There was a victory you mentioned in the trial court. There have been other cases that have been filed, right? There's just a lot going on, but what it's doing is building and building and building toward Election Day. And there is no sign that Donald Trump is de-escalating. All the signs are that his administration is escalating and that his allies are escalating."
He added, "And I expect that that, Nicolle, is just what we are facing over the course of the next five weeks, and then, frankly, in the two or three weeks afterwards."
Wallace replied to Elias by asking, "What is the best-case scenario, then? Is the best-case scenario that the courts can handle the volume of frenetic garbage he throws at them, or what? You tell me. What's the best-case scenario?"
Elias replied, "The best-case scenario is that we are able to keep up with the vote suppressors and election deniers. We're able to bring litigation fast enough. We're able to get favorable results from the courts in enough cases that we have free and fair enough elections. There's no on/off switch there. It's a continuum."
He continued, "And I've said this before: I think the 2026 elections are going to be less free and fair, by relative standards, than the 2024 and 2022 elections. But we win enough of these cases that we are able to protect democracy, and then, frankly, Democrats sweep the House and the Senate in such convincing fashion that it demoralizes the post-election subversion efforts. It's one thing to try to steal a seat or five seats. It's another thing if they've lost five or six Senate seats and a couple dozen House seats. At that point, one hopes that it just becomes a big demoralizing factor, and that we're able to move forward."
Speaking to AlterNet earlier in September, constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School constitutional law professor and former deputy assistant attorney general Justin Levitt countered the view among critics like Elias that Trump can rig the 2026 midterms.
"He is trying to project power that he does not have," Levitt told AlterNet about Trump. "He would love the American public to believe that he actually has operational control of forces able to execute on any of those five things or others, but he doesn't. He's not in charge of the systems that govern the election process. As much as he thinks he is, he's not."
He added, "And so I have firmly believed for a while that the single biggest risk to the '26 elections is that the American public falls for the marketing stunt and bestows magical wizard powers on a tired old man. That we do it to ourselves. That we get so spun up and freaked out thinking that he's got a magic ring that lets him do whatever he wishes that we decide to stay home, or we decide to trim our own sails, because we imbue him with an aura of invincibility that he has not earned and does not have."
Levitt concluded, "So I'm convinced the biggest risk — and I don't think it's actually going to happen; I think we're smarter than this — but I think the biggest risk is that we do it to ourselves, pretending he's got power he doesn't have because he desperately wants to convince us that he's got this power."
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8 26
BREAKING: Trump DOJ Announces 1,000 Monitors to Watch You Vote
1K POLL WATCHERS HARMEET
Aug 17, 2026
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon just announced the Justice Department will deploy 1,000 election observers for the midterms. The DOJ wants you to think this is business as usual, but Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias breaks down why this deployment is anything but and how it's laying the groundwork for what comes after Election Day. Meanwhile, it's no surprise the announcement comes the same day the DOJ lost its 23rd straight court case over access to sensitive voter data. Plus, where are these 1,000 monitors actually coming from?
https://demdock.com/4fBUQam00:00 DOJ Announces Plan For 1,000 Election Monitors 01:09 Harmeet Dillon Announces Election Observers 02:34 Playing Dillon's Full Announcement Clip 03:44 Dillon Normalizes an Unprecedented Power Grab 05:02 DOJ Run By Election Deniers, Not Independent 07:02 Where Will These Thousand Monitors Come From 09:43 History Proves The Alarm Was Justified 11:19 DOJ Loses 23 Straight Voter Data Cases 15:39 What Observers Can And Cannot Legally Do 17:49 How You Can Help Protect The Vote Democracy Docket is the leading digital news platform covering voting rights and elections in the courts — from an unapologetically pro-democracy and independent standpoint.
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AN 6 26
A candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump claimed that he tried to commit voter fraud, but did not provide any evidence that such fraud is an actual issue.
Georgia State Sen. Greg Dolezal, the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, told the Charlie Kirk Show in a February broadcast only recently discovered that he and “a number of friends” submitted fraudulent mail-in ballot applications that included forms signed by children. Their goal was to prove that they received ballots in return to prove that Georgia’s system facilitates fraud.
Notably, Dolezal did not furnish any evidence to verify his claims.
“Earlier this year, Dolezal introduced Senate Bill 568 (SB 568), a proposal that would have assigned early voters to a single location, required voters to use hand-marked paper ballots and expanded the public release of voter information,” Democracy Docket reported. “While that bill failed two votes short of the majority needed, Dolezal has continued attempting to revive Republicans’ push to overhaul Georgia’s elections.”
They added, “During a special legislative session Saturday, Dolezal proposed an amendment to an election bill that would require counties to manually recount every voter cast in the top two races on a ballot before certifying an election. The GOP-controlled Senate approved the amended bill and the House is considering the measure Monday. If passed, the recount requirement would apply to the races for governor and U.S. Senate in November.”
In his appearance on the Charlie Kirk Show, Dolezal said that “the way you get an absentee ballot is you would sign your name to a ballot request form, send it in, and they’d send you a ballot. They’re supposed to check the signatures. Well, we know essentially that they didn’t check the signatures because myself and a number of friends botched our signatures, had kids sign signatures, do all that, send our ballots in the ballot request forms, and in every case, we got a ballot back.”
He did not identify the friends who helped him, elaborate on how voters names were supposedly swapped, explain how the effort was organized or discuss if any of the ballots issues were completed, cast or counted.
“So, yes, we do have essentially a Republican, governor or secretary of state, General Assembly,” Dolezal said. “We’ve moved the needle a good bit. We did move on voter ID, and we have passed some good things, but there has been really no interest in looking at what happened in 2020.”
Democracy experts argue that Trump is trying to spread misinformation about voter fraud so he can falsely claim that any election lost by Republicans was stolen. He falsely claimed that the 2016 Iowa GOP caucuses were stolen when he lost them, that he actually won the 2016 presidential election popular vote when he did not and that he won the 2020 presidential election when he did not. On that last occasion, he attempted a coup after being defeated by then-former Vice President Joe Biden.
Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, told AlterNet earlier this month that Trump is trying to rig the 2026 midterm elections by sowing doubts about the validity of likely Democratic victories.
“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”
He added, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”
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an 5 26
President Donald Trump lost his appealof a personal lawsuit he launched against former Secretary Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee, the law firm Perkins Coie, LLC and others he blames for the Russia investigation.
Politico's Kyle Cheney reported on Tuesday that the 11th Circuit declined to rehear Trump's case, leaving his only option an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump and lawyer Alina Habba in 2023 were sanctioned $1 million for the "frivolous" lawsuit. Florida has rules that allow defendants to ask that a court decide whether a lawsuit is "bogus," the Associated Press reported.
At the time, U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote in the ruling that Trump has a "pattern of abuse of the courts" for filing such lawsuits specifically for political purposes. He said that the move "undermines the rule of law" and "amounts to obstruction of justice."
"Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose," he wrote.
Chief Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, along with Trump appointee Judge Andrew L. Brasher and Joe Biden appointee Judge Embry Kidd, denied Trump's demand to rehear the case.
They added the detail, "... no judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc," which means none of the judges had any interest in weighing in on rehearing the matter. On the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, six of the 12 judges were appointed by Trump.
Lawyer Marc Elias commented on BlueSky, "I was a defendant in Trump’s frivolous lawsuit. I did not settle. I did not compromise. I did not stop speaking out. We fought and won."
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rare loss? an 3 26
U.S. District Court Judge J. P. Boulee, who is overseeing the Fulton County, Georgia, ballot case, has quashed the subpoena for FBI Agent Hugh Raymond Evans, who provided the one affidavit used to support the search warrant to seize the ballots from the 2020 election, reported Lawfare legal analyst Anna Bower.
It's a huge hit before the Friday evidentiary hearing over the raid on the elections office.
Fulton County officials believe that Evans deliberately misled the judge in the case by promoting 2020 election conspiracy theories from one of President Donald Trump's own allies to get the warrant for the ballots.
Boulee was appointed by the first Trump administration.
“In searching for evidence of a crime in Fulton County, President Trump has, in some sense, returned to the scene of his own…Now Trump is using the power of the federal government to seize the very ballots cast by voters whose will he once sought to subvert," Bower wrote in her piece, walking through the specifics of the case ahead of the hearing.
Marc Elias' Democracy Docket explained that the Justice Department has already made one mistake in revealing information about the probe when it unsealed the affidavit.
"Following the raid, the DOJ also initially told Fulton County officials that it wouldn’t oppose Evans testifying about the affidavit," the report explained. "Thomas Albus, a Missouri-based U.S. attorney overseeing the DOJ’s probe into the 2020 vote in Georgia, said in February that he couldn’t imagine Evan’s testimony 'will be an issue.'"
The DOJ then made a huge pivot three days later.
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more perfect union 12 25
PAY ATTENTION: Corporations Are Destroying Democracy | Faiz Shakir
50,016 views Dec 6, 2025 Defending Democracy with Marc Elias
Marc Elias sits down with Faiz Shakir, founder of More Perfect Union and former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, for a deep dive into the future of Democratic messaging, media, and grassroots organizing. Faiz breaks down three core elements of constructive, pro-worker populism, how political organizing is empowering Americans to advocate for workplace justice, and how independent media is stepping into the vacuum left by legacy outlets. More Perfect Union:
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PAY ATTENTION: Corporations Are Destroying Democracy | Faiz Shakir - YouTube
...24:29
in a group setting why I was a Democrat and I said I was born a Democrat. you know, like it was because of the New
24:35
Deal and what the Democratic Party had done for my family. And I grew up as a Democrat and I grew up as a very sort of
24:41
conventional Democrat and considered myself and and still do in kind of the liberal tradition of the Democratic
24:47
party. I started to become much more radicalized probably towards populism.
24:52
Um because I started to see that corporate America that had told us that
24:58
it could do anything. Like they were all powerful, that they could solve every problem, like we should have faith in
25:04
them as a pillar of the society we live in. I saw them uh after the voter
25:11
suppression laws were passed in 2001, they took out a print ad in the New York Times. Literally, the major corporations
25:17
of America decided to respond to mass voter suppression in the state of Georgia by taking out a print ad. Now,
25:23
if you looked up in the dictionary, what is the least you could do? A print ad in the New York Times and the Washington
25:28
Post would qualify as the very least you could do. Here are people who had told people like me, don't worry, we can
25:34
solve all of the world's problems. And they were unwilling to take on voter suppression using their lobbyists and
25:39
their money and their corporate uh power. They were unwilling to take it on. And I have watched through now the
25:45
the the Biden administration. They did not push for the Freedom to Vote Act or the For the People Act. They did not
25:51
push for reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, which they had had taken credit for in past years. You know, in 2006, the
25:58
reason why the bill passes 98 to0 in the Senate, the free the uh John the Voting Rights Act is in part because Walmart
26:05
puts money behind it and they put muscle behind it and they made it a lobbying issue. And by the time we get to, you know, Joe Biden's administration, they
26:12
are doing literally nothing for democracy. And now with Donald Trump in office, I don't even uh call them
26:18
capitulators. I call them collaborators because like they're in it. Like they're in a joint venture with this
26:23
administration. They're not victims of anything. Like the corporate media and the corporate billionaire class and the
26:29
big tech companies, they're they're joint venturing with this administration to destroy democracy. And so like
26:37
literally I have found myself agreeing with you and people in your camp more
26:42
and more that if that is happening in democracy that is happening in all of these other areas
26:48
and why right like let's let's stay with that Mark why because we have these corporate colluders as you're referring
26:55
to them and I agree with that and their their ethics their values I talked about
27:01
this hubris this self-interest this greed makes them worship the almighty dollar. So for a dollar I will give up
27:09
any sense of economic patriotism or belief in this country or belief in like wanting other people around me to
27:16
succeed. It's a downward slide in which the people who don't have their wealth in power are pushed further down so that
27:23
they can accumulate more. And so in exchange for corporate tax rate reduction, some business expensing that
27:30
they get out of the way one one big beautiful bill, they get you know Medicaid cuts. They like these things
27:35
and in exchange they'll fund the destruction of the East Room. They'll do the things that you're talking about on democracy and and I promise you this.
This is what we have to be mindful of. If a Democratic president comes in with a Democratic House and Democratic
Senate, do you know what these corporate colluders will do? They are coming back
to say, "I want to purchase. Hey, I was your best friend. I I promise you, I'm sorry for the last few years. I never
really liked Donald Trump. I didn't really like the right-wing agenda, but I hope you understand. I've really my
heart is with you guys and I would like to be your best friend now. So, will you please give me roles in the
administration, roles with, you know, give me a chance to shape your agenda. And at that point, my view is to say
...
really liked Donald Trump. I didn't really like the right-wing agenda, but I hope you understand. I've really my
28:05
heart is with you guys and I would like to be your best friend now. So, will you please give me roles in the
28:11
administration, roles with, you know, give me a chance to shape your agenda. And at that point, my view is to say
28:17
that we have to have deep convictions in a sense of what are the fundamental problems that we're trying to address in which we co-opt make people if you want
28:25
to sign up to do what we want to do. This is what Zoron is trying to advocate, right? say, "Hey, you want to get child care done? Great. You don't
28:31
get the heck out of my way, right? You want to you want to expand things for workingclass people and improve their
28:38
lives? We're here for that and I'll co-opt you into that fight." But too often the purchase of these corporate
28:43
colluders, as you're talking about, has been the destruction of not only American democracy and American economy to build authoritarianism on all fronts,
28:50
which is obviously depriving a lot of us of individual liberty and freedom. Yeah. I'm not so sure I'm even interested in them coming back into a
28:56
coalition to do good things. Like I mean they have done so much damage already. We're only 11 months into this
29:02
administration. They've done so much damage that honestly I I I am not sure that they can ever be trusted to be part
29:08
of a coalition. For sure. I mean I I just think of the people who need help in America, right?
---
dem dock 9 25
Trump signed a memorandum Thursday directing the federal government to investigate and dismantle “domestic terrorism networks.”
The move appears targeted at left-leaning progressive nonprofit groups, which Trump days ago vowed to dismantle, falsely claiming they fund and support political violence and terrorism in the U.S.
The memo directs the FBI’s National Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to go after “anti-fascist” movements in the U.S.
“This ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties,” the memo reads.
Trump signed the memo shortly after the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice directed several U.S. attorneys offices across the country to open investigations into the Open Society Foundations, a progressive grant network founded by Democratic megadonor George Soros.
Asked what specific people or organizations the memo seeks to target, Trump named Soros, who Republicans have long claimed without evidence funds violent protests in the U.S.
“Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing,” Trump said. “I don’t know. Soros is a name that I hear.”
Trump earlier this month asserted Soros must be “jailed” because “he’s a bad guy,” while Vice President JD Vance baselessly claimed that Soros and the Open Society Foundations pay “the salaries of terrorist sympathizers” and “promote violence and terrorism.”
The Open Society Foundations in a statement to Democracy Docket said the Trump administration’s “accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.
“When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk,” it added.
“The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law.”
“Our work in the United States is solely dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms. We stand by the work we do to improve lives in the United States and across the world.”
Trump also named LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party. Hoffman founded the Aphorism Foundation, a California-based private grantmaking group that focuses on noncontroversial causes such as supporting universities and hospitals.
Through a separate nonprofit, Hoffman provided financial support for writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault lawsuit against Trump.
In terms of specific actions, Thursday’s memo ordered the commissioner of the IRS “to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”
“In addition, where applicable, the Commissioner shall ensure that the [IRS] refers such organizations, and the employees and officers of such organizations, to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution,” the memo reads.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has repeatedly threatened to strip left-leaning organizations of their tax exemptions.
Federal law bars senior executive branch officials from directing the IRS, which is currently headed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an acting capacity, to audit any taxpayer or nonprofit organization.
However, the Trump administration could create pretext triggering an IRS audit through several different means.
The White House has repeatedly attempted to link the recent murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to progressive causes and groups. The effort has heightened fears that Trump and his allies seek to exploit the killing to further attack institutions that power the political left.
The Trump administration has also specifically targeted the Ford Foundation, another progressive philanthropic organization.
Earlier this week, Trump signed a separate memo claiming to designate “antifa,” a leaderless and decentralized anti-fascist movement, as a “domestic terrorist organization.”
Trump and many of his fellow Republicans have long used antifa as a catch-all designation against protests or speech they disapprove of.
Senior White House officials Thursday claimed that large-scale nationwide protests in recent years, such as the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, were organized by unspecified organizations and amounted to terrorism.
“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s homeland security advisor, said as the president signed the memo.
*“Whether it be going back to the riots that started with Black Lives Matter and all the way through to the antifa riots, the attacks on [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers, the doxing campaign and now the political assassinations, these are not lone isolated events,” Miller added. “This is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism.”
Miller recently referred to the Democratic Party as “not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”
*This breaking news story has been updated with additional details throughout.
Next Up
DOJ Obeys Trump, Indicts Comey Days After Order to Pursue President’s Foes
Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted on two criminal counts days after President Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue his perceived enemies more aggressively.
---
10 25
voter suppress
SNATCHTHIS DEAL.COM COMMEMORATIVE COIN OMG GRIFT SURVIVOR GOD
Donald Trump is already trying to steal the 2026 election. Look, I know because I spent more than 30 years on the front
0:07
line defending your right to vote. And I've litigated against Trump and his Republican cronies and beaten them over
0:13
and over again. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, I helped lead the effort
0:19
that defeated Trump and his allies more than 60 times. Now, in this video, I'm
0:24
going to break down exactly how Trump and Republicans plan to undermine our free and fair elections in 2026. And at
0:30
the end, I'm going to tell you what you can do to stop them. But before I do that, I need you to like this video and
0:38
subscribe to the channel to stay informed on how you can defend democracy. All right, here's what you need to know about what Donald Trump is
0:44
up to. He wants to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him and his cronies to cheat. How does he make it
0:50
harder for you to get a ballot? How does he make it harder for you to cast that ballot and have that vote counted? And
0:56
how does he set up a structure that allows him and Republican election officials, his election and I crew, uh,
1:04
uh, cheat you out of that vote? So, the first thing I need everyone to buy into,
1:09
okay? I need you to all like take a deep breath and accept this as truth. Voting
1:14
rules matter and they matter not just in an abstract way, not just in a way of like, oh, it's good that we have fair
1:20
voting rules, but they matter to the outcome of elections. If you allowed me to design a voting system where I could
1:27
set the rules any way I wanted, it would dramatically increase the number of Democrats that are elected because, for
1:34
example, I would draw districts for Congress that favored Democrats, right?
1:39
Redistricting is just a form of election rules, right? where you draw the maps, where you put the lines is just one of
1:45
the many rules that people understand can impact the outcome of elections. But they're not the only rules that affect
1:52
the outcome of elections. For example, you keep hearing that Donald Trump wants to target mailin voting. Well, why does
1:58
he want to target mail-in voting? Because more Democrats rely on mail-in voting than Republicans. So, if you do
2:04
away with mail-in voting, you decrease the number of Democrats who vote relative to the number of Republicans.
2:10
Why does he go after dropboxes? Why does he want to require people to put stamps
2:16
on their return envelopes to return their mail-in ballots? Because more Democrats use dropboxes. Because
2:23
dropboxes are a vital lifeline to people in rural communities, for example, on Native American reservations, because
2:30
fewer young voters, fewer firsttime voters have access to stamps. I mean,
2:35
think about this in your own life right now. Think of someone who is 65 years old and ask yourself, do they have a
2:42
roll of stamps if they open a drawer? And then ask yourself about someone who you know who's 25 and ask the same
2:48
question. And I bet you that 65year-old has stamps in their drawer. And the 25-year-old is like, I don't even know
2:54
where to buy stamps. Like like where does one get a stamp? So all of these
3:00
rules have an outcome effect. Some of them are larger and some of them are smaller. But what you need to know is
3:06
cumulatively they can be the difference between who wins and who loses. The Republican party is spending tens of
3:13
millions of dollars to try to make it harder to vote. There is a right-wing
3:18
network of of organizations that are spending even more than that. And of course, the White House is now in the
3:24
game because it is headed by Donald Trump. And the one thing that Donald Trump cares about is trying to make sure
3:31
that he doesn't lose power by having Democrats win control of Congress in 2026. So Donald Trump is having all of
3:38
these federal agencies, not just the executive orders he's issuing, not just the Department of Justice trying to get
3:44
access to sensitive voter role information and your personal information, but you have all of the
3:50
government at his behest trying to make it harder for you to vote and easier for them to cheat. Now, there are three
3:56
phases of the voting process, and we're going to go through all of them. There is voter registration, there's actually
4:03
casting uh a ballot, and then there is vote counting and certification. But before I do, I want you to know that
4:08
this is why I started democracy docket in 2020, to be a resource to you, to help keep you informed about what is
4:14
happening to democracy and voting in court. As Trump continues to take over our elections, the work they do is more
4:20
important now than ever before. So, please help support Democracy Dockets efforts and their team by signing up
4:26
today at the link in the description below. Now, I promised you we were going to start with voter registration. And it
4:32
is a critical part of the American voting experience. Uh, if you are not registered to vote in most states in
4:39
this country, in fact, in fact, in nearly all states in this country, you cannot vote. There are some states that
4:44
make voter registration easier. Some states that make voter registration harder. Some states you can register on
4:50
election day. Someday you some states you can register uh really at any time.
4:55
Uh but almost every state has some type of rule that deals with who can register
5:01
to vote and how. And what Donald Trump is already doing, what you see in the rhetoric from the Republican party, what
5:08
you see in the early executive orders from Donald Trump is that he is trying to make it harder for people to register
5:14
to vote because if he makes it harder for them to register to vote, then they won't be able to vote at all. The best example that you keep reading about
5:20
right now are so-called proof of citizenship requirements. Now, on their face, these sound perfectly reasonable.
5:25
I mean, after all, we all agree that only US citizens can vote in US elections. Well, I've got news for you.
5:30
Only US citizens currently vote in US elections. Like, there are already a myriad of safeguards to make sure that
5:37
non-citizens don't vote in our elections. But in because what Donald Trump is interested in is not actually
5:43
preventing non-citizen voting, but rather preventing people from voting who may vote against him. He has concocted
5:51
this theory along with Republicans that in order to register to vote, you have to prove that you are a US citizen. Now,
5:58
I'm here to tell you there are really only two documents that will currently prove that you are a US citizen. Number
6:04
one, an original birth certificate, and number two, a US passport. Now, with
6:10
respect to an original birth certificate, most people don't actually have with them their original birth
6:15
certificate, like they may have a copy, they may have a photo copy, they may have something that was emailed to them,
6:21
but they don't necessarily have that original raised sealed copy or original
6:27
of their birth certificate. You know, I tried this out as a test a couple years ago. I actually called uh New York,
6:34
which is where I was born, and said, "Hey, I'd like an original copy of my birth certificate that's certified." And you know what they told me? They told me
6:41
that since the pandemic in 2020, right, five years ago, that their vital records
6:46
offices have been understaffed and in some instances closed, and that it could take me six months to get that original
6:52
birth certificate. And that's not unusual. I hear these stories everywhere I go around the country that, you know,
6:57
the Republicans who say, "We'll just show your original birth certificate." It's not that easy. If you don't happen
7:03
to have it and you need to get a new one, uh, it's not always that simple. With respect to passports, I mean, let's
7:09
be honest, most people don't have passports and in particular, young voters tend not to have passports. Why?
7:15
Because they haven't traveled abroad. And people don't get passports unless they have a reason to get it in the first instance because they plan on
7:21
traveling abroad. So, when you put in place a requirement to prove citizenship, who are you mostly
7:27
impacting? You're impacting first-time registrants who tend to be more democratic. They also tend to be younger
7:35
and they tend to be more transient. You are impacting college students. Why?
7:41
Because college students are again less likely to have their original birth certificate with them because they don't
7:47
otherwise have a reason to have that birth certificate. Like if they're in the job market already, maybe they have the birth certificate because they
7:52
needed to show something when they began employment, but when they're in college, they didn't need it. But they're also
7:58
impacting married women who changed their names when they became married.
8:04
Why? Because the birth certificate name won't match the name on their other
8:10
identification. So if you take the birth certificate name and you compare it to,
8:15
for example, their driver's license, those won't necessarily be the same name if they changed it when they got
8:20
married. So now you have to introduce yet another piece of documentation into the equation which is a certified
8:26
marriage license. And let me tell you, if you think it is hard to get a certified copy of your birth
8:32
certificate, just try to get a certified marriage license and get the state that you now live in to recognize that that
8:39
marriage license was in fact an original marriage license in a different state. This is set up by the Republicans for no
8:47
reason other than to suppress voting rights. It is simply a convenient device
8:53
to make it harder to vote so that you won't go through all these hoops and even if you do, you may still be
9:00
rejected. Now, let me say one other thing. Isn't it curious that they say
9:05
it's really easy just get a birth certificate when after all it was Donald Trump who sp who spread the lie that
9:13
Barack Obama was not born in the United States and that even after he produced a birth certificate from Hawaii they said
9:19
it was a forgery. Right? This is not going to end with you produce a birth certificate and they're going to be like oh that's okay Mr. or Miss Democrat
9:27
we're going to accept that birth certificate. promise you they will find a reason to say that the birth certificate you produce just like they
9:33
did with Barack Obama is in fact somehow not real even though in that case it was the state of Hawaii itself that was
9:40
saying yes this is in fact the the official document that we give people uh
9:45
uh who want a certified birth certificate. What else is interesting about birth certificates? The reason why
9:52
they are currently proof of citizenship is because everyone born in the United
9:58
States is automatically a citizen. Well, what was the first thing that Donald Trump did when he came to office? Tried
10:04
to do away with birth right citizenship. What does that mean? If he's successful, that will mean that birth certificates
10:10
won't even be proof of citizenship. That's right. Even proving you are born in the United States won't be enough.
10:17
Donald Trump is wants to set up a regime in which you can't prove that you are a
10:23
US citizen if he doesn't want you to be able to. And that is why this is the first thing that we need to be paying
10:30
attention to as we head towards 2026. The next thing that Donald Trump is
10:35
trying to do to steal the 2026 election is to tamper with the voting uh process
10:41
itself. Now, this is, you know, unprecedented American history. Like we
10:47
have never seen a president try to ban voting equipment, try to ban entire
10:53
methods of voting, saying that he uh believes that no one should be able to
10:58
vote by mail. I mean this is the kind of totalitarian authoritarian actions that
11:03
we might expect in some thirdw world dictatorship. It is not something that we expect from a US president. So what
11:10
does he want to do? Number one, wants to ban vote by mail. Why does he want to ban vote by mail? As I mentioned at the
11:16
beginning of this video, he wants to ban voting by mail because more Democrats vote by mail than Republicans. Because more Democratic controlled states like
11:23
Colorado, Oregon, uh, uh, and Washington state rely on vote by mail. Because more
11:28
other Democratic states like California, uh, have a large percentage of their
11:33
population who vote by mail. Voting by mail to Republicans is the thing that
11:39
allows Democrats to win. Now, to you and me, it's a way that we cast ballots
11:44
securely. It's a way that we cast ballots from the from the comfort of our own home. It's the way we cast ballots without worrying that we would have to
11:51
take time off from work. But to him, to Donald Trump, who wants to be an authoritarian, banning mail-in voting is
11:58
the holy grail. And it's not just banning it in its entirety.
12:03
There are other subtle changes that Donald Trump and the Republicans want to make to bail to vote by mail that have a
12:11
less dramatic but a significant impact on who wins and lose elections. For example, he wants there to be slower
12:18
mail service, right? I mean, he put he put DeJoy in charge of the mail the postal service and immediately we
12:25
worried in the in the 2020 election that the mail delivery times were getting
12:30
longer. Why? Because if mail delivery times get longer, then fewer people's
12:36
ballots who cast them by mail in close proximity to election day will have those ballots received on time. What
12:43
else does he want? He wants a rule that says that if a mail-in ballot is not received by election day, even if it was
12:50
cast by the voter a week in advance, and there is a clear postmark on that ballot that shows this ballot was mailed well
12:56
in advance of the election. if it comes in the day after the election, he wants that ballot thrown in the trash. He
13:03
wants those ballots not to count. And he wants that so badly that not only is he talking about doing that through
13:08
executive order, he has the Republican National Committee suing over that. And I have fought against him in case after
13:15
case after case because it is not only wrong, but it is illegal to tell someone that their ballot winds up thrown out
13:22
because the US mail service was too slow in delivering it to the election office. even though the election office knows
13:28
that ballot was cast by the voter in advance of election day. In fact, there's a case going to the US Supreme
13:34
Court right now. The Republican National Committee is litigating this case all the way to the US Supreme Court to try
13:41
to get the Supreme Court to bless this radical rule that would discard hundreds
13:46
of thousands of otherwise lawful votes cast in states around this country. Now,
13:52
the good news is you have lawyers like me and my law firm and we are fighting them and we are going to continue to and
13:57
I I am I am very confident that the end we will succeed. But it's not just when
14:02
ballots are received. They want to make it harder to count ballots for so-called signature match issues. This is when
14:08
they compare the signature on the return envelope with the signature they have on file. And if they don't match, they want
14:14
to throw those ballots in the trash. Now, why do they want to do this? because there is a higher rate of rejection for signatures among younger
14:23
voters than older voters. There's actually a higher rate of rejection for signatures for women than men.
14:30
So, literally, if you were designing a system to benefit old white men, it would be this the system that Republicans want. How bad is this? Let
14:38
me give you a couple of statistics from Florida. For example, if you cast your ballot by mail in Florida and you were
14:44
18 to 21, you had a 5.4% 4% rate of rejection. That means approximately one out of every uh 20 ballots cast by
14:51
someone under the age of 21 was thrown in the trash. If you were over the age of 65, that was a 6% chance or one in
14:59
- So the difference between young and old is one in 20 versus one in 200. And
15:06
by the way, it's not just Republican states. In the state of Colorado, more than twothirds of all the ballots
15:12
rejected due to signature matching were voters under the age of 30. Now, why is
15:18
that? It's because older voters tend to have registered using a physical pen and paper. So, when they sign another
15:24
physical piece of paper, the ballot envelope, of course, they match. Younger voters more often signed electronically,
15:31
you know, on a tablet or using a mouse. So, of course, the signatures don't match.
15:36
Also, younger voters tend to not prize a consistent signature in the same way older voters do. Because like when I
15:42
came of age and I was 18 and 19, you had to sign a credit card receipt and they matched the signature on the credit card
15:48
with the receipt. Like you'd give them the credit card and they'd look and they'd say, "Oh, that matches or doesn't match." We used to physically sign
15:54
checks and the banks would compare the signature card with the checks. That just isn't true now. So that is just
16:00
another example of what Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to do where they can't ban mail and voting entirely,
16:07
but they can rig these rules to have an outcome determinative effect on the election. And then there's early voting.
16:14
You know, we don't we haven't heard the Republicans talk a lot about early voting so far, but I promise you, Donald
16:19
Trump and his Republican allies are working to undermine early voting everywhere they can. They are reducing
16:26
the number of days of early voting. They are reducing the number of locations for people to vote early. Hell, when I
16:32
represented Raphael Waro, the US senator from Georgia. And by the way, there's an upcoming episode of me talking to uh
16:39
Senator Waro in which we discuss this. So, make sure you're subscribed to this channel and hit the bell so you get alerted when that episode becomes
16:45
available. They tried to stop early voting in the runoff election on the
16:50
Saturday after Thanksgiving. Now, why would they do that? the special election had already been the number of
16:57
days uh for early voting had already been uh cut. Um the workers for the
17:02
election officers were already open those days because they had to be open to prepare for the final days of voting.
17:08
I'll tell you why they did. Because it turns out if you looked at who voted that day, they were overwhelmingly black and they were overwhelmingly young.
17:15
That's who was voting on that Saturday. And the Republicans didn't want it. Well, we went to court and we sued and we won. And as a result, 90,000 people
17:23
had their right to vote uh protected and they voted and Raphael Waro won by a
17:29
little more than that margin. Of course, there's also what there what Donald Trump wants to do to election day
17:35
voting. And you know, look, he wants there to be long lines among Democratic
17:43
constituencies because people don't want to wait in line to vote. You know, people think that our biggest problem uh
17:48
when we head into election day uh is voter intimidation. And let me be clear, voter intimidation is a crime. We sue to
17:56
prevent voter intimidation. It is terrible. Donald Trump is going to try to intimidate voters. But what Donald
18:02
Trump really is trying to do is slow down the lines, right? Like if he puts ice at the polls, a large number of
18:09
people will just flip them off or they'll ignore them. But what ICE at
18:14
the polls will do is cause a commotion. It'll cause a whole scene. They'll block
18:21
off streets. They'll close parking lots. They will slow down the voting process.
18:27
And let me tell you, having done this for 30 years, what Republicans are always trying to do is in areas in which
18:33
you have large concentrations of Democratic voters, particularly African-Americans, particularly college
18:38
students, they are looking to slow down the voting process. They're not so much trying to intimidate people as just make
18:45
the lines longer. And that is because most people have a limited amount of time that they are willing to wait in
18:51
line. I mean, I'd ask each of you watching this video, how long would you wait in line to vote? Would you wait if
18:58
you were told it was going to be an hour? Would you wait if it was told that it was going to be two hours? Would you
19:05
wait if it was going to be three hours? And let me ask you this. If you waited three hours in line to vote one time,
19:11
would you come back and vote the next time? No. And that's what they're counting on. That's how voter
19:17
suppression works. It works by increasing the cost to people to vote
19:23
in. It works by telling people they voted by mail and their ballot was rejected. And when someone is told that
19:30
their ballot was rejected last time, they are less likely to vote next time. It works because they wait in line for
19:37
three hours and when they wait in line one time for three hours, they don't vote the next time. When they hear a
19:42
neighbor wait is waiting in line for three hours, they don't show up. And so a lot of this stuff about military at
19:49
the polls, ICE at the polls, all of which I've said is going to happen. I've said we're going to see the military deployed in major US cities. We're going
19:57
to have them on election day in 2026. But as much as anything else, what they are going to be doing is simply making
20:05
the process of voting slower, more difficult, more cumbersome, a little more intimidating, and that can be the
20:12
outcome determination in who wins and loses in elections. Let me give you a
20:18
statistic from Georgia that I mentioned. If you were in the state of Georgia in the 2020 primary and you were in one of
20:26
the six metro counties of Atlanta and you were in a precinct that was 90%
20:32
or more black voters, your average wait time to vote was 51
20:37
minutes. You know what it was if you were in the same six counties,
20:43
same election, but you were in a precinct that was 90% or more white registered voters? It was
20:50
six minutes. 51 minutes versus six minutes. Now you
20:55
understand why the Republicans are cutting polling locations. Why
21:00
Republicans are, I am certain, going to deploy the military in ICE. It's not about intimidation. It's about taking 6
21:07
minutes to 51 minutes. Taking 51 minutes to an hour and 51 minutes. Taking an
21:14
hour and 51 minutes to two hours. Right? It is just about increasing the burden
21:20
of voting and that's what they think that they can succeed. Now remember in 2021 I gave you data from 2020. The I
21:27
could give you data from 2024 but I gave you data from 2020 for a reason because what did Georgia do in the aftermath of
21:34
that election in February and March of 2021?
21:40
They banned the practice of handing out food and water to people waiting in line
21:45
to vote. You all remember that the headlines they banned food and water to people waiting in line to vote. Well,
21:51
why'd they do that? Well, I'll tell you what, they didn't do it for the white voters. I mean, if you're waiting in
21:56
line six minutes to vote, you don't have time to eat. You don't need water, right? You're you're cruising in out of
22:02
the polls. The people who were getting the water were the people who were
22:08
standing out in the sun in in Atlanta because they were waiting in long lines
22:14
that were created for the purpose of making them stand out in the sun in long lines. And so to cut off food and water is
22:21
nothing other than to add insult and injury to further inconvenience a population that has already been
22:26
targeted with inconvenience to try to decrease the likelihood that they will vote in this election and importantly to
22:33
vote in future elections. These are all cumulative ways of making it inconvenient for people to vote. Now
22:41
look, they can also do it by providing a shortage of locations and equipment and making, you know, it easier for people
22:48
to challenge voters and to engage in voter purchase. I mean, we have an epidemic of voter purchase in this country. I mean, Donald Trump and the
22:55
Republican party are trying to remove everyone they possibly can from the voter roles because they know if they
23:00
purge people from the voter roles, they are less likely to vote because they think, well, maybe I did something
23:05
wrong. Maybe I'm ineligible. I don't want to get in trouble. And even if none
23:10
of that is true, they're like, "Well, I'm not on the rules now. I don't really feel like reregistering." So, they don't vote. All of these things are
23:17
cumulative. All of these things are aimed towards making it harder for you to vote and easier for Donald Trump to
23:24
cheat. So, we're going to talk about cheating. But before I do, I've got to ask you one more time to do me a favor.
23:30
Number one, please leave a comment. I love reading the comments about what you all think about these videos. Is this useful? Is it not useful? Is there
23:37
something else you wish I was talking about? So, do me a favor right now. Leave a comment in this in this and also
23:42
share this video. If you find that this information is useful, share it with a friend because I promise you if it's
23:47
useful to you, it'll be useful to them as well. And as always, please click the link below to make sure you are a
23:53
democracy subscriber either for free or for premium content. All right, vote
23:58
counting and certification. You know, Joseph Stalin infamously said, "I consider it completely unimportant who
24:04
will vote or how, but what is extraordinarily important is this. Who will count the votes and how?" All
24:11
right, that's Donald Trump in a nutshell, right? Donald Trump is actually at the end of the day not
24:17
interested in how people voted or what method they use for voting. Right? What did he say in Georgia? Right? He said,
24:23
"Find me 11,000 votes." He didn't say where to find them. He didn't say how to find them. You didn't say add 11,000
24:30
votes or subtract 11,000. He doesn't care about that. He just cares what the vote totals are. And so he is very
24:37
focused on vote counting and certification. He tried this in 2020,
24:42
tried it in Georgia, tried it in Wisconsin, tried it in Michigan, tried in Arizona, tried in Pennsylvania. I
24:48
know again because I said at the introduction, I beat him and his legal team in court more than 60 times as they
24:54
tried these efforts to undermine the results of free and fair elections. And he's going to try it again in 2026.
25:03
How do I know? Because Republicans haven't stopped trying it since 2020. Like the only non-negotiable
25:09
platform or plank of Republicans today is to be an election denier. Like you
25:15
can be anti-tariff and still have a place in today's Republican party.
25:21
You can be pro-choice and still find your way to being the HHS secretary
25:26
under Donald Trump. The only thing you can't be is someone who believes that
25:32
the 2020 election was free and fair and that you want the 2026 and 2028
25:37
elections to be free and fair. It is the only non-negotiable item in Donald Trump's Republican party. So, of course,
25:43
they are going to again try to tamper with vote counting and vote certification, but you don't have to
25:49
take my words for it. What did he recently post on social media? In the
25:54
same social media post in which he said he wants to do away with mailin voting, in the same social media post in which
26:00
he said uh he wants to ban some kinds of voting equipment. And by the way, the voting equipment he's going to want to
26:06
ban is the voting equipment that's used in blue cities. You can write that down in ink. That that's the voting equipment
26:11
he's talking about. you know, that's gotten a lot less attention because it's kind of like not clear what he's talking about. That's what he means. You go look
26:17
up what voting equipment is used in the cities of a state versus the rural parts of the state, and that will tell you
26:22
what kind of voting equipment he wants to ban. But in any event, what he said in that social media post, and I'm going to put this on the screen right here, is
26:28
he said, "Remember, the states are merely an agent for the federal government in counting and tabulating
26:35
the votes. They must do what the federal government as represented by the
26:40
president of the United States tells them for the good of the country to do. Donald Trump is saying that when it
26:47
comes to the counting and tabulation of votes in 2026,
26:52
the states have to do what the president of the United States tells them to do.
27:00
I mean, if there was a if there was a clearer statement of Donald Trump's plan to rig the outcome of the 2026 election,
27:07
I don't know what it is. And I have no idea why the legacy media never focuses on this portion of that social media
27:13
post. It is almost like, well, it is like they are pulling their punches when
27:19
it comes to Donald Trump. You know, they they tell us to take him uh seriously,
27:24
but not literally. I'm here to tell you when it comes to vote counting, take him literally. He literally means that he
27:31
gets to decide which votes count and which votes don't count. And this is the biggest threat that we face going into
27:39
the 2026 election. Now, as a matter of law, as a matter of the US Constitution,
27:45
nothing he said here is true. The states are not agents of the federal government. The states are independent
27:50
sovereigns. They have their own constitutional rights and their own constitutional responsibilities.
27:56
They in fact do not have to do what the federal government says. In fact, the constitution says that the time, place,
28:04
and manner of federal elections is set by the states, not by the federal
28:10
government. Now, it says that Congress through appropriate legislation can modify what the states do, but it does
28:16
not mention the president of the United States at all. The president of the United States has no constitutional role in the counting
28:24
or tabulation of votes. Federal law doesn't give him any role either. Federal law is clear that it is
28:32
the role of the states and the role of the governors and the
28:37
state election officials to certify election results to the federal government. The federal government is a
28:44
recipient of that information. It is not a generator of that information. This was largely what the the the leadup to
28:52
January 6, 2021 was about, right? Remember, the states had sent in their electoral uh college returns. Those
28:59
returns had been certified by the governor of the states. They'd been signed by those governors. In most
29:06
places, they had been countersigned by their secretaries of state. And those were in the hands of Congress. Why? To open them and to count them. That's it.
29:14
There was no role for the federal government. There certainly was no role for the president until he instigated a
29:20
violent insurrection in the nation's capital when he could not get his way in court.
29:27
So what do I think he's what do I think he's going to try to do? I think Donald
29:32
Trump is going to suggest that the vote counting was fraudulent, that illegal
29:38
people cast ballots, that they use mail-in voting and all the mail-in ballots should be thrown out, and that
29:46
the results that the states and the counties have come up with should be set aside. If this sounds fanciful to you,
29:54
then you did not pay any attention to what his arguments were in the aftermath of the 2020 election. That is exactly
30:02
what he argued after he lost the presidency in 2020. Now, what changed
30:08
between then and now? Well, personnel, you know, there was a famous meeting
30:13
that's been reported on now over and over again that took place on December 16th, 2020 in which the White House
30:19
council's office said they would resign if he went forward with this plan. The
30:24
attorney general said he'd resign. The acting attorney general said they'd resign. like like basically the
30:30
guardrails held in 2020 because the people around Donald Trump were refusing to go along with his illegal scheme.
30:39
Does anyone really believe that the current White House staff would revolt?
30:44
Does anyone believe that Pam Bondi would do anything other than cheer him on? Does anyone really think that Cash
30:51
Patel, the head of the FBI, would do anything other than say, "Yes, sir. Which ballots do you want us to seize
30:56
first? No, that's why Donald Trump cares enormously who the who the FBI director
31:04
is. It's why he put a sickopant in. It's why he put Pam Bondi, who was an
31:09
election denier who to who tried to overturn the results of the election in 2020 for Donald Trump, put her in charge
31:15
of the Department of Justice. It's why Stephen Miller is the most influential staffer in the White House today because
31:23
this is his plan going into the 2026 election. So, let me just recap this
31:30
briefly. He wants to make it harder for you to vote by making it harder for you to register. He wants to make it harder
31:35
for you to vote by make it harder for you to cast ballots. He wants to make it easier for people to discard your
31:41
ballots and have them not count. He wants to make it easier for states to purge your voters. He wants to make you
31:46
wait in longer lines so that you will give up voting. He wants to have you intimidated.
31:51
He wants all of that stuff to happen. But if that doesn't work, he wants the final say in what votes count and what
31:59
votes don't count. But look, I'm here to tell you now is not the time to give up hope. Okay? Donald Trump wants you to
32:06
believe that everything I just said is a fatal complaint and there's nothing you can do about it. He wants you to think that he is all powerful and that no
32:13
matter what we do, he will win out. And I'm here to tell you that is not true.
32:18
Okay? It wasn't true in 2020. It wasn't true in 2022 when my law firm and I, we
32:23
had to sue Coochis County, Arizona for refusing to certify the results of the election there. We had to sue counties
32:28
in Pennsylvania because they were refusing to certify elections. And you know what? We won those lawsuits just like we won them in 2020. And we've been
32:34
winning lawsuits ever since. So, there are lawyers who are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure your right to vote
32:40
is protected and to prevent these voter suppression laws from from preventing you from being able to cast the ballot.
32:47
And I promise you, just like you saw in North Carolina after the 2024 elections
32:52
when they tried to throw out a 100,000 lawful ballots after the election was
32:57
concluded as part of their vote counting and certification scheme just like that failed. It took months. The Republican
33:04
party litigated that case as hard and as aggressively as I've ever seen anyone litigate any election case. But in the
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end, they lost and and uh and Allison Riggs took her seat on the state supreme court of North Carolina due to the hard
33:17
work of lawyers at my firm and other and other law firms around the country. There are people who are going to fight.
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There are lawyers who are going to fight this uh and prevent this from happening. But you need to do your part as well.
33:28
And part of you doing your part is making sure you are informed, you are ready, you are prepared, you are paying
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attention, you are shining a light every single time a state or local election board meets in your county or state. You
33:42
are writing to your state legislators and your members of Congress telling them that you expect there will be free and fair elections. That is their
33:48
obligation and that you expect that they are going to do everything possible to protect your right to vote and your
33:53
neighbors. We are creating these videos to create a community that you can be a part of that is educated, not scared and
34:01
intimidated, but informed. And if we all do that, we can all work together. But it starts with you clicking the
34:07
subscribe button. It is free. It is staring you right in the face. And also hit that bell so that you are alerted every time we post new content. It is
34:13
important that you in every way you can to say that you insist that there are free and fair elections and that you are
34:20
calling out the people who are engaged in intimidation and engaged in voter suppression. Each of us has a role. Mine
34:27
may be to speak to you here on this YouTube channel. Yours may be to speak
34:33
to your best friend or to share this video in a Facebook group. But all of us need to be publicizing this issue early
34:40
and often and providing support for the election officials who want to do the right thing and being a watchdog for the
34:46
election officials who are trying to do the wrong thing. But we're going to have elections. Even dictators love
34:52
elections. Vladimir Putin loves elections. The question is whether they are free and they are fair. And yes, Donald Trump
34:59
will be a big force trying to make them less so. But you and I working together
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in a pro-democracy coalition, we can do our part to make sure that they are free
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and fair. Together, we will get through this. I will see you next time.
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an 9 25
Elections attorney and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias is sounding the alarm on President Donald Trump's administration, saying in an interview with The Guardianthat the U.S. is at a breaking point.
Elias is best known for leading election-related litigation against the president, with he and his team winning 64 of the 65 cases they worked on in response to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
His efforts have obviously struck a nerve with Trump, who, in a presidential memo, named Elias as a threat to him for his involvement in the Christopher Steele dossier, intelligence memos compiled during the 2016 presidential election that alleged a conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russian government.
In a March Department of Justice press conference,Trump called Elias a “radical” who was trying to “turn America into a corrupt, communist and third-world country," and in 2018, he called him the “best Election stealing lawyer” after Elias went to work on a close Senate election in Florida in 2018.
Elias says he can't afford to back down.
"We are in the break-glass moment of American history when it comes to free and fair elections and democracy and so, no, I don’t have any hesitation about litigating everything that we possibly can to protect elections,” he said.
Trump and his administration dismiss Elias with name-calling and lies.
Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said Elias “is a crooked hack who was deeply involved in creating a false ‘dossier’ against President Trump on behalf of his crooked client Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the 2016 election in her favor. Marc Elias is a disgraceful swamp creature and President Trump is draining that swamp.”
Elias says that it's a mistake to ignore Trump's vindictivenessand that not taking him seriously and literally is "one of the great failings" of how people react to his presidency.
“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he told theGuardian.“I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”
As for those threats, Elias is on the receiving end of antisemitic slurs, he told The Guardian, and while he ignores most as "trolling," he takes all of them very seriously. But, thebiggest threat he sees is Trump.
“Anyone who tells you that Donald Trump targets them and they don’t care, I think they’re just lying to you,” he said. “I think anyone who says they’re not afraid is either a psychopath or a liar. Of course, you’re afraid. Literally, the president of the United States, who ran for election on a campaign of vengeance and revenge, is talking about you. Of course you’re worried.”
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AN 9 25
In an article for Democracy Docket published Tuesday, election attorney Marc Elias argued that President Donald Trump has begun using the machinery of the federal government to target his political opponents, and that these actions threaten democratic norms.
"Trump is quickly changing the nature of politics from adversarial contests to weaponized governance. A president using the power of the state to punish critics — or to condition basic government services on political fealty — is not merely rough politics. It is aimed at crushing dissent and free and fair elections," he wrote.
Elias noted that as soon as Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election, he warned that the administration would use its various tools — political appointees, career officials, government contracts, IRS audits and criminal investigations — to harass those who opposed him. He added that what he predicted has begun to happen.
READ MORE:'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own
According to Elias, there have been threats and intimidation of elected officials, journalists, institutions and media outlets. He also argued that universities, law firms, nonprofits and the media are being offered ways to gain favor or risk punishment, observing that prosecutors and federal agencies are bending toward political ends rather than functioning as neutral arbiters.
Elias reported that White House officials are discussing measures such as revoking tax‑exempt status for nonprofits, deploying anticorruption statutes, using federal agencies to target groups seen as hostile, and issuing executive orders that undermine voting rights.
Elias framed these steps as explicit efforts to suppress dissent and weaken opposition rather than merely an aggressive political strategy.
Elias claimed Trump’s broader goal is to prevent the political opposition, particularly progressive and Democratic groups, from gathering strength ahead of midterm elections. He pointed to efforts such as redrawing electoral maps, undermining voting rights through executive orders, planning to go after progressive groups and their donors, and using fabricated stories to divide opposition.
READ MORE: British historian explains why he was 'shaken every day' during US visit
He warned that democracy is already showing strain: guardrails are weakening, rule of law is fraying, the fabric of democracy is being torn. But he said the worst is yet to come: targeting of donors, organizations, opposition leaders, with lies intended to make each seem uniquely bad, to divide supporters.
"The idea of an explicit government crackdown on thought and speech would have been unthinkable in the past. A president doing so as part of an election strategy would have been so extraordinary at any other time in our nation’s history it would have led to calls for impeachment," Elias wrore.
He added: "It’s as close to Orwellian as we’ve come. The 'Thought Police' is no longer a fictional warning, but our new, stark reality."
Elias called on those who defend democracy to treat attacks on any Democratic campaign, group or organization as attacks against all, to refuse division among progressive actors, and to stand together in defense of free and fair elections. He argued that preserving elections is the greatest vulnerability of the administration’s efforts to consolidate power, and that these must be protected at all costs or democracy itself may fail.
"Donald Trump’s attack on free and fair elections has only just begun. It is not only his biggest target, but also his greatest vulnerability. We must protect them at all costs. If we succeed, we will likely survive this dark period with democracy weakened but intact. If we fail, we may not have a democracy to come home to," he warned.
READ MORE:Trump’s AG scrambles to do 'damage control' after conservatives rage against free speech threat
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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.
.5 days ago
Democracy Docket
Trump’s Plot to Control Elections; the GOP’s Nationwide Gerrymander; DOJ’s Hunt for Voter Fraud
Since the start of the year, Democracy Docket has expanded its newsroom to keep up with the unprecedented war on democracy being waged under...
.2 days ago
Democracy Docket
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
Democracy Docket
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...
.2 weeks ago
Democracy Docket
Senators Want Answers on Use of DHS Database to Purge Voters
If Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials can brief an election-denier group on how states are now using its databases to verify...
.1 month ago
Democracy Docket
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
Democracy Docket
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.
.1 month ago
Democracy Docket
The Lawsuit Exposing MAGA’s Voter Suppression Machine
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
Democracy Docket
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
Georgia Election Officials Have a Duty to Certify Results, Judge Rules
A Georgia judge ruled yesterday that certifying election results is a mandatory duty for county election officials.
.Oct 15, 2024
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Federal judges — appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents — have delivered major setbacks to the legal push behind President Donald Trump’s efforts to penalize certain law firms, The Hill reportedSunday.
In recent rulings, three judges invalidated executive actions designed to restrict government work for prominent firms including Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block.
"The early wins underscore the legal system’s ability to withstand the Trump administration’s pressure test, and have led some in the legal community to take shots at other elite firms that struck deals with Trump to avoid punishments," the report noted.
READ MORE:Outrage grows over a single paragraph buried deep in Republicans' 'Big Beautiful Bill'
Harold Hongju Koh, a Yale Law School professor, told The Hill: “This is a moment for courage, not capitulation."
“The firms that showed courage are being vindicated, and the ones who have capitulated have another chance to show courage,” he added.
Several major law firms have become targets of Trump’s backlash, largely due to their ties to figures and investigations he considers hostile.
Perkins Coie has been in Trump’s crosshairs for years, primarily because of its legal support for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and its connection to the opposition research that produced the widely discredited Steele dossier.
READ MORE:Signs the tide is turning on Trump
WilmerHale drew scrutiny from Trump for employing Robert Mueller both before and after he led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Similarly, Jenner & Block came under fire for its past association with Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor involved in Mueller’s team and a frequent Trump critic.
In a sharply worded decision issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon — appointed by President George W. Bush — ruled in favor of WilmerHale, denouncing Trump’s actions as an attack on the foundational principles of the American legal system.
Leon argued that targeting major law firms with executive orders undermines the independence of both the judiciary and the legal profession, which he described as essential pillars of the nation’s justice system.
Meanwhile, in a piece publishedlast week, Democracy Docket, a platform supporting voting rights, highlighted analysis by Stanford political science professor Adam Bonica which indicates that federal district courts have ruled against the Trump administration in 96% of cases in May.
"Bonica’s findings suggest that judges from both political leanings are consistently ruling against Trump, with 72% of Republican-appointed judges and 80% of Democratic-appointed judges issuing unfavorable decisions.Trump’s cross-ideological loss rate is likely due to several factors," the article said.
READ MORE:'Almost cartoonish': Expert says 'Trumpy style' of MAGA women about 'signaling allegiance'
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MUSK ATTACK
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*in partnership with The Guardian.
In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”.
This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented.
The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”.
It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud.
Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare.
The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence.
The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics.
Close ties to world’s richest man
The Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit.
The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023.
The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events.
The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.
Sachs’s involvement continued through 2024, with her name appearing on records that accompanied the Fair Election Fund’s broadcast purchases.
Since 2022, Musk has been secretly channeling his political spending through a dark-money non-profit called Building America’s Future. That group is run by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two Republican operatives who were involved in DeSantis’s failed presidential bid and now advise Musk. Building America’s Future reportedly backed the Fair Election Fund in 2024. It also provided half of And to the Republic’s overall fundraising in 2023.
The Fair Election Fund has other ties to the Musk advisers who lead Building America’s Future. Cox’s digital marketing firm IMGE LLC, which provides services to several groups in the Musk-backed, Building America Future-tied universe, manages the Fair Election Fund’s Facebook page, and an IMGE employee appears to be responsible for articles on the Fair Election Fund’s website.
The Fair Election Fund/Interstate Priorities also acted as a conduit to support other Musk-backed groups. The group’s 2023 tax return shows that it made a $1,550,000 grant to Citizens for Sanity, which Musk funded in 2022 through Building America’s Future, and which aired racist and transphobic ads that election cycle. That grant made up almost the entirety of Citizens for Sanity’s funding in 2023.
In the 2024 election cycle, Musk publicly disclosed at least $277m in political contributions to Super Pacs that worked to elect President Trump and other Republicans. It is not known how much he may have given to other politically active groups that disguise their donors.
A detour into third-party ballot access
The Fair Election Fund’s goal of exposing election fraud seemingly turned up nothing of significance.
Out of its $5m fund, the group announced $75,000 in “bounty” payments, releasing $50,000 in July 2024 and $25,000 in September 2024. The Fair Election Fund promised that it would “highlight” the election fraud stories it gathered through these payments via “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns”, but it never did so, which suggests that none of the evidence generated was consequential or credible.
Instead, the group took a detour in July 2024: it launched a $175,000 ad “blitz” targeting North Carolina state board of election (NCSBE) members who delayed placing third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F Kennedy Jr on the ballot. At the time, Republicans and their allies believed that West and Kennedy would act as spoilers to help Trump, by siphoning left-leaning votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee.
Ironically, the NCSBE had delayed a decision on West’s and Kennedy’s ballot eligibility based on evidence that petitions were obtained through fraudulent means – concerns that would seem to align with the Fair Election Fund’s stated mission of exposing election fraud.
The Fair Election Fund ads declared that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were “blocking your voting rights”, and offered a reward for evidence of the members’ “shady backroom deal”. The group also projected images on the side of the NCSBE’s building, and drove mobile billboards around the agency’s headquarters.
The Fair Election Fund also ran digital ads in North Carolina featuring Black voters, some of which asserted that “African American voices are not being heard”, while others declared “Support Equality, Support Inclusion, Support [Cornel West’s] Justice for All Party”. The group pushed similar efforts in states such as Michigan.
Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who sought to keep West off of ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, was a frequent target of the group. In October 2024, the group announced that it would be running a six-figure ad buy to “troll” Elias. The ads included mobile billboards around the Elias Law Group office as well as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, which declared: “We beat Marc Elias and his racist voter suppression lawsuits … He tried to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West, but the Fair Election Fund stopped him.”
The Fair Election Fund then veered into a series of efforts to chase other trending rightwing conspiracy theories.
For example, over the summer, the Fair Election Fund seized on to a far-fetched conspiracy theory about the online fundraising platform ActBlue, claiming to have found “60,000 potential discrepancies” in ActBlue-facilitated contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign, based on an investigation conducted “from late July to early August”. The group claimed to have “spent $250,000 on these initial findings” – a jaw-dropping sum to spend on a brief review of campaign finance records.
The group then announced a $50,000 ad buy in several swing states soliciting evidence from people who claim to have been “defrauded by ActBlue”. No evidence from this “investigation” has been made public.
In fall 2024, as conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting gained momentum, the Fair Election Fund announced that it would be launching a “six-figure investigation into noncitizen voting in seven key swing states”. The results of this “six-figure investigation” were never made public.
You’re on the free list for*The Shakedown
===
October 30, 2024, edition of 1310 WIBA Madison's The Vicki McKenna Show
JOSEPH NIXON (PUBLIC INTEREST LEGAL FOUNDATION): It's going to be a much better situation then what we had in 2020. And Vicki, thank you for having me on and letting me talk about this a little bit. In 2020 we experienced a new situation, we had this COVID, and then we had state supreme courts completely ignoring the state's laws and we didn't have any real effective ability to challenge the implementation of crazy rules designed just for the COVID situation. Now we don't have that we are looking at in states like Georgia and Texas rewrote their election codes to prohibit some of the problems that we faced during the COVID situation. So we're in a lot better shape. And then we are -- our organization and organizations like ours are challenging, forcing jurisdictions to comply with their statutes, to follow the law, and they know that we're looking hard.
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an 10 24
'Double-whiff': Judges smack down Republicans' efforts to change voter rolls in two swing states
Article III Project founder Mike Davis suggests leading voting rights lawyer is being funded by Iran and China
Davis: “George Soros may have a say at funding. I just can imagine that would happen. And maybe Iran, maybe China. I say that, kind of, half-jokingly.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 10/22/24
Video pix of bossie w relig icons
CitationFrom the October 22, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
DAVID BOSSIE (HOST): Marc Elias — most of people on, you know, in America have never heard of. He is an invisible hand. And I think you're exactly right. He is incredibly smart, vicious, and talented. You know, say it for what it is. He is — and he's completely dedicated to it. But he's also — maybe you know. How does — how has this been organized and funded? How has Elias's operations over the last many years been funded? Do you know, Mike?
MIKE DAVIS (GUEST): I would imagine that George Soros may have a say at funding. I just can imagine that would happen. And maybe Iran, maybe China. I say that, kind of, half-jokingly, but I would say that —
BOSSIE: The Soros part is right. Yeah. The Soros part is right.
DAVIS: I would imagine that George Soros is giving him a blank check.
===
The acolytes of former President Donald Trump sitting on the Georgia State Election Board just suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
ABC News reported Tuesday that McBurney's decision still requires all county election officials to certify election results by the statutory deadline even if they feel the need to investigate the conduct of elections. The decision slams the door on a previous ruling by the state election board aimed at making it easier for members of county election boards to refuse certification if they suspect fraud.
"No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance," McBurney wrote in the decision.
READ MORE:'Ripe for abuse': GA elections chief now allowing anyone to cancel a voter's registration
McBurney's ruling was celebrated by various legal experts on X (formerly Twitter) after Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias announced McBurney's decision on his website, Democracy Docket. Elias, who helped Democrats argue the case in court, called it "a big defeat for election deniers in Georgia."
"Huge victory for democracy," tweeted Tristan Snell, a former prosecutor with the New York Attorney General's Office. "Huge defeat for Trump's attempts to scuttle the election."
TV producer Morgan J. Freeman (not the actor) praised the ruling as "HUGE" and celebrated that "Georgia is NOT allowing Donald Trump to CHEAT." Bestselling author Nicole Perlroth observed that while it was "absurd this had to be fought in court," McBurney's decision was a "victory for democracy nonetheless."
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance also noted the significance of McBurney's decision, mentioning that Trump has for years attempted to throw a wrench into the gears of the certification process. She noted that the January 6, 2021 insurrection was, at its core, an attempt to interrupt certification of an election whose result was unfavorable for Trump.
READ MORE:Dems take GA's MAGA election board to court over rule that could 'create chaos and aid Trump'
"Trump tried to get his VP to interfere with certifying the vote on Jan 6 2021," she wrote. "Since that didn't work, there's now a move to interfere with certification at the state/county level. A Fulton County judge just ruled that can't be done. Certifying vote counts is purely ministerial."
On the social media platform Bluesky, Darin Self — an assistant political science professor at Brigham Young University — took a different tone. He lamented that American democracy was in such a perilous state that "a judge has to tell officials, yes, you do actually have to count the votes."
The decision was notably handed down on the same day that early voting began in the Peach State. Former New York Daily News and Boston Herald journalist Helen Kennedy reminded her Bluesky followers that former President Jimmy Carter — who recently turned 100 years old — achieved his goal of hanging on long enough to cast his Georgia ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris.
READ MORE:GOP voter fraud prosecutions only yielded 47 convictions out of tens of millions of ballots: report
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in Donald Trump’s unsuccessful effort to reverse his 2020 election defeat, he exploited the vulnerabilities of the Electoral College process. For the election of 2024, he found new ones.
An Anti-Democratic Process
A presidential candidate’s political party names a slate of “electors” to represent that candidate in the Electoral College. When voters cast their ballots, they’re actually voting for a candidate’s electors. Only the slate of a state’s popular vote winner counts toward the 270-electoral votes required to win the presidency.
Although the courts withstood Trump’s specious attacks on the 2020 election, the past is not prologue.
The process requires several steps:
- To determine the popular vote winner, each county board assembles the results from its precincts and certifies the totals.
- The county boards report their results to the state’s election board (and/or the secretary of state). The statewide totals go to the governor.
- The governor signs a final “Certificate of Ascertainment” listing the names on the electoral slates for each candidate, the number of votes each received, and which individuals have been appointed as the state's electors.
- The Certificate goes to the National Archives where, along with all other states’ certifications, it waits to be counted at Congress’ special session the following January.
“For Want of a Nail, the Shoe Was Lost…”
Every step in the Electoral College process is fraught with danger to democracy. And Trump knows it.
- In an effort to reverse his swing state losses in 2020, he twisted the arms of election officials in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, urging them not to certify the results. They rebuffed him.
- In Georgia, Joe Biden won the popular vote, but Trump pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—a Trump supporter—to “find” enough votes to make Trump the winner. Raffensperger resisted, and Trump now faces 32 felony criminal charges in the state.
- Trump pressed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey not to certify their respective states’ results. They refused.
- Meanwhile, Trump’s allies created slates of his “alternate electors” in key swing states. Those Trump supporters swore under oath that they were their states’ proper representatives in the Electoral College. But Trump had lost the popular vote in those states, and more than 60 court cases confirmed his defeat. Many of his “alternate electors” are now facing criminal charges for their false statements.
- At a special session of Congress on January 6, Vice President Mike Pence became Trump’s last hope to retain power. If no candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the election would move to the U.S. House of Representatives where each state’s congressional delegation would get a single vote. Republicans would have the advantage, and Trump would win the presidency after losing the election.
- Because Pence would preside over Congress’ special session, Trump urged him not to count Biden’s electoral votes from key swing states. That gambit failed too.
With local election officials, governors, and Trump’s vice president resisting his unlawful attempts to subvert the election, Trump played his final card: Inciting the violent insurrection to block the transition of power.
Unsettling Precedent
Having learned from their mistakes in 2020, Trump and his MAGA allies have now corrupted the system from within. More than 100 “election deniers” who have refused to accept Trump’s 2020 defeat now serve as local election officials in the eight swing states that will decide the 2024 contest: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Some have already demonstrated their willingness to wreak post-election havoc.
- In 2022, the Republican-led commission of Otero County, New Mexico, refused to certify primary election results. One commission member was co-founder of “Cowboys for Trump.” The Democratic secretary of state sued to force board certification of the vote totals.
- In 2024, two Republican members of a Michigan county board refused to certify the results of an election that led to the recall of three commission members.
- In Arizona, GOP lawmakers sued to reverse the state’s top Democratic officials’ requirement that local boards automatically validate their election results.
- In Georgia, Trump’s allies have suppressed the vote—and found new ways not to count the ones they don’t like. At his August 3 rally in Atlanta, Trump announced the state’s three GOP election board members by name, calling them his “pit bulls” fighting for victory. Three days later, those members formed a 3-2 majority adopting a new rule empowering local boards to pursue a “reasonable inquiry” (undefined) into election results before certifying an election. Ten days later, the board asserted the authority to “examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.”
- And Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, said that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have insisted that “Pennsylvania, Georgia, and many others” have “multiple slates of electors.” He would not have certified Biden’s 2020 victory.
Don’t Worry, Be Happy!
A prominent election law scholar assures us that the weaknesses in the Electoral College process are not a problem. Notre Dame Law Professor Derek Muller argues that local election officials perform only “ministerial” acts—“little more than making sure all precincts have reported and the arithmetic is correct.”
“[T]here are ample safeguards to ensure ballots are tabulated accurately and election results are certified in a timely manner,” Prof. Muller urges.
Muller is talking about judges. He believes that they remain the critical guardrails protecting voters from MAGA loyalists in key election positions because “[a] court can quickly and easily ensure election results are certified in a timely fashion.”
But “can” doesn’t mean “will.”And some “won’t.”
Although the courts withstood Trump’s specious attacks on the 2020 election, the past is not prologue. For more than three years, Trump and his allies have pushed his Big Lie, poisoned the body politic with false claims about non-existent “voter fraud,” and infiltrated the election system with MAGA loyalists determined to assure Trump’s 2024 victory.
And for more than three years, Americans have witnessed the courts’ epic failure to hold Trump accountable for his treasonous misconduct.
A Better Plan
Relying solely on the courts is a prescription for interregnum confusion, chaos, and violence. Trump is desperate and afraid. If he loses the election, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Despite the dismal judicial record of the past three years, perhaps the legal system will begin to deal with Trump and his MAGA allies effectively. Meanwhile, here’s another idea:
Ignore Trump’s outrageous rhetorical distractions and shine a bright light on his dark mission – winning at all costs. To prevail, he’s willing to dismantle democracy.
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// an 9 24
In a deep dive into plans by pro-Donald Trump lawyers to flood the courts with lawsuits and challenges should their man lose to Vice President Kamala Harris in November, one former White House and Trump lawyer claimed there is a major flaw they will have to deal with.
As the New York Times is reporting, conservative lawyers have already filed a wave of lawsuits designed to exclude voters under the guise of potential election fraud, primarily focusing their efforts of key battleground states that will likely decide who is victorious.
According to the report, there is very little evidence that there has been wide-scale voter fraud. Nonetheless, conservative lawyers have unleashed an "onslaught of litigation, much of it landing in recent weeks, includes nearly 90 lawsuits filed across the country by Republican groups this year. The legal push is already more than three times the number of lawsuits filed before Election Day in 2020, according to Democracy Docket, a Democratically aligned group that tracks election cases."
As the report notes, the roadmap for contesting a potential GOP loss will hinge on proving fraud which is where pro-Trump forces may run into the same problems they encountered when challenging the 2020 election results that led to a series of court defeats.
As former Trump attorney Ty Cobb sees it, he expects the same in 2024 despite all the preparation.
“The one thing they need in court is evidence,” Cobb explained. “They didn’t have any last time, and they’re unlikely to have any this time.”
The Times report adds, "Election experts, including some Republicans, say a vast majority of the cases are destined to fail, either because they were filed too late or because they are based on unfounded, or outright false, claims."
You can read more here.
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an 8 24
a variety of election law experts, from Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias to UCLA law professor Rick L. Hasen, have been warning that if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he is certain to fight the election results.
In an article published on August 26, Business Insider's Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert details the post-election fight that Democratic and GOP lawyers are gearing up for.
"This year's election is shaping up to be decided in court, rather than the ballot box, legal experts told Business Insider, and both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are preparing for a nasty legal battle to duke it out," Tangalakis-Lippert explains. "Republican groups, both formally and informally aligned with Trump, are preparing to challenge the outcome of the election in multiple battleground states."
READ MORE:**The absurdity of calling Kamala Harris a commie**
Tangalakis-Lippert describes the actions that that MAGA Republicans have been taking in key swing states like Georgia and Arizona.
"The Guardian reported that Trump allies in Georgia have adopted new rules for the state's election board, allowing members to potentially delay certification of the election over undefined inquiries into ballot discrepancies," the Business Insider reporter notes. "In Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, the GOP has pushed for voter rolls to be purged despite established federal limits on doing so in the months before the election, per The Washington Post."
Tangalakis-Lippert adds, "Republicans in Nevada also filed a suit to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted if they're received after Election Day, though the legal rationale behind the suit has been dismissed repeatedly by courts in the past, the outlet noted."
Syracuse University law professor David Driesen warns that post-election battles could be especially intense in swing states.
READ MORE:**Trump ripped for pouring donor money 'into a legal and financial black hole'**
Driesen told Business Insider, "You now have, in the swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, about 70 election deniers and commissions that are supposed to count the electoral votes, and already there have been about 20 cases where officials in recent elections have refused or delayed certification of results. So what Trump is going to do is claim some kind of fraud and then try to get the officials who believe him to delay or prevent certification on election results…. Or, at least, in a lot of litigation chaos, it could end up putting things in the House of Representatives or to the Supreme Court — which is in Trump's pocket."
Driesen added, "I think (that) the strategy is to try to prevent certification of Harris victories in the swing states where there are substantial numbers of election-law deniers. And sometimes, they may also try to have state legislatures certify alternative slates of electors, using the inability to certify as an approach."
READ MORE:[Former Trump officials consider loyalist Kash Patel especially 'dangerous': report
*Read Business Insider's full report at this link (subscription required).
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an 8 24
Elections lawyer and Democracy Docker publisher Marc Elias has been warning that if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election, his MAGA allies in key swing states have a plan to fight the election results — including some MAGA Republicans who now sit on the Georgia Board of Elections. Caputo, however, isn't the only legal expert who is sounding the alarm.
In an article published by The Atlantic on August 21, New York University law professor Bob Bauer — who served as White House counsel to former President Barack Obama — warns that Trump's allies are hoping to use the U.S. Supreme Court in their efforts to subvert traditional election rules.
"Only months before November’s elections, the Republican National Committee has launched a new legal attack on the rules that govern federal elections," Bauer explains. "Supported by 24 states, the RNC is seeking, on an emergency basis, a Supreme Court ruling that the United States Congress lacks the constitutional authority to regulate presidential elections — congressional elections, yes, but not elections held to select presidents. The petitioners' immediate goal is to allow the state of Arizona to impose a 'proof of citizenship' requirement as a condition of a person’s right to vote for president."
READ MORE: 'Easier to cheat': Georgia GOP leaders urged to sue officials plotting interference
Bauer notes that he has been advising Democratic organizers on this lawsuit and letting them know what is at stake...
"If (Republicans) are to succeed, the Court will have to suddenly, with mere weeks left before people start voting, abandon or explain away a decision it rendered in 2013 — that Congress has the power to establish rules for voter registration in presidential elections," according to Bauer. "But even if the suit fails, it risks achieving some success in sowing doubt about the integrity of elections, highlighting claims of illegal voting by immigrants, and laying a foundation for post-election allegations of fraud and related legal challenges."
Bauer points out that the lawsuit challenges the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
"The 'voting wars,' as the legal scholar Richard L. Hasen has termed the legal battles over elections, appear certain to rage on," Bauer writes. "They have intensified under the pressures of election denialism and the grievances of a former president over an election he will not concede he lost. Now, the Supreme Court will have to decide, whatever course this conflict takes in the years ahead, whether it will entertain novel and potentially destabilizing legal claims as election administrators complete their preparations for the fall, and the voting begins."
READ MORE:['Now is the time to resign': Lawyer sends warning to GOP election officials with plans to refuse results
*Bob Bauer's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).
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an 8 24
earlier this week, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias predicted in an interview with *Rolling Stone*that pro-Donald Trump election officials across the country — in seven battleground states — are expected to refuse their duty of certifying results in November.
"'I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election' in November," the Democracy Docket founder told Rolling Stone."Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared."
Speaking with MSNBC contributor and podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen Thursday, Elias sent a warning to GOP election officials.
READ MORE:**'Mass refusals to certify election' expected from officials in 3 swing states: report**
"If you're a Republican county official — do your job," the Democratic lawyer said. "If you're not prepared to do your job, to administer fair elections to certify accurate results, now is the time to resign. Get out of office. You're not cut out for the job you've been given. If you cannot celebrate democracy and the outcome of free and fair elections, regardless of whether the candidate you support won or lost — you're in the wrong business. Leave the election business and go do something else."
Elias emphasized, "But if you stay in this job, if you choose to be in a position to administer elections and to certify the election results, and you don't do your job, you're gonna get sued. And you're gonna lose. And you're gonna go down in history as one of the villains in American history. And that is true for the county election officials, it is true for the state election officials, and, by the way, it is true for those Republican members of Congress listening: If you can't accept the outcome of free and fair elections — shame on you. Go find another line of work."
In April, the Bulwark's AB Stoddard reported, "Delay is critical to every part of the Trump strategy if Biden wins in November—delay verifying ballots, delay with recounts, delay with audits."
Goddard also noted that in Rich Lowry's column published by the National Review column in March, he wrote, "we can stipulate that if Trump loses in November he won’t concede the election and, in all likelihood, will engage in the same kind of pressure campaign to change the results as he did in 2020."
READ MORE:**How Dems plan to 'pull the guts out of' Project 2025 org’s plans to block Harris from ballot**
Watch the video below or at this link.
AN 7 24
The amount of attention the far-right Heritage Foundation and its authoritarian Project 2025 playbook for the next Republican administration have been getting is also ensnaring several major GOP figures.
On Tuesday, Democratic election attorney Marc Elias' Democracy Docket website delved into the ties nine high-ranking Republicans have to Project 2025. Some of those links are direct while others are more tangential. However, these Republicans are likely to be asked about their connections to the controversial initiative on the campaign trail as Project 2025 and its proposals continue to garner media coverage. In fact, one recent poll found that just one in 10 Americans had a favorable view of Project 2025 after learning about it.
1. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana)
READ MORE:Anti-Trump group posts video of him praising Project 2025 authors after latest denial
Democracy Docket reported that as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Banks published a budget blueprint that was praised by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. That document called for funds to build a border wall, diverting money from several federal agencies to boost the military budget and protecting Americans from what he referred to as "the Radical Woke Agenda."
"The Republican Study Committee, led by my friends Chairman Jim Banks and the RSC Budget and Spending Task Force Chair Kevin Hern, have put forward an important Blueprint to Save America," Roberts said in a statement. "The RSC is going on offense, setting the tone for what conservatives must do when the people take back control."
2. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
Cruz, who is running for a third U.S. Senate term this November, previously spoke at a Heritage Foundation event in 2019 in the wake of former President Donald Trump's first impeachment. He complained about the House's impeachment over Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the former president threatened to withhold aid unless Ukraine investigated then-candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Cruz accused House Democrats of impeaching Trump "without an article claiming a criminal violation."
READ MORE:Exhaustive review finds at :{least 140 ex-Trump advisors behind Project 2025: report}:
"There’s no federal statute that makes abuse-of-power — what they’ve called it — a criminal offense. They’ve just made this up," Cruz said.
3. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska)
Like Cruz, Fischer is also running for reelection this fall. Democracy Docket reported that Fischer spoke at a virtual Heritage Foundation session on the "future of nuclear modernization" in 2021. One of Project 2025's proposals is to bring back nuclear weapons testing at Yucca Mountain in Nevada (less than 100 miles from Las Vegas). The document also calls for radioactive waste to be deposited there again after former President Barack Obama ended it in 2009. Nevada Republican Governor Joe Lombardo, who has endorsed Trump, is against the proposal.
4. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri)
READ MORE:More Americans searching for Project 2025 than for Taylor Swift or the NFL: Google results
Hawley, who is running for a second Senate term this fall, has common ground with one of Project 2025's core goals and has spoken at several Heritage events. In its report on the document, People Magazine called it "a blueprint for marrying church and state at the highest levels of government," which is a goal of Christian nationalists. Rather than run from that label, Hawley embraced it at a recent conservative conference.
“Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian Nation. So I am,” Hawley said. “And some will say that I am advocating Christian Nationalism. And so I do.”
5. Former Governor Larry Hogan (R-Maryland)
Maryland's former two-term Republican governor is now the Republican nominee for the Old Line State's open Senate seat. Despite his more moderate reputation, Hogan still elevated a senior fellow at Heritage to a post within his administration in 2017. To his credit, Hogan has since distanced himself from Project 2025, saying it would put the country on a "dangerous path" in a Washington Post op-ed.
READ MORE:Trump hopes you won't notice 'close partnership' with Project 2025: :{former Labor Secretary}:
6. Governor Jim Justice (R-West Virginia)
West Virginia's billionaire coal baron governor — who switched parties from Democrat to Republican in 2017 — is likely to win the U.S. Senate seat left open by the outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (I-West Virginia). In 2021, Justice signed a bill into a law that directs education funds from public schools to home schools and private school tuition. Heritage lauded the bill and credited one of their experts for advocating for it in the West Virginia legislature. Project 2025 calls for the total elimination of the Department of Education in favor of "parental authority," meaning it would champion policies that weaken public education while strengthening home school programming.
7. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Arizona)
In Obama's last year in office, his Department of Health and Human Services put a regulation in place to protect LGBTQ+ youth in foster care. Project 2025 has called for repealing that regulation, which advocacy group DemocracyForward estimated would impact more than 368,000 kids. In 2020, Schweikert participated in a virtual Heritage Foundation session on proposed changes to the foster care system.
READ MORE:'One of the oldest dictator tricks': Here's why Trump is lying about Project 2025
8. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida)
Florida's junior U.S. senator is currently in a tight race for reelection against former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Florida), who is within striking distance of Scott in the latest polls. Scott — who is in the running to become the next Republican leader in the Senate after Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) retires from the role next year — participated in Heritage's five-part video series on inflation and the economy. Scott repeatedly blasted the Biden administration for higher prices, even though real wages (meaning inflation-adjusted) are up and the rate of inflation has leveled off significantly.
9. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi)
Mississippi's senior U.S. senator, who is the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is running for a fourth term this fall. In January, he participated in a Heritage Foundation talk on "Restor[ing] America's Military Power." Project 2025 has called for rescinding Pentagon policy that pays for female service members' travel costs in the event they have to travel out of their home state to get an abortion — the same policy Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) protested in his months-long blockade of military promotions. Project 2025 also proposes restoring Trump's ban on transgender Americans serving in the military.
READ MORE:Trump: 'I know nothing' about Project 2025 despite numerous ex-officials' involvement
Click here to read Democracy Docket's full report.
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