Interesting story about a Missouri county party claiming the authority to “vet” Republican candidates and bar them from running as Republicans if they fail its test.

In March, the Vernon County Republican Committee filed what is known as a writ of mandamus through their attorney, Mark McCloskey, to, in effect, compel the Vernon County clerk, Adrienne Lee, to do what they believe to be her public duty.

In the filing, the plaintiff maintains that, just like a club is allowed to determine who its members are, the Vernon County Republican Committee is “solely responsible” in the county for determining who may run for office under the Republican banner.

The county clerk, they insist, went beyond her authority when, in February, she took the filing fees from several candidates who were rejected by the committee and told them that their names would be placed on the Republican primary ballot in August.

The committee’s interpretation of state law is that, while the county clerk can take a filing fee, those checks are then passed on to the party committees. They argue that it is ultimately up to a the political parties — Republican or Democrat — whether to accept or reject those fees and accept or reject any particular candidate. In this case, they did not accept those candidates and did not cash their checks. Thus the candidates’ names should be taken off the ballot, the committee argued.

“The whole purpose of the vetting program is to verify that people who run as Republicans adhere to Republican values and principles and aren’t merely putting an ‘R’ behind their name so they can get elected,” McCloskey told The Star. “We believe the courts have backed us up — that a party should have the exclusive right to determine who gets to run under that party’s banner.”

Politico. Of course, these moves to impede Kennedy’s ballot access and attack his candidacy are a product of winner-take-all electoral rules. Under, say, ranked-choice voting, there wouldn’t be the same incentive to stop minor party challengers.

There is a deep concern that Kennedy and other third-party candidates “pose real threats to the Republic by helping Trump win,” said Matt Bennett, president of Third Way, a center-left group that’s involved in efforts to cut Kennedy down. . . .

The push to undercut Kennedy — as well as Green Party candidate Jill Stein and academic Cornel West, both of whom are also running third-party bids — comes from Democrats who say they are motivated by the 2000 and 2016 elections, when third-party candidates played a role in Al Gore and Hillary Clinton’s respective losses. . . .

To date, the campaign against Kennedy has largely focused on research and legal challenges. The Democratic National Committee hired veteran staffers to coordinate their push back against Kennedy, particularly through media stories about Kennedy. They’ve also filed Federal Elections Commission complaints against Kennedy’s allies. The outside groups, like Clear Choice PAC and American Bridge, are diving into opposition research and messaging. MoveOn, a 10 million-member organization, reassigned staffers from No Labels-focused efforts toward Kennedy, as well as bringing on additional staff.

WaPo reports that the share of Black adults who say they’re certain to vote in this year’s election is down sharply from 2020 — and down by more than the analogous share for all adults. Lower turnout is always a cause for concern, but the electoral effects of this development (if it occurs) might be muted given evidence that lower-propensity minority voters are more divided in their partisan leanings.

Black Americans’ desire to vote in this year’s election is down sharply compared with four years ago, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted last month — a potentially troublesome sign for President Biden, whose ascent was powered by Black voters in 2020 and who has intensified efforts to court them before November’s election.

The poll of more than 1,300 Black adults finds that 62 percent of Black Americans say they’re “absolutely certain to vote,” down from74 percent in June 2020. The 12-percentage-point drop outpaces the four-point drop among Americans overall, from 72 percent to 68 percent.

Charis Franklin has written this Note for the Fordham Law Review. Here’s the excerpt:

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (“the Voting Rights Act”) is one of the primary vehicles by which plaintiffs receive injunctive relief ahead of elections. More specifically, § 2 of the Voting Rights Act allows plaintiffs to challenge gerrymandered maps before they are used in contentious elections. However, Justice Kavanaugh’s reframing of the Purcell doctrine in Merrill v. Milligan weakened § 2’s ability to interrupt the use of these maps. This Note discusses how Justice Kavanaugh’s interpretation of the Purcell doctrine recenters the doctrine on bureaucratic inconvenience rather than voter enfranchisement, restricting voters’ access to relief prior to elections. Furthermore, this Note addresses how this restructuring is inconsistent with the intent of the Voting Rights Act and the Purcell doctrine. As a solution, this Note proposes a narrow interpretation of the Purcell doctrine focusing on voter enfranchisement through a strict application of the Gingles factors and a narrow timeline for redistricting.

Politico:

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum on Sunday supported the election fraud allegations made by former President Donald Trump, claiming on CNN: “I think it’s clear that there’s vote-buying going on at a scale like we have never seen before.”…

Trump, never shy about alleging uncorroborated malfeasance by Democrats, said his rivals use “welfare” as an enticement to get people to vote for them. “Don’t underestimate welfare. They get welfare to vote, and then they cheat on top of that — they cheat,” Trump said in his remarks on Saturday.

Burgum didn’t endorse the idea that everyone receiving public assistance is being bribed to vote (“I don’t think that’s the intention that he meant when he said that”) but then circled back to the idea of vote-buying, citing President Joe Biden’s efforts to partially forgive some student loan debt.

“You start trying to give away hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, and it’s not even — it’s like we’re borrowing to give it away. It’s not tax and spend. It’s borrow, borrow from the Chinese, and give it away,” he said.

Burgum added: “Citizens understand those are like preelection payoffs. Those are like, hey, folks, please vote for us because we’re relieving your debt. So at what point does it cross over, programs like student debt, to just vote-buying?” He then answered his own question, saying he saw this as an unprecedented effort at obtaining votes.

A two-term governor, Burgum was part of the 2024 Republican presidential field until dropping out in December. In July 2023, in order to meet the threshold of individual donors each candidate needed to participate in the GOP’s first debate, Burgum announced a campaign to reward individual donors with $20 gift cards.

“Doug knows people are hurting because of Bidenflation and giving Biden Economic Relief Gift Cards is a way to help 50,000 people until Doug is elected President to fix this crazy economy for everyone,” spokesperson Lance Trover said at the time….