USA Today reports. The article begins: “The Republican National Committee and its lawyers are going state to state seeking to influence what laws and procedures will govern the November election.” I think it’s only fair to point out, which the article doesn’t do, that this is something that Democrats did in prior election cycles. To be sure, Republicans ask the courts for different election rules than Democrats do, but it’s still going to court to get more favorable laws than what existing procedures provide.

This article is also misleading in other ways. For example, it states: “If the [RNC’s] cases are successful, fewer people will be allowed to vote in November, and fewer absentee ballots will be counted.” This sentence strongly implies that the RNC seeks, and may persuade courts to mandate, wrongful disenfranchisement of eligible voters. But farther down in the piece, the litigation that is described seeks only the enforcement of the NVRA’s list maintenance requirements. The RNC’s NVRA claims may–or may not–have merit. Both Nevada and Michigan vigorously contest the validity of its NVRA claims in their respective states. But if they do have merit, enforcement of the NVRA won’t constitute wrongful disenfranchisement but instead proper enforcement of existing election law. The idea that a successful lawsuit could cause the wrongful denial of the right to vote is inaccurate–and presents the danger of breeding just the kind of distrust in the rule of law that the article says would damage democracy.

Also, although the article and its headline highlight the cases where the RNC is a plaintiff, many of the cases the article discusses are those in which the RNC is or seeks to be a defendant-intervenor. It’s hard to say that those cases qualify as ones in which “[t]he Republican National Committee and its lawyers are going state to state seeking to influence what laws and procedures will govern the November election,” to quote the opening sentence again.

All in all, this piece in my judgment is a very sloppy job of reporting and, rather than educating the public on election law and litigation, does a disservice to readers attempting to understand how the electoral system operates and the prospects that this year’s election will be conducted in a way that voters can be confident that the candidates who are declared the winners are the ones for whom the participating and eligible voters actually cast their ballots for.

POLITICO:

“On Tuesday, the Trump campaign sent a letter to pro-Trump, external organizations asking them to attend an “entirely off-the-record, private,” and “invite-only” meeting with senior campaign officials, according to a copy of the letter obtained by POLITICO. The sit-down, which the letter describes as a “meeting of the political minds,” is aimed at discussing “collaborat[ion]” and “priorities and plans” for the general election. …

“There have long been tight restrictions on how federal campaigns and political committees can coordinate. But a recent Federal Election Commission advisory opinion, dated March 20, relaxed limitations on how they can collaborate on paid door-knocking efforts.

““We will share our macro view of the electorate with you and discuss new opportunities (in light of a recent FEC ruling) for our organizations to collaborate more effectively than we have been able to in the past,” according to the invitation. “We also ask you to come prepared to share any information you legally can about your priorities and plans with us.”

“The letter indicates that Trump campaign officials and outside groups will be treading carefully legally during the meeting. It notes that Republican National Committee chief counsel Charlie Spies and Trump campaign counsel Dave Warrington “will oversee this meeting to ensure legal compliance.”

“Trump officials appear to be placing a premium on the new FEC decision. Last week, Blair spoke before a meeting of the Rockbridge Network, a secretive gathering of conservative donors. During his remarks, Blair alluded to the advisory opinion, which he described as a game-changer, according to two people familiar with the remarks who were granted anonymity to discuss the matter.”

A new Common Ground Democracy essay, drawing upon Rick Pildes’s work, to discuss why it’s wrong to rely solely on a hope for increased civic virtue, among either politicians or voters, to protect democracy from authoritarianism. Instead, institutional reforms of the kind that Rick advocates in his recent Dunwody lecture are necessary to restore a Madisonian equilibrium to America’s political system. As the essay explains, a Madisonian equilibrium exists when the system’s institutions are well-calibrated to the society’s political culture, including its degree of civic virtue. The problem in the United States today is that, although a Madisonian equilibrium of this nature exhibited for several decades after World War II (when partisan polarization was low and civic solidarity high), this equilibrium has been destabilized by various cultural forces including the rise of intense partisan polarization. To remedy this problem, we must endeavor both to reinvigorate civic virtue within our political culture and make institutional adjustments suitable for the amount of civic virtue–and, its enemy, partisan tribalism–prevalent in our present political culture. Rick’s lecture prioritizes the institutional reforms that have the greatest change of being most effective in the near term on this front.

Disturbing development as reported by CNN:

“Georgia’s Coffee County suffered a cyberattack this month that forced the county to sever its connection to the state’s voter registration system as a precautionary measure, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

“Investigators believe the incident was a ransomware attack, in which cybercriminals typically lock computer systems and demand a ransom, the sources said.

“The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) informed the county of the incident on April 15, and federal and county officials are trying to determine who carried out the hack, according to the sources.

“A spokesperson for the office of Georgia’s secretary of state confirmed the cyberattack and the county’s response.

“The voter registration system, known as GARViS, is a relatively new technology that state officials have touted as a way of ensuring millions of Georgian voters are registered accurately. There was no indication that GARViS was infiltrated by the hackers, and Coffee County’s network connection to GARViS was severed as a precautionary move, the sources said.”

The journal PS: Political Science and Politics has published a special issue on the topic of Democracy Backsliding. Papers include The Resilience of Democracy’s Third Wave by Stephen Levitsky and Lucan Way. Other papers concern how to measure democratic backsliding and what we know and don’t know about the topic. It looks like an important collection.