Announcement: In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Uncivil War, a new documentary from the Bertelsmann Foundation, explores three factors eroding the US electoral system: gerrymandering, voter suppression, and disinformation. The film unravels a web of threats to American elections, separates … Continue reading
Rick Hasen
NYT: The group of Trump campaign officials came carrying cellphone cameras and a determination to help the president’s re-election efforts in Philadelphia. But they were asked to leave the city’s newly opened satellite election offices on Tuesday after being told … Continue reading
Philly Inquirer: A laptop and several memory sticks used to program Philadelphia’s voting machines were stolen from a city warehouse in East Falls, officials confirmed Wednesday, setting off a scramble to investigate and to ensure the machines had not been … Continue reading
Washington Monthly: The bad news is that Republican officials in three swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, are blocking legislation that could allow for the early processing of absentee ballots—purposefully making it take longer to get the election results. In … Continue reading
John Kruzel: A federal appeals court on Wednesday rebuffed Wisconsin Republicans who had asked the court to temporarily halt a ruling that pushed back the battleground state’s mail-vote due date, possibly teeing up a GOP bid for review by the … Continue reading
Greg Stohr: The U.S. Supreme Court put a clash over undocumented immigrants and the census on a fast track, granting a request by President Donald Trump’s administration to expedite handling of his appeal.Trump is trying to exclude undocumented immigrants from … Continue reading
Native American Rights Fund: On September 25, 2020, a Montana court permanently struck down a state law that severely restricted the right to vote for indigenous people living on rural reservations.Western Native Voice v. Stapleton, filed in March of this year by … Continue reading
New Brennan Center report. … Continue reading
Release: A federal court issued a decision today that will help protect the health and right to vote of medically vulnerable Alabamians.The ruling in People First of Alabama v. Merrill means Alabama voters will not need a witness or notary to vote by mail if they have … Continue reading
You can find the proposed resolution at this link. Governor Wolf (a Democrat) has condemned the move (via Ryan Grim). I’m not saying that the Pa legislature would use the power, but this is a first step toward trying to … Continue reading
Zack Beauchamp for Vox: The general sense among experts on American politics is that the nightmare scenarios — an outright stolen election, each party attempting to inaugurate a different president on January 20, or clashes between armed supporters of each side — … Continue reading
Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times Magazine: The strategy was now in full view: Flood every state, every television news network, every newspaper and news feed with manufactured evidence of fraud to suppress Democratic votes before Election Day — … Continue reading
Op-ed: On December 7, 2000, in the midst of the Florida recount crisis, Florida Senate President John McKay and Speaker of the House Tom Feeney announced that, “the Legislature would choose the electors, as permitted by the U.S. Constitution, if … Continue reading
CityBeat reports. … Continue reading
Bloomberg Government: The 2020 election has generated a record $13.3 billion in federal campaign contributions, funding a barrage of political advertising that strategists say risks blurring candidate messaging.The unprecedented outpouring of campaign cash raised through Sept. 28 is more than … Continue reading
Wall Street Journal: New data from researchers at Georgetown University Law Center shows the law could mean a large share of registered voters with felony records still face hurdles. The researchers identified about 14,000 people within this group who have … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump’s angry insistence in the last minutes of Tuesday’s debate that there was no way the presidential election could be conducted without fraud amounted to an extraordinary declaration by a sitting American president that he would try to throw any … Continue reading
This looks terrific with a wonderful lineup. … Continue reading
Politico: President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court did not commit to recusing herself from cases related to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, according to her written responses to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.Amy Coney Barrett’s responses, obtained by … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump’s top intelligence official on Tuesday released unverified information about the 2016 campaign that appeared to be a bid to help Mr. Trump politically and was said to be disclosed over the objections of career intelligence officials who … Continue reading
NYT: A deceptive video released on Sunday by the conservative activist James O’Keefe, which claimed through unidentified sources and with no verifiable evidence that Representative Ilhan Omar’s campaign had collected ballots illegally, was probably part of a coordinated disinformation effort, according … Continue reading
The latest from the National Task Force on Election Crises. … Continue reading
Time: Trump’s rhetoric on the validity of the elections process was both lacking evidence and in stark contrast to how the issue is being judged in courtrooms across the country. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have filed … Continue reading
The WaPo oped concludes: The great danger for the Republican Party is that the president’s claims will shine a spotlight on whether proof of widespread fraud exists to support their positions. Again, such proof doesn’t exist.Rather than suffer a series … Continue reading
WaPo: More than 1 million early votes have already been cast in the 2020 election, but in several battleground states, mail-in ballots will go virtually untouched until right before Election Day. This delay, which is dictated by state laws, could … Continue reading
This should get some attention. … Continue reading
WaPo: Democratic voters who have requested mail ballots — and returned them — greatly outnumber Republicans so far in key battleground states, causing alarm among GOP party leaders and strategists that President Trump’s attacks on mail voting could be hurting … Continue reading
Very interesting way that this case got resolved, and it does raise the question if there is anyone with standing to appeal given that Wisconsin’s executive branch is fine with this extension. Observation from Marty Lederman: If I'm not mistaken, … Continue reading
Under state law the deadline for receipt of the mail-in ballots would have been noon on election day. Opinion. … Continue reading
WRAL: County boards of elections across North Carolina on Tuesday started the process of determining which absentee ballots could be accepted for the general election and which needed further work by voters.With record numbers of voters casting ballots by mail … Continue reading
This event looks good: … Continue reading
Philly Inquirer: President Donald Trump wrongly said Tuesday that poll watchers were being improperly blocked from observing the first day of in-person early voting in Philadelphia.He made the false claims on Twitter, first retweeting his son Eric and then going further … Continue reading
New Vanita Gupta: Right now, the polls say Trump is losing the election. Fearful of losing, he is flexing power he doesn’t have to discourage people from exercising the power they do. But Trump succeeds only if voters fall prey … Continue reading
Greg Sargent: The threat this time resides in a combustible combination of two factors. The first is what’s known as Facebook’s “Group recommendation engine,” which drives people to private Facebook groups. Experts have long warned that these private groups are … Continue reading
I have written this analysis for SCOTUSBlog, part of a symposium on Justice Ginsburg’s jurisprudence. It begins: During her tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg unfailingly sided with voters in election cases and viewed the Constitution as … Continue reading
Details. … Continue reading
NPR reports. … Continue reading
Andy Kroll: Lately, she has urged her liberal brethren to stop promoting the idea that the 2020 election will be rigged, stolen, or a coup as a fait accompli. Doing so, she wrote, feeds into Trump’s voter-suppression strategy, which forms the centerpiece of his reelection … Continue reading
Ned Foley WaPo oped: The first change is a one-sentence addition to a state’s election code. This would provide that all of a state’s ballot-counting procedures, including recounts and judicial contests of results, must be complete by the federal “safe harbor” … Continue reading
Steven Rosenfeld reports. … Continue reading
The following is a fascinating guest post by my UC Irvine colleague, Brook Thomas, Chancellor’s Professor in the English Department: Albion W. Tourgée is best known as Homer Plessy’s attorney. Less well known is how poignantly he speaks to today’s … Continue reading
Protocol: Despite ramping up capacity and working overtime, mail-in ballot vendors like Runbeck have been struggling to meet the needs of every state and county knocking on their doors. Along with COVID-19-related disruption to their supply chains, companies that print … Continue reading
CNN reports. … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Time: For three weeks in August, as election officials across the country were preparing to send out mail-in ballots to tens of millions of voters, the U.S. Postal Service stopped fully updating a national change of address system that most … Continue reading
CLC blog post. … Continue reading
Listen: The Most Important Question in Tonight’s Debate: President Trump has yet to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. When you settle in to watch the Presidential debate tonight, maybe you’ll be listening to … Continue reading
On this episode: On today’s show, we focus on the question: Can the president suspend the elections? The short answer: No. But while the law is clear, President Trump’s efforts to delay the elections, sow distrust in our democratic processes, and wreak havoc … Continue reading
ABC News reports. … Continue reading
NBC News: U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says the 2020 census will end Oct. 5, despite a federal judge’s ruling last week allowing the head count of every U.S. resident to continue through the end of October, according to a tweet posted on … Continue reading