“Democrats want to scare you away from voting absentee,” Guilfoyle says (in Greg Sargent, Intercepted GOP robocalls expose how Trump hopes to corrupt the election.) George Orwell’s estate should sue for copyright infringement. … Continue reading
Rick Hasen
CNN: President Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful presidential transition Wednesday comes as Republicans across the country are taking concrete steps that threaten to undermine the integrity of the election, particularly in key battleground states.Trump’s comments about the transition were … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
Axios: And Trump advisers are ready to challenge the legitimacy of the election results, especially with the expected late wave of Democratic mail ballots. They’re also ready to defend against Democratic lawyers who mount their own election challenges. One Trump campaign … Continue reading
Hansi Lo Wang for NPR: A federal court has ordered the Trump administration to abandon last-minute changes to the 2020 census schedule and extend the time for counting for an additional month.The preliminary injunction issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Lucy … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump declined for a second straight day to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election, repeating baseless assertions that the voting would be a “big scam,” even as leading Republicans scrambled to assure … Continue reading
NYT: Facebook announced on Thursday that it was taking down three disinformation networks that it said were linked to Russia’s military and intelligence agencies, and to the Internet Research Agency, which was central to Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.None of the … Continue reading
WaPo: President Trump reiterated Thursday that he may not honor the results should he lose reelection, reaffirming his extraordinary refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power and prompting election and law enforcement authorities nationwide to prepare for an … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: An East Texas county commissioner was arrested Thursday on charges that he and three associates committed voter fraud in a 2018 primary election.A grand jury indicted Shannon Brown, a Democratic Gregg County commissioner whose office is in Kilgore, Marlena Jackson, … Continue reading
NYT: The Justice Department on Thursday released details about an investigation into nine discarded mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania, an unusual step that stoked new fears that President Trump’s political appointees were using the levers of law enforcement to sow doubt … Continue reading
Politico: The death of a third-party candidate running against freshman Democratic Rep. Angie Craig has triggered the postponement of this year’s vote and scheduleda special election next year in her Twin Cities-area district.The Minnesota secretary of state’s office confirmed Thursday … Continue reading
NYT: Even before his comments over the past several days, the confusion surrounding how ballots should be cast and counted had reached a level rarely before seen.In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two states pivotal to the outcome of the presidential race … Continue reading
Very good bipartisan news: The Michigan Legislature gave final approvals Thursday to a bill that would give local clerks 10 hours extra before the election to begin processing absentee ballots, a nod to the expected uptick in absentee voting in … Continue reading
Nate Persily and Charles Stewart in the WSJ: Pundits are warning that election night in November may turn into election week or even election month. Amid the pandemic, election officials are bracing for a flood of ballots sent by mail, … Continue reading
News and Observer: President Donald Trump’s administration should launch an investigation into a proposed change in North Carolina’s vote-by-mail rules, N.C. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said Thursday.Forest, a Republican like Trump, wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr asking him … Continue reading
New DOJ letter: In addition to the military ballots and envelopes that were discarded and recovered as detailed above, investigators recovered four (4) apparently official, bar-coded, absentee ballot envelopes that were empty. Two (2) of those envelopes had the completed … Continue reading
Jeremy Stahl for Slate: On Thursday, Florida Sen. Rick Scott proposed a bill that would change election laws with less than six weeks to go until November’s election, causing complete mayhem and ensuring that untold number of otherwise valid votes … Continue reading
Timely from History.com. … Continue reading
Marshall Cohen for CNN: The Justice Department said Thursday that it is investigating “potential issues with mail-in ballots” in the swing state of Pennsylvania and, in a highly unusual disclosure, revealed that several ballots marked for President Donald Trump were “discarded.“US Attorney David … Continue reading
LA Times: According to a report in the Atlantic, the campaign has spoken with at least one Republican leader in Pennsylvania about the possibility of citing voting irregularities to reject a Biden win there and have the state legislature direct … Continue reading
BuzzFeed News reports. … Continue reading
Thread starts here: An investigation here may be reasonable. But there is NO legit reason for:1) a DOJ press release on a pending investigation, that2) announces a partial list of unconfirmed facts, including3) the identity of one of the candidates … Continue reading
Looking forward to doing this event for the UC (registration required): The 2020 election is just over a month away! This is your chance to hear directly from the experts on what Californians need to know as they get ready … Continue reading
Very glad to be a part of this and kudos to editor David Canon and staff for getting this out so quickly: VOLUME 19, ISSUE 3 / SEPTEMBER 2020 Special Section: Elections During the COVID PandemicFree Three Pathologies of American Voting Rights Illuminated … Continue reading
Andrew Appel lecture. … Continue reading
Politico: Republicans have closed the traditional voter registration gap with Democrats to an historically small margin in Florida, triggering a wave of Democratic apprehension in the nation’s biggest swing state.Top Florida Democrats and longtime activists have increasingly groused in private … Continue reading
NPR reports on these mostly positive developments: “I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster,” Trump said, once again pushing his unsubstantiated claims about mail-in ballot fraud.Shortly after his remarks, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, tweeted his vehement disapproval: … Continue reading
Happy to participate in this roundtable (Disclosure: Knight is generously supporting my book leave): Midway through a year rocked by a pandemic, protests and politics, we asked leading researchers and policy thinkers: What new questions relating to technology’s impact on … Continue reading
AP: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has refused calls to expand mail-in voting in Texas during the coronavirus pandemic, was sued Wednesday by prominent members of his own party who now want to halt the biggest change he instead ordered … Continue reading
In the past I’ve found Secretary Frank LaRose of Ohio to be interested in bipartisan and commonsense approaches to election administration. He was one of the two keynotes (along with Michigan SOS Jocelyn Benson) at our February conference, “Can American … Continue reading
ProPublica: The previously unreported attack on Hamilton illustrates an overlooked security weakness that could hamper the November election: the vulnerability of email systems in county offices that handle the voting process from registration to casting and counting ballots. Although experts … Continue reading
Call for Papers University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review is pleased to announce a call for papers for its 2021 Symposium, Voting and Elections, to be held on February … Continue reading
Miles Parks for NPR: Last week, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court said ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day will be counted so long as they’re received within the next three days.And a Michigan state judge last week also ruled that absentee … Continue reading
I wrote a thread on Twitter about this, starting here: All of a sudden from @BartonGellman's excellent @TheAtlantic piece, people are learning that we only get to vote for President because state legislatures give voters that right, and they can … Continue reading
CPI: Twenty-six percent of Black voters in East Baton Rouge Parish had their polling place changed between the 2012 and 2016 general elections, compared with 15% of white voters in the parish, according to a new analysis of polling place … Continue reading
CNN: Facebook (FB) has allowed political advertisers to target hundreds of misleading ads about Joe Biden and the US Postal Service to swing-state voters ranging from Florida to Wisconsin in recent weeks, in an apparent failure to enforce its own platform rules … Continue reading
From our cross-ideological, cross disciplinary April report: Although laws govern the conduct of democratic elections, they are also shaped by a set of informal norms. We should strive for a system that upholds democratic principles that are embodied in both … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump declined an opportunity on Wednesday to endorse a peaceful transfer of power after the November election, renewing his baseless warnings about extensive voting fraud before saying there would be no power transfer at all.Asked whether he would “commit here … Continue reading
Leah Litman in the Atlantic: The case captions tell much of the story. Republican Party officials, including those in President Trump’s reelection campaign, are trying to stop states’ efforts to expand voting—they are suing to prevent mail-in voting, extensions for … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Republicans who control the state Legislature appealed a court decision Wednesday to try to make sure absentee ballots aren’t counted if clerks receive them after election day. The filing with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals came two days … Continue reading
WRAL: A pair of State Board of Elections members resigned from the board Wednesday, less than two months ahead of a presidential election, complaining of the details in a lawsuit settlement that may rewrite absentee voting rules in the weeks … Continue reading
Tom Edsall: A Democratic strategist — who requested anonymity because his employer does not want him publicly identified talking about the election — analyzed the implications of the most recent voter registration trends for me.In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he … Continue reading
Chilling: Trump: "Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful … there won't be a transfer, frankly, there will be a continuation."If Barr won't, no surprise if Trump keeps firing until he finds a Deputy Assistant Sub … Continue reading
Release: The Georgia NAACP and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda are moving to stop 14,000 voters from being purged from the rolls before November’s general election, after a lawsuit was filed by two Fulton County voters which seeks … Continue reading
You can watch here. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: With less than six weeks to go before Election Day, and with over 250 COVID-related election lawsuits filed across 45 states, the litigation strategy of the Trump campaign and their allies has … Continue reading
ProPublica and WRAL report. … Continue reading
CNN: Donald Trump Jr. is touting baseless election-rigging claims in videos posted to Facebook and Twitter asking “able-bodied” people to join an election security “army” for his father.Facebook and Twitter affixed labels to the video pointing to accurate information about voting, but neither company … Continue reading
Just wow. … Continue reading
Here’s the clip: … Continue reading