I have written this NY Times oped. It begins: A new, more dangerous front has opened in the voting wars, and it’s going to be much harder to counteract than the now-familiar fight over voting rules. At stake is something … Continue reading
Category Archives: Election Meltdown
NYT Upshot column: What would have happened if the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had responded, “OK, I’ll try,” in a January phone call after President Trump asked him to “find” 11,000 votes?No one can be sure. What is … Continue reading
You can watch the video here. … Continue reading
Andrew C. Eggers, Haritz Garro, and Justin Grimmer have posted this draft on Dropbox. Here is the abstract: After the 2020 US presidential election Donald Trump refused to concede, alleging widespread and unparalleled voter fraud. Trump’s supporters deployed several statistical … Continue reading
Very much looking forward to reading this from Jim Gardner: For many years, the dominant view among American election law scholars has been that the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence of democratic practice got off to a promising start during the … Continue reading
NYT: Warning that the deadly rampage of the Capitol this month may not be an isolated episode, the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said publicly for the first time that the United States faced a growing threat from “violent … Continue reading
This from Tierney Sneed and Matt Shuham is a must-read. … Continue reading
WSJ: The Justice Department’s inspector general said Monday his office will investigate whether department officials “engaged in an improper attempt” to overturn President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.The announcement comes after news reports that former President Donald Trump considered moving to … Continue reading
NYT: When Representative Scott Perry joined his colleagues in a monthslong campaign to undermine the results of the presidential election, promoting “Stop the Steal” events and supporting an attempt to overturn millions of legally cast votes, he often took a … Continue reading
Big news: Today, Facebook is referring its decision to indefinitely suspend former US President Donald Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts to the independent Oversight Board. The board was established last year to make the final call on some of the … Continue reading
I have written this oped for the LA Times. A snippet: It took the civic virtue of about a dozen Republicans who had some control over the election process to resist Trump’s and his supporters’ incessant entreaties to overturn the … Continue reading
Final report from the National Task Force on Election Crises. Executive summary: The 2020 election was defined by paradox and contradiction. Thanks to millions of poll workers, election officials, and citizens who stepped up to make our democracy work, the … Continue reading
NYT: Donald J. Trump on Wednesday became the first American president to be impeached twice, as 10 members of his party joined with Democrats in the House to charge him with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in egging on … Continue reading
Politico: The House convened Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection that — just one week earlier — stormed the U.S. Capitol, battered police officers and sent lawmakers fleeing for safety.The charge, “willful incitement of insurrection,” … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: What’s next to save American democracy?The events of the past week have left many in this country reeling and worried seriously for the fate of democratic governance in the United States. … Continue reading
I made this case in my statement yesterday but now that the vote counting is complete in Congress, this becomes Job 1: Restoring order and finishing the constitutionally mandated counting of the ballots is step number one. Step number 2 … Continue reading
Zuckerberg statement. … Continue reading
Today has been a very sad day for American democracy. Just as Congress was beginning the formality of the process of counting state electoral college votes—as a disingenuous objection for counting Arizona’s electoral college votes from Rep. Gosar and Sen. … Continue reading
You can find the recommendation here (subscription required). … Continue reading
But here’s the complaint. … Continue reading
Politico: The foreign cyberattacks that so many intelligence officials feared didn’t upend the 2020 elections — but this year’s contests nonetheless showed how much the nation still needs to do to fix its security weaknesses.Paper trails protected the integrity of … Continue reading
AJC: Georgia’s extraordinarily thin partisan divide set the stage for rampant misinformation, lawsuits and fights over election integrity after the presidential election.With control of the Senate on the line Jan. 5, elections officials are bracing for a new round of … Continue reading
WaPo: Pence is hoping for a low-key Jan. 6 and is not planning any unnecessary drama, aides said, intending to stick to his perfunctory role. He is eyeing a trip overseas soon after.Trump realized only recently that Pence would play … Continue reading
Yahoo News: With the Georgia Senate runoff races just two weeks away, the Department of Homeland Security is warning of the possibility of “ideologically motivated violence” and even a foreign influence campaign as voters prepare to go to the polls, according to … Continue reading
WaPo reports. Can anyone imagine such a headline as recently as 5 years ago? … Continue reading
Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt: He has otherwise sequestered himself in the White House, playing host to a cast of conspiracy theorists and hard-core supporters who traffic in ideas like challenging the election’s outcome in Congress and even invoking martial law, … Continue reading
Politico: Over the next month, the president would conduct a sweeping campaign to personally cajole Republican Party leaders across the country to reject the will of the voters and hand him the election. In his appeals, he used specious and … Continue reading
Jonathan Manes at Just Security. … Continue reading
Derek at Law & Liberty: The Electoral College is a designedly decentralized process for the selection of the President of the United States. Each State may choose its presidential electors in the manner that the legislature deems appropriate.The State of … Continue reading
WaPo: Trump is continuing to press his case, even now that the electoral college has formally elected Biden. In a meeting with allies on Friday, the president discussed deploying the military to rerun the election and appointing attorney Sidney Powell, whose … Continue reading
In the Dec 18, 2020, New Yorker, Steve Coll notes that the outdated 1887 Law of Electoral Count enables Trump’s allies to create more havoc when the joint session of Congress meets January 6, 2021, for the official count of the electors’ votes. … Continue reading
Political Wire: Jonathan Swan: “Senior Trump administration officials are increasingly alarmed that President Trump might unleash — and abuse — the power of government in an effort to overturn the clear result of the election.”“These officials tell me that Trump … Continue reading
Archived video. … Continue reading
NYT Mag profiles Philly’s Al Schmidt. … Continue reading
Yesterday the Wisconsin Supreme Court held a heated oral argument over Trump’s election contest. The arguments were at noon and heated, and now, less than 17 hours before the electoral college meets, there is not yet a decision. The Court … Continue reading
Ned Foley WaPo oped: It’s over. At that point, the outcome can’t be changed. New electors can’t be appointed in any state, by legislatures or any other means. No time machine exists to undo the meetings of each state’s electors … Continue reading
Today marks the 20th anniversary of Bush v. Gore. On the case’s 10th anniversary, I remarked that perhaps the anniversary would go more unnoticed on the 20th anniversary than the 10th, as many students I teach now about the case … Continue reading
WaPo: They are both elected and appointed, selected by Democrats and Republicans alike.Some have served for decades — while others took the bench only months ago.One is a former high school teacher, another the first Native American woman appointed to … Continue reading
Must-read NYT: The Supreme Court repudiation of President Trump’s desperate bid for a second term not only shredded his effort to overturn the will of voters: It also was a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders in Congress and the states … Continue reading
You can listen here. … Continue reading
The Supreme Court dismissed Texas’s bill of complaint in the latest high-profile case pushed by Trump allies in an attempt to overturn the results of the election. The Court did not issue an accompanying opinion. [Addendum: The court did say … Continue reading
Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog: Texas’ attempt to bring an original action challenging the election results in four states is not a serious legal claim in a legitimate procedural posture, for reasons that many people have already given and that I will not … Continue reading
In The Atlantic: The Michigan protester’s declaration that Trump won the election (by a landslide, no less) falls into the same category. The majority of people who make such declarations understand that in fact, Trump did not win, that he … Continue reading
WaPo: President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make an extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his … Continue reading
Here: What makes this moment deeply alarming—and makes Republicans’ overwhelming silence and tacit approval deeply dangerous, rather than merely an attempt to run out the clock on the president’s clownish behavior—is that Trump’s attempt to steal this election builds on a … Continue reading
Three weeks ago, I and others in the election law field determined that Trump’s path to use lawsuits to overturn the results of the election was dead. The campaign had uncovered no significant fraud or irregularities and none of the … Continue reading
In WaPo: The country was lucky that President Trump and his reelection campaign were so inept. He ultimately lost by a wide margin, and his challenges to the results have been farcical. His rhetoric ramped up in inverse proportion to his ability … Continue reading
AP: Increasingly detached from reality, President Donald Trump stood before a White House lectern and delivered a 46-minute diatribe against the election results that produced a win for Democrat Joe Biden, unspooling one misstatement after another to back his baseless … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: On Monday, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey added his name to the list of Republican officials who have acted admirably to uphold the rule of law following President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attacks … Continue reading
Trump continues his abhorrent delegitimization efforts. See also Fox News Lets Trump Spew Lies Unchecked In First Interview Since Election Day … Continue reading