Category Archives: election subversion risk

“Texas secretary of state’s office auditing four counties’ 2020 elections months after an official called the statewide process ‘smooth and secure'”

September 24, 2021, 6:47 amelection subversion risk, The Voting WarsRick Hasen

Texas Tribune: The Texas secretary of state’s office announced late Thursday that it has begun a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 general election in four Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant. But the statement from that agency did… Continue reading

“Opinion: Our constitutional crisis is already here”

September 24, 2021, 6:45 amelection subversion riskRick Hasen

Robert Kagan in WaPo: The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal… Continue reading

“Special Report: Backers of Trump’s false fraud claims seek to control next elections”

September 23, 2021, 7:01 amelection subversion riskRick Hasen

Reuters: Reuters interviewed nine of the 15 declared Republican candidates for secretary of state in five battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada — and reviewed public statements by all of the candidates. Ten of the 15 have either… Continue reading

“Jan. 6 investigation accelerates as it turns toward Trump”

September 23, 2021, 6:51 amelection subversion riskRick Hasen

Politico: Thompson told POLITICO recently that he hopes to complete the committee’s inquiry this spring, an extraordinarily tight deadline for an investigation of such scope and scale. The panel is attempting to piece together Trump’s pre-Jan. 6 efforts to… Continue reading

Judge Luttig Responds to John Eastman Memo; Advised VP Pence, Contrary to John Eastman, that Pence Could Not Steal the Election for Trump

September 22, 2021, 6:54 amelection subversion riskRick Hasen

Twitter thread from Judge Luttig starts here. I was honored to advise Vice President Pence that he had no choice on January 6, 2021, but to accept and count the Electoral College votes as they had been cast and… Continue reading

John Eastman Gives CNN Longer Six-Page Memo on How He Hoped to Help Mike Pence Steal the Election for Trump

September 21, 2021, 4:47 pmchicanery, election subversion risk, electoral collegeRick Hasen

You can find the memo here. I think it makes Eastman look even worse. MORE from Jonathan Adler: UPDATE: John Eastman has told CNN that the above-cited memo was merely a preliminary outline, and has provided CNN’s Jeremy Herb… Continue reading

Initial Reaction to Eastman Memo

September 21, 2021, 4:56 amelection subversion risk, electoral collegeNed Foley

My first thought on reading the Eastman memo revealed yesterday was that it could wait until I do the relevant work for a planned second edition of Ballot Battles before I reflect on it in earnest. But in light of… Continue reading

Freedom to Vote bill & democracy-protection

September 20, 2021, 1:36 pmelection subversion risk, votingNed Foley

One main point of this new Washington Post column is that some specific provisions in the Senate Democrats’ bill might be both (1) unnecessary to safeguard democracy (even if desirable from a policy perspective) and (2) actually counterproductive to the… Continue reading

“Trump won these counties big. His supporters question the results there, too.”

September 20, 2021, 11:30 amelection administration, election subversion riskRick Hasen

NBC News: Former President Donald Trump won Mesa County, Colorado, by 28 points in last fall’s election.In Barry County, Michigan, he won by more than 32 points. And in Lander County, Nevada, his victory was in excess… Continue reading

My New Draft Paper: “Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United States”

September 20, 2021, 7:52 amelection administration, election subversion risk, electoral college, fraudulent fraud squadRick Hasen

I have written this new academic draft, in connection with the virtual Election Subversion conference that we are holding at UCI Law’s Fair Elections and Free Speech Center, this Friday, September 24. Here is the paper’s abstract: The… Continue reading

“‘It’s spreading’: Phony election fraud conspiracies infect midterms”

September 20, 2021, 6:55 amelection subversion risk, fraudulent fraud squadRick Hasen

Politico: It started as one big, false claim — that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.But nearly a year later, the Big Lie is metastasizing, with Republicans throughout the country raising the specter of rigged elections in their… Continue reading

“Republican leaders remain silent as Trump casts perpetrators of Jan. 6 attack as political prisoners”

September 20, 2021, 6:48 amelection subversion riskRick Hasen

WaPo: The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and the falsehoods that inspired it continue to shape the Republican Party, with former president Donald Trump ramping up his defense of the rioters who participated in the violence while marshaling opposition… Continue reading

“Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee personally vetted Trump’s fraud claims, new book says. They were unpersuaded.”

September 20, 2021, 6:46 amelection subversion risk, fraudulent fraud squadRick Hasen

WaPo: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham agreed to hear Rudolph W. Giuliani out.In a Jan. 2 meeting arranged by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and held in his West Wing office, the South Carolina Republican met with Giuliani… Continue reading

Democracy Protection Requires More than Voting Rights

September 17, 2021, 1:52 pmalternative voting systems, election subversion risk, primariesNed Foley

Senator Tim Kaine has a new Washington Post op-ed entitled The Jan. 6 attack demands that we protect voting rights, in which he says: “Only by passing comprehensive voting rights legislation can we live up to th[e] responsibility” to protect… Continue reading