Reuters reports. … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaigns
Bob Bauer at Just Security. … Continue reading
Interesting phenomenon; misleading headline. … Continue reading
CNN: An outside group that supports President Donald Trump is running a radio ad in Atlanta ahead of Georgia’s special election Tuesday that takes the voice of former President Barack Obama out of context to make the argument that Democrats … Continue reading
Politico: With Georgia’s special House election going down to the wire, it’s no shock that Twitter is saturated with Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel. But what is surprising is just how much of the traffic traces to a … Continue reading
WaPo: A Republican contractor’s database of nearly every registered American voter was left vulnerable to theft on a public server for 12 days this month, according to a cybersecurity researcher who found and downloaded the trove of data. The lapse … Continue reading
Politico: Democrats are uniting behind a simple message about Russian hacking during the 2016 election: Donald Trump doesn’t care. Even as the president lashes out at the series of Russia-related probes besieging his administration, Democrats say Trump has yet to … Continue reading
Advisory: Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today announced that the Committee will hold an open hearing on June 21st … Continue reading
Despicable: Authorities were called to the neighborhood where [GA06 congressional candidate] Karen Handel lives in Roswell after suspicious envelopes were found in mailboxes Thursday afternoon. Police say Roxburg Drive off Old Alabama Road was shut down for several hours while crews … Continue reading
Great investigation by Craig Silverman and Tarini Parti: Those three groups — Great America PAC, Great America Alliance and Stop Hillary PAC— have been cited or promoted in some way in more than 110 articles on AAN dating back to … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: Relying on statements President Donald Trump made during his campaign to argue against his proposed immigration restrictions could chill free speech in campaigns, posing “an unacceptable risk to First Amendment interests,” according to a new brief filed with … Continue reading
Jim Rutenberg NYT column: Of course, Watergate unfolded in a much simpler time in the media industry. There were three major news networks and PBS; a major paper or three in every city; and a political dynamic in which leaders … Continue reading
WaPo: Montana congressman-elect Greg Gianforte, who was charged with a misdemeanor after allegedly slamming Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs to the ground for asking a question, has apologized to the reporter and announced a donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists. … Continue reading
Key Bauer followup: Evidence Supporting a Finding of “Substantial Assistance” It follows that the evidence in support of the “substantial assistance” would be different in quantity and nature from what is needed for a “coordination” claim. The evidence on the … Continue reading
NYT: Those divisions did not happen by themselves. Republican lawmakers were moved along by a campaign carefully crafted by fossil fuel industry players, most notably Charles D. and David H. Koch, the Kansas-based billionaires who run a chain of refineries … Continue reading
HuffPo reports. … Continue reading
Bob Bauer: Commentary on Russian intervention in the 2016 elections has included one confidently expressed and perhaps growing view: that there may be a scandal there, but no conceivable crime. It is claimed that the Trump campaign could wink and … Continue reading
Farhad Manjoo in the NYT: Specifically, Twitter often acts as the small bowel of digital news. It’s where political messaging and disinformation get digested, packaged and widely picked up for mass distribution to cable, Facebook and the rest of the … Continue reading
NYT: Shifting from his previous blanket denials, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Thursday that “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers could have been involved in cyberattacks last year to help the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. While … Continue reading
PunditFact: Jarrett said that “you can collude all you want with a foreign government in an election,” because there’s no law that says collusion is a crime. Three prominent election law scholars said there are at least four laws that … Continue reading
Pacific Legal Foundation: On Election Day, millions of Americans trek to polling places in all corners of this Nation. On the way to casting their vote, many proudly wear shirts, buttons, and badges of organizations that share their views. Union … Continue reading
LA Times reports. … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has refused demands by the Federal Election Commission to provide more public details about more than $1 million in bank loans that helped finance his original campaign for the Senate in 2012, according to … Continue reading
Kristen Clarke tweets. … Continue reading
Ken Vogel for Politico: Weintraub’s interest was piqued by an article published last week by TIME magazine that revealed intelligence officials had evidence that Russian agents bought Facebook ads to disseminate election-themed stories. It also indicated that congressional investigators were … Continue reading
Phillip Howard and Robert Gorwa WaPo oped (that I missed last week): This month, one of the most important intelligence documents about Russian interference in the U.S. election emerged. But it didn’t come from the National Security Agency or the … Continue reading
Alicia Bannon and Nathaniel Sobel at TAP. … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: Undisclosed donors provided nearly half of the more than $20 million in outside campaign spending in three closely watched, current congressional election races, a Bloomberg BNA review of Federal Election Commission reports found. Bloomberg BNA looked at FEC … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: A Republican super political action committee that is pouring money into congressional races in Montana and Georgia is being funded by tobacco companies, video game manufacturers, other corporations and wealthy donors, according to recently filed Federal Election Commission … Continue reading
The Guardian: But this signed legal document – a document that was never meant to be made public and was leaked by a concerned source – connects both Vote Leave and Leave.EU’s data firms directly to Robert Mercer, the American … Continue reading
Odd and troubling. … Continue reading
Politico: Precisely how do private companies benefit from access to federal officials? Surprisingly, beyond anecdotal stories, it has been difficult to know; there had been no irrefutable data on how firms’ access to the White House translates into private gains—until … Continue reading
Fredreka Schouten for USA Today: President Trump has headlined four big rallies in the first months of his presidency to tout his agenda and savage his foes. A new $1.5 million television ad campaign promotes his accomplishments and attacks the media. … Continue reading
Bernard L. Fraga, Sean McElwee, Jesse Rhodes and Brian Schaffner for the Monkey Cage: Using data from the voter file vendor Catalist and information from the U.S. Census Bureau, we examine the change in turnout rates for different racial/ethnic groups … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: A new federal lawsuit involving a contentious Montana judicial race last year claims an investigation into campaign statements is having a chilling effect on one of the candidate’s ability to defend himself in disciplinary proceedings. Robert Myers … Continue reading
Politico: It’s official: Georgia’s special election will be the most expensive House race in U.S. history. Candidates and outside groups have aired or reserved more than $29.7 million worth of TV ads in the race to replace HHS Secretary Tom … Continue reading
Daniel Bice for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Long a player on the national stage, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee has been quietly using its vast resources to construct state-by-state networks of activist groups to win support for its conservative … Continue reading
Dave Levinthal reports for CPI. … Continue reading
Lynn Vavreck for NYT’s The Upshot: Despite the robust record of these models, they didn’t get much attention leading up to 2016. Mr. Trump was such a nontraditional candidate — in his fund-raising; support for atypical G.O.P. positions on trade … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Albuquerque Journal: Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made a $400,000 cash donation to the political committee supporting the proposed tax on sugary beverages in Santa Fe, bringing his investment in the effort to more than $1.13 million. … Continue reading
WaPo on the Va governor’s race. … Continue reading
Very nice treatment of the case: Vote buying, a practice carried over from England’s early experiments with democracy, was widespread in United States elections until the modern era.. A 1905 study of a New York City election, for example, found … Continue reading
That tidbit and much more in Open Secrets tally of Election 2016: That’s why we also looked at the top 1 percent of 1 percent of donors, a group of less than 200 people who spent almost $1 billion combined … Continue reading
New CFI analysis: Perhaps it is time to stop bemoaning the weakness of political parties in financing federal elections. The prevailing opinion is that since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, “outside groups” accepting unlimited contributions … Continue reading
NYT: Mr. Bannon’s allies have already begun discussing a post-White House future for him. On Friday, his main political patron, Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of Robert Mercer, a major Trump donor, holed up in her office at Cambridge Analytica in … Continue reading
LAT: Phootoshopped campaign mailers sent in a Los Angeles City Council race in the San Fernando Valley are sparking accusations of election law violation and counterallegations of hypocrisy. A political advocacy group called Latinas Lead California sent a “cease and … Continue reading
Good catch by Adam Smith. More here on the ad tying the Democratic candidate in the GA special election to Osama bin Laden. … Continue reading
Vlad Kogan, Stephane Lavertu and Zachary Peskowitz have posted this working draft. Here is the abstract: There is considerable debate about how election timing shapes who votes, election outcomes, and, ultimately, public policy. We examine these matters by combining information … Continue reading
Derek Muller NYT oped. I expressed a more ambivalent view here in Politico. … Continue reading