“‘Remember Hanging Chads? That’s Play-Doh!’ Election Night May Be Just the Beginning of the Real 2020 Drama”
Joe Pompeo for Vanity Fair.
Monthly Archives: September 2020
Federal Court in Michigan Strikes Down MI Law Limiting Free Transportation to Polling Places, Upholds Limits on Third Parties Collecting and Turning in Absentee Ballot Applications
You can find the decision at this link.
What Else Do We Have to Worry About?
Edward Luce is one of the best analysts of Western democracy, as reflected in his 2017 book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism. In his piece in the Financial Times, on the nature of this fall’s election, he ends on this… Continue reading
“Federal judge issues temporary injunction against USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns”
WaPo:
A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying that President Trump… Continue reading
“How Republicans Undermined Ex-Felon Voting Rights in Florida: It’s a cautionary tale about the messy process of citizen-led ballot initiatives and how a dominant political party can exert its power”
NYT:
When voters passed the referendum, known as Amendment 4, civil rights groups celebrated what was billed as a potentially game-changing expansion of the electorate in the nation’s biggest battleground state. White people like Mr. Gruver represent a majority… Continue reading
“FBI director Wray says Russia is actively interfering in 2020 election to ‘denigrate’ Biden”
CNN:
According to Wray, Russia is using social media, proxies, state media and online journals to sow “divisiveness and discord” and “primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”Intelligence officials… Continue reading
Watch Archived Video of My Constitution Day Conversation with U Cincinnati Law Dean Verna Williams on Voting Rights, Election Meltdown, and the U.S. Constitution
Great conversation that you can view here.
“Trump Is Waging A Multistate, Multimillion-Dollar Legal Battle Against Mail-In Voting During The Pandemic”
Zoe Tillman for BuzzFeed:
President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party are devoting millions of dollars to wage a state-by-state legal battle against mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, not only suing state officials but also intervening in… Continue reading
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Decision
I want to highlight one intriguing aspect of this decision. The state adopted no-excuse absentee voting in a law passed in 2019, before the pandemic. That meant that the surrounding laws were not written for the volume of absentees likely… Continue reading
Breaking: Pennsylvania Supreme Court Extends Absentee Ballot Receipt Deadlines, Allows Drop Boxes, Limits Poll Watchers from Other PA Counties. What’s Next?
Jonathan Lai for the Philly Inquirer:
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the state’s mail ballot deadlines on Thursday, a move that could allow tens of thousands of additional votes to be counted — and will likely draw criticism from Republicans… Continue reading
“Barr’s undermining of the election is downright dangerous”
I have written this oped for CNN. It begins:
By repeating false and misleading statements about the potential for voter fraud and post-election violence, Attorney General William Barr has stepped out of his role as the nation’s chief law enforcement… Continue reading
Breaking: Pennsylvania Supreme Court, on 5-2 Vote, Holds Green Party Won’t Be on November Ballot Because of Deficiencies in Nomination Papers
You can find the majority opinion here. (I do not yet have the concurring/dissenting opinion).
Update:
Concurring-and-Dissenting-Opinion1Download
“How a Pennsylvania law could delay presidential election results for days or even weeks”
Jon Ward:
If Pennsylvania has a repeat performance of its primary, America is in trouble.Election results in Pennsylvania’s June 2 primary took weeks to be announced. And because it is such a crucial swing state, a similar delay in… Continue reading
Former DNI Dan Coats in NYT Oped Calls for High Level Election Commission to Weigh In on Election Issues
Coats:
The most important part of an effective response is to finally, at long last, forge a genuinely bipartisan effort to save our democracy, rejecting the vicious partisanship that has disabled and destabilized government for too long. If we cannot… Continue reading