NYT:

President Trump’s sustained assault on his own party in Georgia, and his repeated claims of election fraud in the state, have intensified worries among Republicans that he could be hurting their ability to win two crucial Senate runoff races next month.

The president has continued to claim without evidence that his loss in the new battleground state was fraudulent, directing his ire in particular at Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both conservative Republicans, whom he has accused of not doing enough to help him overturn the result.

Over the weekend, he escalated his attacks on Mr. Kemp, saying he was “ashamed” to have endorsed him in 2018, and on Monday he called Mr. Kemp “hapless” as he urged him to “overrule his obstinate Republican Secretary of state.’’

Mr. Trump’s broadsides have quietly rattled some Republicans in the state, who fear that concerns about the fairness of the presidential election could depress turnout for the Senate races, which will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the chamber.

WaPo:

Wisconsin and Arizona on Monday became the last two of six states where President Trump has contested his defeat to finalize their vote counts, dealing a fresh blow to his quest to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory as a chorus of Republicans and Democrats offered support for the election’s integrity.

Trump and his allies vowed to continue pressing legal claims challenging the election results in several states, but such efforts have met with resounding failures in the courts across the country. Monday’s certifications brought to a close a key period in which Trump and his advisers had said they would be able to derail Biden’s win.

Political Wire:

Cook Political Report: “There have only been three federal elections in the last 100 years decided by fewer than 20 votes… But in an insult to injury for House Democrats, who have already lost a dozen incumbents to the GOP, Democrats are currently trailing by a scant six votes in Iowa’s 2nd CD and 12 votes in New York’s 22nd CD as both races head for lengthy legal fights.”

There’s an excellent new biography out of James A. Baker III, by Peter Baker (no relation) and Susan Glasser. Some call Baker the most important non-elected figure in Washington in the last half of the 20th Century. He ran five presidential campaigns, was WH Chief of Staff to two Presidents, and was Secretary of State and of Treasury.

I have a new essay out on the chapter concerning Baker’s masterminding of the 2000 election litigation over Florida, which ended with George W. Bush becoming President. To me, at least, the book has three major new revelations about the 2000 election litigation. An excerpt:

The book’s first revelation comes immediately: 45 minutes after being briefed on the situation that morning of Nov. 8, when Bush’s lead in Florida stood at 1,784 votes out of nearly 3 million cast – and before even a machine recount had taken place that would cut that lead by two-thirds – Baker told others: “We’re heading to the Supreme Court.”

When they expressed surprise, Baker followed up by saying: “It’s the only way this can end.”

Baker’s acumen here was stunning. At this stage, and even later in the saga, a large majority even of election law and Supreme Court experts were highly skeptical that the court would get involved at all.

The widely shared view was that the process of recounts would be resolved completely under Florida law and through Florida’s administrative processes and courts. That’s how election challenges, even in federal elections, had always been handled. Baker’s first choice to lead the litigation effort, former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, reflected this common view.

Danforth told Baker, “I just can’t conceive that a federal court’s going to take jurisdiction over a matter relating to state election law … I just can’t believe that.”..

The second revelation in the book is highly disturbing, if accurate.

Litigating the outcome of the 2000 election began with the Gore campaign filing requests under Florida law for manual recounts in four counties. Two weeks after Election Day, the litigation made its first appearance before the Florida Supreme Court. Just before the argument was about to begin, Baker was reportedly handed a note from an intermediary who somehow knew that the Florida justices had already decided among themselves that they were going to rule against Bush and had written a draft opinion to that effect.

Once they got this note, Bush’s lawyer for the argument, Michael Carvin, asserts they decided “to lose and lose big,” in order to bait the Florida Supreme Court into a broad decision that would make U.S. Supreme Court intervention more likely.

Whether Carvin’s self-serving strategic claim is accurate or not, that’s exactly what happened. The Florida Supreme Court approved a manual recount and ordered the deadline for certifying the outcome extended by 12 days. The U.S. Supreme Court – to the surprise of many – agreed to hear the case. …

The third revelation involves an issue that has swirled around the current election: the possible role of state legislatures in directly appointing presidential electors, rather than permitting the will of the voters to determine who has won the presidential election – and hence the electors – in that state.

Federal law permits a state legislature to appoint electors if the election has “failed” in that state – a term whose meaning the law does not clarify. …

The closest the U.S. has ever come to that happening is Florida in 2000. After the Florida Supreme Court decision that the Bush campaign lost, Baker asserted to the press that the Florida court had changed the rules after the election, by approving a manual recount and extending the deadline for certifying the election by 12 days.

Then Baker threatened: “So one should not now be surprised if the Florida legislature seeks to affirm the original rules.”

And indeed, in early December, the Florida legislature announced it would convene a special session to discuss appointing Florida’s electors itself.

That much is a matter of public record. But what the new biography reveals is that, while Baker wanted this to be seen as a threat, he did not want Florida’s legislature to go through with it….

Some Democrats will never forgive Baker, nor the Supreme Court, for their roles in ending the recount before all the ballots were counted – though a consortium of major newspapers later determined that if the recount had been completed, Bush would have won under 21 of 24 possible standards for what constituted a valid vote.

But Democrats involved in the litigation battles knew the other side had the more effective leader. Indeed, the new Baker biography claims that when Baker was put in charge of the Florida contest, his “reputation was so formidable that Democrats knew they would lose the moment they heard of his selection.”

I can confidently say that thought did not cross the mind of any Democrat when Rudy Giuliani was put in charge this time around.

VoteBeat emerged in this election as an important source of information about election administration and controversies at the state and local level. I’m really glad to see the project continuing.

You can sign up here to get weekly updates on its reporting.

Bright Line Watch:

The 2020 election and its aftermath presented severe challenges to U.S. democracy. The election was conducted during a pandemic that required fundamental changes in how Americans cast and counted ballots. The incumbent president refused to commit in advance to a peaceful transition of power if he lost, and continues to refuse to recognize that defeat as legitimate (though he has finally relented to letting the transition begin and signaled that he would accept an Electoral College defeat). During this process, many GOP leaders have endorsed the president’s baseless claims of electoral fraud, even publicly suggesting that state legislatures could override the popular vote in awarding electors. Yet the election ultimately succeeded in ways few dared hope. Most notably, polling places and mail balloting operated effectively and mostly uneventfully under unprecedented conditions. And despite a barrage of accusations and litigation, no evidence has surfaced of systematic malfeasance or mismanagement. 

To assess the importance and consequences of these events, Bright Line Watch fielded parallel surveys of political science experts and of a representative sample of Americans to assess the importance and magnitudes of these events. In this post-election survey, which was fielded from November 12–25, we asked our public sample questions about the legitimacy of the election results, their confidence that votes were cast and counted fairly, their beliefs about voter fraud, and their willingness to condone political violence. We asked our experts to rate the likelihood of 23 scenarios related to the November election and the transition to a new administration that could produce political crises, and to evaluate a number of recent events related to the election. As in previous surveys, we asked both groups to assess the quality of U.S. democracy overall and to rate performance on 30 distinct democratic principles. 

We report a number of key findings below from both the public and the experts we surveyed:

Public

• Compared to before the election, confidence in the election process and the legitimacy of the outcome became much more polarized between supporters and opponents of President Trump.
• Most notably, confidence in the national vote count plummeted among Trump supporters, declining from 56% before the election to 28% afterward.
• Similarly, belief polarization about voter fraud grew still wider — in particular, even larger majorities of Trump supporters now believe that fraud is rampant compared to before the election.
• More encouragingly, willingness to condone political violence declined slightly after the election.

Experts

• Expert forecasts in October correctly identified the six nightmare scenarios that did actually transpire as among the eight that they forecast as most likely, but generally overestimated the probability of outcomes seen as somewhat or not very likely (none of which actually took place).
• Experts believe it is highly likely that President Trump will continue to refuse to recognize Biden’s presidency and to obstruct the transition, and that the President will take actions to protect himself and those around him from legal exposure after leaving office. They regard problems with the Electoral College and the formal recognition of Biden’s presidency as unlikely.
• Large majorities of experts regard Trump’s attacks on U.S. elections and the press as serious or grave threats to American democracy. By contrast, experts do not consider mail balloting to pose a threat to democracy and are divided over Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court appointment.

We present our results in three parts. First, we review the public’s perception of various aspects of the November election. We then describe experts’ assessments of the election and events in its immediate wake. Finally, we step back to gauge how both the public and the experts rate the performance of American democracy both overall and across thirty core democratic principles.