Monthly Archives: September 2021

“Texas’s New Law Is The Climax Of A Record-Shattering Year For Voting Restrictions”

The Voting Wars

538:

The Texas law is likely the culmination of the large-scale Republican push to restrict voting access this spring and summer — the policy byproduct of former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. At this point in the year, most state legislatures are now out of session, so we are close to being able to close the book on our tracking of these restrictions for 2021. Based on data from the Brennan Center for Justice and the Voting Rights Lab as well as our own research, we now count 52 new voting restrictions that have been enacted this year in 21 different states. And 41 of the 52 were sponsored primarily or entirely by Republicans.

In total, state legislators proposed a whopping 581 voting-restriction bills this year — 89 percent of them sponsored by Republicans. Most (402) were rejected or failed to pass before a key deadline, but 42 of those passed at least one state-legislative chamber before dying, and another eight would have become law had they not been vetoed by their state’s (usually Democratic) governor.1 And technically, 127 voting-restriction bills are still alive, including 20 that have passed at least one chamber. However, these bills are mostly either blocked by Democratic governors or languishing in committee (putting them still quite far away from passage). So the number of voting restrictions enacted here in 2021 likely won’t rise very far, if at all, beyond 52.

Even if nothing else passes, though, that is still a staggering number by historical standards. The Brennan Center for Justice has tracked the number of new voting restrictions enacted every year since 2011, and no year has even come close to 2021: The previous high was the 19 voting restrictions enacted in 2011,2 the year after Republicans took full control of several state governments in the 2010 election. In recent years, the number of new restrictions has typically been in the single digits. (For example, 2020 saw only seven new voting restrictions become law.)

The sheer number of bills — both enacted and proposed — really emphasizes what a big priority tightening election laws has become for the GOP since the 2020 election. But it’s also important to remember that a single law can contain numerous far-reaching voting restrictions. And as such, Texas’s Senate Bill 1 is probably the most comprehensive voting-restriction law passed since Florida’s SB 90. 

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“Election fraud conspiracies run rampant. Will they help or hurt push to recall Newsom?”

fraudulent fraud squad

LAT:

Some recall campaign leaders fear that mistrust could backfire on their cause by discouraging conservatives from casting ballots. The short timeline of the special election, wildfires and the pandemic have left some counties with fewer options for in-person polling places, making it imperative for the movement to recall Newsom to turn out its voters by any means possible. But fraud rumors are especially prevalent around mail-in ballots.

“It really hurts us if people go out and say, ‘fraud, fraud, fraud,’ because people won’t vote,” said Anne Hyde Dunsmore, campaign manager for Rescue California, the main pro-recall group….

n recent weeks, videos have surfaced purporting to show hundreds of ballots being stolen from mailboxes. Facebook forums are packed with worried posts about holes in ballot envelopes that fraudsters could use to find pro-recall votes (but which actually serve a dual purpose of allowing blind people to know where the signature line is and giving election workers a way to ensure the envelope is empty before discarding it).

Some of those conspiracies have targeted local officials.

In Sacramento County, the registrar of voters, Courtney Bailey-Kanelos, was accused of having two employees of election equipment maker Dominion Voting Systems working for her. The man who made the claim had toured her offices and made the allegation while speaking at a conference sponsored by “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell, a national leader in vote fraud conspiracies.

Since then, Bailey-Kanelos has been deluged with angry calls, emails and Public Records Act requests about any communication with Dominion, including one tweet claiming that if Newsom wins, it will be because of Dominion fraud in her office, she said. The onslaught prompted her to put out a news release denying it.

“The frustrating part is we put out the release, we say this isn’t true, and it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Even though it’s not true, the message doesn’t get across.”

Now, she has election observers watching her office process mail-in ballots nearly every day. They have challenged the signatures on about 30 to 40 ballots so far. It is a manageable number and she welcomes the scrutiny, she said, but “there is a fine line between observers and disrupting the process.”

Recall organizers are deploying hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers to examine mail-in ballots and work at the polls, Dunsmore said. Their observations are being collected by the state GOP and organizations including the Election Integrity Project California, founded by a tea party conservative, which has used such reports in the past to sue state and local election officials….

Thomas W. Hiltachk, a longtime election lawyer whose firm represents the California Republican Party, said paranoia about election fraud may stem from common errors by election officials, such as sending ballots to incorrect addresses. Such mistakes can be construed by some as evidence of fraud.

“Does that mean there is a massive conspiracy to win the election?” he asked. “No. It is election incompetence. When you have incompetence, it leads people to think that something is amiss.”…

Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at UC San Diego, said the ongoing push by some conservatives to claim election fraud before the results are even known is “the most damaging trend we’ve seen in our democracy.”

He said that a close vote tally, or a “nightmare scenario” of late-counted ballots flipping the win toward Newsom, could turn dangerous.

“The miracle of American politics is that we have managed to keep these fights primarily in rallies, elections and debates on the floor,” he said. “The worry is always that they will move into violence.”

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“Hundreds of law enforcement officials were prepped early for potential Jan. 6 violence”

chicanery, election subversion risk

Politico:

Just two days before armed rioters stormed and ransacked the Capitol, about 300 law enforcement officials got on a conference call to talk about the possibility that Donald Trump’s supporters would turn violent on Jan. 6. They specifically discussed the possibility that the day’s gatherings would turn into a mass-casualty event, and they made plans on how to communicate with each other if that happened.

The officials were so prepared for chaos that they even had a hashtag to share information on the FBI’s private communication service: #CERTUNREST2021.

These previously unreported details come from a person familiar with the call and an email summarizing it obtained by the transparency group Property of the People. The Wall Street Journal first reported that the call occurred.

“Reporting indicates a significant number of individual [sic] plan to or are advocating for others to travel to Washington, DC to engage in civil unrest and violence,” reads the summary of the call, which included officials from so-called fusion centers — regional intelligence hubs set up after 9/11 to track major domestic threats.

The extent of the FBI’s awareness that the rally by Trump backers could turn violent raises fresh questions about why national security and law enforcement officials didn’t do more to protect the Capitol on that volatile day

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“Introducing Future Voter Scorecards: OC Edition”

voting

Civics Center:

One of the biggest obstacles to improving youth voter registration is the lack of data. Most statistics about youth voting lump everyone together from ages 18-24 or, even worse, ages 18-29. Most reports about increases or decreases in youth voting focus on the country as a whole, or individual states or counties, but not school districts. Many reports focus on turnout without analyzing whether young people are registered to vote in the first place.  

Without information that compares individual school districts’ registration rates for the youngest potential voters, we can’t figure out what works best at the school district level to get students ready to participate in our democracy. We can’t focus our attention on the areas that need the most help. Unfortunately, no one publishes such information.  

Until now.  

The Civics Center is introducing Future Voter Scorecards, which measure the percentage of registered voters among new 18-year-olds by school district. 

We are starting in Orange County, California, where approximately 35,000 young people will have turned 18 between last November’s election day and September 14 of this year, the final date to vote in California’s gubernatorial recall election. This scorecard focuses on youth who turned 18 within the six months following the 2020 general election.

Our results as of May 2021 show that Orange County school districts need to work much harder if they want to comply with state law requiring them to educate students about voter registration and voting and to encourage young people to be full participants in our democracy. In every district, the registration rate for these new 18-year-olds is under 45%. In contrast, 82% of the citizen voting age population and 73% of the total voting age population in Orange County are registered to vote….

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“Trump Insiders Are Quietly Paying Teen Memers For Posts”

campaign finance, campaigns

HuffPost:

In the fever swamps of Instagram, a network of right-wing meme accounts run by teenage boys and young men has erupted into an advertising powerhouse reaching millions. These memers — who regularly post far-right conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine propaganda and other incendiary clickbait — first caught the attention of obscure brands selling cheap MAGA merch, who started paying themto display ads to their rapidly growing conservative audiences. The money wasn’t great, as a few memers told HuffPost last summer, but it still felt like a big deal to watch their Instagram pages blossom into mini businesses.

Little did they know, members of Donald Trump’s inner circle would soon come knocking.

Since the 2020 election, these meme moguls have quietly collected payments to run ads for the Trump campaign’s “Election Defense Fund”; former senior Trump aide Jason Miller’s new social media network, GETTR; Trump confidant Mike Lindell’s bedding company, MyPillow; and, as recently as a few weeks ago, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In a few cases, the memers have included high-schoolers as young as 14. Some of these discreet ad deals were brokered directly between teens and former members of the Trump White House, communications obtained by HuffPost reveal.

Most of the ads come in the form of memes with captions urging people to click customized links inserted into the memers’ Instagram bios, which lead to the promoted parties’ websites. The memers typically earn a small “conversion” fee for each person who uses their link, doled out by third-party marketing agencies working with big-name clients. Given the massive reach of several of these pages, often boosted by Instagram’s powerful recommendation algorithms, this can quickly add up. For the recent GETTR ad campaign, memers earned $0.85 per conversion with a cap of 25,000 conversions — or $21,250….

he services they provide are highly valuable: They’ve fostered relationships with huge niche communities and can launch hushed influence campaigns that are free from the kind of oversight and transparency mandates enforced through regulated advertising channels. This could open the door to dark-money campaigns and targeted, opaque disinformation operations reminiscent of when the Internet Research Agency, Russia’s Kremlin-linked troll farm, attempted to influence U.S. voters from the shadows via meme warfare in 2016.

Almost none of the dozens of meme ads that HuffPost has observed have been labeled as paid endorsements — a form of deceptive advertising known as “stealth shilling.” In certain cases, memers’ failure to disclose their compensation likely constitutes a violation of federal law for which they, the promoted parties and any intermediaries could be held liable. 

But the evidence doesn’t exist for long: Unlike an official ad placed through Instagram’s business platform, which would be stored in an online database and subject to public scrutiny, the memers tend to delete sponsored posts from their pages after just 24 to 72 hours. This is especially problematic when it comes to ads of a political nature, as it allows advertisers to target voters with virtually untraceable messaging.

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Michael McDonald: “Powering the Public to Draw and Evaluate Redistricting Plans”

redistricting

The following is a guest post from Michael McDonald about his important project:

With the release of the Census Bureau’s redistricting data, redistricting is now upon us.

A number of organizations have been working on data and technology in anticipation of this moment, and we’re highlighting some of their efforts on Redistrict2020.org. Here, you can find selected redistricting plans with links to the canonical data source on official state websites and with links to these plans as they exist on PlanScore, DistrictBuilder, and Dave’s Redistricting App. We also provide links to summary redistricting activity webpages for each state on All About Redistricting and 538.

These efforts are the culmination of a quiet revolution in public access to redistricting data, mapping tools, and evaluation metrics, as my colleague Micah Altman and I describe in our Public Mapping Project book (electronic version is free). The general public now has access to the same data and tools that were previously available only to those who could bear steep resource and skill costs, such as state governments, political parties, and prominent good government and voting rights organizations. In one example of how public participation changes the game, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned a state legislative redistricting plans based, in part, by maps drawn by a music teacher using DRA.

While software engineers have designed these mapping and evaluation websites, the Voting and Election Science Team that I lead has been working across the country to collect and disseminate accurate precinct boundaries enhanced with election results for statewide offices. Without election data, it would be impossible to evaluate the political consequences of redistricting plans. As a by-product, VEST sometimes works with local election officials to produce precinct maps where previously none or highly inaccurate boundaries existed. Already, these data appear in a racial bloc voting analysis for Virginia’s Redistricting Commission and an analysis of the effect of the Census Bureau’s disclosure avoidance system on racial bloc voting estimates. A number of media organizations have used VEST data in their election coverage, including the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Nevada Independent, and KSN Television Wichita Kansas. 

An important reason we created Redistrict2020 is that we’ve done the work of loading redistricting plans and providing static links to these plans as they exist on PlanScore, DistrictBuilder, and DRA. While anyone can load a redistricting plan provided in a standard format into these sites, it takes some time and familiarity with data formats. It also burns a little computational time on these sites to load a plan into them. Providing static links saves a person who wishes to start mapping or link a news article or blog post to a plan as it exists on these sites some time and effort and will save these organizations a little money on computing costs.

To put a finer point on this, we’ve already encountered states that are not producing redistricting plans in an easily accessible manner that facilitates evaluation by these sites. In the past, my coauthors and I argue details such as mundane data formatting are strategies politicians use to reduce redistricting transparency and public participation. So far, we have successfully converted these plans into a standard format and are providing the resulting files on Redistrict2020 so that interested persons can import plans into their personal software. We encourage all legislatures and commissions to help us and the public by releasing plans in a format that lists all census blocks and their associated districts. This ensures that we have the most accurate assignments of census blocks to districts.

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Bauer and Ginsberg: “Election officials need our legal help against repressive laws and personal threats”

chicanery, election administration, election subversion risk

WaPo oped:

Election officials are coming under unprecedented attack for doing their jobs. Some states are attempting to criminalize the exercise of these officials’ trained professional judgments; some officials have been the target of threats to themselves and their families. Any American — whether Republican, Democrat or independent — must know that systematic efforts to undermine the ability of those overseeing the counting and casting of ballots on an independent, nonpartisan basis are destructive to our democracy.

The two of us have been partisan opponents in the past, representing opposing political parties to the best of our abilities. But at this moment in time, we share a grave concern about attacks on those public servants who successfully oversaw what was arguably the most secure and transparent election in our country’s history, with record turnout, during a global pandemic. If such attacks go unaddressed, our system of self-governance will suffer long-term damage.

So, in partnership with the nonprofit and nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, we are launching the Election Official Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), which will connect licensed, qualified, pro bono attorneys with election administrators who need advice or assistance. State and local election workers anywhere in the country can go to EOLDN.org, or call the toll-free number (877) 313-5210, at any time, 24/7, to request to be connected with a lawyer who can help them, at no cost.

This service will be available regardless of the officials’ political affiliation or where they work — that is, whether they are in a blue or red state or county. We already have lawyers committed to provide this volunteer support, and we are recruiting more. As co-chairs, we will be supported by a bipartisan advisory board of experienced state and local election officials of both parties, from across the nation. The response from these officials has been extraordinary and gratifying.

When we co-chaired the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2013-2014, we saw how essential it is for election officials to have the space, resources and respect to perform their critical jobs. We both came away extremely impressed with their dedication and performance.

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“Special Report: Terrorized U.S. election workers get little help from law enforcement”

election administration, election subversion risk

Reuters:

The case illustrates the glaring gaps in the protection that U.S. law enforcement provides the administrators of American democracy amid a sustained campaign of intimidation against election officials and staff. The unprecedented torrent of terroristic threats began in the weeks before the November election, as Trump was predicting widespread voter fraud, and continues today as the former president carries on with false claims that he was cheated out of victory.

In an investigation that identified hundreds of incidents of intimidation and harassment of election workers and officials nationwide, Reuters found only a handful of arrests.

Local police agencies said in interviews that they have struggled to identify suspects who conceal their identities and to determine which threats are credible enough to prosecute. The U.S. Justice Department has acknowledged that law enforcement has not responded well to the surge in threats to election officials.Report ad

“The response has been inadequate,” John Keller, a senior attorney in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, told a meeting of secretaries of state in Iowa on Aug. 14. Keller heads a task force created in July to investigate threats of violence to election workers and to coordinate with local and state authorities that receive most initial reports of intimidation.

After this story was published, Justice Department spokesman Joshua Stueve issued a statement to Reuters about the wave of threats. “The Justice Department is committed to aggressively addressing threats of violence directed toward state and local election workers and will work tirelessly with our federal, state, and local partners to strengthen our collective efforts to combat this recent and entirely unacceptable phenomenon,” Stueve wrote.

The Reuters investigation revealed a breakdown in coordination and accountability among various levels of law enforcement. Some election officials fumed that police investigators or federal agents didn’t appear to take the threats seriously and that it was unclear which agency, if any, was investigating. Some said they never heard from investigators again after reporting threats of violence. When pressed about the status of some cases, several police officials said they had no involvement and pointed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Federal officials, by contrast, bemoaned a lack of information-sharing by local authorities.

Through public records and interviews, Reuters documented 102 threats of death or violence received by more than 40 election officials, workers and their relatives in eight of the most contested battleground states in the 2020 presidential contest. Each was explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the typical legal threshold for prosecution.

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“Donald Trump backs Michigan election critic for secretary of state”

election subversion risk, fraudulent fraud squad

Detroit News:

Former President Donald Trump is supporting Republican Kristina Karamo, an outspoken critic of the 2020 election, to be Michigan’s next secretary of state, a development that will likely bolster her campaign.

Trump announced his endorsement of Karamo to be Michigan’s top election official on Tuesday, saying the Oak Park educator is “strong on crime, including the massive crime of election fraud.” Karamo traveled to Arizona in June to view that state’s audit of the 2020 vote and has said there’s “overwhelming evidence” that gives residents “reasonable concerns” about the result in Michigan.

“Kristina will fight for you like no other, and of equal importance, she will fight for justice,” Trump said in a statement. “Good luck Kristina, and while you’re at it, check out the fake election results that took place in the city of Detroit.”

Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points in 2020 in Michigan. Dozens of audits by election officials, a series of court rulings and an investigation by the GOP-controlled state Senate have upheld the result.

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“‘Keep your head on a swivel’: FBI analyst circulated a prescient warning of Jan. 6 violence”

chicanery, election subversion risk

Politico:

An FBI intelligence analyst warned days after the 2020 election that Stop the Steal rallies — one of which metastasized into the ransacking of the Capitol — could turn violent.

The emailed warning from an analyst at the FBI’s school for bomb technicians circulated through the Bureau and to some of its state and local partners on Nov. 9, 2020, just days after the major TV networks called the election for now-President Joe Biden. Its subject line was simple: “Far-Right Chatter re Election Results.”

“As Joe Biden is declared the victor in the 2020 Presidential Campaign, chatter from the far-right indicates the belief the election was stolen from President Trump,” the FBI analyst wrote, then urging recipients to “keep your head on a swivel.”

The FBI analyst’s message, which has not been previously published and was obtained by the watchdog group Property of the People, indicates that federal law enforcement officials saw ample signs before Jan. 6 that right-wing efforts to overturn the election results could result in violence. FBI Director Christopher Wray has testified before Congress that the Bureau tracked the threat from domestic extremists in the months before the attack on the Capitol, and the email gives new detail on what the FBI was watching. When the email went out, prominent officials and leaders in the conservative movement were promoting the #StopTheSteal hashtag.

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“Gingles Unraveled: Hispanic Voting Cohesion in South Florida”

Voting Rights Act

Nicholas Warren has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, North Carolina Civil Rights Law Review). Here is the abstract:

The Voting Rights Act protects the ability of racial and language minority groups to elect candidates of choice by prohibiting states and localities from diluting those groups’ votes when drawing electoral districts. The Fair Districts provisions of the Florida Constitution include a similar ban on vote dilution, plus further protections against diminishing (retrogressing) existing minority voting strength. A key element of proving vote dilution or retrogression is that the minority group votes cohesively. Historically, minority voting cohesion has often been uncontested or easily proven in VRA suits. But in South Florida, Hispanic citizens are voting less cohesively than they used to.

This Article investigates the legal issues that arise when the assumption of cohesion unravels. First, this Article investigates to what extent the Hispanic community in South Florida is cohesive. It then proposes several alternative approaches to the vote dilution and retrogression framework to better align doctrine with the real-world conditions of voters and communities.

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“Gov. Greg Abbott signs Texas voting bill into law, overcoming Democratic quorum breaks”

The Voting Wars

Texas Tribune:

Though delayed by Democratic quorum breaks, Texas has officially joined the slate of Republican states that have enacted new voting restrictions following the 2020 election.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed into law Senate Bill 1, sweeping legislation that further tightens state election laws and constrains local control of elections by limiting counties’ ability to expand voting options. The governor’s signature ends months of legislative clashes and standoffs during which Democrats — propelled by concerns that the legislation raises new barriers for marginalized voters — forced Republicans into two extra legislative sessions.

SB 1 is set to take effect three months after the special legislative session, in time for the 2022 primary elections. But it could still be caught up in the federal courts. Abbott’s signature was both preceded and followed by a flurry of legal challenges that generally argue that the law will disproportionately harm voters of color and voters with disabilities.

On top of two federal lawsuits filed last week, three new lawsuits, including one in state district court, were filed Tuesday shortly after it became law.

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“Florida GOP official: Third-party candidates help Republicans win ‘many’ elections”

ballot access, chicanery, third parties

Washington Examiner:

Internal jostling for leadership of Florida’s Republican Party has shaken loose a revelation bolstering allegations the GOP regularly runs third-party candidates funded by “dark money” shadow groups to win elections.

In an email sent Tuesday to all Florida GOP committee members, former state representative and current Lee County Property Appraiser Matt Caldwell ripped the party’s leadership for failing to support incumbents and for placing elected state officials – including current chairperson Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota – in charge.

Caldwell, defeated by Democrat Nikki Fried in the 2018 state agriculture commissioner election by 6,753 votes, blamed his loss on the state party’s neglect.

“The most glaring difference in the loss for Ag. Commissioner was the lack of any 3rd party candidate” in his race against Fried as, he implied, the state party did for candidates in four other statewide races, including Gov. Ron DeSantis’ half-percent victory over Democrat Andrew Gillum.

In fact, he added, “Many of our victories can be attributed to 3rd Party candidates dividing the vote.”

While recruiting third-party or no party affiliation (NPA) candidates is not new and, under Florida’s campaign financing rules, not necessarily illegal, the Miami-Dade State Attorney Office is investigating at least one NPA candidate’s 2020 campaign and Democrats are demanding lawmakers reassess state campaign regulations.

The most notable example comes from Miami-Dade County’s Senate District 37 race, where NPA candidate Alex Rodriguez received 6,300 votes out of 215,000 ballots cast in an election won by 32 votes by Sen. Ileana Garcia, who unseated incumbent Democrat José Javier Rodríguez.

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