Pam Fessler for NPR:
With so many cases still up in the air, legal experts say it’s difficult to tell whether Democrats or Republicans are coming out ahead. Democrats have won numerous victories — including fending off a Republican effort to prevent Nevada from automatically sending out ballots to all registered voters.
But Democrats have also had some of their earlier wins overturned. The South Carolina witness requirement is the most recent example. Republicans have been successful in a number of cases, including one to require felons in Florida to pay off all fees and penalties before they can vote.
“I would say Democrats and voting rights group had some important victories, but on those cases that made it up the food chain, they have tended to do not as well,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.
Hasen thinks such victories could be even rarer in the weeks ahead because courts are reluctant to make changes in voting rules too close to an election. “Any kind of last-minute changes that expand voting rights coming now are going to have a really tough road as they go up the appellate process,” he said.
How such cases are decided could prove crucial after the election, when potential legal challenges to the outcome might end up before the Supreme Court. President Trump has already said that he thinks that will happen.
Alabama Secretary of State Merrill this week also released a letter, signed by a number of Republican secretaries of state, that calls for swift Senate confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, to ensure that all the seats on the high court are filled by Election Day.
“In the case an election issue is challenged in court, America cannot afford a tie vote,” they wrote Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School is more optimistic such an outcome can be avoided. The former Justice Department official thinks one benefit of all the current litigation is that it reduces the chance of a legal challenge after Election Day revolving around such questions as whether ballots received after Election Day can be counted.
“The fact that the courts have weighed in on that issue now means it’s far less likely to want to weigh in on that issue after Election Day. And that’s true for a lot of the different claims that have been pressed so far about which ballots are legitimate and which aren’t,” he said.
The Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked a conservative group’s challenge to a new Nevada law that allows for mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuit was filed by the Election Integrity Project of Nevada, backed by former state lawmaker and failed U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle. It argued that Assembly Bill 4 — the law passed during a special session in August that requires mail-in ballots be sent to active registered voters across the state as part of the state’s plan to let people vote safely during the pandemic — violates the state constitution because it allows for “standardless counting procedures” and lacks safeguards against voter fraud….
In their unanimous ruling issued Wednesday, the justices said that the lower court was not wrong in denying the group’s ask for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the Nevada secretary of state from implementing the legislation. They agreed with the lower court that the group did not present substantial evidence that the parts of the law that were challenged “are not rationally related to the State’s interest in ensuring that all active registered voters have an opportunity to exercise their right to vote in a safe and secure manner during a pandemic.”
The justices also disagreed with the argument from Angle’s group that mail-in ballots would lead to more voter fraud, an argument that Republicans have tried and failed to make in court several times this election cycle, including ahead of the primary election.
The group, the justices said, “presented no concrete evidence that such events will occur or that the Secretary of State’s maintenance of the voter rolls exacerbated any such problem.”
You can read the unpublished order here.
David Daley for The Atlantic:
In 2019, writing the decision for Common Cause v. Rucho, Chief Justice John Roberts closed off the federal courts as an avenue for addressing partisan gerrymandering. But, Roberts insisted, the Supreme Court’s decision did not condone these excesses. Rather, another path for addressing structural electoral reform existed. Noting the success of several citizen-driven state-constitutional amendments passed by ballot in Colorado, Michigan, and Missouri the previous November, Roberts said that citizens still had the tools to make change.
Just over a year later, however, that hasn’t proved to be the case.
Voters in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Idaho took Roberts up on his suggestion to drive reform via citizen-led initiative or by amending their state constitution. In Arkansas, with two different amendments, citizens worked to establish an independent redistricting commission and also open primaries and institute ranked-choice voting. In North Dakota, they looked to strengthen overseas-military voting and election audits, open primaries to all voters, and enact instant runoffs. Idaho voters, meanwhile, sought to expand funding for public education. One by one, these initiatives have been knocked off the ballots this summer by state and federal courts, and for the most tendentious and technical reasons.
In light of this news, this is a relief from Politico:
The effort to discredit the intelligence community’s findings that Russia hacked Democrats to harm Clinton’s candidacy comes almost exactly four years to the day after the U.S. intelligence community first assessed that the Russian government had mounted a sweeping effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with the specific goal of helping Trump win.
It also comes in the middle of an ongoing investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was tasked by the Justice Department with probing the intelligence community’s findings. Durham is expected to refrain from releasing any conclusions before Election Day to avoid affecting the race, but the recent declassifications by both Ratcliffe and Attorney General William Barr appear to be an effort to fill that void. Trump has taken full advantage of it, weaponizing the releases to boost his reelection campaign.
The new round of declassifications also serves a larger and more vindictive purpose for the president: It is the latest salvo in a yearslong effort to cast doubt on U.S. intelligence agencies and senior Obama administration officials, who the president alleges were unfairly and illegally targeting him and his campaign. Trump’s crusade has extended to questioning assessments by his own administration that Russia is actively backing him in the 2020 election; he went so far as to fire a top intelligence official who, earlier this year, allowed a subordinate to brief Congress about Russia’s interference in the ongoing presidential race.
Over the past few weeks, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his lieutenants have watched the presidential race with an increasing sense of alarm.
Executives have held meetings to discuss President Trump’s evasive comments about whether he would accept a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election. They watched Mr. Trump tell the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, to “stand back and stand by.” And they have had conversations with civil rights groups, who have privately told them that the company needs to do more because Election Day could erupt into chaos, Facebook employees said.
That has resulted in new actions. On Wednesday, Facebook said it would take more preventive measures to keep political candidates from using it to manipulate the election’s outcome and its aftermath. The company now plans to prohibit all political and issue-based advertising after the polls close on Nov. 3 for an undetermined length of time. And it said it would place notifications at the top of the News Feed notifying people that no winner had been decided until a victor was declared by news outlets.
“This is shaping up to be a very unique election,” Guy Rosen, vice president for integrity at Facebook, said in a call with reporters on Wednesday.
Facebook is doing more to safeguard its platform after introducing measures to reduce election misinformation and interference on its site just last month. At the time, Facebook said it planned to ban new political ads for a contained period — the week before Election Day — and would act swiftly against posts that tried to dissuade people from voting. Mr. Zuckerberg also said Facebook would not make any other changes until there was an official election result.
But the additional moves underscore the sense of emergency about the election, as the level of contentiousness has risen between Mr. Trump and his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr. On Tuesday, to help blunt further political turmoil, Facebook also said it would remove any group, page or Instagram account that openly identified with QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy movement.
For decades, federal prosecutors have been told not to mount election fraud investigations in the final months before an election for fear they could depress voter turnout or erode confidence in the results. Now, the Justice Department has lifted that prohibition weeks before the presidential election.
The move comes as President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr have promoted a false narrative that voter fraud is rampant, potentially undermining Americans’ faith in the election.
A Justice Department lawyer in Washington said in a memo to prosecutors on Friday that they could investigate suspicions of election fraud before votes are tabulated. That reversed a decades-long policy that largely forbade aggressively conducting such inquiries during campaigns to keep their existence from becoming public and possibly “chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities” or “interjecting the investigation itself as an issue” for voters.
The memo creates “an exception to the general non-interference with elections policy” for suspicions of election fraud, particularly misconduct by federal government workers, including postal workers or military employees; both groups transport mail-in ballots. The exception allows investigators to take overt investigative steps, like questioning witnesses, that were previously off limits in such inquiries until after election results were certified.
The move also allows prosecutors to make more of a spectacle of election fraud in the weeks before the vote on Nov. 3. The U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Craig Carpenito, promoted an arrest on Wednesday of a postal worker suspected of discarding mail, including dozens of ballots, which were found and put back in the mail.
The New York Times reviewed portions of the memo. ProPublica earlier reported details of it on Wednesday.
For many Native Americans living on tribal reservations, a home address is not a standard number and street name, like 735 Bleeker Street. Instead, it’s a series of instructions.
“They’ll say something like, I live off highway 86 by milepost 125 and a half,” said Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation and a Democratic candidate for Pima County recorder in Arizona.
These “nontraditional addresses” complicate things for indigenous voters during a time when the majority of states have moved to voting by mail to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. A record number of Americans are expected to vote by mail in the November election. States like Nevada, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota, which all include large stretches of tribal land, held their primary elections almost entirely by mail.
While these states will offer in-person voting options in November, the prioritization of mailed ballots creates hurdles for indigenous people — about 4.7 million of whom are of voting age — who already faced voting obstacles prior to the pandemic.
Most residents on reservations receive mail at P.O. Boxes instead of their homes. But the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation — which at 4,460 square miles is about the size of Connecticut — has a single post office. That’s not unique to this one reservation. A 2020 report by Native American Rights Fund determined that some members of the Navajo Nation must travel 140 miles roundtrip for postal services. Many do not have access to personal vehicles or public transportation to get them there, said Jean Schroedel, a political science professor at Claremont Graduate School who specializes in Native American voting rights.
“This is a group that has real serious challenges in trying to do voting by mail,” Schroedel said.
WRAL:
A federal judge in North Carolina sharply criticized Wednesday an absentee ballot procedure giving voters more leeway to fix incomplete witness information, but said he’d issue a written ruling at a later time.
U.S. District Judge William Osteen said he’d aim to issue a written ruling early next week after hearing arguments in two related lawsuits on Thursday. Voting rights advocates argue that thousands of ballots with deficiencies are essentially in limbo until a clear process is developed for handling them.
A key issue is how local elections boards should implement a state law requiring absentee voters to have an adult witness their ballot. The state had recently developed a new procedure to allow voters to fix incomplete witness information by returning an affidavit to county officials, but not filling out a new ballot from scratch and having it witnessed again. Those updated rules are currently on hold pending the lawsuits.
Osteen expressed concerns that the procedure would essentially eliminate the witness requirement. He had previously ruled in August that the state had to ensure voters could fix certain deficiencies, but upheld the witness requirement.
WSJ:
On any given day over the past two years, visitors to the home page of RealClearPolitics were likely to see its famous average of political polls, a roundup of news and center-right commentary—and, near the bottom, a link or two to stories from RT.com.
The provenance of the RT headlines was obscured. Readers didn’t immediately know they were clicking on headlines from a Russian state-backed publication that American intelligence officials considered the Kremlin’s “principal international propaganda outlet.” The news organization, once known as Russia Today, was a central player in Russia’s efforts to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian efforts created a backlash against social-media companies, which were accused of providing platforms for a misinformation campaign aimed at influencing voters. Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and others have since implemented changes to limit the reach of state-run media.
Yet RT continues to draw a large American audience, helped unwittingly by some of America’s most prominent conservative websites. The reason: Those news outlets agreed to join a distribution network that allows other members’ content to be displayed on their home pages.
The company responsible for RT’s presence on RealClearPolitics is Mixi.Media. Since its launch in 2018, Mixi has assembled a network of right-leaning publishers, including National Review, The Daily Caller and Newsmax, as well as mainstream sites like RealClearPolitics. Also in Mixi’s fold are RT and another Russian state-backed outlet, Sputnik.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office has referred a press release by the state’s Republican Party about an unlocked ballot drop box for investigation “as election misinformation.”
The Democrat’s office announced the referral to Attorney General Dana Nessel Wednesday hours after the Michigan GOP sent out a statement titled, “Ballot drop boxes left unlocked In Lansing.” The statement featured videos posted on social media of a drop box in the city that was apparently left unlocked two weeks earlier and someone struggling to close the drop box this week.
The earlier video featured an unnamed person opening the apparently unlocked box and saying, “There are ballots. Nothing to see here ladies and gentlemen.”
Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope previously responded to the video on Facebook, saying the envelope pictured in the drop box was not a ballot envelope and the video was posted before Lansing voters received their ballots.
New working paper at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center.
I’m looking forward to participating in this (registration required):
- Race, Reconstruction and Voting Rights
October 13th, 5:30 PM EST - The Constitution explicitly excluded African Americans and Indigenous People from Constitutional protection, and the Bill of Rights—drafted by the First Congress as the first ten Amendments to Constitution and enacted in September of 1789—did nothing to correct that. Extending Constitutional protections and rights to Black people fell to later Amendments, what are often called “the Reconstruction Amendments.” But the reality is that African Americans have been impeded in the free exercise of their right to vote—by state laws, federal court decisions, and the resistance of their fellow citizens. This, despite passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, fully a century after the Civil War ended, and subsequent legislation protecting Black Americans and other disenfranchised populations that passed only with significant political resistance. In 2013, in Shelby County v Holder, the Supreme Court struck down key requirements of this legislation, reasoning that it was no longer responsive to current conditions. The panel will discuss this long history of efforts to suppress Black voting, its impact on other minority voting, and challenges to voting rights that are a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Moderator: Jami Floyd
- Well-known as the local host of “All Things Considered” and Legal Editor in the WNYC Newsroom, Jami Floyd is now leading WNYC’s new Race& Justice unit that covers news through the prism of race, class, and social justice. With a degree from Berkeley Law School, Ms. Floyd taught law at Stanford Law School before embarking on a journalism career that spans two decades and has included stints at ABC News, CBS News, and Court TV. She has appeared as a legal and political analyst on many news outlets including CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, and PBS.
- Panelists:
- Vanita Gupta is President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalition. Previously Gupta was Acting Assistant Attorney General and head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division where she served as the nation’s chief civil rights prosecutor. Prior to joining the Justice Department, Gupta served as Deputy Legal Director and the Director of the Center for Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she launched the Smart Justice Campaign to end mass incarceration.
- Richard Hasen is a Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. A nationally recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, he was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal in 2013. His newest book, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy was published earlier this year. Professor Hasen’s previous books include Voting Wars, Plutocrats United, and The Justice of Contradictions.
- Rina Shah is Managing Director of Red Fort Strategies, a government relations and public affairs strategic consulting firm that specializes in activating the Asian-American community. Her expertise is in building political and issue advocacy campaigns at every level as well as offering strategic guidance to a wide-range of domestic and international corporations, including start-up ventures, which seek to navigate the legislative and executive branches of U.S. government. Ms. Shah served as a senior aide to two Republican Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and is a frequent media commentator.
- REGISTER
Franklin County elections officials are scrambling to figure out how many voters received the wrong ballot in the mail as thousands more lined up across the state for the first day of in-person early voting.
Problems with a thus-far undetermined portion of about 250,000 ballots mailed to Franklin County voters emerged Tuesday afternoon as the first wave of a record number of absentee ballots hit mailboxes.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office has directed the board to provide replacement ballots along with a letter explaining the error to all voters affected by the problem.
Franklin County elections staffers learned of the problem when voters noticed irregularities in their ballots and contacted the board or LaRose’s office. Voters in Worthington reported receiving ballots for elections in Whitehall. Others got ballots with the wrong congressional race. Ballots for one precinct went to voters in another.
In some cases, one member of a household received the correct ballot while another received the wrong ballot.
New guide from the Cleveland Clinic and the Bipartisan Policy Center.
State officials have told Cuyahoga County elections officials that they still can’t proceed with their plan to set up ballot collection sites at county libraries, saying a federal judge in a written order incorrectly described a policy set by Secretary of State Frank LaRose.On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Dan Polster dismissed a lawsuit from voter rights’ advocates who sought an expansion of ballot drop box sites in Ohio. His rationale was that LaRose had issued a written directive to county elections officials that said staffed, off-site ballot collection sites like the ones Cuyahoga County had planned were allowed, making the issue moot.
But that’s not what LaRose’s guidance actually said, Bridget Coontz, an assistant Ohio attorney general, said in a Wednesday email to a Cuyahoga County attorney.
“Contrary to the Court’s statement in its Order, the Secretary’s recent Directive … did not authorize the portion of the Cuyahoga County Board’s Plan ‘to receive ballots at six public libraries,’ nor did the Directive authorize ‘any other board in Ohio that votes to do so [to] deploy its staff to receive ballots off-site,’ Coontz wrote in her email, a copy of which was obtained by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested a postal carrier from Kearny who they said dumped 1,875 pieces of mail — including general election ballots and campaign flyers – instead of delivering them.
Nicholas Beauchene, 26, was nabbed by special agents of the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General after a Saddle Brook man reported finding dumped bundles of mail in a dumpster behind a North Arlington bank.
Beauchene tossed 1,875 pieces of mail – including 99 general election ballots destined for residents in West Orange and 276 campaign flyers from local candidates for West Orange Town Council and Board of Education – into dumpsters in town and in North Arlington on Friday and Monday, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
Very worrisome development broken by ProPublica:
The Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials.
Avoiding election interference is the overarching principle of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps — such as an arrest or a raid — before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race.
But according to an email sent Friday by an official in the Public Integrity Section in Washington, now if a U.S. attorney’s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election.
The email announced “an exception to the general non-interference with elections policy.” The new exemption, the email stated, applied to instances in which “the integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses within the scope of the policy including but not limited to misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense or any other federal department or agency.”
Specifically citing postal workers and military employees is noteworthy, former DOJ officials said. But the exception is written so broadly that it could cover other types of investigations as well, they said.
Both groups have been falsely singled out, in different ways, by President Donald Trump and his campaign for being involved in voter fraud. Trump has repeatedly attempted to delegitimize ballots sent through the postal service, just as the country experiences increased voting by mail spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. He has also raised the specter that the ballots of military members, among whom he enjoys broad support, might be suppressed.
Chief Justice Hecht delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justice Guzman, Justice Lehrmann, Justice Boyd, Justice Blacklock, Justice Busby, and Justice Bland joined.
Justice Blacklock, joined by Justice Busby except as to Part I.C., concurring in the denial of the petition for writ of mandamus.
Justice Devine dissenting from the Court’s order denying the petition for writ of mandamus and motion for stay.
More than 2,000 Los Angeles County voters got mail-in ballots with a very egregious flaw: no way to vote for U.S. president.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office confirmed late Monday that about 2,100 “faulty ballots” were mailed earlier that day to residents in the Woodland Hills area.
The botched effort was part of a campaign to mail 21 million ballots to registered California voters. About 5.6 million of those voters are in L.A. County. State law mandates that absentee ballots be mailed 29 days ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
“While this has impacted a very small number of Los Angeles County voters … we nevertheless apologize to those affected by the mistake,” said Michael Sanchez, a spokesman for the county clerk’s office.
Four weeks ahead of Election Day, senior national security officials provided fresh assurances about the integrity of the elections in a video message Tuesday, putting them at odds with President Donald Trump’s efforts to discredit the vote.
“I’m here to tell you that my confidence in the security of your vote has never been higher,” Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in the video message. “That’s because of an all-of-nation, unprecedented election security effort over the last several years.”
Michael Waldman and Wendy Weiser in Politico:
Every day we work on the policies and law underpinning our elections. We regularly point out the flaws in our electoral system. They are real. But when it comes to stealing a national election, let’s all take a deep breath.
To be sure, Trump is doing all he can to undermine the vote and foment chaos. All who care about our democracy should be angry — and ready. It’s terrifying to think about an Election Day full of chaos and disinformation, followed by false claims of victory and attempts to swap out electors. But there are strong safeguards in place, and many ways for the system to block an illegitimate power grab. There may be a plot against America, but a lot of people would have to break laws for the plot to succeed. An all-out attack can work only if all the institutional checks fail and the American people let it happen.”
This petition faces an uphill battle. Note the attempted distinction between “absentee” and “mail in” ballots and the attempt to argue around the Purcell principle. Note too that this does not come from state defendants objecting to the expansion of mail-in balloting.
[This post has been updated.]
He did not ask for a response. (I had thought there might be some interest at the Court in the issue presented there.)
Another case with the ridiculous line that “it’s the pandemic, not the State” to blame here. Also heavy on Purcell.
The opinion and dissent are here on the question certified by the 7th Circuit. The action will shift back to federal court over the question of a federal court decision easing vote by mail during the pandemic in Wisconsin.
Fiserv Forum and Miller Park will not be used for in-person absentee voting for the November election after all, the Milwaukee Election Commission announced Tuesday.
Election Commission Executive Director Claire Woodall-Vogg cited “legal challenge concerns” as the reason behind the change.
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel, she cited a ruling in which U.S. District Judge William Conley rejected requests to expand early voting and a notice from the Wisconsin Elections Commission to clerks stating WEC has “no ability to authorize” clerks to designate alternate or additional sites for in-person absentee voting for the November election. Those sites must have been designated by June 12, according to the WEC notice.
Justin here. I’m tracking the litigation over election issues related to COVID-19 … and the list of cases just hit 275. (The Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project also has a really useful sortable database of these cases, with more info.)
A reminder: the number in each state isn’t necessarily a good indication of the contentiousness of the issues: any individual case may be “big” or “small” — or a good case or a shoddy one — and some of these cases are essentially repeat claims of others. But overall, that’s still an awful lot of legal paper.
There’s an upside to some of this: with litigation brought in March, April, or May, as the pandemic reached the primaries, we got resolution of some pretty contentious issues in June, July, August, September, and squeaking into October. That’s less to fight about in November. Which is good for everyone. There are some new cases, mostly asking for very tailored relief, and a few bomb-throwers that will be tossed out of court. Most of the cases are now done.
These are just the cases I know of — I’m sure I’m missing some. State court cases are particularly difficult to track. I think that five states have been spared so far (Kansas, Nebraska, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming) … but if you know of a COVID-related election case I’m missing here, please let me know.
You can find the order at this link (via Zoe Tillman).
New Brennan Center resource.
AP:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday denied a request for an emergency injunction to block most Montana counties from mailing ballots to active voters.
A three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request filed by Joe Lamm, the Ravalli County Republican Central Committee and Republican voters, but said it would continue to hear the appeal. The first briefs are due in January.
On Wednesday, September 30, the Georgetown University Humanities Initiative and Georgetown University Press cosponsored a panel discussion on how we vote in the United States. Participants included How We Vote authors Kathleen Hale and Mitchell Brown and Georgetown University professors Robert Patterson, Hans Noel, and Diana Owen.
It is now settled law that off-site drop boxes are neither prohibited nor compelled in Ohio.
Yesterday, October 5, the Secretary issued Directive 2020-22. In his latest Directive, the Secretary authorized any board to deploy its staff to receive ballots at sites other than the board office. This means that the Cuyahoga County board may implement its intended plan to receive ballots at six public libraries, and that any other board in Ohio that votes to do so may deploy its staff to receive ballots off-site, so long as the board complies with the procedures set forth in Section II of Directive 2020-22.
While the off-site staff collection of absentee ballots may not have all the advantages of off-site drop boxes, such a program alleviates many of the concerns raised at the hearing. There is no evidence before the Court that Secretary LaRose is currently prohibiting any board from doing something it voted to do to protect the voting rights of its citizens with respect to off-site drop boxes or off-site delivery of ballots. Therefore, there is no problem that requires an injunction.
Accordingly, this case is DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE. The Court fervently hopes that now that voting has begun, the litigation over drop boxes and off-site ballot collection will come to an end. Should it come to pass, however, that between now and November 3 any county board of elections votes to implement off-site drop boxes, Plaintiffs may refile their lawsuit, so long as the affected board is added as a party.
Notable that this story is at Fox News:
More than two million Ohio residents requested mail-in ballot applications prior to the start of early voting on Tuesday, doubling the count at the same time in 2016 and 2012. Ballots in the state are counted for up to 10 days after Election Day — as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 2 — meaning that election results displayed on the night of Nov. 3 will be unofficial and include all votes received through any method by 7:30 p.m. local time.
LaRose, a Republican, said the state will have “pretty conclusive” results on election night if early returns show President Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden winning the state by a wide margin.
But if the race is close, he acknowledged that it could take “three weeks or more” to know the final results as elections officials work to tabulate mail-in and provisional ballots. LaRose added that the state is taking steps to be transparent about the process, such as publishing the number of outstanding mail-in ballots online.
“When the results on election night say one thing and then when the results change over the ensuing several weeks, that’s not a sign that something nefarious is happening. In fact, quite the contrary,” LaRose told Fox News. “It’s a sign that the legal process is being allowed to play itself out so that every legally cast vote can be tabulated. That’s exactly what we need to do.”…
Trump has argued, without evidence, that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud and suggested that their widespread use could result in a “rigged election.” During his debate with Biden last week, Trump said he would only accept the results of the vote “if it’s a fair election.”
Job announcement:
The 2020 California Citizens Redistricting Commission is seeking a Chief Counsel with min. 10 yrs. law experience. The Chief Counsel will advise the Commission on all aspects of the redistricting process and government affairs. The ideal candidate will have served as the principal legal advisor to a governing board, as well as government relations, redistricting and voting rights experience, and has a history of working closely with community organizations developing and maintaining relationships with diverse groups and coalitions. The Commission is charged with drawing the State’s legislative, Congressional, and Board of Equalization electoral lines. For additional information, refer to the Job Bulletin at https://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/64/2020/09/Chief-Counsel_Recuitment-2020-Sept-30.pdf
Inquiries may be directed to voterfirstact@crc.ca.gov
This order does not bode well for the Trump campaign’s federal claims (such as that Pa. court allowing drop boxes somehow creates a federal constitutional problem):
ORDER vacating 462 amended scheduling order. Upon careful consideration of the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment, the Court finds that there are no material disputes of fact on the remaining legal claims and defenses in this case. The Court intends to resolve all claims on summary judgment. As such, the remaining deadlines, obligations, and events in the amended scheduling order (ECF 462 ), including the evidentiary hearing, are hereby VACATED.
It’s illegal in all 50 states to engage in militia activity. Still, militia members will almost certainly appear at some polling places this election cycle.To prepare voters for potential voter intimidation, Georgetown University Law Center created fact sheets for all 50 states on illegal militias and what to do if voters encounter them.
A private militia engages in law enforcement activities without authorization by state or federal officials. Their members are often armed and wearing uniforms or identifying insignias, and they often believe they have legal authority to protect property or control crowds.
But no private militia has that authority. Every state bans unauthorized militias from taking on the activities of law enforcement.
So, Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, along with several pro bono law firms, created state-specific fact sheets about militias and the state statutes that ban their activities.
Florida extended the deadline for voter registration after the state’s online portal crashed under the weight of heavy traffic hours before the Oct. 5 deadline.
Registration will be open for an additional seven hours, from noon to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Secretary of State Laurel Lee said in a written statement.
The move should short-circuit a lawsuit that civil rights and voting groups were preparing to file early Tuesday.
Another example of a district court case favorable to voting rights gorups getting reversed on appeal.
Marshall Cohen for CNN:
After a string of early legal victories in voting rights cases, Democrats are now fighting on more challenging terrain in federal appeals courts across the country, and have seen some of their hard-fought victories wiped off the books by conservative-leaning judges.
There are hundreds of state and federal lawsuits related to the 2020 election, with cases brought by both political parties, trying to get the rules changed in their favor and rulings coming on a near-daily basis. But Democrats have celebrated a wave of early victories in some key battleground states.Many of those rulings have been appealed. Democrats now find themselves in more hostile territory, and Republicans are clawing their way back in some cases, experts say. President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have reshaped the federal judiciary by confirming more than 200 judges since 2017, and have filled dozens of vacancies specifically on appeals courts.
“The Republican side may be far more successful in blocking lower court orders sought by Democrats and voting rights groups seeking to expand voting by mail,” CNN election law analyst Rick Hasen wrote in a Slate op-ed published Monday. “Although Democrats in particular have crowed about some of their (sometimes partial) victories, things are far from over.”
CAP:
The United States’ electoral culture demands instant gratification when it comes to election results. Members of the public, candidates, and journalists have come to expect that they will know the winners and losers of electoral races within hours of polls closing on election night. This year, counting ballots will likely take longer than usual due to increased reliance on vote by mail in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be particularly true in states that do not begin processing absentee ballots until Election Day or after polling places close on election night.
The winners of the U.S. presidential election and other hotly contested races will almost certainly not be known on November 3, and results may not be announced for several days after Election Day. Experts worry that candidates will claim victory prematurely, before all ballots are counted, and that bad actors will propagate dangerous conspiracy theories to sow public confusion and challenge electoral outcomes. It is the responsibility of government officials, members of the media, and technology platforms to set realistic expectations now for members of the public about when election results will be finalized. Preparations must also be made for pushing back against distortions of legitimate electoral procedures and vote counts.
Please join the Center for American Progress for a discussion about ballot-counting processes in November and why electoral results may not be known until well after election night. Panelists will discuss the importance of responsible results reporting by the media and technology platforms, as well as best practices for preventing the spread of misinformation on election night.
We’d love to hear your questions. Please submit any questions you have for our distinguished panel via email at CAPeventquestions@americanprogress.org or on Twitter using #ElectionNightExpectations.
Distinguished Panelists:
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Secretary of State
Adam Conner, Vice President, Technology Policy, Center for American Progress
Benjamin Hovland, Chairman, U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Amanda Terkel, Washington Bureau Chief, HuffPostModerator:
Daniella Gibbs Léger, Executive Vice President, Communications and Strategy, Center for American Progress