The Ohio General Assembly adjourned on Wednesday without addressing an issue that the state’s top elections official said would prevent President Biden from being placed on the ballot there, escalating a partisan clash that could result in the president not being on the ballot in all 50 states in November.
Frank LaRose, the Republican secretary of state, has said that he plans to exclude Mr. Biden from the ballot because he will be officially nominated after a deadline for certifying presidential nominees on the ballot. This is usually a minor procedural issue, and states have almost always offered a quick solution to ensure that major presidential candidates remain on the ballot.
The Biden campaign is considering suing the state in order to ensure Mr. Biden is on the ballot, while also searching for some other way to resolve the issue without moving the date of the nominating convention, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations.
A legal fight could be expensive and arduous. The Supreme Court recently ruled that states could not bar Mr. Trump from running for another term under a constitutional provision, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, that prohibits insurrectionists from holding office. But it took six months of legal wrangling before the court put that issue to bed.
A man who admitted to sending out robocalls mimicking President Joe Biden’s voice on the day of the New Hampshire primary is now facing criminal charges.
Ten indictments have been returned against Steve Kramer out of Rockingham County for bribing, intimidation and suppression and impersonation of candidates. The indictments name five people who said they received the robocall.
In testimony before a House committee, a Republican witness recently cited as credible claims by researcher James Agresti that “10% to 27% of non‐citizens are illegally registered to vote” and predicted that “about 5% to 13% of them will illegally vote in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections.” Speaking to New York Times reporter Minho Kim for an article published today, I stated,“These numbers simply aren’t believable… They aren’t consistent with what we know from the various other sources.”
The eyes of Texas were upon the ballots cast by several high-profile Texas politicians on Wednesday, after documents were leaked related to a stunning lawsuit accusing state election officials of failing to properly protect ballot secrecy. The leak included the purported ballot for the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) — catching him in a lie about how he voted in the presidential primary.
The 77-page complaint was filed by an elections security researcher who lives in Williamson County, Texas and four other Texas voters, two of whom also live in Williamson County, one from Bell County, and one from Llano County. Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, Director of the Division of Elections Christina Adkins, and the county election administrators for Williamson, Bell, and Llano Counties are named as defendants, accused of “willful and systematic disregard of election laws” that put at risk the secrecy of potentially millions of ballots cast by Texans in recent elections.
The complaint describes the plaintiffs as all “consistent voters” who “voted in the most recent Texas elections in November 2023 and March 2024,” but either do not qualify to vote by mail under Texas law or prefer to vote in person….
The actual method used to cross-reference the unique identifier ballot numbers with the voter names and the results from individual ballots were originally filed in redacted form with the complaint (a redacted presentation by a Texas A&M University computer scientist regarding the methodology available for download here), according to our source. Rumors have been flying around Texas political circles in recent weeks about the method mentioned in the lawsuit and whether or not Texans’ ballots were really at risk of exposure.
And then on Wednesday, Texas-based website Current Revolt published documents that were produced using the methodology deployed in the investigation for the lawsuit – specifically, Rinaldi’s ballot.
We have obtained a copy of Chairman Matt Rinaldi’s ballot from Super Tuesday that indicates he voted for Ron Desantis and not Donald Trump. You can read how we obtained his ballot and why our elections are in crisis in the reply below (1/2) #txlege: https://t.co/CdQRMJeUH9pic.twitter.com/Ik8fivcY7b
— Tony Ortiz (Current Revolt) (@CurrentRevolt) May 22, 2024
Rinaldi voted in person in Dallas County for the Texas GOP presidential primary in March. He had publicly endorsed former President Donald Trump, said he voted for him, and even continued to insist earlier this week that he had cast his vote for Trump.
So we’ll see you in a #MAGA hat at convention? With the ability these days to track ballots to individual voters I accept your challenge to see if it is #fakenews and see if you actually did vote for @realDonaldTrump. @MattRinaldiTX didn’t for sure.
That’s not what the ballot and cast vote record images (below) show. Instead, Rinaldi allegedly voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), whose campaign collapsed in an embarrassingsputter in Iowa months earlier.
Why is FEC Commissioner Trainer even asking someone if they will be “in a #MAGA hat at” the Republican convention?
I expect we are going to hear much more about both aspects of the story, especially the potential loss of a secret ballot in Texas. If this pans out, just wow.
Back on May 5, I highlighted a new election law in Illinois that changed the rules for ballot access after the primary election, blocking a number of candidates from obtaining major party ballot access through the alternative “slating” route that they were relying on. (I also noted the unusual lack of media coverage, and since then, there hasn’t been much more, but this AP story did cover it, and the president of the League of Women Voters of Illinois had this op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times critiquing the law.)
Yesterday afternoon, a state court judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law. You can see early coverage from the Chicago Tribune, the Center Square, and the Daily Northwestern. (And as with last time, no other apparent media coverage outside the state of Illinois.) Of note from the Daily Northwestern:
Attorney Hal Dworkin, who represented the Illinois Attorney General, argued the preliminary injunction could set several negative precedents for the Illinois government. For one, several previous court cases have applied strict scrutiny only when a change in electoral policy completely negated the election results, Dworkin said.
The case may well be appealed, and this is only a preliminary injunction (final hearing is June 3), but it’s a swift reprisal in a state court, using (it appears) a state constitution’s “right to vote” provision, against a law enacted just a couple of weeks ago. We’ll see if we get a written order in the near future and how that might be used in future litigation.
Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.
This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.
Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google street view image from late August also shows the flag.
The photographs, each taken independently, are from four different dates. It is not clear whether the flag was displayed continuously during those months or how long it was flown overall.
A Google street view photo taken in August 2023 shows the flag flying at the Alitos’ house.
Justice Alito declined to respond to questions about the beach house flag, including what it was intended to convey and how it comported with his obligations as a justice. The court also declined to respond….
In coming weeks, the justices will rule on that case, which could scuttle some of the charges against Mr. Trump, as well as on whether he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president. Their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances at regaining the White House in the next one.
The disclosure about the new flag is troubling, several ethics experts said in interviews, because it ties Justice Alito more closely to symbols associated with the attempted election subversion on Jan. 6, and because it was displayed as the obstruction case was first coming for consideration by the court.
Judges are not supposed to give any impression of bias, yet the flag could be seen as telegraphing the Alitos’ views — and at a time when the justices were on the cusp of adopting a new ethics code. “We all have our biases, but the good judge fights against them,” said Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University Bloomington. “When a judge celebrates his predispositions by hoisting them on a flag,” he added, “that’s deeply disturbing.”
I was uncertain if the initial revelation of the first flag merited Justice Alito’s recusal in the first case, but I now believe he must recuse in the Trump immunity and related cases. His impartiality could be reasonably questioned here. There’s no blaming it on his spouse this time in any credible way.
Votebeat:
Several members of Milwaukee’s election staff have voiced concerns to the mayor’s office about the inexperience of the new leader chosen to replace the Election Commission’s recently ousted executive director, two people close to the matter told Votebeat.
The… Continue reading
Politico:
Florida election officials are warning that an obscure new ballot rule being put in place by the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis could force them to break state law or face removal from office.
A wave of exasperated election… Continue reading
NBC News:
Smartmatic alleges that Newsmax has destroyed evidence in the voting machine company’s lawsuit against the right-wing news channel over false claims that Smartmatic helped “rig” the 2020 election, according to court documents made public this week.
Lawyers for… Continue reading
Kroll deep dive in ProPublica:
What divides the Republican Party of 2024 is not any one policy or ideology. It is not whether to support Donald Trump. The most important fault line in the party now is democracy itself. Today’s… Continue reading
KC Star:
When Missouri voters head to the ballot box this year, they’ll be asked to sign off on a measure that would ban ranked-choice voting or ranking candidates by preference.
But the first bullet point that will appear on… Continue reading
Very troubling and deplorable:
Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington went on lockdown for about two hours Wednesday morning after a suspicious package was delivered to the building.
The United States Capitol Police’s hazardous incident response division cleared the… Continue reading
WaPo:
Rudy Giuliani has agreed to no longer accuse two Georgia poll workers of tampering with the 2020 election, according to a draft agreement filed Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court.
The agreement bars Giuliani — who has amplified election… Continue reading
NYT:
The incumbent in the lone competitive race for a seat on the Georgia Supreme Court won re-election on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, fending off a challenge from a former Democratic congressman who had built his campaign… Continue reading
