“‘Swindlers,’ ‘Hijacking,’ and ‘Blackmail’; Inside the Kennedy campaign’s Natural Law Party meltdown in Florida.”

Must-read Marc Caputo:

AMID VOTER DISENCHANTMENT with a Trump-Biden rematch, third-party activist Joseph Wendt believed 2024 could transform American politics. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be the candidate to do it.

“It seemed this was the Year of the Third Party,” said Wendt, the former chair of Florida’s Reform Party affiliate. “This would be the year where we would be able to make an impact.”

So Wendt started the process of reconstituting the long-defunct Natural Law Party of the United States with the Federal Election Commission and he resurrected its Florida branch. He planned to hold a convention and nominate Kennedy for president so that RFK could appear on the Florida ballot as the Natural Law Party candidate. Kennedy’s campaign loved the idea. And the two sides started talking money. Wendt signed a $10,000-a-month consulting contract with Kennedy’s campaign on February 24.

“I was over the moon,” Wendt said. “We could get him on the ballot. It might have an impact. But it turned into a nightmare.”

Bureaucratic delays and mistakes turned into mistrust. A bitter rift grew. Wendt was ultimately paid nothing. And he lost control of the Natural Law Party of the United States, which was taken over by Kennedy allies.

Now Wendt, a 39-year-old Lyft driver, wants the national Natural Law Party back in his control. He calls the Kennedy campaign unethical “swindlers.” Kennedy campaign officials fired back, accusing Wendt of illegally “hijacking” the national party and trying to “blackmail” the campaign, and suggesting to him that his actions amounted to “extortion.”

Both sides deny wrongdoing. But a close look at the record of the dispute provides a window into the obstacles third-party candidates face and shines a light on the Kennedy campaign’s aggressive efforts to get on the ballot. RFK’s campaign has tapped a constellation of third-party groups in various states, all of which have different rules.

Why? Because states generally provide presidential candidates ballot access if they’re nominated by a verified political party, regardless of its size. Otherwise, campaigns usually have to rely on paid petition-gatherers, which, according to experts familiar with the process, can cost as much as $1.7 million in a state like Florida….

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“Several Pa. House Republicans boo officers who defended Capitol on Jan. 6”

WaPo:

Two former law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection were jeered by state GOP lawmakers as they visited Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives on Wednesday, according to several Democratic lawmakers present.

Former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and former sergeant Aquilino Gonell were introduced on the floor Wednesday as “heroes” by House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D) for having “bravely defended democracy in the United States Capitol against rioters and insurrection on January 6.”

As the two men — both of whom were injured by rioters on Jan. 6 — were introduced, the House floor descended into chaos. According to Democratic lawmakers, several GOP lawmakers hissed and booed, with a number of Republicans walking out of the chamber in protest.

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“Dispute over mailed ballots in a New Jersey county delays outcome of congressional primary”

AP:

Whether to count more than 1,900 mail ballots cast in one New Jersey county will be up to a judge after their envelopes were unsealed prematurely and members of the local election board deadlocked on how to proceed.

Superior Court Judge Michael J. Blee will hear arguments Friday in Atlantic City. The decision could affect the outcome of the Democratic primary in the race for the state’s 2nd Congressional District, where businessman Joe Salerno holds a 400-vote lead over attorney Tim Alexander in unofficial results.

At the center of the dispute is a state law that allows local election officials to open mail ballots five days before an election day. In Atlantic County this year, the envelopes containing the 1,909 ballots were unsealed about a month before Tuesday’s primary, but the ballots themselves were not removed at that time, said Creed Pogue, a Democrat appointed to the county Board of Elections.

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Combating Misinformation and Building Trust in Elections: Assessing Election Official Communications During the 2022 Election Cycle

New report from Thessalia Merivaki and Mara Suttmann-Lea. Abstract:

In this project, we identify the dominant trust-building campaigns used by state and local election officials, with an emphasis on combating misinformation, during the 2022 election cycle. In partnership with the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI.io), we analyzed 50,000 organic posts from over 118 state election officials’ and 1,000 local election officials’ accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter between September 10 and November 15, 2022. We produced a one-of-a-kind repository of these communications, organized using a comprehensive taxonomy of election-related labels. This database is used to identify best trust-building communication practices, and evaluate the effectiveness of these practices on voter attitudes.

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“Election certification disputes in a handful of states spark concerns over 2024 presidential contest”

AP:

In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, two Republican members of a county canvassing board last month refused to sign off on the results of an election that led to the recall of three GOP members of the county commission. They did so only after state officials warned them it was their legal duty to record the final vote tally.

In Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes the Democratic-voting city of Atlanta, a group run by members of former President Donald Trump’s administration last week sued so a Republican member of the local elections board could refuse to certify the results of the primary election.

And in Arizona, GOP lawmakers sued to reverse the state’s top Democratic officials’ requirement that local boards automatically validate their election results.

The past four years have been filled with battles over all sorts of election arcana, including one that had long been regarded as an administrative afterthought — little-known state and local boards certifying the results. With the presidential election looming in November, attorneys are gearing up for yet more fights over election certification, especially in the swing states where the victory margins are expected to be tight. Even if those efforts ultimately fail, election officials worry they’ll become a vehicle for promoting bogus election claims.

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