Trump and Cheseboro filings in the Georgia conspiracy case

chicanery, election law and constitutional law, Supreme Court,

As expected, President-elect Donald Trump has filed a motion in the Georgia Court of Appeals to dismiss the conspiracy prosecution against him in Georgia on the basis that “a sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal.”  (The argument behind that claim isn’t only from the Trump v. United States SCOTUS case this past summer: the claim is well beyond what the Supreme Court decided.)

At least as interesting to me, in many ways, is the filing of Kenneth Cheseboro, in the Fulton County trial court, on the same day.  Cheseboro pled guilty in October 2023 to one conspiracy count of filing a false document, based on the filing of a fraudulent certificate of electoral votes with a Georgia federal court.  In September 2024, the Fulton County court declared that count unconstitutional with respect to John Eastman and Shawn Still as applied to these facts: the judge said that the state law couldn’t be used to prosecute false filings in a federal court.  That decision is now, I believe, up on appeal.  But in the meantime, Cheseboro has argued that a guilty plea to a charge that has been invalidated must itself be invalidated.

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Historically tiny House majority

political parties

As a result of the fact that California counties have certified their elections (yes, even in Shasta County), the last U.S. House race (CD 13, in the Central Valley) was called.  And as a result of that, there are now a number of reports on the 217-215 split that will be “the smallest House majority in history” or “a historically tiny House majority”  (once Gaetz doesn’t return and two other Members take jobs in the Administration).

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Happy California official canvass deadline day, to all who celebrate

absentee ballots, election administration

December 5 (30 days after election day) is the final final day for certifying elections in California.  Usually, many California counties have certified before today.  But this year, as a one-time only change responding to some 60,000 ballots left uncounted in 2022 due to signature issues, the state legislature left a longer period for voters to cure those mistakes, effectively precluding certification for most counties until December 3.

Paraphrasing Natalie Adona (who was paraphrasing Doug Chapin, who was paraphrasing any number of election gurus past and future): fast, accurate, cheap: pick any two.

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“Voters Broadly Positive About How Elections Were Conducted, in Sharp Contrast to 2020”

election administration

Pew is out with new data on voters’ views about the 2024 electoral process, from a survey out Nov. 12-17 of this year.  As they dryly note, “It’s not unusual in presidential elections for voters who supported the winning candidate to express more confidence in the outcome than those who supported the losing candidate.”

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“Republican calls for second recount in NC Supreme Court race”

judicial elections, recounts, voter registration

I’ve gotten a few questions about this.  First, there was a request for a machine recount of the by-a-tiny-nose North Carolina Supreme Court election between incumbent Allison Riggs and challenger Jefferson Griffin.  Then there was a request for a recount of samples of ballots, comparing the machine counts for those samples to hand counts.  Then there was a challenge to the validity of more than 60,000 ballots that had been cast.

Leaving aside the merits of any of the claims in the final challenge (there are real questions about the accuracy of the claims in that challenge), the different procedures are all contemplated by state law, as different ways to ensure that the results were right.  The first two recounts are designed to make sure that the ballots were tallied accurately (and so far, it looks like they really, really were, with 110 votes statewide changing on each side, out of 2.8 million votes apiece).  The challenge procedure is designed to make sure that the ballots that were tallied should have been tallied.

In a race this tight, these types of procedures are to be expected.  And so far, what they’re showing is how well the elections process works.

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“Will NC Republicans have the votes to override Cooper’s veto of powers-stripping bill?”

political parties, The Voting Wars

The story above was about how well the North Carolina elections process works.  Jury’s still out on the state’s democracy process, though.

This News & Observer piece reviews the legislation tacked on to a Helene relief bill, stripping state executive officials’ powers in Democratic hands that might check the Republican-supermajority legislature.  The legislation was passed largely on party lines, vetoed by the Governor, and now needs every Republican legislator in the state House and Senate in order to override the veto.  The Republican Senate has already moved to override.  But that “largely on party lines” statement is really important: three Republican members of the House voted no as the bill was on its way to passage, and there are a lot of eyes on them as the House sets up an override vote for next week.

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