“Feds increase security for Jan. 6 in effort to prevent Capitol attack repeat”

election administration, election subversion risk

WaPo:

The federal government will dramatically increase security protections for the joint session of Congress where lawmakers count states’ electoral votes, an escalation of government-wide efforts to prevent a repeat of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the Secret Service said Wednesday in a statement provided to The Washington Post.

The Department of Homeland Security has designated the next electoral count — scheduled for Jan. 6, 2025 — a National Special Security Event, giving the once-routine post-election gathering the same level of security accorded to presidential inaugurations and political conventions, the Secret Service, which will take over security for the count, confirmed.

“National Special Security Events are events of the highest national significance,” Eric Ranaghan, the special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Dignitary Protective Division, said in the statement. “The U.S. Secret Service, in collaboration with our federal, state, and local partners are committed to developing and implementing a comprehensive and integrated security plan to ensure the safety and security of this event and its participants.”

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“How unfounded GOP claims about noncitizen voting could cost some eligible voters their rights”

Uncategorized

Votebeat:

But this close to an election, the risk of disenfranchising or discouraging eligible voters is high. Efforts to “clean” the voter rolls have indeed wrongly or improperly ensnared eligible voters in the past. In 2019, for example, Texas officials flagged 95,000 voters whom they identified as “noncitizens” and accused broadly of voter fraud. After review, it turned out that many of the people identified on the rolls were naturalized citizens. The scandal resulted in the secretary of state resigning. The state abandoned the effort after numerous lawsuits, which resulted in the state setting new guidelines for future voter roll cleanups.

That relatively recent episode has prompted concerns about the press release put out last month by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, asserting that Texas has removed 6,500 “potential noncitizens” from its rolls since 2021.

Advocacy groups want to know how the state identified those voters as potential noncitizens, and whether those steps complied with the procedures put in place after the 2019 incident. Many of those voters, they point out, may in fact be citizens.

Nonetheless, the number in Abbott’s release is making its way into the comments made by other Republicans on the issue. For example, at the opening of a House Judiciary Committee meeting on the proof of citizenship legislation Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, cited it, and he described the removed voters only as noncitizens — not “potential noncitizens.”

In response to the concerns about noncitizen voting, election officials have repeatedly stressed, in court and to the public, that there are multiple measures in place to prevent noncitizens from registering and casting ballots, and no evidence that these things are happening, outside of rare and isolated instances.

Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican who left office in 2023, said in an interview that election officials perform many checks before adding a voter. In that state, “at least two people have to sign off to say that this person should be added to the voter rolls,” he said. Texas election officials, too, have emphasized the checks they use to keep voter rolls accurate and ensure only eligible voters are on them….

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“Politics might already be factional, which calls for a different reform approach”

alternative voting systems

Jack Santucci:

As a student of how electoral-system change happens, I read the Boston Review’s recent essay collection, “We Need More Parties,” with great interest.

It weighs the merits of several responses to a widely held view that the party system is out of step with the preferences of most Americans. These responses include: proceeding with reforms in the vein of nonpartisan ranked-choice (Danielle Allen), embracing ballot fusion instead (Lee Drutman, Tabatha Abu El-Haj), using proportional representation federally to break the major parties into factions that might recombine in ‘better’ ways (Lee Drutman, Grant Tudor & Cerin Lindgrensavage), twinning fusion with community organizing (Deepak Bhargava & Arianna Jiménez, Maurice Mitchell & Doran Schrantz), twinning it with stronger unions (Bob Master), uniting behind one of the major parties (Daniel Schlozman & Sam Rosenfeld), sidestepping parties with reforms to promote citizen deliberation (Josh Lerner), prioritizing policies that might rebuild civil society (Joel Rogers), and having congressional leaders nominate candidates (Ian Shapiro). I will focus on the electoral-system reforms.

And, I argue that reforms most likely to help are least likely to get adopted, those less likely to help are more likely to get adopted, and these conjectures flow from an underappreciated possibility: the doom loop already has broken. Making this argument involves acknowledging that candidates want to win — they are ambitious — and that can be at odds with with a policy-based coalition’s interest in winning control of government….

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“Election officials warn that widespread problems with the US mail system could disrupt voting”

absentee ballots, election administration

AP:

State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies.

In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.

The officials also said that repeated outreach to the Postal Service to resolve the issues had failed and that the widespread nature of the problems made it clear these were “not one-off mistakes or a problem with specific facilities. Instead, it demonstrates a pervasive lack of understanding and enforcement of USPS policies among its employees.”…

“We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service,” they added. “Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”

A message seeking a response from the U.S. Postal Service was not immediately returned.

The two groups, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, said local election officials “in nearly every state” are receiving timely postmarked ballots after Election Day and outside the three to five business days USPS claims as the standard for first-class mail….

UPDATE: Here is the text of the letter.

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At Debate, Trump Backs Away from Earlier Concession He Lost 2020 Election, Denies Responsibility for January 6, 2021 Invasion of Capitol and Attempt to Disrupt the Peaceful Transition of Power

election subversion risk, fraudulent fraud squad

C-SPAN has the relevant video.

From ABC News summary:

Trump tried to explain his own remarks recently in which he appeared to accept he lost the 2020 election, including his comment last week that he “lost by a whisker.”

“I said that?” Trump said on the debate stage when it was read back to him.

“Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?” ABC News moderator David Muir asked.

“No, I don’t acknowledge that at all,” he said. “That was said sarcastically.”

Asked about the peaceful transfer of power, Trump did not say that he regrets anything about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. He claimed he had “nothing” to do with what happened that day, which culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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Sept. 17 Live Event from Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Hammer Museum: “Democracy and Risks to the 2024 Elections”

election subversion risk, The Voting Wars, Voting Rights Act
Very much looking forward to moderating this event (recording will be made available after the event): Sept. 17: Democracy and Risks to the 2024 Elections   Tuesday, September 17, 7:30pm PT at the UCLA Hammer Museum, (Recording to Follow)Co-presented with the… Continue reading