An assault on American voters is underway

[China]

Arizona Free Enterprise Club sues over rules included in Elections Procedures Manual

 

Members of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club are suing to block proposed election rules that ban people from photographing and approaching voters who use ballot drop boxes.

 

Attorneys for the group contend those rules in the new Elections Procedures Manual amount to attacking the speech of its members in violation of the First Amendment.

 

There are some restrictions within 75 feet of voting locations.

 

The new manual says following people delivering ballots to drop boxes, even outside that perimeter, could be intimidation.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Evil Genius]

That's the point. They want to intimidate.

[China]

Arizona GOP introduces resolution to declare Trump 2024 winner regardless of the vote

 

Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives have introduced a resolution that would seek to declare former President Donald Trump the winner of the 2024 presidential election — regardless of what the voters decide, reported KPNX's Brahm Resnik.

 

The resolution would not carry any force of law because it is not a bill, noted Resnik.

 

However, it is in response to rulings in Colorado and Maine disqualifying the former president from the ballot under the Insurrection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It will be reviewed by the House Election Committee Wednesday.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[mcsluggo]

I'm frankly tired of Democrats almost always being fair on gerrymandering and republicans ALWAYS going full tilt.   it will NEVER get solved nationally like this. never

 

i think California, New York etc (blue states) ... and Wisconsin/Pennsylvania/Virginia  (purple-ish states with a lean toward blue at the moment) should act like North Carolina/Wisconsin/alabama/Texas republicans (and Maryland democrats), to spur changes at the national level.

 

See how republicans in red states react to Democrats getting 50 out of 52 California congressional seats???  or Wisconsin flipping from Republicans getting 6 of 8 congressional seats with 51 of the vote to Democrats getting 6 of 8 congressional seats with 51% of the vote. 

 

 

this **** needs to change at the national level... but at this point only democrats see it as a problem.    MAKE republican ****bags see it as a ****ing problem

[Larry]

Your plan assumes that Team Insurection will respond with "Oh noes! We need to stop behaving like dictators!". And not "See?  We need to be even more partisan!".

[mcsluggo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index

 

New York tilts towards Democrats by 10 percentage points... and puts 15 democrats and 11 republicans into congress

Florida tilts towards Republicans by 2 percentage points..... and puts 20 republicans versus 8 democrats into congress

Texas tilts  towards Republicans by 5 percentage points..... and puts 25 republicans versus 13 democrats into congress

 

make New York/Colorado/Virginia like Massachusetts (tilts towards democrats by 15% and puts 9 democrats and 0 republicans into Congress) and see how quick Republicans respond to a Democratic super-majority in the house of representatives?

 

even MORE important than making the split between democrats and republicans look like actual votes in states.... it would go MILES towards getting rid of whack-job extremists in safe seats... 

3 minutes ago, Larry said:

Your plan assumes that Team Insurection will respond with "Oh noes! We need to stop behaving like dictators!". And not "See?  We need to be even more partisan!".

 

fine.   the fact is that there are more democrats than republicans in the country.   Lets see how important "protecting minority voting rights" becomes to Republicans when they are <correctly> rammed into the minority. 

 

i actually DO absolutely DESPISE gerrymandering, on both sides of the aisle.... i just don't see ANY way to fight it where it needs to be fought (at the national level) until Republicans start hating it too.   

[China]

Is Texas breaking its own election law in 2024?

 

 It was one of the state’s best weapons to fight against voter fraud.

 

But Texas, along with eight other Republican-led states, abandoned the national, data-sharing program called ERIC, or the Electronic Registration Information Center.

 

As Texans head to the polls for the primary, Republican leaders have yet to replace the program with anything.

 

“I think that Republicans have really shot themselves in the foot here. They want to talk to you about dead voters. They want to talk to you about duplicate registration. They want to talk to you about out-of-state voters. Like this is the system we use to get those people off their list,” Jessica Huseman explained to us on Y’all-itics.

 

Huseman is the Editorial Director of Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization that reports on elections across the country. Its reporters have covered ERIC, and the Republican pullback, extensively.

 

When we asked Jessica how accurate the voter rolls are currently in Texas, she bluntly told us “not very.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Assembly leaders concede Michael Gableman violated records laws during fruitless 2020 election review

 

Assembly officials have admitted former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman violated public records laws while taxpayers paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to probe the 2020 election — an investigation that did not turn up any evidence to question President Joe Biden's victory.

 

The acknowledgment by Assembly leaders was part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed against the Assembly's Office of Special Counsel when Gableman occupied the office. It was filed by liberal watchdog American Oversight after Gableman testified he routinely deleted records during a hearing in another lawsuit over Gableman's record keeping.

 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired Gableman to review the 2020 election and has since said he regrets doing so. Gableman accrued more than $2.5 million in costs to taxpayers and a steady drumbeat of explosive court hearings and rulings in lawsuits over Gableman's desire to jail election officials and mayors who refused to be interviewed behind closed doors, and his decision to ignore requests from the public for records related to his probe. 

 

Gableman also turned against Vos during the probe as Trump stepped up pressure on Vos to decertify the 2020 election result, which is impossible and illegal.

 

“We are pleased the Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel has finally acknowledged it is subject to the state’s records retention law, and more importantly, that it has stopped destroying records that should have been preserved,” Chioma Chukwu, Deputy Executive Director of American Oversight, said in a statement.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Experts Say Domestic Disruptions Are Equal Risk to Foreign Interference in 2024 Election

 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cautions that domestic actors have introduced new unknown factors into the 2024 election cycle. Its 2024 threat assessment warns that DHS expects the upcoming election cycle to be “a key event for possible violence and foreign influence targeting our election infrastructure, processes and personnel.”

 

In 2020, DHS warned about what Iran, Russia and China might do to sow “discord, division and distraction” around the presidential election. These concerns remain in 2024, but domestic actors with a range of motives are playing an increasing role, cultivating distrust of election processes and antagonism toward the people who administer elections.

 

The DHS assessment confirms the concerns of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, which works to preserve election integrity.

 

In a webinar on Tuesday of this week, “What Can We Do to Have a Fair and Safe Election in 2024?,” project director and legal scholar Rick Hasen brought together election administration experts to review lessons from 2020 as well as anticipate the effects of developments in social media, artificial intelligence and foreign interference that could bring novel challenges.

 

He was joined by MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III; Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory; Kate Klonick, a law and technology researcher based at St. John’s University; and Kim Wyman, senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. For her part, Wyman also served as the Republican secretary of state in Washington state before joining the Biden administration as election security lead for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

 

Every election is unique. It’s not possible to know in advance what the circumstances will be, or how people will behave, Klonick said. The social media ecosystem has changed considerably since 2020. Some have fled Twitter since Elon Musk purchased it. More people are using decentralized, open source platforms such as Mastodon. Large platforms are convening to develop ways to deal with misinformation, but the outlying channels that have proliferated are a new development and controlling them could be difficult. In addition, the Supreme Court is currently considering cases involving laws enacted in Texas and Florida to limit the ability of social media companies to remove or block content, originating from grievances that conservative views were being censored. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[China]

The new secret 'over the top' plan on how fascists could win in 2024

 

Back on March 13, 2020 — almost exactly four years ago — I wrote an article that was published at alternet.org laying out how Republicans were then, ten months before January 6th, planning to partially repeat the debacle of the election of 1876 by having Vice President Pence refuse to certify swing state votes and thus throw the election to the House to keep Trump in office, no matter how the election went.

 

When I published the article ten months before January 6th, I received concerned and even alarmed communications from several Democratic strategists and a few elected officials who basically said they didn’t think there was any way Trump would try such an audacious move and, if he did, he wouldn’t get away with it.

 

But I was right and that was exactly what Trump had up his sleeve. We saw it play out on January 6th. The only thing that stopped him was Pence’s unwillingness to go along with stealing an election.

 

Now I’m hearing a new story from those same GOP insiders (as well as other commentators) about Trump’s schemes for 2024. Here’s what I’m hearing Republicans are planning in the event Joe Biden wins re-election and Democrats hold the Senate and take the House this November:

 

First, Republicans need to make sure they’re in control of the House of Representatives on January 6th, 2024, when the new president will be certified.

 

To do that, even though Democrats might have won enough seats to take back the House in the 2024 election, Speaker Johnson will refuse to swear into Congress on January 3rd a handful of those Democrats, claiming there are “irregularities” in their elections that must be first investigated.

 

Consider that Johnson is still refusing to swear in Tom Suozzi (who recently won George Santos’ old seat), something Johnson apparently did to maintain enough Republican-majority votes to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas. (Johnson says they’ll swear him in this coming Thursday, but nobody’s holding their breath.)

 

Like Mitch McConnell withholding Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for over a year, withholding certification of a handful of Democrats would be easy, legal, and completely immoral. There’s nothing Democrats can legally do to stop Speaker Johnson from pulling this off: he can postpone swearing a member in for as long as he wants.

 

That keeps Speaker “MAGA Moscow Mike” Johnson in charge of the House, so they can also refuse to accept the Electoral College certificates of election from a handful of states where they claim there are “problems.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[EmirOfShmo]

She's an idiot...

 

 

[China]

Federal Court Strikes Down Provisions of Arizona Voter Suppression Laws

 

In a 109-page opinion issued earlier today, a federal court struck down provisions of two Arizona voter suppression laws. 

 

This positive ruling for voters penned by a Clinton-appointee stems from a consolidated lawsuit (made up of eight cases) brought by pro-voting organizations challenging provisions of two Arizona voter suppression laws: House Bill 2492 and House Bill 2243.  

 

Under H.B. 2492, new voters registering with federal forms must provide proof of citizenship or residency documentation (DPOC) if they want to vote in presidential elections or vote early by mail for any office. Voters who registered when the DPOC requirement wasn’t in effect must provide citizenship documentation to vote in presidential elections. The law also empowers the Arizona attorney general’s office to investigate voters with missing citizenship statuses. Lastly, the law requires registrants who use the state voter registration form to list their birthplace, information that is not material to a voter’s eligibility and not required by the federal voter registration form.  

 

H.B. 2243 allows for voter purges and requires the cancellation of voter registrations where county recorders have “reason to believe” voters not citizens if they do not provide “satisfactory evidence” within 35 days of being notified.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Supreme Court won’t hear lawsuit seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional maps

 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court won’t hear a lawsuit that sought to redraw the state’s congressional map, striking a blow to Democrats that could have national implications. 

 

The ruling means the state will hold its 2024 U.S. House elections using the existing map, which helped the GOP win six of eight congressional districts in 2022, despite a strong showing from Democrats statewide.

 

It’s a different outcome than the recent fight over state legislative districts, which ended last month when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new maps for the state Assembly and Senate that he drew as part of a separate lawsuit. Those maps are projected to make races for the state Legislature far more competitive than they’ve been in well over a decade.

 

The congressional lawsuit, filed by the Democratic firm Elias Law Group, asked justices to reopen a 2021 redistricting case in which the court’s former conservative majority adopted a “least changes” approach to redrawing congressional and state legislative maps. 

 

It hinged on a December ruling by the state Supreme Court’s liberal majority in Wisconsin’s high-profile legislative redistricting case. In that decision, justices ruled the “least changes” approach used previously by the court to draw legislative and congressional district lines “lacks any basis in Wisconsin redistricting law or precedent.” 

 

The court’s rejection of the lawsuit, which Republicans called a political venture using a “cynical hypothesis,” likely hurts Democratic chances of picking away at a slim GOP majority in Congress going into the November election.

 

While Democrats could still compete in Wisconsin, they face an uphill climb. Just two of the state’s congressional seats are considered competitive under the current map, and both are represented by GOP incumbents.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

New data shows it's gotten easier to vote in the U.S. since 2000

 

For all the concern in recent years that U.S. democracy is on the brink, in danger or under threat, a report out Tuesday offers a glimmer of good news for American voters worried that casting a ballot will be difficult in 2024.

 

Put simply, the new data shows that voting in America has gotten easier over the past two decades. More voters have the ability to cast a ballot before Election Day, with the majority of U.S. states now offering some form of early in-person voting and mail voting to all voters.

 

"Although we often talk in a partisan context about voter fraud and voter suppression and whether voters have access to the ballot, the reality is, over the past 25 years, we've greatly increased the convenience of voting for almost all Americans," said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which authored the new report.

 

The research was inspired by an NPR request for historical data around voting access, and NPR is the first news organization to report the findings.

 

The data shows that, despite real efforts by some Republican-led legislatures to restrict access at the margins, the trend in the U.S. since 2000 has been toward making it easier to vote: Nearly 97% of voting-age American citizens now live in states that offer the option to vote before Election Day.

 

"The lies about early voting, the lies about voting machines and efforts in some state legislatures to roll back some of the election integrity and convenience measures that have evolved over the last several decades, those efforts almost all failed," Becker said. "In almost every single state, voters can choose to vote when they want to."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

An appeals court says 'undated' Pennsylvania ballots don't count

 

A federal appeals panel has set up a potential U.S. Supreme Court battle about Pennsylvania's mail-in ballots that could play a role in determining who wins this year's presidential election and other races in the key swing state.

 

Mailed ballots that arrive on time but in envelopes without dates handwritten by Pennsylvania voters or with incorrect dates should not be counted, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday. Their 2-1 decision strikes down a lower court ruling.

 

The main legal issue surrounding what are often called "undated ballots" is whether not tallying them violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says a person's right to vote cannot be denied for "an error or omission" that is "not material" in determining voting eligibility.

 

Click on the link for the full article 

[China]

Montana Supreme Court strikes down voting restrictions

 

Montana’s highest court on Wednesday struck down four laws that the state’s Republican-led legislature passed in 2021 to restrict voting.

 

The Montana Supreme Court declared the laws unconstitutional, siding with a district court judge who ruled against them in 2022. The laws “violate the fundamental right to vote provided to all citizens by the Montana Constitution,” according to a summary of the majority opinion that was signed by four of the seven justices.

 

The laws ended same-day voter registration in most cases, eliminated student ID cards as a permitted form of voter ID and sought to curtail paid ballot-collection efforts. They also outlawed absentee ballots for people who would be 18 years old by Election Day.

 

“Today’s decision is a tremendous victory for democracy, Native voters, and young people across the state of Montana,” Sheila Hogan, executive director of the Montana Democratic Party, said in a statement. “While Republican politicians continue to attack voting rights and our protected freedoms, their voter suppression efforts failed and were struck down as unconstitutional.”

 

The office of Montana’s secretary of state, Christi Jacobsen (R), criticized the Supreme Court decision Wednesday.

 

“The Secretary is devastated by this decision but assures Montanans that her commitment to election integrity will not waver by this narrow adoption of judicial activism that is certain to fall on the wrong side of history,” Jacobsen’s office said in a statement. “State and county election officials have been punched in the gut.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Conservative activists reach $1 million settlement deal with New York AG for running 2020 voter suppression campaign

 

Conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have agreed to pay $1 million to the New York attorney general’s office and others for running a voter suppression campaign targeting Black voters during the 2020 election.

 

The deal announced Tuesday by state Attorney General Letitia James represents the latest punishment the pair will face for orchestrating a broad voter suppression campaign four years ago that used robocalls to spread election-related misinformation to Black voters and others in an effort to discourage voting.

 

A federal judge found the two men liable last year for targeting Black voters in New York, saying in a lengthy ruling that they “set into motion a full-scale voter suppression operation during the summer of 2020 to discourage eligible voters from voting by targeting mail-in voting in the 2020 Election.”

 

Under the deal reached by Wohl and Burkman with James’ office, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and several individual plaintiffs, the two men have agreed to pay a $1 million judgment to those parties, according to the attorney general. If the pair “fail to pay at least $105,000 by December 31, 2024, and do not address the failure to pay within 30 days, the amount will increase to $1.25 million,” James’ office said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Revealed: Mysterious benefactors behind Mike Lindell's push to hand-count ballots

 

At the local discount cinema in this Phoenix suburb this winter, a crowd of about 100 took their seats for something different from the typical Sunday matinee.

 

The man standing in front of the big screen, Mark Cook, packed up his life months ago to drive around in an RV for a mission he said he was called to by God. Their elections had been stolen from them, he told the crowd, and it was time to take them back. He dubbed his cross-country venture the “hand count road show.”

 

“Elections belong to us,” he said, emphatically. “Say it!” a woman in the front of the theater yelled out.

 

The ultimate solution he offered the crowd: Eliminating mail-in voting, counting all ballots cast at polling places on the night of the election, and, most importantly, doing the counting by hand.

 

Cook is one of several quasi-disciples of Mike Lindell and other big-name election influencers who have been spreading the hand-count gospel around the country since 2020, when Donald Trump began claiming without evidence that ballot tabulating machines were rigged against him.

 

The push to hand-count ballots is ramping up, albeit with spotty success, as the 2024 election nears, according to a review by The Guardian and Votebeat. If more localities decide to try hand-counting in the November election, results could be inaccurate, untrustworthy, or delayed, fostering more distrust in elections. In places that opt not to hand count, supporters of the practice could use this choice as a reason to question or refuse to sign off on certification.

 

Either way, it raises the risk of throwing the 2024 election into chaos.

 

“It just gives additional grounds for calling into question the results of elections when there are no valid grounds,” said Heather Sawyer, executive director at American Oversight. “There’s no good reason to do it. And there’s lots of room for mischief and problems.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Ohio AG shuts down Democrat proposal that would skirt election deadline to get Biden on ballots

 

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost's office rejected an effort by state Democrats to circumvent a key election deadline to allow President Biden on state ballots this week, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital.

 

The documents show correspondence from Yost's office and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as well as attorney Donald McTigue, who is representing Democrats on the matter.

 

LaRose, a Republican, had notified state Democrats earlier this month that the Democratic National Convention would not occur until more than a week after Ohio's Aug. 7 deadline for certifying presidential candidates. LaRose warned that either the Ohio assembly would have to vote to change the law, or Democrats would have to move up their plans for certifying Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

McTigue responded in an April 9 letter, arguing the Secretary of State had the authority to accept a provisional certification of Biden and Harris' nominations prior to the official certification at the party's convention.

 

He claimed Ohio law allows for a provisional move because Biden and Harris "have secured the pledged delegates necessary to become the party's nominees."

 

LaRose then consulted with Yost's office about the proposed solution, but the attorney general shot down the plan in a statement on Monday.

 

"The Democratic Party’s notion of providing a ‘provisional certification’ by the statutory deadline simply is not provided for by law," Yost's office said. "Instead, the law mandates the Democratic Party to actually certify its president and vice-president candidates on or before August 7, 2024. No alternative process is permitted."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

I assume the Dems don't want to just certify Biden now, because they want lots of primaries, to bring Dem voters to lots of other state ballot initiatives. 

[China]

Prosecutions of Fake Electors for Trump Gain Ground in Swing States

 

The chair of the Nevada Republican Party has been indicted. So has the former chair of the Georgia GOP. In Michigan, a former co-chair of the state party is facing charges.

 

As former President Donald Trump goes on trial in the New York criminal case, other investigations and prosecutions in five crucial swing states are continuing to scrutinize the steps that he and his allies took in trying to circumvent the will of voters after the 2020 election.

 

The investigations focus largely on the plan to deploy fake electors in states Trump lost. Documents emerging from the state cases highlight divisions among Trump advisers after the 2020 election about whether to use hedging language in the phony certificates they sent to Washington purporting to designate electoral votes for Trump. They also undercut claims by some Trump aides that they played little role in the fake-electors plan.

 

Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have already brought charges against a total of 25 fake electors, including current and former Republican Party leaders in those states. The Georgia case, led by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has gone further, bringing charges against Trump himself and a number of his advisers.

 

Investigations are also playing out in Wisconsin as well as in Arizona, where state Attorney General Kris Mayes is expected to bring charges soon. Grand jury subpoenas were recently issued to the people who acted as fake electors in Arizona, including Kelli Ward, a former state Republican chair. Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is already facing charges in Georgia, is also among those subpoenaed in the Arizona case.

 

There are so many state investigations going on that “they all kind of run together,” said Manny Arora, a lawyer for Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the fake-electors plan who has emerged as a key witness in the investigations.

 

“Most of the jurisdictions are keeping it local and leaving the big stuff to the feds,” Arora said, adding that he did not expect most of the state cases to “be quite as sweeping as Georgia.”

Evidence has also emerged from state civil suits brought on behalf of legitimate 2020 electors for Joe Biden, and from the federal case brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Trump.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[@DCGoldPants]