Category Archives: elections

Democrats Push Voting-Rights Expansion With Fresh Urgency

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From today’s New York Magazine:

When the House passed the For the People Act, a package of voting, redistricting, and campaign-finance reforms, in March of 2019, it was a symbolic and aspirational effort. It passed on a strict party-line vote. Its significance as a Democratic “messaging” vehicle was reflected in its designation as HR 1, the first bill introduced in the 116th Congress.

The bill is back as HR 1 in the 117th Congress, but this time it will also be the first bill introduced when Democrats take over the Senate this week. The Republican majority in the Senate over the past four years made democracy-reform legislation a nonstarter. But now a Democratic governing trifecta in Washington gives such reforms a new impetus, as does the baleful experience of the 2020 election cycle, in which Republicans aligned with the Trump administration doubled down on a strategy of suppressing as many votes as possible and then trying to keep votes already cast from being counted or reflected in the final Electoral College balloting for the presidency.

Here’s a list of reforms in the legislation, as compiled by Daily Kos’s Stephen Wolf when it passed the House last year:

• Automatic voter registration at an array of state agencies

• Same-day voter registration

• Online voter registration

• Allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register so they’ll be on the rolls when they turn 18Allowing state colleges and universities to serve as registration agencies

• Banning states from purging eligible voters’ registration simply for infrequent voting

That’s a lot of reforms, and many are at cross-purposes with the GOP’s renewed determination to make voting more, not less, difficult — especially via mail balloting — and the latter-day Republican conviction that massive spending on elections by wealthy interests is not a travesty but a cherished First Amendment right.

So unless Republicans experience some sort of radical post-Trump conversion to enthusiasm for democracy, passage of these reforms in the Senate will almost certainly be blocked by its GOP minority, barring filibuster reform (which in turn would require unanimous Democratic support, which it does not appear to have at the moment). This also isn’t the kind of legislation that can be moved around the filibuster barricades by a budget reconciliation bill, because it doesn’t involve significant fiscal issues.

Read the complete article here.

Sen. Ron Wyden: Capitol riots prove we must strengthen American democracy by protecting voting rights for all

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From NBC News Online:

On Jan. 6, at the behest of the outgoing president of the United States, domestic terrorists attacked the legislative branch of the government of the United States. Bombs were left apparently targeting us, gunshots rang out, Molotov cocktails were brought to the building, and five deaths resulted from the melee on the Capitol grounds. It remains unclear who — if anyone — was in command of the military when officials were pleading for help from the National Guard, which didn’t receive orders to assist for several hours. It’s a miracle that the insurrection failed, that the building didn’t burn and that many more people weren’t killed.

At 8 p.m. on Wednesday, my colleagues and I walked past shards of glass and refuse left behind by the insurrectionist mob to resume debate on the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Some of my fellow senators said they felt that returning to the chamber and finishing the Electoral College count was a signal that America was already turning the page.

Not in my book.

In the wake of this attack, Democrats must use our majorities in Congress to pass reforms that will defend our democracy from the forces that supported, incited and fueled the riots — which means making it easier for every American to vote. Congress cannot — must not — move forward in the belief that the end of Donald Trump’s presidency means all is well in our country.

After all, what happened after police cleared the Capitol building and workers began cleaning up the wreckage and blood? Republicans walked right back into the House and Senate chambers and continued spreading the same lies about voters and voting rights that had drawn the mob to the Capitol in the first place.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for instance, claimed that he just wanted an election commission to study the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania — where Biden won decisive victories. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., claimed that he was just giving voice to his constituents’ concerns about election integrity by attempting to throw out the legally cast ballots of millions of Pennsylvanians. It was all nonsense.

Wednesday’s phony debate about counting the Electoral College ballots was just about two elected officials laundering a violent, fanatical conspiracy — one that had already done great harm to the country and the institution in which they serve — to further their own ambitions. It was nothing more than self-promotion and a barefaced, ham-handed attempt to delegitimize the next administration.

Read the complete article here.

Members of Trump Cabinet discussing invoking 25th Amendment

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From ABC News Online:

There have been discussions among some members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet and his allies over invoking the 25th Amendment, a potential vehicle for removing the president from office, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the discussions told ABC News.

Un-American.' 'Treasonous.': North Texas leaders decry mob breach at U.S. Capitol

It’s unclear how extensive these conversations have been or whether Vice President Mike Pence is supportive of such action. Many were horrified by Wednesday’s violence at the Capitol as well as Trump’s apparent lack of urgency in marshaling resources to stop the mob, the sources said.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., on Thursday became the first Republican to publicly call for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

The 25th Amendment, which was ratified in 1967 in the wake of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, lays out the procedures for replacing the president in the event of death, removal, resignation or incapacitation.

“The president not only abdicated his duty to protect the American people and the people’s house, he invoked and inflamed passions that gave fuel to the insurrection we saw here,” Kinzinger said in a video posted to Twitter. “When pressed to move and denounce the violence he barely did so, while of course victimizing himself … all indications are that the president has become unmoored, not just from his duty, or even his health, but from reality itself.”

“It is for this reason that I call for the vice president and members of the cabinet to ensure that the next few weeks are safe for the American people, and that we have a sane captain of the ship,” Kinzinger said.

Read the complete article here.

Electoral Vote Count to Resume After Pro-Trump Mob Storms US Capitol

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From today’s NBC News Washington:

A mob supporting President Donald Trump forced its way into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, surging past security barriers and delaying the constitutional process to affirm Joe Biden’s victory in the November election.

A woman died after being shot by law enforcement at the Capitol, sources told NBC News, and several officers and others were injured.

Rioters used chemical irritants on police in order to gain access to the Capitol grounds — D.C.’s acting police chief said — broke glass and waved Trump flags. 

Officials declared the U.S. Capitol complex “secure” at nearly 6 p.m. after heavily armed police moved to end a violent, nearly four-hour occupation. An announcement saying “the Capitol is secure” rang out Wednesday evening inside a secure location for officials of the House. Lawmakers applauded.

Members of Congress said they were stunned by the violence. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) said she had expected the day to be tense.

“Them actually entering the United States Capitol is not something anyone would have expected to see here in the United States of America. It it is a shameful and sad day for our democracy,” she said.

Rioters will be held responsible for the chaos, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said.

“The behavior that we are witnessing is shameful, unpatriotic and, above all, it is unlawful,” she said at a news conference. “Anyone who has engaged in these activities, continues to engage in these activities, will be held accountable.”

Read the complete article here.

Trump pressures GA election official to ‘find’ winning votes in taped call

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From today’s Los Angeles Times:

President Trump demanded that Georgia’s top election official help him “find” enough votes to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, according to a phone recording made public Sunday that pointed to a brazen new chapter in the president’s attempt to overturn his election defeat.

In an hour-long phone call Saturday, reported Sunday by the Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Trump cajoled, flattered and implicitly threatened Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, marshaling elaborate conspiracy theories to support his claim that he had won a state that Biden carried by almost 12,000 votes.

Raffensperger, a Republican, rejected the president’s blunt overtures, telling him: “The data that you have is wrong,” according to the audio recording. The Journal-Constitution said the authenticity of the recording was confirmed by two people involved in the conversation.

Legal experts and some Democrats suggested the president’s actions may have violated the law. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate Democratic whip, issued a strongly worded statement urging a criminal investigation, saying Trump sought to “intimidate an elected official into deliberately changing and misrepresenting” a legally counted vote. Law professors, including Stanford’s Nate Persily, tweeted out relevant sections of Georgia’s election code.

Two months after the election, and almost three weeks after the electoral college certified Biden’s victory by a 306-232 margin, Trump is backing expected challenges to the results by congressional Republicans in a joint session of Congress on Wednesday that typically is ceremonial in nature. Scores of Republican House members and at least a dozen GOP senators have signaled support for the effort, which could result in hours of debate before each chamber is expected to reject the protest.

Republican plans to contest the election have generated scorn from establishment GOP figures, including Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. On Sunday, seven conservative Republican House members issued an unusual joint statement announcing their opposition to the challenge, warning that congressional action “would amount to stealing power from the people and the states.”

Read the complete article here.

Georgia Senate Runoffs: More Voters Turn Out For Early Voting On First Day Than For General Election

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From today’s Forbes Magazine:

Nearly 169,000 Georgians cast ballots on Monday, the first day of early voting in the state’s Senate runoff elections—a massive number that surpasses even that of the general election’s early voting kickoff and demonstrates the wave of enthusiasm for a pair of races that will determine the makeup of the Senate.

According to data cited by voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, who has been leading the Democratic party’s efforts to rally support in Georgia, 168,293 state residents voted on Monday, which is nearly 30,000 more than the number of votes cast on the first day of day of early voting in the November general election (140,000).

Taking into account the 314,000 Georgians who have already cast their ballots by mail, this means over 480,000 of the state’s 10.6 million residents have voted in the Senate runoffs to date. 

Overall, the general election had still enticed 24% more voters by this point for a total of 633,990 votes due to the whopping 484,000 ballots sent by mail. 

Over the weekend, Abrams told CNN that the Democratic party is confident in its ability to win the two runoff elections, having already seen massive interest in absentee ballots and a surge in enthusiasm from voters whose demographics signal enthusiasm for Democratic candidates. 

Read the complete article here.

Battleground states urge SCOTUS to reject Texas bid to overturn Biden’s wins

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From today’s CNBC News Online:

The battleground states whose presidential election results are being challenged by Texas at the Supreme Court urged the justices on Thursday not to take up the case.

The four states targeted in the lawsuit warned in uncharacteristically sharp briefs that granting Texas’ unprecedented request would “do violence to the Constitution” and “disenfranchise millions” of voters. Those states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia — have all certified their election results, with Democrat Joe Biden defeating President Donald Trump.

Nearly simultaneously, Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine filed a brief at the court on behalf of the District of Columbia and 22 states and territories defending the four states targeted by Texas. That friend-of-the-court brief was joined by California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington.

The flurry of major briefs related to the case — including Trump’s own request to intervene — demonstrated the dramatic and lingering polarization of the U.S. just weeks after one of the most contentious elections in memory.

Pennsylvania in its brief called Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s long-shot bid to overturn other states’ elections “legally indefensible” and “an affront to principles of constitutional democracy. Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees,” Pennsylvania’s scathing brief read.

Dana Nessel, the attorney general of Michigan, told the court in her state’s brief to reject Texas’ case outright. “To do otherwise would make this Court the arbiter of all future national elections,” Nessel wrote.

Christopher Carr, the attorney general of Georgia, told the court that Texas was seeking to “transfer Georgia’s electoral powers to the federal judiciary.” “Respect for federalism and the constitutional design prohibits that transfer of power, but this Court should never even reach that issue,” he wrote.

The replies came one day after Trump asked the high court to let him intervene in the case. The president, who is refusing to concede to Biden, has hyped Texas’ case as “the big one” — but election law experts say there’s little if any chance the court will allow it to proceed.

So far, the justices have not taken any action in the case. Despite Trump’s frequent pleas, the court has not shown an eagerness to get involved in any litigation related to the presidential election.

Read the complete article here.

Trump’s false claims laying groundwork for new voting restrictions, experts warn

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From NBC News Online:

Even before the final votes in the 2020 election were tallied, President Donald Trump sent his attorneys to court alleging voter fraud.

When it became clear that he had lost to President-elect Joe Biden, his claims — and his campaign’s court filings — accelerated. Trump attacked cities with large shares of Black voters, who had come out in force for Biden, while his lawyers baselessly alleged a global conspiracy and filed dozens of suits in six states.

The legal strategy failed in court after court — not a single incident of voter fraud has been proven in the lawsuits — but experts warn the narrative is laying the groundwork for disenfranchisement of voters across the country.

“I don’t actually think that all of this leads to a different result in January, but I am really afraid about what Donald Trump is currently doing to the country for February and beyond,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert and professor at Loyola Law School who worked at the Department of Justice during the Obama administration.

Despite the large body of evidence that American elections are secure from both hacking and widespread voter fraud, federal and state politicians are already proposing new laws that will make it harder to vote.

“We’re already seeing trial balloons of new measures to restrict access to voting, and I expect that this false narrative of voter fraud is going to be used as an excuse in many other places to try and drive an anti-voter agenda going forward,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.

In Georgia, a traditionally red state that Biden flipped blue this year by more than 12,000 votes, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has proposed several major election changes, including adding a voter ID requirement to mail-in voting and making it easier to challenge a voter’s stated residency.

“Close elections sow distrust,” Raffensperger said on Nov. 20, announcing that a hand recount had shifted Biden’s margin of victory in the state but had not changed the outcome. “People feel like their side was cheated.”

A second recount followed in the state, affirming the same result. Another Republican official in his office, Gabriel Sterling, later forcefully condemned the president and other Republicans’ rhetoric around a “stolen” or “rigged” election, which he said has incited harassment of election officials and death threats.

Read the complete article here.

Georgia’s GOP senators falsely claim election fraud just to stay in power

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From today’s NBC News Online:

We are a conservative and a centrist who — at various times in our careers — have served in significant federal government roles. From the time of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush through today, we have seen in action how the adherence to the principles of federalism and the separation of powers has served the people of the United States as our Constitution’s framers wisely intended.

But the position of Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., on federal interference in their own state’s electoral processes is unfaithful to that tradition; it is neither conservative nor effective. Georgians should demand more of their senators — and so should the people of every state where similar, spurious challenges against their electoral processes are being leveled on behalf of a failed president.

The joint statement of Perdue and Loeffler claiming mismanagement and corruption in their state’s elections reflects both bad temper and bad judgment. Their claim lacks any specificity or description of evidence of actual fraud, and was issued with a malicious, menacing tone befitting dark conspiracy theorists rather than high public officials.

And, since their initial statement, neither has provided any specific evidence of fraud. (On Thursday, Georgia finished a hand recount of ballots in the state showing Joe Biden had indeed won presidential race.)

Forced to demonstrate any possible sources of election fraud, Perdue’s cousin, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, also made hollow, unsupported assertions of unidentified people voting twice, others engineering votes by or on behalf of those who have died, moved out of state, and yet others voting despite being ineligible convicted felons. He cited no evidence — and, in fact, there may be no such illegal voters — of any such voter fraud or any basis for believing that it could disqualify enough ballots to flip the outcome.

To make matters worse, Sens. Perdue and Loeffler used the opportunity to demonize Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who not only voted to re-elect President Donald Trump, but also to re-elect both of them. “I’d like our side to win,” Raffensperger said in an interview with Atlanta’s Fox affiliate Nov. 10, “but then you have to win fair and honestly.”

He added: “I want 100 percent of the people to understand that the process was fair and accurately counted.”

That is how a democracy is supposed to work; anything else, and we might as well live in Russia or China.

Read the complete article here.

Election Officials in Every Swing State Say There’s No Evidence of Voter Fraud

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From today’s Newsweek:

Election officials in 49 states, including swing states crucial to the victory of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, have all publicly stated that they’ve seen no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Their statements run contrary to the claims of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and President Donald Trump‘s re-election campaign.

Months before the election, Trump claimed he would only lose if there were widespread fraud or vote-rigging. Trump subsequently lost the election by more than 5 million popular votes and 73 electoral votes.

Biden decisively won due to 273,000 popular votes and 79 electoral votes in six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Election officials and secretaries of state from those and 43 other states told The New York Times that they neither suspect nor have proof of any widespread voter fraud. The only state not to respond was Texas, where Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick offered citizens $1 million for any evidence of fraud.

Gabriel Sterling, voting implementation manager in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, disavowed any claims of fraud to the Times. Jake Rollow, spokesman for Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, told the publication, “We have not seen any evidence of fraud or foul play in the actual administration of the election.”

Jacklin Rhoads, spokeswoman for Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, said, “No active lawsuit even alleges, and no evidence presented so far has shown, widespread problems.”

Read the complete article here.