Election Integrity
Early Warnings
Early Warnings
- How the Democrats and the Left Plan to Undermine the Security of Future Elections
August 7, 2022
Dem Forces Link Election Integrity Bills to ‘Racist Sponsors’
Brennan Center
*Our key findings at the legislative district level include:
Representatives from the whitest districts in the most racially diverse states were the most likely to sponsor anti-voter bills.
Districts with higher racial resentment were more likely to be represented by lawmakers who sponsored restrictive bills.
* At the state level, we find:
It is the interaction between race and partisanship that matters. States with unified Republican control are not uniformly likely to introduce or pass restrictive provisions. In fact, predominantly white states are unlikely to introduce or pass restrictive provisions, regardless of which party controls the legislature. But racially diverse states controlled by Republicans are far more likely to introduce and pass restrictive provisions.
Dem Forces Institutionalizing Dim View of Election Integrity Efforts
Alpha News
*The University of Minnesota held an event recently where students working towards a certificate in election administration were taught to build strategic alliances with the media and celebrities to counter the voices of election security skeptics.
*The event was called “Election Accuracy: Going on the Offensive” and was put on by the university’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs as part of its program for training current and future election officials. The event featured speakers who taught students to build allies in the media ahead of Election Day to neutralize skeptics who may raise questions about practices like mail-in voting.
Study Data Portends Shift in Dems’ Rhetorical Approach to the ‘Big Lie’
NPR
[Comment - Recasting your argument to appeal to your opponent’s core values is a relatively recent development in propaganda science.]
*They found that while more than a third of voters said they don't trust the process for counting votes in the U.S., after people were shown affirmative but nonpartisan messaging about democratic systems persevering, that number significantly improved.
*"The good news from our research is that we found that by appealing to the values that American voters hold dear — things like freedom, independence, a longing for unity — that we actually can persuade voters that the Big Lie is really nothing more than a partisan power grab."
* A Justice Department official said in a Senate hearing this week that the federal law enforcement agency had reviewed more than a thousand hostile threats against election workers over the past year.
‘Republicans Will Disrupt the Midterms’ - Watch for False Flag Events
Last week, we summarized a training from the Scrutineers warning Dems, “The same people who pushed The Big Lie about the 2020 election are threatening to disrupt the midterms.” An election integrity team leader warns there will be false flag events - Dems posing as Republicans and making trouble in polling places in the 2022 elections, in order to make Republicans look bad and to prove the ‘truth’ of the narrative.
Dem Forces Defend Long Election Season
CEIR
*Put simply, a longer voting period bolsters efforts to quickly detect and mitigate technical glitches, fraud, cyberattacks, and other potential threats.
Dem Forces Seek Further Penetration of Election Apparatus in the Name of Fighting ‘Misinformation’
Brennan Center
*Recommendations for election officials
Plan well-timed voter education campaigns that include resources such as Frequently Asked Questions pages and video tutorials.
Provide educational resources in voters’ preferred languages.
Consider publishing rumor control pages to “prebunk” misinformation.
Build and maintain a network of partners and messengers — including secretaries of state, community groups, candidates of all affiliations, business groups, and the media — to amplify accurate election information.
Where languages other than English are common, election officials should seek partnerships with messengers who can reach such voters and have their trust.
*Recommendations for community-based organizations
Develop contacts among election officials and nonpartisan voting experts.
Provide accurate election information and tools to identify misinformation to community constituencies in preferred languages and formats.
Develop partnerships with trusted messengers to ensure community education efforts travel further.
Phill Kline Pushes Back on Bidenbucks
Just the News
*Federal agencies participating in voter turnout efforts "is wrong" because they will target who they want to turn out to vote, "and government can't be engaged in that process" because it's "partisan politics," Phill Kline, director of The Amistad Project, told Just the News.
The View from Our Side
Dem Forces Link Election Integrity Bills to ‘Racist Sponsors’
Brennan Center
*Our key findings at the legislative district level include:
Representatives from the whitest districts in the most racially diverse states were the most likely to sponsor anti-voter bills.
Districts with higher racial resentment were more likely to be represented by lawmakers who sponsored restrictive bills.
* At the state level, we find:
It is the interaction between race and partisanship that matters. States with unified Republican control are not uniformly likely to introduce or pass restrictive provisions. In fact, predominantly white states are unlikely to introduce or pass restrictive provisions, regardless of which party controls the legislature. But racially diverse states controlled by Republicans are far more likely to introduce and pass restrictive provisions.
Dem Forces Institutionalizing Dim View of Election Integrity Efforts
Alpha News
*The University of Minnesota held an event recently where students working towards a certificate in election administration were taught to build strategic alliances with the media and celebrities to counter the voices of election security skeptics.
*The event was called “Election Accuracy: Going on the Offensive” and was put on by the university’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs as part of its program for training current and future election officials. The event featured speakers who taught students to build allies in the media ahead of Election Day to neutralize skeptics who may raise questions about practices like mail-in voting.
Study Data Portends Shift in Dems’ Rhetorical Approach to the ‘Big Lie’
NPR
[Comment - Recasting your argument to appeal to your opponent’s core values is a relatively recent development in propaganda science.]
*They found that while more than a third of voters said they don't trust the process for counting votes in the U.S., after people were shown affirmative but nonpartisan messaging about democratic systems persevering, that number significantly improved.
*"The good news from our research is that we found that by appealing to the values that American voters hold dear — things like freedom, independence, a longing for unity — that we actually can persuade voters that the Big Lie is really nothing more than a partisan power grab."
* A Justice Department official said in a Senate hearing this week that the federal law enforcement agency had reviewed more than a thousand hostile threats against election workers over the past year.
‘Republicans Will Disrupt the Midterms’ - Watch for False Flag Events
Last week, we summarized a training from the Scrutineers warning Dems, “The same people who pushed The Big Lie about the 2020 election are threatening to disrupt the midterms.” An election integrity team leader warns there will be false flag events - Dems posing as Republicans and making trouble in polling places in the 2022 elections, in order to make Republicans look bad and to prove the ‘truth’ of the narrative.
Dem Forces Defend Long Election Season
CEIR
*Put simply, a longer voting period bolsters efforts to quickly detect and mitigate technical glitches, fraud, cyberattacks, and other potential threats.
Dem Forces Seek Further Penetration of Election Apparatus in the Name of Fighting ‘Misinformation’
Brennan Center
*Recommendations for election officials
Plan well-timed voter education campaigns that include resources such as Frequently Asked Questions pages and video tutorials.
Provide educational resources in voters’ preferred languages.
Consider publishing rumor control pages to “prebunk” misinformation.
Build and maintain a network of partners and messengers — including secretaries of state, community groups, candidates of all affiliations, business groups, and the media — to amplify accurate election information.
Where languages other than English are common, election officials should seek partnerships with messengers who can reach such voters and have their trust.
*Recommendations for community-based organizations
Develop contacts among election officials and nonpartisan voting experts.
Provide accurate election information and tools to identify misinformation to community constituencies in preferred languages and formats.
Develop partnerships with trusted messengers to ensure community education efforts travel further.
Phill Kline Pushes Back on Bidenbucks
Just the News
*Federal agencies participating in voter turnout efforts "is wrong" because they will target who they want to turn out to vote, "and government can't be engaged in that process" because it's "partisan politics," Phill Kline, director of The Amistad Project, told Just the News.
The View from Our Side
- J. Christian Adams: Vote-by-mail is the worst way to run an election
- *[In the 2020 election] ... 1.1 million mail ballots were returned as undeliverable, meaning they went to the wrong address and never reached the intended recipient. This reveals a whole other problem of states not having accurate up to date voter rolls.
- *the voter rolls are a mess. An analysis by the Public Interest Legal Foundation in 2020 found nearly 350,000 deceased registrants and nearly 40,000 duplicate registrants on America’s voter rolls. When you automatically send everyone on the voter rolls a mail ballot, these deceased and duplicate registrants are receiving ballots.
- RNC Hits Election Integrity Milestones 100 Days Before Midterm Elections
- *With 100 days left before the election, the RNC has surpassed a significant milestone with over 32,000 poll watchers in primary, general, and special elections so far this cycle. In addition, they have made over 65,000 unique volunteer engagements and have held over 2,700 Election Integrity trainings.
- *RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Breitbart News, “Since the start of the cycle, we’ve made a multi-million dollar investment in our Election Integrity program, from engaging in over 50 lawsuits to recruiting thousands of poll watchers and poll workers to ensure transparency at the ballot box.”
- *The chairwoman added that the committee is “firing on all cylinders to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat,”
July 31, 2022
Dems Oppose State Legislative Oversight of Elections
Brennan Center
[Note: Rogue elections changed the rules in the 2020 elections without proper authorization in state law. Bureaucrats adopted drop boxes, mail-in voting, and other vectors of election fraud, citing the pandemic as justification. Now, Democrats seek to make those infirmities permanent. And they wonder why we want state legislatures more actively involved in elections.]
*As you know, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Moore v. Harper, a case in which some North Carolina legislators have asked the Court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature notion.
*First, the notion would greenlight partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts.
*Second, the radical claim would remove constraints on voter suppression.
*Third, the notion would create election chaos, disenfranchising voters and overwhelming election officials.
*Fourth, the notion would remove critical checks against election interference and sabotage.
Zuckerbucks Group Pushes Poll Worker Recruitment
CTCL Mailing - 7/27/22 + Ideas List here
The mailing describes leveraging high schools and colleges to recruit student poll workers. It also describes a left-wing group - Power the Polls - that “can provide support for recruitment in general, and targeting specific needs such as tech savvy individuals, multilingual speakers, or any other specific skills or gaps you are seeking to fill. When election administrators flag a poll worker need, Power the Polls can boost recruitment through their various recruitment channels - partners, businesses, earned media, social media (and more)....” The ideas list stresses bilingual populations, underrepresented communities, teachers unions, and government employees - all of which lean Democrat.
USPS Sets Up New Office to Aid Mail-In Voting
Gateway Pundit
[Note: this is not good news for election integrity. The potential for election fraud through mail-in voting is well-recognized (e.g., Carter-Baker commission). And don’t forget all the problems with biased postal workers and their union reported during the 2020 elections, several of which are recounted in the article.]
* With mail-in ballots becoming a feature of all future elections, the United States government, specifically the United States Postal Service (USPS) is now creating a permanent division inside USPS to control the delivery and return of the election ballots.
Paper Shortage Ramifications
Center for Public Integrity
* “In this cycle, there may not be a way to reprint ballots late in the game,” said Matthew Weil of the Bipartisan Policy Center, which recently published a report on the paper shortage. That risks “chaos,” he said, in jurisdictions where a judge might strike a candidate from a ballot as the election draws close.
*...the group typically hands out voter registration forms at high school graduations and naturalization ceremonies around the state. In places like Harris County — home to Houston and a population of 4.7 million — the league received 6,000 fewer forms than it requested. “We weren’t able to provide them to everyone” at naturalization ceremonies, LeBombard said.
*The League of Women Voters eventually raised money to place a bulk print order of its own, something the state permits. The league printed 10,000 forms in Harris County alone.
Dems Go Into Overdrive to Discredit Election Integrity Efforts
1)
New state laws re Zuckerbucks, drop boxes, voter, ID, new investigative units and powers, absentee ballot restrictions are all based on election fraud myths.
Brennan Center
[Note: No, they’re all based on the bad stuff that happened during the 2020 elections, all of which has been copiously documented for anyone who cares to look at the evidence.]
2)
Election deniers are running for administrative positions in several states
Brennan Center / Election Denial in State Races
[Note: Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton are ‘election deniers’. One thinks she’s the Governor of Georgia and the other thinks she’s President.]
3)
Election integrity groups on the Right like the Conservative Partnership Institute and Stop the Steal are just ‘election deniers’.
Brennan Center | New York Times
4)
GOP poll workers are saboteurs and violent.
Scrutineers mailing - 7/26/22
* The same people who pushed The Big Lie about the 2020 election are threatening to disrupt the midterms.
*(A training teaches) Advance planning to keep yourself and others safe.
[Note: Telling members that outsiders are not to be trusted and a threat is a cult technique. Also, the way we hear the story, Senator Schumer has been itching to have a hearing on this but can't seem to find any victims of Republican poll watchers to testify.]
5)
Michigan Sheriff who brought a complaint against state officials for interfering with his investigation is a far-right kook.
Reuters
Dems Oppose State Legislative Oversight of Elections
Brennan Center
[Note: Rogue elections changed the rules in the 2020 elections without proper authorization in state law. Bureaucrats adopted drop boxes, mail-in voting, and other vectors of election fraud, citing the pandemic as justification. Now, Democrats seek to make those infirmities permanent. And they wonder why we want state legislatures more actively involved in elections.]
*As you know, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Moore v. Harper, a case in which some North Carolina legislators have asked the Court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature notion.
*First, the notion would greenlight partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts.
*Second, the radical claim would remove constraints on voter suppression.
*Third, the notion would create election chaos, disenfranchising voters and overwhelming election officials.
*Fourth, the notion would remove critical checks against election interference and sabotage.
Zuckerbucks Group Pushes Poll Worker Recruitment
CTCL Mailing - 7/27/22 + Ideas List here
The mailing describes leveraging high schools and colleges to recruit student poll workers. It also describes a left-wing group - Power the Polls - that “can provide support for recruitment in general, and targeting specific needs such as tech savvy individuals, multilingual speakers, or any other specific skills or gaps you are seeking to fill. When election administrators flag a poll worker need, Power the Polls can boost recruitment through their various recruitment channels - partners, businesses, earned media, social media (and more)....” The ideas list stresses bilingual populations, underrepresented communities, teachers unions, and government employees - all of which lean Democrat.
USPS Sets Up New Office to Aid Mail-In Voting
Gateway Pundit
[Note: this is not good news for election integrity. The potential for election fraud through mail-in voting is well-recognized (e.g., Carter-Baker commission). And don’t forget all the problems with biased postal workers and their union reported during the 2020 elections, several of which are recounted in the article.]
* With mail-in ballots becoming a feature of all future elections, the United States government, specifically the United States Postal Service (USPS) is now creating a permanent division inside USPS to control the delivery and return of the election ballots.
Paper Shortage Ramifications
Center for Public Integrity
* “In this cycle, there may not be a way to reprint ballots late in the game,” said Matthew Weil of the Bipartisan Policy Center, which recently published a report on the paper shortage. That risks “chaos,” he said, in jurisdictions where a judge might strike a candidate from a ballot as the election draws close.
*...the group typically hands out voter registration forms at high school graduations and naturalization ceremonies around the state. In places like Harris County — home to Houston and a population of 4.7 million — the league received 6,000 fewer forms than it requested. “We weren’t able to provide them to everyone” at naturalization ceremonies, LeBombard said.
*The League of Women Voters eventually raised money to place a bulk print order of its own, something the state permits. The league printed 10,000 forms in Harris County alone.
Dems Go Into Overdrive to Discredit Election Integrity Efforts
1)
New state laws re Zuckerbucks, drop boxes, voter, ID, new investigative units and powers, absentee ballot restrictions are all based on election fraud myths.
Brennan Center
[Note: No, they’re all based on the bad stuff that happened during the 2020 elections, all of which has been copiously documented for anyone who cares to look at the evidence.]
2)
Election deniers are running for administrative positions in several states
Brennan Center / Election Denial in State Races
[Note: Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton are ‘election deniers’. One thinks she’s the Governor of Georgia and the other thinks she’s President.]
3)
Election integrity groups on the Right like the Conservative Partnership Institute and Stop the Steal are just ‘election deniers’.
Brennan Center | New York Times
4)
GOP poll workers are saboteurs and violent.
Scrutineers mailing - 7/26/22
* The same people who pushed The Big Lie about the 2020 election are threatening to disrupt the midterms.
*(A training teaches) Advance planning to keep yourself and others safe.
[Note: Telling members that outsiders are not to be trusted and a threat is a cult technique. Also, the way we hear the story, Senator Schumer has been itching to have a hearing on this but can't seem to find any victims of Republican poll watchers to testify.]
5)
Michigan Sheriff who brought a complaint against state officials for interfering with his investigation is a far-right kook.
Reuters
July 24, 2022
Dems Move to Control Local Election Machinery
Daily Signal
*Two big money liberal operations, ready to spend $80 million each, are trying to determine who controls elections and how in the years ahead.
*One of the two liberal groups, Run for Something, is a political action committee founded by a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer. In the spring, Run for Something established its Clerk Work project with the goal of electing clerks, election supervisors, registrars, recorders, and other local officials charged with running elections.
Note: This is inspired by George Soros’ efforts to elect liberal Secretaries of State and progressive prosecutors. Funding is coming from a Hillary Clinton (c)(4), Chan Zuckerberg, LinkedIn, ActBlue and others. I previously told you about the second project in May:
*The Alliance for Election Excellence is a five-year, $80 million project made up of seven nonprofit organizations aimed at advising local election offices on how to run elections in their jurisdictions. The Center for Tech and Civic Life is the leading organization among seven in the alliance. In 2020, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative gave $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life.
Dems Working to Make Mail-In Voting Permanent
Capital Research Center
*Americans should be familiar with the true face of vote by mail: Amber McReynolds.
*McReynolds was key to many of the last-minute voting-law changes in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2020 election, which conservatives criticized as unconstitutional and vulnerable to fraud.
*McReynolds’ sworn testimony (paid for at a rate of $225 per hour) notes that “ballot drop-boxes can be an important component of implementing expanded mail-in voting,” “do not create an increased opportunity for fraud,” and “are generally more secure than…post office boxes.” She also supports the adoption of “text-to-cure,” a system adopted in 2020 in Colorado wherein voters are invited to email, fax, or send a text message to “cure” mistakes in their ballots (e.g., a missing signature) instead of sending an affidavit.
* California hired McReynolds to consult on its massive vote-by-mail expansion plans in mid-2020.
*Biden’s nominees uniformly count speedier delivery of mail-in ballots as central to their proposed “sweeping reforms” to the Postal Service. One can expect the other Democrats and McReynolds to support transforming the declining agency into a ballot-delivery service, since vote-by-mail is central to the Democrats’ future election strategy.
*In March, Biden asked Congress for $10 billion to fund “election infrastructure”—half of which would be used to boost USPS’s capacity for mail-in voting “in underserved areas” (translation: rich with Democratic votes), including free postage for ballots for an agency that has lost money for the past 15 years.
*But the strategy makes more sense when viewed in concert with other elements designed to give Democrats a permanent edge in future elections, like CTCL’s $80 million campaign to get Uncle Sam to pay for the things Mark Zuckerberg funded in 2020: more mail-in paper ballots, and taxpayer funding for drop boxes to bypass USPS should it fail to deliver the necessary votes.
Note: USPS is not an honest broker - “Those absentee ballots accumulate at the local Post Office. The Wisconsin voter integrity team, one of the best in the country, found evidence that the Post Office collected those ballots and gave them to the Voter Concierges — to vote.” (Jay Valentine in American Thinker)
Don’t Hire Republican Poll Workers (Wink, Wink, Nod, Nod)
Brennan Center
*Recent press reports indicate that individuals who promote falsehoods about Michigan’s election processes are being recruited as election inspectors. Some are outright encouraging prospective election inspectors to engage in improper conduct by, for example, tampering with election equipment or otherwise interfering with election administration.
*state and local officials should take reasonable steps to ensure that applicants are willing to and do, in fact, follow the law and lawful instructions from election officials.
Wisconsin, Washington State Bring Complaints Against Election Watchdogs to Avoid Scrutiny
Just the News
*As voter integrity groups continue to report irregularities in the 2020 election, some states are pursuing punitive reprisals to deter unwanted scrutiny, with Wisconsin's elections regulators slapping independent election watchdogs with fines, while Washington's Democratic attorney general has submitted a state bar complaint against an election integrity lawyer.
Bipartisan Group of Lawmakers Reaches Deal to Change Electoral Count Act
CNN
*A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal to make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, marking the most significant response by Congress to former President Donald Trump's relentless pressure campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
*senators are attempting to clarify that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the electoral results.
*The proposal also includes key provisions intended to promote an orderly transition of presidential power by outlining guidelines for when eligible candidates can receive federal resources for a transition into office.
*It would also make it harder for members of Congress to attempt to overturn an election by increasing the number of House and Senate members required to raise an objection to election results when a joint session of Congress meets to certify them. Under current law, just one senator can join one House member in forcing each side to vote on whether to throw out results subject to an objection.
See also: Trump Slams Electoral Count Act Rewrite
ERIC Ties to Soros Organizations (historical)
Gateway Pundit
*On Friday we reported on how ERIC is working — The Largest U.S. Counties Removed Only ZERO to TWO Ineligible Voters From Their Voter Rolls the Last 4 Years
*Today we will focus on ERIC and its connections to Soros and far left organizations.
*The original funding of ERIC came from an “anonymous donor” and Pew Center On The States, who received grants from the Transparency & Integrity Fund of George Soros Open Society. But the leftist founders realized ERIC would not survive partisan politics. So the project transitioned to be fully funded *So who’s in control of ERIC, and what’ really going on here?
*David Becker, the lead driver of ERIC, is truly a scoundrel. In 2016 he founded CEIR. He distributed $69.5 mil in Zuckerberg money in 2020, aligned with CTCL
Dems Continue to Discredit Election Integrity Efforts
1) Canvassing (NPR)
Note: the Right is split on canvassing. J. Christian Adams advises against it: canvassers lay themselves open to accusations they are burdening civil rights (right to vote). One unfortunate example is the canvassing operation that asked who the person voted for; that has nothing to do with cleaning the rolls.
2) Canvassing and Poll-Watching (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/07/sham-fears-over-trump-loyalists-election-integrity-drive
3) Supposed ‘Election Deniers’, e.g., spread disinformation (NPR, NPR)
New from the Right: Artificial Intelligence Will Help Stop Cheating
1) Drop Boxes (Reuters)
*True the Vote officials described the coalition as a multi-faceted effort to encourage sheriffs to pursue election-fraud claims. In addition to grants meant to help sheriffs conduct surveillance of drop boxes, the group said it aims to provide sheriffs with “artificial intelligence” software to assist in analyzing the video they collect. True the Vote also plans to set up hotlines to alert sheriffs to suspicious activity at polling stations and ballot drop boxes.
2) Other Contexts (Jay Valentine in American Thinker)
*Several voter integrity teams, using advanced artificial intelligence technology, can check every registrant, at silicon speed, against over 30 databases, with a billion records, ensuring that the registrant is not living in an R.V. park, a church, or a UPS store, and that his address meets current legal standards.
*Sorry, Beto, but registering every itinerant is no longer the key to the Texas Governor's Mansion.
*For the first time, phantom voters are being identified before their registrations take effect.
*Living in an apartment where you do not designate the apartment number? Sorry, pal — you aren't voting this year. Registering from a church? There had better be enough bathrooms to meet the certificate of occupancy requirements for that county.
*More voters showing up in a county than there are eligible citizens? Flagged hourly! Alert issued before the ballots are counted!
*As ballots arrive during early voting, artificial intelligence snapshots aggregate voter identities. That guy who voted on day 2 in person, disappeared on snapshot 8, reappeared on snapshot 11 with his ballot changed to absentee...is identified. Before that ballot is tabulated, it is red-flagged, and the voter integrity team files a protest.
*Thirty-five thousand inactive voters, changed to active — then voted, then changed to inactive again? The A.I. systems pick this up with snapshot analysis. That scam is over!
*For the first time, voter integrity teams have technology ballot-harvesters cannot outrun.
*The battlefield has changed to real-time analysis, driven by artificial intelligence.
*The combined knowledge of a dozen gifted voter integrity teams, with 16 months of experience, is built into an artificial intelligence engine, identifying phantom voters before they are registered, before they can illegally vote.
Dems Move to Control Local Election Machinery
Daily Signal
*Two big money liberal operations, ready to spend $80 million each, are trying to determine who controls elections and how in the years ahead.
*One of the two liberal groups, Run for Something, is a political action committee founded by a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer. In the spring, Run for Something established its Clerk Work project with the goal of electing clerks, election supervisors, registrars, recorders, and other local officials charged with running elections.
Note: This is inspired by George Soros’ efforts to elect liberal Secretaries of State and progressive prosecutors. Funding is coming from a Hillary Clinton (c)(4), Chan Zuckerberg, LinkedIn, ActBlue and others. I previously told you about the second project in May:
*The Alliance for Election Excellence is a five-year, $80 million project made up of seven nonprofit organizations aimed at advising local election offices on how to run elections in their jurisdictions. The Center for Tech and Civic Life is the leading organization among seven in the alliance. In 2020, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative gave $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life.
Dems Working to Make Mail-In Voting Permanent
Capital Research Center
*Americans should be familiar with the true face of vote by mail: Amber McReynolds.
*McReynolds was key to many of the last-minute voting-law changes in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2020 election, which conservatives criticized as unconstitutional and vulnerable to fraud.
*McReynolds’ sworn testimony (paid for at a rate of $225 per hour) notes that “ballot drop-boxes can be an important component of implementing expanded mail-in voting,” “do not create an increased opportunity for fraud,” and “are generally more secure than…post office boxes.” She also supports the adoption of “text-to-cure,” a system adopted in 2020 in Colorado wherein voters are invited to email, fax, or send a text message to “cure” mistakes in their ballots (e.g., a missing signature) instead of sending an affidavit.
* California hired McReynolds to consult on its massive vote-by-mail expansion plans in mid-2020.
*Biden’s nominees uniformly count speedier delivery of mail-in ballots as central to their proposed “sweeping reforms” to the Postal Service. One can expect the other Democrats and McReynolds to support transforming the declining agency into a ballot-delivery service, since vote-by-mail is central to the Democrats’ future election strategy.
*In March, Biden asked Congress for $10 billion to fund “election infrastructure”—half of which would be used to boost USPS’s capacity for mail-in voting “in underserved areas” (translation: rich with Democratic votes), including free postage for ballots for an agency that has lost money for the past 15 years.
*But the strategy makes more sense when viewed in concert with other elements designed to give Democrats a permanent edge in future elections, like CTCL’s $80 million campaign to get Uncle Sam to pay for the things Mark Zuckerberg funded in 2020: more mail-in paper ballots, and taxpayer funding for drop boxes to bypass USPS should it fail to deliver the necessary votes.
Note: USPS is not an honest broker - “Those absentee ballots accumulate at the local Post Office. The Wisconsin voter integrity team, one of the best in the country, found evidence that the Post Office collected those ballots and gave them to the Voter Concierges — to vote.” (Jay Valentine in American Thinker)
Don’t Hire Republican Poll Workers (Wink, Wink, Nod, Nod)
Brennan Center
*Recent press reports indicate that individuals who promote falsehoods about Michigan’s election processes are being recruited as election inspectors. Some are outright encouraging prospective election inspectors to engage in improper conduct by, for example, tampering with election equipment or otherwise interfering with election administration.
*state and local officials should take reasonable steps to ensure that applicants are willing to and do, in fact, follow the law and lawful instructions from election officials.
Wisconsin, Washington State Bring Complaints Against Election Watchdogs to Avoid Scrutiny
Just the News
*As voter integrity groups continue to report irregularities in the 2020 election, some states are pursuing punitive reprisals to deter unwanted scrutiny, with Wisconsin's elections regulators slapping independent election watchdogs with fines, while Washington's Democratic attorney general has submitted a state bar complaint against an election integrity lawyer.
Bipartisan Group of Lawmakers Reaches Deal to Change Electoral Count Act
CNN
*A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal to make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, marking the most significant response by Congress to former President Donald Trump's relentless pressure campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
*senators are attempting to clarify that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the electoral results.
*The proposal also includes key provisions intended to promote an orderly transition of presidential power by outlining guidelines for when eligible candidates can receive federal resources for a transition into office.
*It would also make it harder for members of Congress to attempt to overturn an election by increasing the number of House and Senate members required to raise an objection to election results when a joint session of Congress meets to certify them. Under current law, just one senator can join one House member in forcing each side to vote on whether to throw out results subject to an objection.
See also: Trump Slams Electoral Count Act Rewrite
ERIC Ties to Soros Organizations (historical)
Gateway Pundit
*On Friday we reported on how ERIC is working — The Largest U.S. Counties Removed Only ZERO to TWO Ineligible Voters From Their Voter Rolls the Last 4 Years
*Today we will focus on ERIC and its connections to Soros and far left organizations.
*The original funding of ERIC came from an “anonymous donor” and Pew Center On The States, who received grants from the Transparency & Integrity Fund of George Soros Open Society. But the leftist founders realized ERIC would not survive partisan politics. So the project transitioned to be fully funded *So who’s in control of ERIC, and what’ really going on here?
*David Becker, the lead driver of ERIC, is truly a scoundrel. In 2016 he founded CEIR. He distributed $69.5 mil in Zuckerberg money in 2020, aligned with CTCL
Dems Continue to Discredit Election Integrity Efforts
1) Canvassing (NPR)
Note: the Right is split on canvassing. J. Christian Adams advises against it: canvassers lay themselves open to accusations they are burdening civil rights (right to vote). One unfortunate example is the canvassing operation that asked who the person voted for; that has nothing to do with cleaning the rolls.
2) Canvassing and Poll-Watching (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/07/sham-fears-over-trump-loyalists-election-integrity-drive
3) Supposed ‘Election Deniers’, e.g., spread disinformation (NPR, NPR)
New from the Right: Artificial Intelligence Will Help Stop Cheating
1) Drop Boxes (Reuters)
*True the Vote officials described the coalition as a multi-faceted effort to encourage sheriffs to pursue election-fraud claims. In addition to grants meant to help sheriffs conduct surveillance of drop boxes, the group said it aims to provide sheriffs with “artificial intelligence” software to assist in analyzing the video they collect. True the Vote also plans to set up hotlines to alert sheriffs to suspicious activity at polling stations and ballot drop boxes.
2) Other Contexts (Jay Valentine in American Thinker)
*Several voter integrity teams, using advanced artificial intelligence technology, can check every registrant, at silicon speed, against over 30 databases, with a billion records, ensuring that the registrant is not living in an R.V. park, a church, or a UPS store, and that his address meets current legal standards.
*Sorry, Beto, but registering every itinerant is no longer the key to the Texas Governor's Mansion.
*For the first time, phantom voters are being identified before their registrations take effect.
*Living in an apartment where you do not designate the apartment number? Sorry, pal — you aren't voting this year. Registering from a church? There had better be enough bathrooms to meet the certificate of occupancy requirements for that county.
*More voters showing up in a county than there are eligible citizens? Flagged hourly! Alert issued before the ballots are counted!
*As ballots arrive during early voting, artificial intelligence snapshots aggregate voter identities. That guy who voted on day 2 in person, disappeared on snapshot 8, reappeared on snapshot 11 with his ballot changed to absentee...is identified. Before that ballot is tabulated, it is red-flagged, and the voter integrity team files a protest.
*Thirty-five thousand inactive voters, changed to active — then voted, then changed to inactive again? The A.I. systems pick this up with snapshot analysis. That scam is over!
*For the first time, voter integrity teams have technology ballot-harvesters cannot outrun.
*The battlefield has changed to real-time analysis, driven by artificial intelligence.
*The combined knowledge of a dozen gifted voter integrity teams, with 16 months of experience, is built into an artificial intelligence engine, identifying phantom voters before they are registered, before they can illegally vote.
July 7, 2022
J. Christian Adams: FBI, DOJ, Left-Wing Activists and Funders Coordinating with Election Officials
PJMedia
Editor’s Summary: Government documents show “behind-the-curtain relationships developing between progressive funders, federal authorities, corporations, state election officials, and leftist organizations.” Progressives are organizing state officials and third parties to discuss election administration at conferences, baseball games, etc. - no Republicans invited. The Zuckerberg-funded Center for Election Innovation & Research is involved.
Democrat Propaganda Claims All Attempts at Election Integrity are Sinister and Must Be Discredited
1)
Wanting to Look Inside Voting Machines
Brennan Center
*While the January 6 committee has rightly focused on the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, it is critical to remember that this threat is ongoing, and many of the people implicated continue to work to undermine future elections.
*wealthy Republican businessmen like Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of MyPillow Inc., and Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com, have been active in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and are also supporting those working to gain unauthorized access to election systems.
*Who is behind the effort to gain this unauthorized access? In many cases, the very same people involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
*Lindell is also linked with key players seeking to access voting machines in Colorado and elsewhere.
*Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, an “election integrity” group
*Byrne has “funded independent efforts to send teams of ‘hackers and cybersleuths’ to access voting computer systems across the country,” according to the Daily Beast. He is connected to another instance of unauthorized access to election systems, this one in Georgia.
*This increased risk of both external and insider threats is why it’s so important we take steps now to protect future elections. That includes paying for and implementing measures to protect against unauthorized access to critical election systems.
2)
Recruiting Poll Workers and Poll Watchers
The Guardian
*Leading election denier promoting local groups to ‘oversee’ elections and determine if officials are ‘friend or foe’
*Cleta Mitchell was on Donald Trump’s legal team in 2020 and played a central role in his efforts to overturn the election result.
*In Raleigh, Mitchell eschewed the term “election denier”. “There were so many things wrong with that election,” she said. “That the outcome was correct, that’s all I deny.”
*During the same podcast appearance Bannon asked her whether the summits were a chance to learn how to “take over and grab hold of and control the local apparatus in their local elections and then to network throughout the country, so we have an apparatus that’s unbreakable?” “That’s absolutely what we’re doing,” Mitchell said.
*Mitchell’s effort is happening parallel to a significant effort from the Republican National Committee to recruit election workers. So far, the RNC has recruited 16 in-state election integrity directors, more than 15,000 poll workers, and 10,000 observers in swing states, according to Gates McGavick, an RNC spokesperson. Josh Findlay, the RNC’s national director of election integrity, spoke at the North Carolina summit. The RNC said it “works with other groups who have an interest in promoting election integrity” but that its poll worker focus was independent.
Dems All Aflutter Over Supreme Court ‘Independent State Legislature’ Case
Common Cause
*The U.S. Supreme Court decided today it will hear oral arguments during the October 2022 term in North Carolina’s consolidated Congressional gerrymandering case. The case, Moore v. Harper, advances a dangerous legal theory which would allow state legislatures to restrict the freedom to vote and fair elections with impunity.
*North Carolina lawmakers appealed to the nation’s highest court after the N.C. Supreme Court’s historic ruling held partisan gerrymandering illegal under North Carolina’s Constitution and demanded new maps. The decision prompted leaders in the General Assembly to pursue this fringe legal theory, seeking to give legislatures unchecked power to set elections and voting-related policies.
*Across the country, state lawmakers are asking federal courts to give them unchecked power to manipulate voting districts and dismantle the freedom to vote. Their argument, known as the “independent state legislature theory,” contradicts the U.S. Constitution and federal precedent.
[Note: more on the theory here]
Dems Lay Out Electoral Count Act Wish List
Brennan Center
*Congress must take advantage of bipartisan momentum to address the Electoral Count Act’s vulnerabilities as soon as possible.
*A number of bipartisan and nonpartisan groups, as well as key senators and the chair of an important House committee, have released reform proposals sharing many common elements. Effective Electoral Count Act reform must have several components.
*First, the law must explicitly confirm that the vice president does not have the power to alter the electoral vote count.
*The rules for objections must also be overhauled. Ideally, revisions would reaffirm that the grounds on which Senate and House members may object are narrow. They should also set a reasonable minimum threshold of support for any objection to be considered. If Congress does sustain an objection and disqualifies a slate of electors without accepting another slate, the total number of votes needed for a majority under the 12th Amendment must be correspondingly reduced.
*Further, Congress must clarify the rules around the appointment of electors. It should replace the vague language about “failed” elections with clearer language establishing that electors may only be selected after Election Day in very exceptional circumstances that make voting impossible, like a major natural disaster, and that the default remedy in such instances is to extend voting in affected areas, not to redo the election or appoint electors by some other means.
*Congress must also take other steps to counter after-the-fact tampering with presidential election results. It should specify that elector vacancies must be filled according to the law as it existed prior to Election Day.
*It also is critical that Congress, while not inviting frivolous litigation, make clear provision for legal actions to require certification of valid presidential election results
Feds Issue "Election Infrastructure Insider Threat Mitigation Guide"
CISA
Note: The Guide is for anyone interested in the mechanical nuts and bolts of election machinery or how the Dems could use insiders to rig an election.
*Individuals entrusted with access to election infrastructure can, at times, represent potential risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of election systems and information.
*Practices that deter, detect, or prevent harm caused by insiders are an integral part of conducting secure elections.
*While election infrastructure stakeholders cannot predict or fully control the information environment around elections, they can educate their staff, volunteers, and vendors about MDM narratives and tactics.
*Insider Threats and Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation
*BUILDING AN INSIDER THREAT MITIGATION PROGRAM
*Key Elements of Election Infrastructure Insider Threat Mitigation Programs
*Standard Operating Procedures
*Access Control
*Zero Trust Security Principles
*Chain of Custody
*ELECTION INSIDER THREATS IN FOCUS
*Vendors and Contractors
*Temporary Staff, Seasonal Staff, and Volunteers
J. Christian Adams: FBI, DOJ, Left-Wing Activists and Funders Coordinating with Election Officials
PJMedia
Editor’s Summary: Government documents show “behind-the-curtain relationships developing between progressive funders, federal authorities, corporations, state election officials, and leftist organizations.” Progressives are organizing state officials and third parties to discuss election administration at conferences, baseball games, etc. - no Republicans invited. The Zuckerberg-funded Center for Election Innovation & Research is involved.
Democrat Propaganda Claims All Attempts at Election Integrity are Sinister and Must Be Discredited
1)
Wanting to Look Inside Voting Machines
Brennan Center
*While the January 6 committee has rightly focused on the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, it is critical to remember that this threat is ongoing, and many of the people implicated continue to work to undermine future elections.
*wealthy Republican businessmen like Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of MyPillow Inc., and Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com, have been active in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and are also supporting those working to gain unauthorized access to election systems.
*Who is behind the effort to gain this unauthorized access? In many cases, the very same people involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
*Lindell is also linked with key players seeking to access voting machines in Colorado and elsewhere.
*Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, an “election integrity” group
*Byrne has “funded independent efforts to send teams of ‘hackers and cybersleuths’ to access voting computer systems across the country,” according to the Daily Beast. He is connected to another instance of unauthorized access to election systems, this one in Georgia.
*This increased risk of both external and insider threats is why it’s so important we take steps now to protect future elections. That includes paying for and implementing measures to protect against unauthorized access to critical election systems.
2)
Recruiting Poll Workers and Poll Watchers
The Guardian
*Leading election denier promoting local groups to ‘oversee’ elections and determine if officials are ‘friend or foe’
*Cleta Mitchell was on Donald Trump’s legal team in 2020 and played a central role in his efforts to overturn the election result.
*In Raleigh, Mitchell eschewed the term “election denier”. “There were so many things wrong with that election,” she said. “That the outcome was correct, that’s all I deny.”
*During the same podcast appearance Bannon asked her whether the summits were a chance to learn how to “take over and grab hold of and control the local apparatus in their local elections and then to network throughout the country, so we have an apparatus that’s unbreakable?” “That’s absolutely what we’re doing,” Mitchell said.
*Mitchell’s effort is happening parallel to a significant effort from the Republican National Committee to recruit election workers. So far, the RNC has recruited 16 in-state election integrity directors, more than 15,000 poll workers, and 10,000 observers in swing states, according to Gates McGavick, an RNC spokesperson. Josh Findlay, the RNC’s national director of election integrity, spoke at the North Carolina summit. The RNC said it “works with other groups who have an interest in promoting election integrity” but that its poll worker focus was independent.
Dems All Aflutter Over Supreme Court ‘Independent State Legislature’ Case
Common Cause
*The U.S. Supreme Court decided today it will hear oral arguments during the October 2022 term in North Carolina’s consolidated Congressional gerrymandering case. The case, Moore v. Harper, advances a dangerous legal theory which would allow state legislatures to restrict the freedom to vote and fair elections with impunity.
*North Carolina lawmakers appealed to the nation’s highest court after the N.C. Supreme Court’s historic ruling held partisan gerrymandering illegal under North Carolina’s Constitution and demanded new maps. The decision prompted leaders in the General Assembly to pursue this fringe legal theory, seeking to give legislatures unchecked power to set elections and voting-related policies.
*Across the country, state lawmakers are asking federal courts to give them unchecked power to manipulate voting districts and dismantle the freedom to vote. Their argument, known as the “independent state legislature theory,” contradicts the U.S. Constitution and federal precedent.
[Note: more on the theory here]
Dems Lay Out Electoral Count Act Wish List
Brennan Center
*Congress must take advantage of bipartisan momentum to address the Electoral Count Act’s vulnerabilities as soon as possible.
*A number of bipartisan and nonpartisan groups, as well as key senators and the chair of an important House committee, have released reform proposals sharing many common elements. Effective Electoral Count Act reform must have several components.
*First, the law must explicitly confirm that the vice president does not have the power to alter the electoral vote count.
*The rules for objections must also be overhauled. Ideally, revisions would reaffirm that the grounds on which Senate and House members may object are narrow. They should also set a reasonable minimum threshold of support for any objection to be considered. If Congress does sustain an objection and disqualifies a slate of electors without accepting another slate, the total number of votes needed for a majority under the 12th Amendment must be correspondingly reduced.
*Further, Congress must clarify the rules around the appointment of electors. It should replace the vague language about “failed” elections with clearer language establishing that electors may only be selected after Election Day in very exceptional circumstances that make voting impossible, like a major natural disaster, and that the default remedy in such instances is to extend voting in affected areas, not to redo the election or appoint electors by some other means.
*Congress must also take other steps to counter after-the-fact tampering with presidential election results. It should specify that elector vacancies must be filled according to the law as it existed prior to Election Day.
*It also is critical that Congress, while not inviting frivolous litigation, make clear provision for legal actions to require certification of valid presidential election results
Feds Issue "Election Infrastructure Insider Threat Mitigation Guide"
CISA
Note: The Guide is for anyone interested in the mechanical nuts and bolts of election machinery or how the Dems could use insiders to rig an election.
*Individuals entrusted with access to election infrastructure can, at times, represent potential risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of election systems and information.
*Practices that deter, detect, or prevent harm caused by insiders are an integral part of conducting secure elections.
*While election infrastructure stakeholders cannot predict or fully control the information environment around elections, they can educate their staff, volunteers, and vendors about MDM narratives and tactics.
*Insider Threats and Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation
*BUILDING AN INSIDER THREAT MITIGATION PROGRAM
*Key Elements of Election Infrastructure Insider Threat Mitigation Programs
*Standard Operating Procedures
*Access Control
*Zero Trust Security Principles
*Chain of Custody
*ELECTION INSIDER THREATS IN FOCUS
*Vendors and Contractors
*Temporary Staff, Seasonal Staff, and Volunteers
June 26, 2022
Dems Want Electoral Count Act, Other Congressional Changes
Washington Post
*Any attempt to subvert the next presidential election is likely to be far more efficient and ruthlessly targeted than the last effort. It will be focused on holes and ambiguities in the arcane rules for counting electoral college votes set forth in the Constitution and in a poorly written 1887 law, the Electoral Count Act.
*Congress can revise the Electoral Count Act to create a more robust role for federal courts in making sure that states follow their own rules for picking the winner of their electoral college votes.
*Congress should also mandate that voting machines produce paper ballots that could be recounted in the event of an election dispute, provide adequate funding for fair elections, increase protection of election workers and officials against harassment and violence, and stiffen criminal penalties for interfering with official election proceedings.
*Other changes to the Electoral Count Act would also help. A new set of rules could state definitively that the vice president, who presides over the Jan. 6 counting of electoral college votes, has no power to deprive Congress of lawfully submitted slates of electors
*The Electoral Count Act says a challenge to electors can proceed if one member from each chamber (House and Senate) agrees. That threshold should be raised significantly. Congress can clarify, too, that challenges to electors must focus on such constitutional issues as the eligibility of candidates, not on disagreement over vote totals.
Massachusetts Makes Mail-In Voting Permanent
AP
*A voting rights bill designed to ensure that mail-in ballots and early voting become permanent fixtures in future Massachusetts elections was signed into law Wednesday by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.
*The law does not include provisions that would let individuals both register and vote on Election Day — a change sought by some activists.
*The law will let registered voters vote by mail for any presidential, state or municipal primary or election; set aside two weeks — including two weekends — of early voting in-person for biennial state elections and one week — including one weekend — for presidential or state primaries; and move the voter registration deadline from 20 to 10 days before a preliminary, primary or general election.
*The secretary of state is required under the new law to send out mail-in ballot applications, with return postage guaranteed, to registered voters 45 days before any state election while hosting an online portal where voters can request ballots in multiple languages.
*The law also provides for electronic voting options for overseas voters including military personnel.
Dems See Pressing Need to Translate Ballots into Amharic, Among Other Languages
The Nevada Independent
*While most Nevada voters who identify themselves as AAPI or Hispanic speak English as their first language, many are limited in their ability to read, speak, write or understand English.
*Nevada’s immigrants and children of immigrants – those who have become citizens and those born citizens – may have the right to vote, but that doesn’t mean they can make their voices heard. A voter's difficulty in speaking or reading English should not restrict their freedom to vote.
*For starters, Cegavske’s office should serve as a hub for translated voter education information and election updates, providing county clerks access to election materials translated in Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai and Amharic. Additionally, Cegavske should encourage county clerks to provide the translated materials on their websites and to print them out when necessary.
[Comment: A 1975 Voting Rights Act amendment requires multilingual election information under complicated formulas. Efforts to expand the list are ongoing. NPR]
Study Confirms Felon Re-Enfranchisement Efforts Will Pay Off for Democrats
Common Dreams
*Historians point out that felony disenfranchisement laws are rooted in the Jim Crow era and were implemented to suppress Black electoral power.
*Currently, 11 states still permanently disenfranchise at least some individuals from voting due to past criminal convictions, including five in the South: Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
*A 2019 study found that laws re-enfranchising ex-felons had a "positive, but not statistically significant, effect" on the vote share of Democratic candidates and turnout rates of minority voters in U.S. House elections.
*The Mississippi Constitution's felony disenfranchisement provision is currently being challenged in federal court for its racist intent by a 2017 lawsuit filed by the Mississippi Center for Justice on behalf of Roy Harness and Kamal Karriem.
*In North Carolina, the fight for ex-felon voting rights is also being waged in the courts. In March, a three-judge Superior Court panel struck down a 1973 law that prevented people from voting while serving active sentences — including when they are on probation or parole.
* in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, announced last month that he had restored voting rights to 3,496 individuals with felony convictions. "Individuals with their rights restored come from every walk of life and are eager to provide for themselves, their families and put the past behind them for a better tomorrow," Youngkin said. Though Virginia is among the states that permanently bar people with felony convictions from voting, the state constitution gives the governor the ability to restore voting rights to those who complete their criminal sentences.
*Both Republican and Democratic governors in Virginia have led rights restoration efforts for ex-felons in recent years.
View from the Left: "The Money Behind January 6 Is Flowing into the 2022 Elections"
Brennan Center
*The narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, which fueled the violence on that day, is playing a central role in key elections this year, including some that will decide who runs the 2024 elections.
*Packaging supplies magnate Richard Uihlein was reportedly one of the biggest financial supporters of the rally. He contributed $4 million in recent years to the Tea Party Patriots....
*Others have shown support for the “stop the steal” movement’s attempt to discredit the 2020 result and gone on to plow millions into the 2022 election.
*Trump’s own role in the insurrection has of course been a key focus of the inquiry. In this election cycle, Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, has spent more than $9 million on federal and state candidates and other political groups.
*The January 6 committee is also investigating the Republican National Committee, which last month had a judge reject its attempt to block the panel from acquiring email fundraising records from the RNC’s vendor, Salesforce.
*This year, the RNC is recruiting and training “an army” of poll workers in Democratic-leaning communities who would be in contact with party attorneys and looking for ways to challenge voters.
*With the support of megadonors, the Big Lie behind the insurrection continues to threaten to wreak havoc on our elections.
View from the Right: Secret Deal in Kansas to Boost Liberal Voter Registration May Spread to Other States
Foundation for Government Accountability
* in 2020 Gov. Laura Kelly secretly worked with outside groups to register hundreds of thousands of voters who were probably more likely to vote for liberal candidates.
* The story starts in November 2019, when Gov. Kelly, a Democrat, met with a coalition of liberal groups, including Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). They informed her they were about to bring a lawsuit against Kansas alleging violations of the National Voter Registration Act. Ultimately, the lawsuit wasn’t filed because the governor unilaterally signed a legally binding settlement agreement to implement the groups’ demands, without informing voters
* The deal itself is deeply concerning. It likely boosted voter registration among constituencies that skew to the left.
* Kansans didn’t know about the settlement agreement until September 2021 — nearly two years after that first meeting.
* The Republican Legislature passed a bill to prevent governors from keeping the public in the dark. Gov. Kelly, who’s up for reelection in 2022, ultimately vetoed the bill on May 13, leading to the Legislature’s override.
* Under the new law, governors are still able to negotiate settlement agreements, but they must inform the legislature.
* Demos has bragged that it was also responsible for nearly three million voter registration mailings in Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan, and Virginia — all key states in the 2020 election. Settlement agreements may have been involved. Voters in every state should ask if their governors have reached similar secret deals.
Dems Want Electoral Count Act, Other Congressional Changes
Washington Post
*Any attempt to subvert the next presidential election is likely to be far more efficient and ruthlessly targeted than the last effort. It will be focused on holes and ambiguities in the arcane rules for counting electoral college votes set forth in the Constitution and in a poorly written 1887 law, the Electoral Count Act.
*Congress can revise the Electoral Count Act to create a more robust role for federal courts in making sure that states follow their own rules for picking the winner of their electoral college votes.
*Congress should also mandate that voting machines produce paper ballots that could be recounted in the event of an election dispute, provide adequate funding for fair elections, increase protection of election workers and officials against harassment and violence, and stiffen criminal penalties for interfering with official election proceedings.
*Other changes to the Electoral Count Act would also help. A new set of rules could state definitively that the vice president, who presides over the Jan. 6 counting of electoral college votes, has no power to deprive Congress of lawfully submitted slates of electors
*The Electoral Count Act says a challenge to electors can proceed if one member from each chamber (House and Senate) agrees. That threshold should be raised significantly. Congress can clarify, too, that challenges to electors must focus on such constitutional issues as the eligibility of candidates, not on disagreement over vote totals.
Massachusetts Makes Mail-In Voting Permanent
AP
*A voting rights bill designed to ensure that mail-in ballots and early voting become permanent fixtures in future Massachusetts elections was signed into law Wednesday by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.
*The law does not include provisions that would let individuals both register and vote on Election Day — a change sought by some activists.
*The law will let registered voters vote by mail for any presidential, state or municipal primary or election; set aside two weeks — including two weekends — of early voting in-person for biennial state elections and one week — including one weekend — for presidential or state primaries; and move the voter registration deadline from 20 to 10 days before a preliminary, primary or general election.
*The secretary of state is required under the new law to send out mail-in ballot applications, with return postage guaranteed, to registered voters 45 days before any state election while hosting an online portal where voters can request ballots in multiple languages.
*The law also provides for electronic voting options for overseas voters including military personnel.
Dems See Pressing Need to Translate Ballots into Amharic, Among Other Languages
The Nevada Independent
*While most Nevada voters who identify themselves as AAPI or Hispanic speak English as their first language, many are limited in their ability to read, speak, write or understand English.
*Nevada’s immigrants and children of immigrants – those who have become citizens and those born citizens – may have the right to vote, but that doesn’t mean they can make their voices heard. A voter's difficulty in speaking or reading English should not restrict their freedom to vote.
*For starters, Cegavske’s office should serve as a hub for translated voter education information and election updates, providing county clerks access to election materials translated in Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai and Amharic. Additionally, Cegavske should encourage county clerks to provide the translated materials on their websites and to print them out when necessary.
[Comment: A 1975 Voting Rights Act amendment requires multilingual election information under complicated formulas. Efforts to expand the list are ongoing. NPR]
Study Confirms Felon Re-Enfranchisement Efforts Will Pay Off for Democrats
Common Dreams
*Historians point out that felony disenfranchisement laws are rooted in the Jim Crow era and were implemented to suppress Black electoral power.
*Currently, 11 states still permanently disenfranchise at least some individuals from voting due to past criminal convictions, including five in the South: Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
*A 2019 study found that laws re-enfranchising ex-felons had a "positive, but not statistically significant, effect" on the vote share of Democratic candidates and turnout rates of minority voters in U.S. House elections.
*The Mississippi Constitution's felony disenfranchisement provision is currently being challenged in federal court for its racist intent by a 2017 lawsuit filed by the Mississippi Center for Justice on behalf of Roy Harness and Kamal Karriem.
*In North Carolina, the fight for ex-felon voting rights is also being waged in the courts. In March, a three-judge Superior Court panel struck down a 1973 law that prevented people from voting while serving active sentences — including when they are on probation or parole.
* in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, announced last month that he had restored voting rights to 3,496 individuals with felony convictions. "Individuals with their rights restored come from every walk of life and are eager to provide for themselves, their families and put the past behind them for a better tomorrow," Youngkin said. Though Virginia is among the states that permanently bar people with felony convictions from voting, the state constitution gives the governor the ability to restore voting rights to those who complete their criminal sentences.
*Both Republican and Democratic governors in Virginia have led rights restoration efforts for ex-felons in recent years.
View from the Left: "The Money Behind January 6 Is Flowing into the 2022 Elections"
Brennan Center
*The narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, which fueled the violence on that day, is playing a central role in key elections this year, including some that will decide who runs the 2024 elections.
*Packaging supplies magnate Richard Uihlein was reportedly one of the biggest financial supporters of the rally. He contributed $4 million in recent years to the Tea Party Patriots....
*Others have shown support for the “stop the steal” movement’s attempt to discredit the 2020 result and gone on to plow millions into the 2022 election.
*Trump’s own role in the insurrection has of course been a key focus of the inquiry. In this election cycle, Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, has spent more than $9 million on federal and state candidates and other political groups.
*The January 6 committee is also investigating the Republican National Committee, which last month had a judge reject its attempt to block the panel from acquiring email fundraising records from the RNC’s vendor, Salesforce.
*This year, the RNC is recruiting and training “an army” of poll workers in Democratic-leaning communities who would be in contact with party attorneys and looking for ways to challenge voters.
*With the support of megadonors, the Big Lie behind the insurrection continues to threaten to wreak havoc on our elections.
View from the Right: Secret Deal in Kansas to Boost Liberal Voter Registration May Spread to Other States
Foundation for Government Accountability
* in 2020 Gov. Laura Kelly secretly worked with outside groups to register hundreds of thousands of voters who were probably more likely to vote for liberal candidates.
* The story starts in November 2019, when Gov. Kelly, a Democrat, met with a coalition of liberal groups, including Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). They informed her they were about to bring a lawsuit against Kansas alleging violations of the National Voter Registration Act. Ultimately, the lawsuit wasn’t filed because the governor unilaterally signed a legally binding settlement agreement to implement the groups’ demands, without informing voters
* The deal itself is deeply concerning. It likely boosted voter registration among constituencies that skew to the left.
* Kansans didn’t know about the settlement agreement until September 2021 — nearly two years after that first meeting.
* The Republican Legislature passed a bill to prevent governors from keeping the public in the dark. Gov. Kelly, who’s up for reelection in 2022, ultimately vetoed the bill on May 13, leading to the Legislature’s override.
* Under the new law, governors are still able to negotiate settlement agreements, but they must inform the legislature.
* Demos has bragged that it was also responsible for nearly three million voter registration mailings in Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan, and Virginia — all key states in the 2020 election. Settlement agreements may have been involved. Voters in every state should ask if their governors have reached similar secret deals.
June 21, 2022
Three Cheers for Mail-In Voting (If Only We Can Fix It)
Washington Post
Comment: I haven’t heard anybody make the point made in this article, and it could form the basis for a new offensive to expand mail-in balloting: allow states to process and count them before election day and everything will be fine. It’s only where states don’t allow the envelopes to be opened until election day where you run into problems, so the argument goes.
*Mr. Trump and others have attacked mail-in voting as inherently flawed. In fact, several states, such as Colorado, Florida and Utah, run secure, efficient elections with massive numbers of absentee ballots. Voters enjoy the convenience of mail-in voting; fraud is negligible; and election officials report results quickly. What these states have in common is that they make it easy for voters to get and to cast absentee ballots — and for election workers to process them. Crucially, election officials may begin processing and counting absentee ballots before Election Day.
*This is not the case in the majority of states. Only 10 allow processing and counting before Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty-three permit counting to commence while polls are open on Election Day, while 16 bar counting until polls close.
*A big reason Pennsylvania's GOP Senate primary took so long to call was the state's restrictions on absentee ballot processing. Election workers must start frantically sorting through mountains of mail ballots just as in-person voting starts, virtually guaranteeing a major delay in reporting results.
*...reporting delays spur frustration and shake confidence. The results could be particularly chaotic and damaging in a close presidential election in which Pennsylvania's electoral votes would determine the outcome.
*[Maryland] Gov. Larry Hogan (R) recently vetoed a bill that would have permitted pre-Election Day absentee ballot processing over only loosely related disagreements about ballot signature verification. This is an obvious reform that should not fall victim to partisan warfare. Maryland, Pennsylvania and all other jurisdictions that make it unduly hard to run elections with high numbers of mail-in ballots must change, now.
Bipartisan Group of Senators Reach Agreement on Electoral Count Act
Gateway Pundit
*Currently, a group of Republican and Democrat senators are working together to adjust the act so that Americans can never challenge a disputed or stolen election in the future.
*The proposed rules will require 20% of Congress, the House and Senate, to challenge the results from any state. That will make it impossible for weak Republicans to challenge any future stolen elections.
*RINOs believe this is a good idea.
"Critics worry Florida's new elections chief will make the office more partisan”
NPR
Comment: Here’s the translation - ‘It’s OK when we tilt the table, but not when you put it back, that’s partisan’
*Florida is among the minority of states where voters don't get to choose who runs their elections.
Instead, in Florida and some other states, like Pennsylvania and Texas, the elections chief is appointed by the governor.
*Byrd will lead a new election crimes unit -
Byrd has stepped into this position at a time when Republicans and Democrats are at serious odds about how elections should be run.
Like many other GOP-led states over the past two years, Florida lawmakers have passed new voting laws that Democrats say will make it harder for people to vote. A 2021 law created new restrictions on mail-in voting, drop boxes and third-party voter registration efforts.
And Skhir, of the ACLU of Florida, says there's concern among voting groups over a law enacted this year that creates a new election crimes unit.
*Byrd says he plans to hire data analysts, investigators and law enforcement once a director is in place.
*Nikki Fried, the state's agriculture and consumer services commissioner, recently sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking officials to "closely monitor the election-related actions of Florida officials and take appropriate federal action if necessary."
‘Big Lie’ Secretary of State Candidate in Nevada Alarms Dems
CNN
*Republican voters in Nevada on Tuesday picked a vocal proponent of false fraud claims about the 2020 election as their party's choice to oversee the 2024 elections in this presidential battleground state, according to a CNN projection.
*In his campaign, Marchant has pledged to overhaul what he calls the "fraudulent election system" in Nevada. He has said he would not have certified President Joe Biden's more than 33,500-vote victory had he been secretary of state in 2020.
*He has talked publicly of a "deep state cabal" that he claims has improperly installed candidates in office for years. And nearly two years ago, he sued unsuccessfully to get a revote after losing by roughly 16,000 votes to Democratic Rep. Steve Horsford in the state's 4th Congressional District.
*Whoever becomes Nevada's new secretary of state will oversee the election machinery in one of the country's most important presidential swing states.
Media, Dems Prepping America for Another Election Steal
Gateway Pundit
*The Democrats are going to cheat again in the mid-term elections. We know this because they are beginning to brag about winning despite having the worst record in history.
*[per the AP] Democrats are going to hold onto the House after November’s midterm elections. They will pick up as many as four seats in the Senate, expanding their majority and overcoming internal dissent that has helped stifle their agenda.
* As the challenges confronting President Joe Biden intensify, his predictions of a rosy political future for the Democratic Party are growing bolder. The assessments, delivered in speeches, fundraisers and conversations with friends and allies, seem at odds with a country that he acknowledged this week was “really, really down,” burdened by a pandemic, surging gas prices and spiking inflation.
*It appears the far-left media is prepping America for another election steal. There is no other way to explain it.
* There is no way they can win legitimately.
"8 Ideas to Engage the Media and Shape Elections Coverage"
CTCL
Comment - This is all couched in neutral terms to lull you to sleep, but looks downright sinister when viewed through the prism of advancing left-wing narratives, which is what CTCL is all about. Just look at their paymasters. More Zuckerbucks polluting our elections is the last thing we need.
* Be Proactive About Developing Relationships with the Media
*Put a Human Face and Voice to Your Election Office
*Invite Reporters to Take a Tour of Your Election Office
*Propose Stories to the Media
*Publish Columns in Your Local Paper
*Respond to Reporters’ Questions
*Encourage Poll Workers to Share Their Story
*Collaborate With Your Fellow Election Officials
Three Cheers for Mail-In Voting (If Only We Can Fix It)
Washington Post
Comment: I haven’t heard anybody make the point made in this article, and it could form the basis for a new offensive to expand mail-in balloting: allow states to process and count them before election day and everything will be fine. It’s only where states don’t allow the envelopes to be opened until election day where you run into problems, so the argument goes.
*Mr. Trump and others have attacked mail-in voting as inherently flawed. In fact, several states, such as Colorado, Florida and Utah, run secure, efficient elections with massive numbers of absentee ballots. Voters enjoy the convenience of mail-in voting; fraud is negligible; and election officials report results quickly. What these states have in common is that they make it easy for voters to get and to cast absentee ballots — and for election workers to process them. Crucially, election officials may begin processing and counting absentee ballots before Election Day.
*This is not the case in the majority of states. Only 10 allow processing and counting before Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty-three permit counting to commence while polls are open on Election Day, while 16 bar counting until polls close.
*A big reason Pennsylvania's GOP Senate primary took so long to call was the state's restrictions on absentee ballot processing. Election workers must start frantically sorting through mountains of mail ballots just as in-person voting starts, virtually guaranteeing a major delay in reporting results.
*...reporting delays spur frustration and shake confidence. The results could be particularly chaotic and damaging in a close presidential election in which Pennsylvania's electoral votes would determine the outcome.
*[Maryland] Gov. Larry Hogan (R) recently vetoed a bill that would have permitted pre-Election Day absentee ballot processing over only loosely related disagreements about ballot signature verification. This is an obvious reform that should not fall victim to partisan warfare. Maryland, Pennsylvania and all other jurisdictions that make it unduly hard to run elections with high numbers of mail-in ballots must change, now.
Bipartisan Group of Senators Reach Agreement on Electoral Count Act
Gateway Pundit
*Currently, a group of Republican and Democrat senators are working together to adjust the act so that Americans can never challenge a disputed or stolen election in the future.
*The proposed rules will require 20% of Congress, the House and Senate, to challenge the results from any state. That will make it impossible for weak Republicans to challenge any future stolen elections.
*RINOs believe this is a good idea.
"Critics worry Florida's new elections chief will make the office more partisan”
NPR
Comment: Here’s the translation - ‘It’s OK when we tilt the table, but not when you put it back, that’s partisan’
*Florida is among the minority of states where voters don't get to choose who runs their elections.
Instead, in Florida and some other states, like Pennsylvania and Texas, the elections chief is appointed by the governor.
*Byrd will lead a new election crimes unit -
Byrd has stepped into this position at a time when Republicans and Democrats are at serious odds about how elections should be run.
Like many other GOP-led states over the past two years, Florida lawmakers have passed new voting laws that Democrats say will make it harder for people to vote. A 2021 law created new restrictions on mail-in voting, drop boxes and third-party voter registration efforts.
And Skhir, of the ACLU of Florida, says there's concern among voting groups over a law enacted this year that creates a new election crimes unit.
*Byrd says he plans to hire data analysts, investigators and law enforcement once a director is in place.
*Nikki Fried, the state's agriculture and consumer services commissioner, recently sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking officials to "closely monitor the election-related actions of Florida officials and take appropriate federal action if necessary."
‘Big Lie’ Secretary of State Candidate in Nevada Alarms Dems
CNN
*Republican voters in Nevada on Tuesday picked a vocal proponent of false fraud claims about the 2020 election as their party's choice to oversee the 2024 elections in this presidential battleground state, according to a CNN projection.
*In his campaign, Marchant has pledged to overhaul what he calls the "fraudulent election system" in Nevada. He has said he would not have certified President Joe Biden's more than 33,500-vote victory had he been secretary of state in 2020.
*He has talked publicly of a "deep state cabal" that he claims has improperly installed candidates in office for years. And nearly two years ago, he sued unsuccessfully to get a revote after losing by roughly 16,000 votes to Democratic Rep. Steve Horsford in the state's 4th Congressional District.
*Whoever becomes Nevada's new secretary of state will oversee the election machinery in one of the country's most important presidential swing states.
Media, Dems Prepping America for Another Election Steal
Gateway Pundit
*The Democrats are going to cheat again in the mid-term elections. We know this because they are beginning to brag about winning despite having the worst record in history.
*[per the AP] Democrats are going to hold onto the House after November’s midterm elections. They will pick up as many as four seats in the Senate, expanding their majority and overcoming internal dissent that has helped stifle their agenda.
* As the challenges confronting President Joe Biden intensify, his predictions of a rosy political future for the Democratic Party are growing bolder. The assessments, delivered in speeches, fundraisers and conversations with friends and allies, seem at odds with a country that he acknowledged this week was “really, really down,” burdened by a pandemic, surging gas prices and spiking inflation.
*It appears the far-left media is prepping America for another election steal. There is no other way to explain it.
* There is no way they can win legitimately.
"8 Ideas to Engage the Media and Shape Elections Coverage"
CTCL
Comment - This is all couched in neutral terms to lull you to sleep, but looks downright sinister when viewed through the prism of advancing left-wing narratives, which is what CTCL is all about. Just look at their paymasters. More Zuckerbucks polluting our elections is the last thing we need.
* Be Proactive About Developing Relationships with the Media
*Put a Human Face and Voice to Your Election Office
*Invite Reporters to Take a Tour of Your Election Office
*Propose Stories to the Media
*Publish Columns in Your Local Paper
*Respond to Reporters’ Questions
*Encourage Poll Workers to Share Their Story
*Collaborate With Your Fellow Election Officials
June 12, 2022
Justice Department Looking at Trump Lawyers
The Guardian
* Legal experts believe the US Justice Department has made headway with an important criminal inquiry and could be homing in on top Trump lawyers who plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s election, after the department wrote to the House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack seeking transcripts of witness depositions and interviews.
*While it’s unclear exactly what information the DoJ asked for, former prosecutors note that the 20 April request occurred at about the same time a Washington DC grand jury issued subpoenas seeking information about several Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, plus other Trump advisers, who reportedly played roles in a fake electors scheme.
Dems Warn of Lions, Tigers, and Bears in GOP Election Integrity Efforts - Oh, My!
Politico
Editor’s Note: Tell me with a straight face everything was on the up-and-up in Detroit in the 2020 election.
*Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.
*The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.
* Patrick Colbeck, a former member of the Michigan state Senate and former gubernatorial candidate, said at the same summit that he is “working with another organization right now” on “developing a kit for law enforcement” because many don’t understand election law and it will give them “tools that identify and enforce election fraud more effectively.” Editor’s Note: Oh, my!
Dems Take Aim at the Electoral College and Electoral Count Act, Urge More Federal Funding of Elections
Washington Post
*The special House committee [January 6th] hearings ... are serving multiple purposes: They are revealing evidence that could be used to file criminal charges for attempted election subversion against some of former president Donald Trump’s lawyers, against people who tried to manipulate the count of electoral college votes and potentially against Trump himself. They have begun to provide the most comprehensive account yet of the unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election.
*To begin with, Congress can revise the Electoral Count Act to create a more robust role for federal courts in making sure that states follow their own rules for picking the winner of their electoral college votes.
*Congress should also mandate that voting machines produce paper ballots that could be recounted in the event of an election dispute, provide adequate funding for fair elections, increase protection of election workers and officials against harassment and violence, and stiffen criminal penalties for interfering with official election proceedings.
*If the role of federal courts is clarified by new legislative language, however, judges could intervene to determine that Biden actually won the state and that there was no fraud that rendered the election results suspect.
*Reforms of the law along these lines would benefit both parties. After all, it will be Vice President Harris who will preside over the counting of electoral college votes on Jan. 6, 2025.
*In January, after Democrats failed to pass major voting rights reform, reports emerged that Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) were in talks aimed at combating election subversion by, among other things, fixing the Electoral Count Act.
*And USA Today reports that two Jan. 6 committee members, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), are nearing agreement on their own reform package.
More on Cleta Mitchell’s ‘Partisan Interference with Elections’
Brennan Center
*When Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to demand that he “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” hinting at criminal prosecution, he was joined by a surprising participant: Cleta Mitchell.
*Mitchell has long been a prominent right-leaning attorney, representing the National Rifle Association as well as senators like Oklahoma’s James Inhofe and Florida’s Marco Rubio. She was a partner in the DC office of influential law firm Foley and Lardner, until the firm ousted her for her involvement with Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
*This week, the New York Times published a story detailing Mitchell’s far-flung campaign to assemble an army of hyper-partisan poll watchers that will disrupt, discredit, and intimidate election officials. Among other things, the trainees are encouraged to research the backgrounds of historically nonpartisan election officials and categorize them as “friend or foe.”
*Six states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma — have enacted nine laws that raise the likelihood of partisan interference in our elections. And at least 17 such bills introduced this year are still moving through five state legislatures.
*Some of those laws connect unnervingly with Cleta Mitchell’s work. Oklahoma’s H.B. 3677, for example, would make it a felony to obstruct the view or restrict the free movement of a poll watcher, which could empower aggressive interference at polling places State legislators are rolling out the red carpet for Mitchell’s poll watchers.
Dems Object When GOP Candidate Starts Using Their Gas Card Trick
Daily Beast
Editor’s Note - I recall stories about Dems giving students gas cards around election time.
*Lucky drivers pulling up to a packed Chevron gas station south of Atlanta last Saturday finally saw a little relief at the pump, in the form of a $25 gas voucher straight from the goddaughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece.
*The catch: They had to sit through a pitch for her political candidate of choice—college football hero, Olympic bobsledder, Russian roulette aficionado, and now aspiring Republican senator Herschel Walker
*But the goddaughter—Trump-pardoned felon, QAnon booster, and reality TV tell-all author Angela Stanton-King—wasn’t out there on her own. And they weren’t her vouchers. She was the face of a promotion from a pro-Walker super PAC called “34N22,” which claimed to be giving away $4,000 worth of fuel in the name of unseating his opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), the pastor who currently leads the congregation at King Jr.’s old church.
*Brett Kappel, campaign finance expert at Hammon Curran, told The Daily Beast that laws against vote buying require an agreement.
*This giveaway would then be legal, Kappel said, “as long as they aren’t given the gas cards in exchange for agreeing to vote for Herschel.” He observed that if this model were successful, then similar promotions “may indeed become a popular gimmick for Republicans to bash Democrats over inflation and gas prices.”
*Republicans have seized on the recent hikes, tagging the increasing prices to President Joe Biden and Democrats in power, while promising a return to normal once they regain control of Congress—without explaining exactly how they’d accomplish lower prices.
Snapshot of Left-Wing ‘Free and Fair Elections’ Group
Scrutineers.org
Editor’s Note: Opinion on the Right is split about this group. Some view it as just another Left-wing effort. Others say sign up and join in - Know Thy Enemy.
*Presented in partnership with the Future Coalition
The people behind the changes in election laws making it harder for people to vote are planning other dirty tricks this year that threaten to sabotage our elections!
They plan to challenge individual voters, eliminate or severely limit ballot drop boxes, and try to stop votes from being counted. We can’t stand by and watch while our freedom to vote is destroyed!
Did you know that in most places the processing and counting of votes is open for observation, yet hardly anyone shows up to make sure everything is done fairly and accurately?
*Learn to Help Stop Election Sabotage
At this one-hour training, you’ll learn:
How to get a behind-the-scenes view of your local elections
How fair-minded election observers protect the freedom to vote
Where things can go wrong in the counting of votes
What to do if you see problems
How to become a post-election observer
You don’t need any prior experience to be an election observer. So even if you’ll be voting for the first time this year or do not have voting rights, you’re welcome at the training!
Justice Department Looking at Trump Lawyers
The Guardian
* Legal experts believe the US Justice Department has made headway with an important criminal inquiry and could be homing in on top Trump lawyers who plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s election, after the department wrote to the House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack seeking transcripts of witness depositions and interviews.
*While it’s unclear exactly what information the DoJ asked for, former prosecutors note that the 20 April request occurred at about the same time a Washington DC grand jury issued subpoenas seeking information about several Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, plus other Trump advisers, who reportedly played roles in a fake electors scheme.
Dems Warn of Lions, Tigers, and Bears in GOP Election Integrity Efforts - Oh, My!
Politico
Editor’s Note: Tell me with a straight face everything was on the up-and-up in Detroit in the 2020 election.
*Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.
*The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.
* Patrick Colbeck, a former member of the Michigan state Senate and former gubernatorial candidate, said at the same summit that he is “working with another organization right now” on “developing a kit for law enforcement” because many don’t understand election law and it will give them “tools that identify and enforce election fraud more effectively.” Editor’s Note: Oh, my!
Dems Take Aim at the Electoral College and Electoral Count Act, Urge More Federal Funding of Elections
Washington Post
*The special House committee [January 6th] hearings ... are serving multiple purposes: They are revealing evidence that could be used to file criminal charges for attempted election subversion against some of former president Donald Trump’s lawyers, against people who tried to manipulate the count of electoral college votes and potentially against Trump himself. They have begun to provide the most comprehensive account yet of the unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election.
*To begin with, Congress can revise the Electoral Count Act to create a more robust role for federal courts in making sure that states follow their own rules for picking the winner of their electoral college votes.
*Congress should also mandate that voting machines produce paper ballots that could be recounted in the event of an election dispute, provide adequate funding for fair elections, increase protection of election workers and officials against harassment and violence, and stiffen criminal penalties for interfering with official election proceedings.
*If the role of federal courts is clarified by new legislative language, however, judges could intervene to determine that Biden actually won the state and that there was no fraud that rendered the election results suspect.
*Reforms of the law along these lines would benefit both parties. After all, it will be Vice President Harris who will preside over the counting of electoral college votes on Jan. 6, 2025.
*In January, after Democrats failed to pass major voting rights reform, reports emerged that Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) were in talks aimed at combating election subversion by, among other things, fixing the Electoral Count Act.
*And USA Today reports that two Jan. 6 committee members, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), are nearing agreement on their own reform package.
More on Cleta Mitchell’s ‘Partisan Interference with Elections’
Brennan Center
*When Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to demand that he “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” hinting at criminal prosecution, he was joined by a surprising participant: Cleta Mitchell.
*Mitchell has long been a prominent right-leaning attorney, representing the National Rifle Association as well as senators like Oklahoma’s James Inhofe and Florida’s Marco Rubio. She was a partner in the DC office of influential law firm Foley and Lardner, until the firm ousted her for her involvement with Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
*This week, the New York Times published a story detailing Mitchell’s far-flung campaign to assemble an army of hyper-partisan poll watchers that will disrupt, discredit, and intimidate election officials. Among other things, the trainees are encouraged to research the backgrounds of historically nonpartisan election officials and categorize them as “friend or foe.”
*Six states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma — have enacted nine laws that raise the likelihood of partisan interference in our elections. And at least 17 such bills introduced this year are still moving through five state legislatures.
*Some of those laws connect unnervingly with Cleta Mitchell’s work. Oklahoma’s H.B. 3677, for example, would make it a felony to obstruct the view or restrict the free movement of a poll watcher, which could empower aggressive interference at polling places State legislators are rolling out the red carpet for Mitchell’s poll watchers.
Dems Object When GOP Candidate Starts Using Their Gas Card Trick
Daily Beast
Editor’s Note - I recall stories about Dems giving students gas cards around election time.
*Lucky drivers pulling up to a packed Chevron gas station south of Atlanta last Saturday finally saw a little relief at the pump, in the form of a $25 gas voucher straight from the goddaughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece.
*The catch: They had to sit through a pitch for her political candidate of choice—college football hero, Olympic bobsledder, Russian roulette aficionado, and now aspiring Republican senator Herschel Walker
*But the goddaughter—Trump-pardoned felon, QAnon booster, and reality TV tell-all author Angela Stanton-King—wasn’t out there on her own. And they weren’t her vouchers. She was the face of a promotion from a pro-Walker super PAC called “34N22,” which claimed to be giving away $4,000 worth of fuel in the name of unseating his opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), the pastor who currently leads the congregation at King Jr.’s old church.
*Brett Kappel, campaign finance expert at Hammon Curran, told The Daily Beast that laws against vote buying require an agreement.
*This giveaway would then be legal, Kappel said, “as long as they aren’t given the gas cards in exchange for agreeing to vote for Herschel.” He observed that if this model were successful, then similar promotions “may indeed become a popular gimmick for Republicans to bash Democrats over inflation and gas prices.”
*Republicans have seized on the recent hikes, tagging the increasing prices to President Joe Biden and Democrats in power, while promising a return to normal once they regain control of Congress—without explaining exactly how they’d accomplish lower prices.
Snapshot of Left-Wing ‘Free and Fair Elections’ Group
Scrutineers.org
Editor’s Note: Opinion on the Right is split about this group. Some view it as just another Left-wing effort. Others say sign up and join in - Know Thy Enemy.
*Presented in partnership with the Future Coalition
The people behind the changes in election laws making it harder for people to vote are planning other dirty tricks this year that threaten to sabotage our elections!
They plan to challenge individual voters, eliminate or severely limit ballot drop boxes, and try to stop votes from being counted. We can’t stand by and watch while our freedom to vote is destroyed!
Did you know that in most places the processing and counting of votes is open for observation, yet hardly anyone shows up to make sure everything is done fairly and accurately?
*Learn to Help Stop Election Sabotage
At this one-hour training, you’ll learn:
How to get a behind-the-scenes view of your local elections
How fair-minded election observers protect the freedom to vote
Where things can go wrong in the counting of votes
What to do if you see problems
How to become a post-election observer
You don’t need any prior experience to be an election observer. So even if you’ll be voting for the first time this year or do not have voting rights, you’re welcome at the training!
June 5, 2022
NYT Hit Piece Targets Cleta Mitchell and CPI-Led Election Integrity Network
New York Times
Comment: This piece is total left-wing narrative from start to finish. It dismisses the evidence of election fraud, misstates the results of court cases (of which Trump forces won over 60), repeats the threadbare assertion election workers feel threatened, and declares the Republicans are ‘too aggressive’ without providing any objective measure of what constitutes ‘too aggresseive’. The Fairfax Republican Election Integrity Team is discussed. You have to read to the end to find that Christopher Piper, who until recently ran the Virginia Department of Elections, admits, despite the ‘annoyance’ of having skeptics question the process, “at the end of the day it’s worth it so these people can see the process and feel comfortable and know that it’s a safe, secure process.” (The article is behind a paywall, but you can get it through ProQuest.)
Permanent Mail-In and Expanded Early Voting Close to Passage in Massachusetts
Public News Service
*Both elections saw the highest voter turnout in decades, with the majority casting ballots early, in person or by mail. But those changes were short-lived and quickly expired.
*MassVOTE's Communications Consultant Alex Psilakis said his nonpartisan group wants to make them permanent with the VOTES Act.
*"It would make voting by mail and expanded early in-person voting permanent in Massachusetts," said Psilakis. "We've been also pushing for Election Day registration. We're expecting a decision on that on Beacon Hill very shortly."
Public News Service
*The state House and Senate have passed two versions of the bill, which are now in conference committee for reconciliation.
New York Acts Against GOP ‘Voter Suppression’
Brennan Center
*Today the New York State Assembly passed the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York (A. 6678E/S. 1046E). The bill would restore many of the legal protections against racial discrimination that recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have taken away from voters of color. The state senate passed the bill on May 31, and it awaits the governor’s signature.
*“This bill would restore the protections New York’s voters of color lost as a result of two devastating blows to the federal Voting Rights Act — the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Shelby County (2013) and Brnovich (2021). The bill would also add new protections against racial discrimination in voting that go beyond those in federal law or the law of any other state.
Dems Gear Up to Fight GOP ‘Voter Suppression’
Reuters
*When a Forsyth County, Georgia, man last week challenged the eligibility of 13,000 voters, a power that a new state law gives individual citizens, it set Democrats and voting-rights activists scrambling, calling in a high-powered law firm to protest.
*Georgia's law was one of nearly three dozen in 2021 that curbed ballot access across 19 states, most of them controlled by Republicans. That push carried into this year, with legislators in at least 27 states having introduced, pre-filed, or carried over 250 bills with restrictive provisions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice's latest tally.
*In addition to giving individual Georgians the power to challenge an unlimited number of voters at once, the state's law limited the use of dropboxes, narrowed the window for submitting absentee ballots and criminalized a variety of election-related activities, including giving water to voters in line.
*Of all the new law's measures, decreased drop box access will likely have the biggest influence on turnout, said Charles Bullock, professor of political science at the University of Georgia, though he reckons the impact will be small.
Dems Going After GOP Election Lawyers
Townhall
*The day after the 2020 presidential election, I predicted the left was going to target any attorney who dared to get involved challenging election fraud.... This year, they launched “The 65 Project” to brazenly accomplish it, named after the 65 lawsuits Trump-affiliated attorneys filed after the election.
*The left has developed a powerfully coordinated legal election effort under the leadership of left-wing lawyer Marc Elias.
*Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who has been out on the forefront investigating election fraud, had 12 bar complaints filed against him and his staff by radical activist Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs over election issues. He beat them, but she will just figure out reasons to file more
More ‘Insurrection’ Challenges to GOP Candidates Fail
Gateway Pundit
*The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by the radical left to remove three conservative legislators from the 2022 ballot for attending the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
*This is a losing issue for the Democrats, so they’re weaponizing the courts to suppress conservative speech all across the country.
*On Monday, the court ruled that Representative Andy Biggs, Representative Paul Gosar, and State Rep. Mark Finchem are qualified to remain on the 2022 Primary ballot, affirming the superior court’s judgment. Reps Biggs and Gosar are seeking reelection to the U.S. House, and Mark Finchem is running for Arizona Secretary of State to secure elections in Arizona.
DEMS KEEP POUNDING THEIR NARRATIVES
‘New GOP Poll Workers Will Go Rogue and Sabotage Elections’
NPR
*And elections officials in Ottawa County, where Kelley lives, are preparing for the possibility that people who believe his misinformation will try to get jobs inside the election system.
*"I feel like they're trying to — infiltrate might be a good word," said Teresa De Graaf, the clerk of Port Sheldon Township, in Ottawa County.
*De Graaf, a Republican, said she had already received poll worker applications from two people she calls "radicals," who believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
*"They start spouting their beliefs and how the election was rigged and how they want to be part of the process because of that," she said. "But you can actually tell that their ultimate goal is maybe to create some chaos and to prove their point."
‘Election Deniers Running for Office’
Brennan Center
*State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a leading proponent of the Big Lie that fraud decided the 2020 election, won the GOP primary for governor. He ran on a promise to “decertify” the 2020 results, has raised the prospect of the state legislature appointing its own slate of electors in future presidential elections, and proposes to wipe all voters from the rolls. “You’re going to have to re-register — we’re going to start all over again,” he bragged.
*The Republican Party of Minnesota recently endorsed for governor Scott Jensen, who has called the election process “bastardized” and implied that the Minnesota secretary of state could be jailed for it Michigan Republicans nominated for secretary of state Kristina Karamo, who claims there is a “massive coverup” of 2020 election fraud. The list of election deniers running for office goes on and on.
FROM OUR FRIENDS
"Trevor Loudon Exposes Marxist Groups, Foreign Connections Behind Mass Voting Drives"
Epoch Times
*The recently released documentary “2000 Mules” by Dinesh D’Souza shows that there were about 2,000 individuals who received ballots from various nonprofit organizations and delivered them in the middle of the night to many mail-in dropboxes ahead of the 2020 election.
*While those organizations’ names were not mentioned in the documentary, Trevor Loudon, who has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements for more than 30 years, said that there is a network of voter registration organizations set up by the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) in San Francisco, a “front” organization for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
*This network is called “Seed the Vote” and it has ties with a number of organizations set up in key swing states such as Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Wisconsin, Detroit Action in Michigan, Living United For Change in Arizona, New Georgia Project in Georgia, and Pennsylvania Stands Up in Pennsylvania, Loudon said.
*And all of these organizations are connected to Liberation Road–an organization connected to the pro-CCP Chinese Progressive Association (CPA)–that helped organize Black Lives Matter (BLM), Loudon said.
*Liberation Road is a socialist organization that draws from Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist ideologies, “with a clear focus on building the resistance to Trump,” its website reads. “We learn from the Chinese leader Mao Zedong, with his insistence that all correct ideas come ‘from the masses to the masses.’”
"STATES MUST STAND GUARD AGAINST OUTSIDE INFLUENCE IN ELECTIONS"
Foundation for Government Accountability
*There are some who criticize the decentralized nature of U.S. elections, ridiculing the process as a patchwork system of inconsistent rules and regulations. But this is a feature, not a bug. Granting primary authority to states to decide the times, places, and manner of elections held within their border helps promote free, fair, and efficient elections.1 With voters generally more confident that votes cast in their county and state are counted as intended, and less confident of that being the case for votes cast nationwide, the decentralized local election system helps foster trust in election results.2 Trust in the outcome of elections is no less important than accuracy. Both must be achieved to promote voter participation, and an election system run largely by the states is the best model for achieving both in equal measure.
*The threats to state administration of elections are real and on the rise, and states should be proactive to protect against outside influence in elections.
*In 2020, a now-infamous grant program primarily funded by donations from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative marred the integrity of election results across the country.
*The Biden administration is seeking to leverage the power and resources of the federal government to do what Zuckerbucks did during the 2020 election, only on a much larger scale. Instead of Zuckerbucks, it’s Bidenbucks.
*But this plan was not dreamed up by the Biden administration, it was developed by a well-funded progressive think tank called Demos.
*States must be proactive in safeguarding their authority over the conduct of elections to help stop outside influence
*Federal guidance from bureaucrats can cause problems, especially when that guidance contradicts state law. Such guidance can be misleading and intimidating and can cause serious confusion for officials attempting to follow the law as they administer local elections.
*While the Trump administration placed limits on the use of sub-regulatory guidance, the Biden administration has reversed course.
*For instance, a weaponized Department of Justice (DOJ) staffed with President Biden’s appointees has issued a wave of new election guidance already.20 This so-called “guidance” is nothing more than an attempt to reinterpret existing laws that have been on the books for decades and is not legally binding.
*State policymakers should require the legislature to examine any federal election guidance to ensure it is accurate and lawful before state election officials implement it.
NYT Hit Piece Targets Cleta Mitchell and CPI-Led Election Integrity Network
New York Times
Comment: This piece is total left-wing narrative from start to finish. It dismisses the evidence of election fraud, misstates the results of court cases (of which Trump forces won over 60), repeats the threadbare assertion election workers feel threatened, and declares the Republicans are ‘too aggressive’ without providing any objective measure of what constitutes ‘too aggresseive’. The Fairfax Republican Election Integrity Team is discussed. You have to read to the end to find that Christopher Piper, who until recently ran the Virginia Department of Elections, admits, despite the ‘annoyance’ of having skeptics question the process, “at the end of the day it’s worth it so these people can see the process and feel comfortable and know that it’s a safe, secure process.” (The article is behind a paywall, but you can get it through ProQuest.)
Permanent Mail-In and Expanded Early Voting Close to Passage in Massachusetts
Public News Service
*Both elections saw the highest voter turnout in decades, with the majority casting ballots early, in person or by mail. But those changes were short-lived and quickly expired.
*MassVOTE's Communications Consultant Alex Psilakis said his nonpartisan group wants to make them permanent with the VOTES Act.
*"It would make voting by mail and expanded early in-person voting permanent in Massachusetts," said Psilakis. "We've been also pushing for Election Day registration. We're expecting a decision on that on Beacon Hill very shortly."
Public News Service
*The state House and Senate have passed two versions of the bill, which are now in conference committee for reconciliation.
New York Acts Against GOP ‘Voter Suppression’
Brennan Center
*Today the New York State Assembly passed the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York (A. 6678E/S. 1046E). The bill would restore many of the legal protections against racial discrimination that recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have taken away from voters of color. The state senate passed the bill on May 31, and it awaits the governor’s signature.
*“This bill would restore the protections New York’s voters of color lost as a result of two devastating blows to the federal Voting Rights Act — the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Shelby County (2013) and Brnovich (2021). The bill would also add new protections against racial discrimination in voting that go beyond those in federal law or the law of any other state.
Dems Gear Up to Fight GOP ‘Voter Suppression’
Reuters
*When a Forsyth County, Georgia, man last week challenged the eligibility of 13,000 voters, a power that a new state law gives individual citizens, it set Democrats and voting-rights activists scrambling, calling in a high-powered law firm to protest.
*Georgia's law was one of nearly three dozen in 2021 that curbed ballot access across 19 states, most of them controlled by Republicans. That push carried into this year, with legislators in at least 27 states having introduced, pre-filed, or carried over 250 bills with restrictive provisions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice's latest tally.
*In addition to giving individual Georgians the power to challenge an unlimited number of voters at once, the state's law limited the use of dropboxes, narrowed the window for submitting absentee ballots and criminalized a variety of election-related activities, including giving water to voters in line.
*Of all the new law's measures, decreased drop box access will likely have the biggest influence on turnout, said Charles Bullock, professor of political science at the University of Georgia, though he reckons the impact will be small.
Dems Going After GOP Election Lawyers
Townhall
*The day after the 2020 presidential election, I predicted the left was going to target any attorney who dared to get involved challenging election fraud.... This year, they launched “The 65 Project” to brazenly accomplish it, named after the 65 lawsuits Trump-affiliated attorneys filed after the election.
*The left has developed a powerfully coordinated legal election effort under the leadership of left-wing lawyer Marc Elias.
*Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who has been out on the forefront investigating election fraud, had 12 bar complaints filed against him and his staff by radical activist Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs over election issues. He beat them, but she will just figure out reasons to file more
More ‘Insurrection’ Challenges to GOP Candidates Fail
Gateway Pundit
*The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by the radical left to remove three conservative legislators from the 2022 ballot for attending the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
*This is a losing issue for the Democrats, so they’re weaponizing the courts to suppress conservative speech all across the country.
*On Monday, the court ruled that Representative Andy Biggs, Representative Paul Gosar, and State Rep. Mark Finchem are qualified to remain on the 2022 Primary ballot, affirming the superior court’s judgment. Reps Biggs and Gosar are seeking reelection to the U.S. House, and Mark Finchem is running for Arizona Secretary of State to secure elections in Arizona.
DEMS KEEP POUNDING THEIR NARRATIVES
‘New GOP Poll Workers Will Go Rogue and Sabotage Elections’
NPR
*And elections officials in Ottawa County, where Kelley lives, are preparing for the possibility that people who believe his misinformation will try to get jobs inside the election system.
*"I feel like they're trying to — infiltrate might be a good word," said Teresa De Graaf, the clerk of Port Sheldon Township, in Ottawa County.
*De Graaf, a Republican, said she had already received poll worker applications from two people she calls "radicals," who believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
*"They start spouting their beliefs and how the election was rigged and how they want to be part of the process because of that," she said. "But you can actually tell that their ultimate goal is maybe to create some chaos and to prove their point."
‘Election Deniers Running for Office’
Brennan Center
*State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a leading proponent of the Big Lie that fraud decided the 2020 election, won the GOP primary for governor. He ran on a promise to “decertify” the 2020 results, has raised the prospect of the state legislature appointing its own slate of electors in future presidential elections, and proposes to wipe all voters from the rolls. “You’re going to have to re-register — we’re going to start all over again,” he bragged.
*The Republican Party of Minnesota recently endorsed for governor Scott Jensen, who has called the election process “bastardized” and implied that the Minnesota secretary of state could be jailed for it Michigan Republicans nominated for secretary of state Kristina Karamo, who claims there is a “massive coverup” of 2020 election fraud. The list of election deniers running for office goes on and on.
FROM OUR FRIENDS
"Trevor Loudon Exposes Marxist Groups, Foreign Connections Behind Mass Voting Drives"
Epoch Times
*The recently released documentary “2000 Mules” by Dinesh D’Souza shows that there were about 2,000 individuals who received ballots from various nonprofit organizations and delivered them in the middle of the night to many mail-in dropboxes ahead of the 2020 election.
*While those organizations’ names were not mentioned in the documentary, Trevor Loudon, who has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements for more than 30 years, said that there is a network of voter registration organizations set up by the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) in San Francisco, a “front” organization for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
*This network is called “Seed the Vote” and it has ties with a number of organizations set up in key swing states such as Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Wisconsin, Detroit Action in Michigan, Living United For Change in Arizona, New Georgia Project in Georgia, and Pennsylvania Stands Up in Pennsylvania, Loudon said.
*And all of these organizations are connected to Liberation Road–an organization connected to the pro-CCP Chinese Progressive Association (CPA)–that helped organize Black Lives Matter (BLM), Loudon said.
*Liberation Road is a socialist organization that draws from Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist ideologies, “with a clear focus on building the resistance to Trump,” its website reads. “We learn from the Chinese leader Mao Zedong, with his insistence that all correct ideas come ‘from the masses to the masses.’”
"STATES MUST STAND GUARD AGAINST OUTSIDE INFLUENCE IN ELECTIONS"
Foundation for Government Accountability
*There are some who criticize the decentralized nature of U.S. elections, ridiculing the process as a patchwork system of inconsistent rules and regulations. But this is a feature, not a bug. Granting primary authority to states to decide the times, places, and manner of elections held within their border helps promote free, fair, and efficient elections.1 With voters generally more confident that votes cast in their county and state are counted as intended, and less confident of that being the case for votes cast nationwide, the decentralized local election system helps foster trust in election results.2 Trust in the outcome of elections is no less important than accuracy. Both must be achieved to promote voter participation, and an election system run largely by the states is the best model for achieving both in equal measure.
*The threats to state administration of elections are real and on the rise, and states should be proactive to protect against outside influence in elections.
*In 2020, a now-infamous grant program primarily funded by donations from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative marred the integrity of election results across the country.
*The Biden administration is seeking to leverage the power and resources of the federal government to do what Zuckerbucks did during the 2020 election, only on a much larger scale. Instead of Zuckerbucks, it’s Bidenbucks.
*But this plan was not dreamed up by the Biden administration, it was developed by a well-funded progressive think tank called Demos.
*States must be proactive in safeguarding their authority over the conduct of elections to help stop outside influence
*Federal guidance from bureaucrats can cause problems, especially when that guidance contradicts state law. Such guidance can be misleading and intimidating and can cause serious confusion for officials attempting to follow the law as they administer local elections.
*While the Trump administration placed limits on the use of sub-regulatory guidance, the Biden administration has reversed course.
*For instance, a weaponized Department of Justice (DOJ) staffed with President Biden’s appointees has issued a wave of new election guidance already.20 This so-called “guidance” is nothing more than an attempt to reinterpret existing laws that have been on the books for decades and is not legally binding.
*State policymakers should require the legislature to examine any federal election guidance to ensure it is accurate and lawful before state election officials implement it.
May 22, 2022
Update: Dems Still Trying to Weaponize Social Media
Washington Post
*Republican congressional candidate Joe Kent recently claimed “rampant voter fraud” in the 2020 election in an ad on Facebook — a misinformation problem Facebook has tried to correct.
*It’s one example of the type of misinformation already testing Facebook in the midterm elections, according to researchers, civil rights advocates and some former employees, who are calling on Facebook to ramp up its policies to prevent the spread of election-related misinformation.
*Facebook has not yet released a new public policy strategy for the November midterms to refresh and update its rules and tools to protect the elections, something it traditionally touts.
*The midterm primaries are already surfacing some of the issues. On Wednesday, Trump moved to baselessly discredit the too-close-to-call Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, urging his endorsed candidate, Mehmet Oz, to “declare victory” over his opponent before all the votes were counted.
*Meanwhile, South Carolina congressional candidate Katie Arrington has been running an ad campaign on Facebook that claims Democrats and media organizations covered up “ballot harvesting” during the 2020 election, elevating debunked claims from a new documentary that alleges nonprofit organizations paid people to collect ballots and put them into drop boxes in various cities.
*Facebook enforces its policies against voter-suppression content through a mix of human content moderation and artificial-intelligence-backed systems that scan Facebook’s networks for potential rule violations. Facebook also directs users to a portal with accurate information about how to vote.
*The coalition of civic advocacy groups is calling on Facebook and other social media platforms to go further this time around. They want the platforms to commit to increasing their staffing and content moderation practices in the period between Election Day and when the new members take office in 2023 to help “ensure a peaceful transition.”
*The groups are also asking tech companies to prioritize removing posts that amplify the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen or glorify the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol, “particularly from political candidates and in fundraising advertisements,” they wrote in their letter.
Reuters
*more than 100 advocacy groups, led by Common Cause ... [wrote] a letter to social media executives.
*Social media companies including Facebook (FB.O), Twitter , YouTube and TikTok must act now to blunt the effect of false information - including Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud - in this year's U.S. midterm congressional elections, rights groups said on Thursday.
*The letter, also sent to the CEOs of Google (GOOGL.O), Instagram LLC and Snap Inc (SNAP.N), urged the companies to take steps, including prioritizing fact-checking and providing real-time access of data to external researchers and watchdogs.
*Others that signed include voting rights and election integrity groups as well as the Center for American Progress, the League of Women Voters, Greenpeace, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Arab American Institute.
Leftist Group Goes Back to the Well for Dem Election Workers
Gateway Pundit
*Power to the Polls, a leftist organization that previously recruited 700,000 potential poll workers in 2020 hopes to reengage those same people in 2022.
The Left Controls Justice Department Voting Unit
CPI Election Integrity Network
*Election law attorney Maureen Riordan currently serves as Litigation Counsel for the non-profit election integrity law firm, The Public Interest Legal Foundation....
* After moving to Virginia in 2020, Maureen accepted a job at the Department of Justice Voting Section, believing she would be working within the Department’s stated mission of enforcing voting laws and rooting out legitimate cases of discrimination. What she discovered was the Department was a weaponized arm of the far left’s anti-election integrity agenda, populated with attorneys and staff from far-left organizations, with an open agenda of tipping the scales away from equal application of law and targeting states the liberal DOJ attorneys considered conservative and thus in need of DOJ “supervision” and control.
The Left’s ‘Big Lie’ Narrative Continues
Brennan Center
*The Republican primary was won by State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who will face Democratic nominee Attorney General Josh Shapiro in the general election.
*In Pennsylvania’s primary election Tuesday, voters will choose the nominees for the seat being vacated by Gov. Tom Wolf (D). Election denial — the stance that President Biden didn’t actually win the 2020 election — has loomed large in the contest. The issue has the potential to affect the 2024 elections, since Pennsylvania’s governor appoints the secretary of the commonwealth, who is the state’s chief elections official.
*On the Democrats’ side, the only candidate is Shapiro, who has partially based his campaign on his record fighting the lawsuits to challenge the 2020 vote count in Pennsylvania.
*election denial is likely to continue to be a central issue in this contest with potential repercussions for the administration of the 2024 elections.
[Note: Whenever you are told you are an ‘election denier’, simply respond: ‘Oh, you mean like Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton?’]
‘Election Workers Under Threat’ Narrative Continues
Vice
*Arizona’s Election Security Chief Quits Over Threats and Conspiracies
*Ken Matta has dire a warning about his state handing over election integrity to election deniers and conspiracy theorists.
*Ken Matta helped run elections in the Arizona secretary of state’s office for more than 19 years. For the last six, he was head of election security.
*KEN MATTA: " it’s a perfect time to get out of elections. A lot of people are fleeing because right now it’s a caustic and dangerous work environment"
Michigan Radical SoS Benson Wants Changes - Hmm...
WILX-10 Lansing
[Note: Some of this makes sense on the face of things, but Benson’s track record should make you suspicious.]
*Michigan’s top election official is calling for legislative changes ahead of the 2022 statewide elections.
*The changes include stricter penalties for election sabotage, making it easier for the military to vote, giving state funds to townships for running elections and measures for improving ballot processing time.
*Similar to how states such as Florida, Kentucky and Ohio handle absentee voting, Benson requested the legislature allow Michigan’s absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day, and then have unofficial election results on election night. Election deniers exploit this and spread misinformation that undermines well-placed faith in our elections and threatens American democracy,” Benson said. “In February 2022, both the associations of the municipal and county clerks called on the Legislature to allow preprocessing.”
*She said that providing stable funding is intended to allow the local governments to acquire technology, security and equipment they may need.
*“Election officials, workers, and volunteers are increasingly the targets of threats and harassment in Michigan and across the country,” Benson said. “They play a critical role in our democracy and need to be protected.”
*In the 2020 presidential election, around 25% of military ballots were returned too late to be counted, or simply never arrived. Benson says that’s due to Michigan’s current ballot collection system relying on international mail.
*“Michigan is behind many other states by requiring overseas military and their spouses to rely on unpredictable international mail to return their ballots,” Benson said.
Eric Coomer Case Against Trump Allies Survives Motion to Dismiss
KESQ-3
*A Colorado judge rejected a request by several allies of former President Donald Trump that she dismiss a defamation case they’re facing after hyping bogus 2020 election fraud claims.
*“There is no constitutional value in false statements of fact or the deliberate spread of dangerous and inflammatory political disinformation designed to sow distrust in democratic institutions,” the judge wrote. “The public has an active interest in ensuring that there are remedies for defamatory statements.”
*The case was brought by Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems executive, after several Trump allies falsely claimed that Coomer had been involved in a plot to rig the 2020 election.
*While they were seeking to challenge Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020, Powell and Giuliani both pointed to an uncorroborated claim — made first by a conservative media figure in Colorado, Joe Oltmann — that Coomer had bragged on a conference call organized by Antifa of a plot to rig the election for President Joe Biden.
*The judge noted that Powell has continued “to claim that the statements were substantially true,” but has “produced no evidence that would support a finding that any of these statements were true.”
*Coomer’s lawsuit is separate from the defamation cases that Dominion has brought, which include lawsuits in Washington, DC, against Powell, Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, as well as a lawsuit Dominion filed in Delaware court against Fox.
Oregon Will Count Mail-In Ballots for 7 Days After Elections
Gateway Pundit
*Infamous for being one of the early adopters of vote-by-mail, Oregon always looks for ways to expand the methods that unscrupulous individuals can take advantage of the system. The latest example being a new law that allows ballots to be counted long after election night as long as the envelope was post marked for election day. That could even mean it was put in a postage box after 8:00 PM on election night.
*That could mean piles of extra ballots found sitting in a bin in some post office that employees “forgot about” until seven days after an election. In the event of a close race separated by only a few votes, that could mean the public would have to wait weeks for that election to be certified.
Mail-In Voting Is on the Decline
AP
"The great vote-by-mail wave appears to be receding just as quickly as it arrived.
*After tens of millions of people in the United States opted for mail ballots during the pandemic election of 2020, voters in early primary states are returning in droves to in-person voting this year.
*A step back in mail balloting was expected given easing concerns about COVID-19, but some election officials and voting experts had predicted that far more voters would seek out the convenience of mail voting once they experienced it.
*Requesting a mail ballot is significantly harder now in Georgia than in 2020, when voters could go online to request a ballot be sent to them without a printed request. Part of the 2021 voting law pushed by Republicans required voters to print or obtain a paper form, then sign it in ink before sending it in by mail, email or fax
*helping drive the reversal is the rollback of temporary rules expanding mail ballots in 2020, combined with distrust of the process among Republicans and concerns about new voting restrictions among Democrats.
*In the Virginia governor’s election last year, the percentage of mail ballots cast was slightly
larger than four years earlier but noticeably lower than in 2020, said Charles Stewart III, an elections expert and professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
*“Elections are kind of going back to where they were,” he said.
Swiss Billionaire Bankrolled Stacey Abrams’ Voter Agitation Group
Washington Free Beacon
*Sacramento-based dark money group Fund for a Better Future in 2020 gave more than $3 million to Abrams's Fair Fight Action, its tax forms show. Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss is by far Fund for a Better Future's top donor—his advocacy group, Berger Action Fund, gave the dark money group more than $45 million from 2016 to 2020.
* At least one watchdog group believes Wyss's liberal philanthropy violates U.S. law.
* Wyss sits on the board of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. He has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing groups over the last two decades.
[Note: So, was Stacey Abrams saying all that stuff because she really believed it or because it was a good gig? Remember, she admitted in Congressional testimony voter ID laws are not racist per se.]
Cruz Wins at Supreme Court, but What’s Sauce for the Goose Is....
Common Cause
*Today, the conservative majority of United States Supreme Court struck down a law that prevents potential corruption from arising when politicians make large personal loans to their own campaigns only to repay them with donations received after Election Day.
*The federal law, part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, limited candidates from using more than $250,000 in contributions raised after the date of an election to repay outstanding personal loans candidates make to their campaigns. In 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-T.X.) put $260,000 of his own money into his reelection and sued the FEC the following year, complaining that this law prevented him from paying off the last $10,000 with post-election contributions. Last June, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with Sen. Cruz, striking down the limit on the amount candidates can raise post-election to repay personal loans to their campaigns.
*Today’s decision creates a shell game that will only serve to further undermine public faith in their elected officials. These loans could run into the millions of dollars and voters will now not know who bankrolled a candidate’s campaign until after the election.
CTCL Update: “Deadline Extended to Join the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence”
CTCL
2000 Mules Update: Engelbrecht and Phillips interview - “Ballot Mules Funded by Obama-Linked NGOs Who Poured Billions Into ‘Local Insurgencies’: Analyst”
Epoch Times TV
Update: Dems Still Trying to Weaponize Social Media
Washington Post
*Republican congressional candidate Joe Kent recently claimed “rampant voter fraud” in the 2020 election in an ad on Facebook — a misinformation problem Facebook has tried to correct.
*It’s one example of the type of misinformation already testing Facebook in the midterm elections, according to researchers, civil rights advocates and some former employees, who are calling on Facebook to ramp up its policies to prevent the spread of election-related misinformation.
*Facebook has not yet released a new public policy strategy for the November midterms to refresh and update its rules and tools to protect the elections, something it traditionally touts.
*The midterm primaries are already surfacing some of the issues. On Wednesday, Trump moved to baselessly discredit the too-close-to-call Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, urging his endorsed candidate, Mehmet Oz, to “declare victory” over his opponent before all the votes were counted.
*Meanwhile, South Carolina congressional candidate Katie Arrington has been running an ad campaign on Facebook that claims Democrats and media organizations covered up “ballot harvesting” during the 2020 election, elevating debunked claims from a new documentary that alleges nonprofit organizations paid people to collect ballots and put them into drop boxes in various cities.
*Facebook enforces its policies against voter-suppression content through a mix of human content moderation and artificial-intelligence-backed systems that scan Facebook’s networks for potential rule violations. Facebook also directs users to a portal with accurate information about how to vote.
*The coalition of civic advocacy groups is calling on Facebook and other social media platforms to go further this time around. They want the platforms to commit to increasing their staffing and content moderation practices in the period between Election Day and when the new members take office in 2023 to help “ensure a peaceful transition.”
*The groups are also asking tech companies to prioritize removing posts that amplify the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen or glorify the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol, “particularly from political candidates and in fundraising advertisements,” they wrote in their letter.
Reuters
*more than 100 advocacy groups, led by Common Cause ... [wrote] a letter to social media executives.
*Social media companies including Facebook (FB.O), Twitter , YouTube and TikTok must act now to blunt the effect of false information - including Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud - in this year's U.S. midterm congressional elections, rights groups said on Thursday.
*The letter, also sent to the CEOs of Google (GOOGL.O), Instagram LLC and Snap Inc (SNAP.N), urged the companies to take steps, including prioritizing fact-checking and providing real-time access of data to external researchers and watchdogs.
*Others that signed include voting rights and election integrity groups as well as the Center for American Progress, the League of Women Voters, Greenpeace, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Arab American Institute.
Leftist Group Goes Back to the Well for Dem Election Workers
Gateway Pundit
*Power to the Polls, a leftist organization that previously recruited 700,000 potential poll workers in 2020 hopes to reengage those same people in 2022.
The Left Controls Justice Department Voting Unit
CPI Election Integrity Network
*Election law attorney Maureen Riordan currently serves as Litigation Counsel for the non-profit election integrity law firm, The Public Interest Legal Foundation....
* After moving to Virginia in 2020, Maureen accepted a job at the Department of Justice Voting Section, believing she would be working within the Department’s stated mission of enforcing voting laws and rooting out legitimate cases of discrimination. What she discovered was the Department was a weaponized arm of the far left’s anti-election integrity agenda, populated with attorneys and staff from far-left organizations, with an open agenda of tipping the scales away from equal application of law and targeting states the liberal DOJ attorneys considered conservative and thus in need of DOJ “supervision” and control.
The Left’s ‘Big Lie’ Narrative Continues
Brennan Center
*The Republican primary was won by State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who will face Democratic nominee Attorney General Josh Shapiro in the general election.
*In Pennsylvania’s primary election Tuesday, voters will choose the nominees for the seat being vacated by Gov. Tom Wolf (D). Election denial — the stance that President Biden didn’t actually win the 2020 election — has loomed large in the contest. The issue has the potential to affect the 2024 elections, since Pennsylvania’s governor appoints the secretary of the commonwealth, who is the state’s chief elections official.
*On the Democrats’ side, the only candidate is Shapiro, who has partially based his campaign on his record fighting the lawsuits to challenge the 2020 vote count in Pennsylvania.
*election denial is likely to continue to be a central issue in this contest with potential repercussions for the administration of the 2024 elections.
[Note: Whenever you are told you are an ‘election denier’, simply respond: ‘Oh, you mean like Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton?’]
‘Election Workers Under Threat’ Narrative Continues
Vice
*Arizona’s Election Security Chief Quits Over Threats and Conspiracies
*Ken Matta has dire a warning about his state handing over election integrity to election deniers and conspiracy theorists.
*Ken Matta helped run elections in the Arizona secretary of state’s office for more than 19 years. For the last six, he was head of election security.
*KEN MATTA: " it’s a perfect time to get out of elections. A lot of people are fleeing because right now it’s a caustic and dangerous work environment"
Michigan Radical SoS Benson Wants Changes - Hmm...
WILX-10 Lansing
[Note: Some of this makes sense on the face of things, but Benson’s track record should make you suspicious.]
*Michigan’s top election official is calling for legislative changes ahead of the 2022 statewide elections.
*The changes include stricter penalties for election sabotage, making it easier for the military to vote, giving state funds to townships for running elections and measures for improving ballot processing time.
*Similar to how states such as Florida, Kentucky and Ohio handle absentee voting, Benson requested the legislature allow Michigan’s absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day, and then have unofficial election results on election night. Election deniers exploit this and spread misinformation that undermines well-placed faith in our elections and threatens American democracy,” Benson said. “In February 2022, both the associations of the municipal and county clerks called on the Legislature to allow preprocessing.”
*She said that providing stable funding is intended to allow the local governments to acquire technology, security and equipment they may need.
*“Election officials, workers, and volunteers are increasingly the targets of threats and harassment in Michigan and across the country,” Benson said. “They play a critical role in our democracy and need to be protected.”
*In the 2020 presidential election, around 25% of military ballots were returned too late to be counted, or simply never arrived. Benson says that’s due to Michigan’s current ballot collection system relying on international mail.
*“Michigan is behind many other states by requiring overseas military and their spouses to rely on unpredictable international mail to return their ballots,” Benson said.
Eric Coomer Case Against Trump Allies Survives Motion to Dismiss
KESQ-3
*A Colorado judge rejected a request by several allies of former President Donald Trump that she dismiss a defamation case they’re facing after hyping bogus 2020 election fraud claims.
*“There is no constitutional value in false statements of fact or the deliberate spread of dangerous and inflammatory political disinformation designed to sow distrust in democratic institutions,” the judge wrote. “The public has an active interest in ensuring that there are remedies for defamatory statements.”
*The case was brought by Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems executive, after several Trump allies falsely claimed that Coomer had been involved in a plot to rig the 2020 election.
*While they were seeking to challenge Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020, Powell and Giuliani both pointed to an uncorroborated claim — made first by a conservative media figure in Colorado, Joe Oltmann — that Coomer had bragged on a conference call organized by Antifa of a plot to rig the election for President Joe Biden.
*The judge noted that Powell has continued “to claim that the statements were substantially true,” but has “produced no evidence that would support a finding that any of these statements were true.”
*Coomer’s lawsuit is separate from the defamation cases that Dominion has brought, which include lawsuits in Washington, DC, against Powell, Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, as well as a lawsuit Dominion filed in Delaware court against Fox.
Oregon Will Count Mail-In Ballots for 7 Days After Elections
Gateway Pundit
*Infamous for being one of the early adopters of vote-by-mail, Oregon always looks for ways to expand the methods that unscrupulous individuals can take advantage of the system. The latest example being a new law that allows ballots to be counted long after election night as long as the envelope was post marked for election day. That could even mean it was put in a postage box after 8:00 PM on election night.
*That could mean piles of extra ballots found sitting in a bin in some post office that employees “forgot about” until seven days after an election. In the event of a close race separated by only a few votes, that could mean the public would have to wait weeks for that election to be certified.
Mail-In Voting Is on the Decline
AP
"The great vote-by-mail wave appears to be receding just as quickly as it arrived.
*After tens of millions of people in the United States opted for mail ballots during the pandemic election of 2020, voters in early primary states are returning in droves to in-person voting this year.
*A step back in mail balloting was expected given easing concerns about COVID-19, but some election officials and voting experts had predicted that far more voters would seek out the convenience of mail voting once they experienced it.
*Requesting a mail ballot is significantly harder now in Georgia than in 2020, when voters could go online to request a ballot be sent to them without a printed request. Part of the 2021 voting law pushed by Republicans required voters to print or obtain a paper form, then sign it in ink before sending it in by mail, email or fax
*helping drive the reversal is the rollback of temporary rules expanding mail ballots in 2020, combined with distrust of the process among Republicans and concerns about new voting restrictions among Democrats.
*In the Virginia governor’s election last year, the percentage of mail ballots cast was slightly
larger than four years earlier but noticeably lower than in 2020, said Charles Stewart III, an elections expert and professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
*“Elections are kind of going back to where they were,” he said.
Swiss Billionaire Bankrolled Stacey Abrams’ Voter Agitation Group
Washington Free Beacon
*Sacramento-based dark money group Fund for a Better Future in 2020 gave more than $3 million to Abrams's Fair Fight Action, its tax forms show. Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss is by far Fund for a Better Future's top donor—his advocacy group, Berger Action Fund, gave the dark money group more than $45 million from 2016 to 2020.
* At least one watchdog group believes Wyss's liberal philanthropy violates U.S. law.
* Wyss sits on the board of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. He has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing groups over the last two decades.
[Note: So, was Stacey Abrams saying all that stuff because she really believed it or because it was a good gig? Remember, she admitted in Congressional testimony voter ID laws are not racist per se.]
Cruz Wins at Supreme Court, but What’s Sauce for the Goose Is....
Common Cause
*Today, the conservative majority of United States Supreme Court struck down a law that prevents potential corruption from arising when politicians make large personal loans to their own campaigns only to repay them with donations received after Election Day.
*The federal law, part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, limited candidates from using more than $250,000 in contributions raised after the date of an election to repay outstanding personal loans candidates make to their campaigns. In 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-T.X.) put $260,000 of his own money into his reelection and sued the FEC the following year, complaining that this law prevented him from paying off the last $10,000 with post-election contributions. Last June, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with Sen. Cruz, striking down the limit on the amount candidates can raise post-election to repay personal loans to their campaigns.
*Today’s decision creates a shell game that will only serve to further undermine public faith in their elected officials. These loans could run into the millions of dollars and voters will now not know who bankrolled a candidate’s campaign until after the election.
CTCL Update: “Deadline Extended to Join the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence”
CTCL
2000 Mules Update: Engelbrecht and Phillips interview - “Ballot Mules Funded by Obama-Linked NGOs Who Poured Billions Into ‘Local Insurgencies’: Analyst”
Epoch Times TV
May 16, 2022
Advocacy Groups Ask Big Tech to Control Election ‘Disinformation’
Common Cause
*Today, more than 120 civil rights, democracy, and public interest groups called on the major social media companies to combat and curb election disinformation on the platforms ahead of this year’s midterm elections. In a letter to the CEOs of Meta, Twitter, YouTube, Snap, Instagram, TikTok, and Alphabet, the groups urged the platforms to take a variety of specific actions
*The groups signing the letter, including Common Cause, Center for American Progress, Free Press, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
*The groups strongly urge the platforms to take the following decisive actions (detailed in the letter) against election disinformation on their platforms as we approach the first national election since the January 6th insurrection:
Introduce friction to reduce the distribution of content containing electoral disinformation.
Focus on preventing disinformation targeting non-English speaking communities.
Consistently enforce civic integrity policies during both election and non-election cycles.
Prioritize enforcement to combat the ‘Big Lie.’
Consistently apply civic integrity policies to all live content as a means of combating election disinformation.
Prioritize fact-checking of electoral content, including political advertisements and posts from public officials.
Provide real-time access of social media data to external researchers and watchdogs.
Provide greater transparency of political advertisements, enforcement practices and algorithmic models.
*The letter closes by emphasizing that the social media platforms can be valuable tools to promote a strong democracy when proper oversight and protections are utilized. But the groups warns if election disinformation is allowed to spread largely unchecked that the platforms “will become known as the dominant threat to a thriving democratic process.”
Left’s ‘Persecuted Election Workers’ Narrative Continues
CNN
*Election officials in Arizona could face criminal charges if a noncitizen registers to vote on their watch.
*In Iowa, a law enacted last year makes it a felony for election clerks to willfully buck state election laws.
*And in Florida, election supervisors face fines of up to $25,000 for leaving a ballot drop box unattended.
*This year alone, lawmakers have introduced 16 different bills in eight states that create new criminal or civil penalties for functions associated with running elections, said Will Wilder, who works on voting rights at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.
*Arizona is the only state that requires voters to prove citizenship when they vote -- an outgrowth of a 2004 ballot measure in the state. (A handful of other states have similar laws on the books, but they have not been enforced.)
*The US Supreme Court in 2013, however, struck down Arizona's proof-of-citizenship provision, saying that --while the state can set eligibility rules for its elections -- federal law requires the state to accept the federal voter registration form for federal elections. That form requires voters to attest that they are US citizens, but they don't have to provide documents proving their citizenship.
*The new law, which takes effect in December, says an election official who fails to reject a registration application without proof of citizenship or knowingly attempts to register a noncitizen could face felony charges.
*A voting rights group immediately filed a legal challenge to the law.
*In Florida, at least one election supervisor found a workaround to abide by the state's new law establishing a stiff fine for unattended drop boxes. Alan Hayes, the elections supervisor in Lake County, just outside Orlando, said he's removed the drop box outside of his office and replaced it with a US Postal Service mailbox instead.
Comment: As if all these laws are merely punitive and there were no good reasons to enact them.
Now Those Mean Republicans Are Targeting the Disabled
NPR
*In January, a Waukesha County judge sided with a conservative legal group in a lawsuit and ruled that ballot drop boxes, which were widely used in the 2020 election, aren't permitted under state law and that voters must return their absentee ballots themselves.
*An appeals court temporarily blocked the order for primaries in February, but the ban was in effect for local elections in April. The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the appeal of the case last month and is expected to make a decision in June — two months before the state's crucial statewide primary elections.
*Many voters with disabilities are warily following efforts across the country by Republican-led states to tighten voting rules following the 2020 election, in what conservatives say are steps to shore up election integrity.
*In Wisconsin, the crux of the legal case over drop boxes and returning ballots is the interpretation of a portion of state law that details the absentee ballot return process.
*"The envelope shall be mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots," the statute reads.
*One in five adults in Wisconsin has a disability of some kind, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
*In his oral arguments before the court and in an interview with NPR, Esenberg referenced a U.S. Postal Service program that he said could help voters with disabilities return their ballots. It involves getting a statement from a doctor attesting that someone is "unable to collect mail from a curb or centralized mailbox."
*But disability advocates say that premise is flawed — that there are already many people for whom such a program wouldn't work, and that seeking a legal exemption, which would likely take time and money, is not equitable access to voting.
*Carey says the ruling forces voters like him who rely on ballot return assistance to choose between asking someone else to mail their ballot anyway and break the law, or not vote at all.
More ‘Insurrection’ Challenges to GOP Candidates Fail
NPR, Epoch Times
Marjorie Taylor Greene:
*Officials in Georgia have ruled that Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene should remain on the ballot for reelection, after a group of voters and a supporting legal group filed a formal challenge to her candidacy for her role in the Capitol riot.
*Later on Friday, Georgia's secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, who had final say, announced that he would follow the judge's recommendation
*"The evidence in this matter is insufficient to establish that Rep. Greene ... 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution," Judge Charles Beaudrot wrote in his ruling.
Arizona Republicans:
*The Arizona Supreme Court on Monday ruled that two Republican congressmen and a state representative should remain on the November ballot after opponents claimed they were ineligible for reelection because they actively participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
*the court on Monday found that only Congress had the power to disqualify the elected officials and not a private citizen.
Comment: VEInet is not aware of any case where the ‘insurrection’ theory has succeeded in keeping a Republican off the ballot.
"Conservative group launches $2M effort to elect candidates committed to secure elections"
Washington Times
*A center-right political group announced Monday a $2 million endeavor to elect state election officials committed to strengthening the integrity of the ballot.
*The Election Transparency Initiative (ETI) plans to be active in several states this election cycle targeting at least 10 swing states, including Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania considered pivotal ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
*A coalition of several influential national conservative groups, including FreedomWorks and the legislative affiliate of the Family Research Council, are working in support of ETI’s effort, but not financing its work.
*ETI will specifically work to elect candidates to state legislatures, as well as secretary of state offices — two public positions that have significant sway over elections.
Show Me the Election Skeptic and I’ll Show You the Crime
The Guardian
*Conservative groups perpetuating Donald Trump’s false charges that the 2020 election was rigged have sparked a lawsuit against one in Colorado, and a congressional panel investigation of another in New Mexico, over aggressive tactics allegedly used to seek out possible voter fraud.
*A lawsuit was filed by the NAACP and two other groups in March charging that Colorado-based US Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), which has echoed Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 election fraud, has gone door to door in some counties aggressively questioning residents about their voting status and sometimes bearing arms.
*The lawsuit alleges, without providing specific cases, that USEIP representatives have at times worn badges or carried firearms when visiting voters’ residences, although they are not government officials.
*A Colorado judge last week rejected a motion by USEIP to dismiss the lawsuit. A separate motion by the plaintiffs’ two counsels, the nonprofit legal group Free Speech for People and the law firm Lathrop GPM, to obtain a preliminary injunction to halt USEIP’s efforts is pending.
*The lawsuit partly rests on a measure that passed after the Civil War, called the KKK Act, aimed at stopping white terrorists from using violence to interfere with Black voters.
*USEIP, which started after Joe Biden defeated Trump, is run by Shawn Smith, a retired air force colonel who also leads Cause of America....
*Mike Lindell, the multimillionaire Trump loyalist who is CEO of MyPillow and has been the chief financier of Cause of America, told the Guardian that the group serves as an “information hub” with a presence in all 50 states and on his website FrankSpeech.com.
*The House Oversight Committee chair, Carolyn Maloney, and the chair of its subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties, Jamie Raskin, wrote Ayyadurai in March that it is “investigating whether your company’s audit and canvass in New Mexico interferes with Americans’ right to vote by spreading disinformation about elections and intimidating voters”.
*The House letter pointed out that 40% of the county’s residents are non-white Hispanic, and raised the concern that the company’s canvas could “have a particular impact on minority communities in Otero county”
Marc Elias Getting Comeuppance
Washington Free Beacon
*Marc Elias, the left's go-to attack dog, is laughed out of court, accused of lying to the special counsel, and on the losing end of several voting-rights cases
*It's not every day that a federal judge calls a lawsuit from one of the country's top lawyers a nasty and partisan "Hail Mary pass" intended to undermine free and fair elections. But that's what happened on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, tossed out a lawsuit brought by Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias.
*Elias's tactics are now drawing rebukes from judges, prosecutors, and even fellow Democrats, who say his hard-charging nature is hurting the party. Elias is publicly reeling. He last month scrubbed years of posts from his Twitter feed and hasn't explained why. The move comes less than a year after he decamped from the white-shoe law firm Perkins Coie to found his own law firm—ostensibly to engage "more fully" in the "political process," though some speculate the firm was increasingly uncomfortable with Elias's tactics and the scrutiny of the Durham probe. Durham indicted Elias's partner, Michael Sussman, a month after Elias left.
*Durham on May 2 submitted a second filing that pushes Elias about his relationship with Fusion. It's a sure sign that the special counsel isn't letting the matter lie, and a request for sanctions could be near.
Advocacy Groups Ask Big Tech to Control Election ‘Disinformation’
Common Cause
*Today, more than 120 civil rights, democracy, and public interest groups called on the major social media companies to combat and curb election disinformation on the platforms ahead of this year’s midterm elections. In a letter to the CEOs of Meta, Twitter, YouTube, Snap, Instagram, TikTok, and Alphabet, the groups urged the platforms to take a variety of specific actions
*The groups signing the letter, including Common Cause, Center for American Progress, Free Press, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
*The groups strongly urge the platforms to take the following decisive actions (detailed in the letter) against election disinformation on their platforms as we approach the first national election since the January 6th insurrection:
Introduce friction to reduce the distribution of content containing electoral disinformation.
Focus on preventing disinformation targeting non-English speaking communities.
Consistently enforce civic integrity policies during both election and non-election cycles.
Prioritize enforcement to combat the ‘Big Lie.’
Consistently apply civic integrity policies to all live content as a means of combating election disinformation.
Prioritize fact-checking of electoral content, including political advertisements and posts from public officials.
Provide real-time access of social media data to external researchers and watchdogs.
Provide greater transparency of political advertisements, enforcement practices and algorithmic models.
*The letter closes by emphasizing that the social media platforms can be valuable tools to promote a strong democracy when proper oversight and protections are utilized. But the groups warns if election disinformation is allowed to spread largely unchecked that the platforms “will become known as the dominant threat to a thriving democratic process.”
Left’s ‘Persecuted Election Workers’ Narrative Continues
CNN
*Election officials in Arizona could face criminal charges if a noncitizen registers to vote on their watch.
*In Iowa, a law enacted last year makes it a felony for election clerks to willfully buck state election laws.
*And in Florida, election supervisors face fines of up to $25,000 for leaving a ballot drop box unattended.
*This year alone, lawmakers have introduced 16 different bills in eight states that create new criminal or civil penalties for functions associated with running elections, said Will Wilder, who works on voting rights at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.
*Arizona is the only state that requires voters to prove citizenship when they vote -- an outgrowth of a 2004 ballot measure in the state. (A handful of other states have similar laws on the books, but they have not been enforced.)
*The US Supreme Court in 2013, however, struck down Arizona's proof-of-citizenship provision, saying that --while the state can set eligibility rules for its elections -- federal law requires the state to accept the federal voter registration form for federal elections. That form requires voters to attest that they are US citizens, but they don't have to provide documents proving their citizenship.
*The new law, which takes effect in December, says an election official who fails to reject a registration application without proof of citizenship or knowingly attempts to register a noncitizen could face felony charges.
*A voting rights group immediately filed a legal challenge to the law.
*In Florida, at least one election supervisor found a workaround to abide by the state's new law establishing a stiff fine for unattended drop boxes. Alan Hayes, the elections supervisor in Lake County, just outside Orlando, said he's removed the drop box outside of his office and replaced it with a US Postal Service mailbox instead.
Comment: As if all these laws are merely punitive and there were no good reasons to enact them.
Now Those Mean Republicans Are Targeting the Disabled
NPR
*In January, a Waukesha County judge sided with a conservative legal group in a lawsuit and ruled that ballot drop boxes, which were widely used in the 2020 election, aren't permitted under state law and that voters must return their absentee ballots themselves.
*An appeals court temporarily blocked the order for primaries in February, but the ban was in effect for local elections in April. The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the appeal of the case last month and is expected to make a decision in June — two months before the state's crucial statewide primary elections.
*Many voters with disabilities are warily following efforts across the country by Republican-led states to tighten voting rules following the 2020 election, in what conservatives say are steps to shore up election integrity.
*In Wisconsin, the crux of the legal case over drop boxes and returning ballots is the interpretation of a portion of state law that details the absentee ballot return process.
*"The envelope shall be mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots," the statute reads.
*One in five adults in Wisconsin has a disability of some kind, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
*In his oral arguments before the court and in an interview with NPR, Esenberg referenced a U.S. Postal Service program that he said could help voters with disabilities return their ballots. It involves getting a statement from a doctor attesting that someone is "unable to collect mail from a curb or centralized mailbox."
*But disability advocates say that premise is flawed — that there are already many people for whom such a program wouldn't work, and that seeking a legal exemption, which would likely take time and money, is not equitable access to voting.
*Carey says the ruling forces voters like him who rely on ballot return assistance to choose between asking someone else to mail their ballot anyway and break the law, or not vote at all.
More ‘Insurrection’ Challenges to GOP Candidates Fail
NPR, Epoch Times
Marjorie Taylor Greene:
*Officials in Georgia have ruled that Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene should remain on the ballot for reelection, after a group of voters and a supporting legal group filed a formal challenge to her candidacy for her role in the Capitol riot.
*Later on Friday, Georgia's secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, who had final say, announced that he would follow the judge's recommendation
*"The evidence in this matter is insufficient to establish that Rep. Greene ... 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution," Judge Charles Beaudrot wrote in his ruling.
Arizona Republicans:
*The Arizona Supreme Court on Monday ruled that two Republican congressmen and a state representative should remain on the November ballot after opponents claimed they were ineligible for reelection because they actively participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
*the court on Monday found that only Congress had the power to disqualify the elected officials and not a private citizen.
Comment: VEInet is not aware of any case where the ‘insurrection’ theory has succeeded in keeping a Republican off the ballot.
"Conservative group launches $2M effort to elect candidates committed to secure elections"
Washington Times
*A center-right political group announced Monday a $2 million endeavor to elect state election officials committed to strengthening the integrity of the ballot.
*The Election Transparency Initiative (ETI) plans to be active in several states this election cycle targeting at least 10 swing states, including Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania considered pivotal ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
*A coalition of several influential national conservative groups, including FreedomWorks and the legislative affiliate of the Family Research Council, are working in support of ETI’s effort, but not financing its work.
*ETI will specifically work to elect candidates to state legislatures, as well as secretary of state offices — two public positions that have significant sway over elections.
Show Me the Election Skeptic and I’ll Show You the Crime
The Guardian
*Conservative groups perpetuating Donald Trump’s false charges that the 2020 election was rigged have sparked a lawsuit against one in Colorado, and a congressional panel investigation of another in New Mexico, over aggressive tactics allegedly used to seek out possible voter fraud.
*A lawsuit was filed by the NAACP and two other groups in March charging that Colorado-based US Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), which has echoed Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 election fraud, has gone door to door in some counties aggressively questioning residents about their voting status and sometimes bearing arms.
*The lawsuit alleges, without providing specific cases, that USEIP representatives have at times worn badges or carried firearms when visiting voters’ residences, although they are not government officials.
*A Colorado judge last week rejected a motion by USEIP to dismiss the lawsuit. A separate motion by the plaintiffs’ two counsels, the nonprofit legal group Free Speech for People and the law firm Lathrop GPM, to obtain a preliminary injunction to halt USEIP’s efforts is pending.
*The lawsuit partly rests on a measure that passed after the Civil War, called the KKK Act, aimed at stopping white terrorists from using violence to interfere with Black voters.
*USEIP, which started after Joe Biden defeated Trump, is run by Shawn Smith, a retired air force colonel who also leads Cause of America....
*Mike Lindell, the multimillionaire Trump loyalist who is CEO of MyPillow and has been the chief financier of Cause of America, told the Guardian that the group serves as an “information hub” with a presence in all 50 states and on his website FrankSpeech.com.
*The House Oversight Committee chair, Carolyn Maloney, and the chair of its subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties, Jamie Raskin, wrote Ayyadurai in March that it is “investigating whether your company’s audit and canvass in New Mexico interferes with Americans’ right to vote by spreading disinformation about elections and intimidating voters”.
*The House letter pointed out that 40% of the county’s residents are non-white Hispanic, and raised the concern that the company’s canvas could “have a particular impact on minority communities in Otero county”
Marc Elias Getting Comeuppance
Washington Free Beacon
*Marc Elias, the left's go-to attack dog, is laughed out of court, accused of lying to the special counsel, and on the losing end of several voting-rights cases
*It's not every day that a federal judge calls a lawsuit from one of the country's top lawyers a nasty and partisan "Hail Mary pass" intended to undermine free and fair elections. But that's what happened on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, tossed out a lawsuit brought by Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias.
*Elias's tactics are now drawing rebukes from judges, prosecutors, and even fellow Democrats, who say his hard-charging nature is hurting the party. Elias is publicly reeling. He last month scrubbed years of posts from his Twitter feed and hasn't explained why. The move comes less than a year after he decamped from the white-shoe law firm Perkins Coie to found his own law firm—ostensibly to engage "more fully" in the "political process," though some speculate the firm was increasingly uncomfortable with Elias's tactics and the scrutiny of the Durham probe. Durham indicted Elias's partner, Michael Sussman, a month after Elias left.
*Durham on May 2 submitted a second filing that pushes Elias about his relationship with Fusion. It's a sure sign that the special counsel isn't letting the matter lie, and a request for sanctions could be near.
May 8, 2022
Biden’s Executive Order: Hiding the New Zuckerbucks
Wall Street Journal
Note: People are calling Joe Biden’s March 2022 executive order on elections the ‘new Zuckerbucks’. Like Zuckerbucks, the order is a thinly disguised get-out-the-vote effort to benefit the Democrats. From the article:
*President Biden is ordering all agencies in the federal bureaucracy to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” That language, from a March 2021 executive order titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” may sound benign. It isn’t, and it may conceal an abuse of power. The administration is making it difficult for the public to find out.
*The Constitution doesn’t grant the president authority over federal elections. It reserves that power to the states and to a lesser extent Congress. Mr. Biden’s order ignores that prohibition by expanding the role of federal agencies in elections. Congress hasn’t approved such an expansion, and election legislation Mr. Biden backs is stuck in the Senate.
*The White House refuses to release the plans that various agencies created under the executive order. Agencies submitted their plans by September, yet the administration has provided only overviews of slightly more than a dozen, with little detail. Their full plans should be available, and so should those of hundreds of other agencies. With the federal government throwing its weight behind voter registration and participation, Americans have a right to see what it’s doing and which voters it’s targeting, especially with crucial midterm elections in November.
*In July, the Foundation for Government Accountability [FGA] submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to key agencies covered by the executive order.
*Not a single agency has provided the documents the FGA requested, and most of them haven’t responded at all. The Justice Department is a case in point. It blew past the federal requirement that it acknowledge our FOIA request within 20 days.
*This week we are filing a lawsuit that seeks to right this wrong. Having exhausted all other legal remedies, we [FGA] are asking the federal courts to compel the Justice Department to turn over the documents we requested within three weeks, thereby ensuring that Americans can learn if anything inappropriate is happening before they cast their midterm ballots. We aren’t yet filing suit against other agencies in the hope that a federal ruling in our favor will spur them to follow the Justice Department lead.
Center for Tech and Civic Life
Note: Increasing campus voter turnout is part of the Democrats’ effort to tilt elections in their favor (Zuckerbucks, Biden executive order, ERIC, attempted Democrat redistricting in New York, etc.). From the article:
*Two Michigan clerks—Jody Hansen and Jackie Beaudry—found themselves asking this question after setting up satellite clerk’s offices at their local universities in 2020. They saw tremendous success, registering thousands of new voters while demystifying the voting process. This year, they’re evaluating what worked well in 2020, and where there was room for improvement. Using their reflection and refinement skills, they’re ensuring that their initiatives have an even greater impact in 2022.
*Grand Valley State University, located 12 miles west of Grand Rapids in Allendale Township, serves over 24,000 students. And GVSU students have a history of turning out in impressive numbers. On Election Day in 2016, so many first-time student voters showed up at a polling location that election workers were overwhelmed and long lines formed. In 2020, to prevent a similar situation from happening, former Township Clerk Laurie Richards established a satellite clerk’s office on GVSU’s campus
*The satellite offices at GVSU and UMMA made voting more accessible and convenient for college-age voters in 2020. Ann Arbor and Allendale Township registered thousands of voters and collected thousands of ballots. Still, there was room to further improve voters’ experiences for the upcoming 2022 elections.
*The pop-up office will incorporate the popular elements from the office at UMMA, namely using art and design to create a welcoming environment for student voters. While Jackie and the team are still ironing out the details of the space’s theme, they do have some ideas.
*For more guidance on fostering partnerships with universities, Students Learn Students Vote’s Election Official and Campus Engagement Report & Toolkit includes a list of action items you can take to get started, including:
Democrats Obtain Arrests and a Conviction in Unauthorized Voting System Access Cases
Reuters
*Chasing proof of vote-rigging conspiracy theories, Republican officials and activists in eight U.S. locales have plotted to gain illegal access to balloting systems, undermining the security of elections they claim to protect.
*... eight known attempts to gain unauthorized access to voting systems in five U.S. states since the 2020 election. All involved local Republican officeholders or party activists who have advanced Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods or conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, according to a Reuters examination of the incidents.
*Some of the people and groups involved in the vigilante election-investigator movement are drawing financial support from Lindell, the My Pillow Inc chief executive and one of the most visible backers of Trump’s false fraud claims. Lindell said he hired four top members of one group, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, or USEIP. The group got Lindell’s backing about three months after its co-founder advised Elbert County Clerk Schroeder in his effort to copy and leak voting data. In all, Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, a right-wing network of election activists.
*Four experts in voting law told Reuters the extent of these balloting-data breaches is unprecedented in modern U.S. elections. The violations are especially worrying, say election officials, because they break the chain of custody over ballots and tabulating equipment.
*The Colorado data Schroeder leaked likely included ballot images that showed how people voted, according to the secretary of state’s office. If so, that would violate a core principle of modern American democracy: the secret ballot, which is intended to protect voters from politically motivated harassment or intimidation and to prevent vote-buying.
*The incidents examined by Reuters all took place in states that have been competitive in recent elections: Two occurred in Colorado, three in Michigan and one each in Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. At least five of the cases are under investigation by local or federal law enforcement, with three arrests and one conviction, according to state and local officials.
*Schroeder wasn’t the only Colorado clerk approached by the USEIP’s Smith for access to secure voting data. In May 2021, Smith told El Paso County clerk Chuck Broerman in a meeting that USEIP would conduct a “forensic investigation” of his voting systems, Broerman said.
Dems Attack GOP Reliance on State Legislatures
Brennan Center
*The independent state legislature theory is a radical and baseless attack on our elections....
*The Framers didn’t trust state legislatures.
*“What led to the appointment of this Convention?” John F. Mercer of Maryland rhetorically asked his fellow delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. “The corruption & mutability of the Legislative Councils of the States.”
*The Elections Clause gives “legislatures” the power to set the “times, places, and manner” of elections. (And — to underline how little the Framers’ trusted state legislatures — Congress “may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”) Since the founding, “legislatures” has been understood to mean “state governments.”
*Voters across the country are trying to take back their elections. They are amending their constitutions to demand fair maps and taking their own lawmakers to court to ensure access to the ballot The independent state legislature theory would wipe those reforms away — along with countless state constitutional provisions that govern our elections.
"Sen. Scott: Left-Wing Groups Using Race, Lawsuits to Carry Out Election Fraud"
Epoch Times / Zero Hedge
*Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) says that Democrats are currently using claims that voter ID laws are racist in a bid to strike them down, although many such laws are commonplace in countries across Europe and elsewhere. [Note: Stacey Abrams and other Democrats have admitted voter ID is not racist.]
*Scott said that NRSC and Republican National Committee are now defending numerous lawsuits against election integrity laws across the United States.
*About a month ago, a judge in Florida ruled that the state’s new election law, SB 90, was unconstitutional, although state officials have appealed the order. That law was signed in May 2021 by the governor before it was challenged by several liberal advocacy groups, some of which accused the law of being racist.
*Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, an Obama appointee, said the law is discriminatory and claimed it violates the Constitution. He also issued a permanent injunction that prevented the enforcement of many of the provisions
*Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody last month appealed the ruling, while Gov. Ron DeSantis said he believes Walker’s ruling will be overturned.
Note: A federal appeals court just reinstated parts of Florida’s new law.
More Dirty Tricks Coming from the Democrats
Gateway Pundit
*Democrat National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison on Saturday appeared on MSNBC to discuss the Democrats’ strategy for the 2022 midterms
*MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross called Republicans “Fascists” as she wondered how the Democrat party can connect with more voters going into the midterms.
*[Harrison called this statement by Roland Martin a “good road map”]: “They’ve got to be willing to engage in war. You cannot play fair with people who don’t play fair. There are no rules. The other side has shown that they will do whatever is necessary in order to win. So you’ve got to say, America, when they didn’t care about you, we did.”
Note: If you believed this, what would you do?
Biden’s Executive Order: Hiding the New Zuckerbucks
Wall Street Journal
Note: People are calling Joe Biden’s March 2022 executive order on elections the ‘new Zuckerbucks’. Like Zuckerbucks, the order is a thinly disguised get-out-the-vote effort to benefit the Democrats. From the article:
*President Biden is ordering all agencies in the federal bureaucracy to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” That language, from a March 2021 executive order titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” may sound benign. It isn’t, and it may conceal an abuse of power. The administration is making it difficult for the public to find out.
*The Constitution doesn’t grant the president authority over federal elections. It reserves that power to the states and to a lesser extent Congress. Mr. Biden’s order ignores that prohibition by expanding the role of federal agencies in elections. Congress hasn’t approved such an expansion, and election legislation Mr. Biden backs is stuck in the Senate.
*The White House refuses to release the plans that various agencies created under the executive order. Agencies submitted their plans by September, yet the administration has provided only overviews of slightly more than a dozen, with little detail. Their full plans should be available, and so should those of hundreds of other agencies. With the federal government throwing its weight behind voter registration and participation, Americans have a right to see what it’s doing and which voters it’s targeting, especially with crucial midterm elections in November.
*In July, the Foundation for Government Accountability [FGA] submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to key agencies covered by the executive order.
*Not a single agency has provided the documents the FGA requested, and most of them haven’t responded at all. The Justice Department is a case in point. It blew past the federal requirement that it acknowledge our FOIA request within 20 days.
*This week we are filing a lawsuit that seeks to right this wrong. Having exhausted all other legal remedies, we [FGA] are asking the federal courts to compel the Justice Department to turn over the documents we requested within three weeks, thereby ensuring that Americans can learn if anything inappropriate is happening before they cast their midterm ballots. We aren’t yet filing suit against other agencies in the hope that a federal ruling in our favor will spur them to follow the Justice Department lead.
- In addition to the executive order:
*the Biden administration proposed a $10 billion federal fund available for the next decade to replicate and expand the cash injections to election offices like those seen in 2020. Another $5 billion is requested for the U.S. Postal Service so it can expand its role in voting-by-mail. Even if the administration gets a fraction of that request, it will make the $500 million spent in 2020 from private groups to increase urban turnout look like small potatoes. [J. Christian Adams] - HUD Pushes Voter Registration Drives in Public Housing Under Biden’s Executive Order
Center for Tech and Civic Life
Note: Increasing campus voter turnout is part of the Democrats’ effort to tilt elections in their favor (Zuckerbucks, Biden executive order, ERIC, attempted Democrat redistricting in New York, etc.). From the article:
*Two Michigan clerks—Jody Hansen and Jackie Beaudry—found themselves asking this question after setting up satellite clerk’s offices at their local universities in 2020. They saw tremendous success, registering thousands of new voters while demystifying the voting process. This year, they’re evaluating what worked well in 2020, and where there was room for improvement. Using their reflection and refinement skills, they’re ensuring that their initiatives have an even greater impact in 2022.
*Grand Valley State University, located 12 miles west of Grand Rapids in Allendale Township, serves over 24,000 students. And GVSU students have a history of turning out in impressive numbers. On Election Day in 2016, so many first-time student voters showed up at a polling location that election workers were overwhelmed and long lines formed. In 2020, to prevent a similar situation from happening, former Township Clerk Laurie Richards established a satellite clerk’s office on GVSU’s campus
*The satellite offices at GVSU and UMMA made voting more accessible and convenient for college-age voters in 2020. Ann Arbor and Allendale Township registered thousands of voters and collected thousands of ballots. Still, there was room to further improve voters’ experiences for the upcoming 2022 elections.
*The pop-up office will incorporate the popular elements from the office at UMMA, namely using art and design to create a welcoming environment for student voters. While Jackie and the team are still ironing out the details of the space’s theme, they do have some ideas.
*For more guidance on fostering partnerships with universities, Students Learn Students Vote’s Election Official and Campus Engagement Report & Toolkit includes a list of action items you can take to get started, including:
Democrats Obtain Arrests and a Conviction in Unauthorized Voting System Access Cases
Reuters
*Chasing proof of vote-rigging conspiracy theories, Republican officials and activists in eight U.S. locales have plotted to gain illegal access to balloting systems, undermining the security of elections they claim to protect.
*... eight known attempts to gain unauthorized access to voting systems in five U.S. states since the 2020 election. All involved local Republican officeholders or party activists who have advanced Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods or conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, according to a Reuters examination of the incidents.
*Some of the people and groups involved in the vigilante election-investigator movement are drawing financial support from Lindell, the My Pillow Inc chief executive and one of the most visible backers of Trump’s false fraud claims. Lindell said he hired four top members of one group, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, or USEIP. The group got Lindell’s backing about three months after its co-founder advised Elbert County Clerk Schroeder in his effort to copy and leak voting data. In all, Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, a right-wing network of election activists.
*Four experts in voting law told Reuters the extent of these balloting-data breaches is unprecedented in modern U.S. elections. The violations are especially worrying, say election officials, because they break the chain of custody over ballots and tabulating equipment.
*The Colorado data Schroeder leaked likely included ballot images that showed how people voted, according to the secretary of state’s office. If so, that would violate a core principle of modern American democracy: the secret ballot, which is intended to protect voters from politically motivated harassment or intimidation and to prevent vote-buying.
*The incidents examined by Reuters all took place in states that have been competitive in recent elections: Two occurred in Colorado, three in Michigan and one each in Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. At least five of the cases are under investigation by local or federal law enforcement, with three arrests and one conviction, according to state and local officials.
*Schroeder wasn’t the only Colorado clerk approached by the USEIP’s Smith for access to secure voting data. In May 2021, Smith told El Paso County clerk Chuck Broerman in a meeting that USEIP would conduct a “forensic investigation” of his voting systems, Broerman said.
Dems Attack GOP Reliance on State Legislatures
Brennan Center
*The independent state legislature theory is a radical and baseless attack on our elections....
*The Framers didn’t trust state legislatures.
*“What led to the appointment of this Convention?” John F. Mercer of Maryland rhetorically asked his fellow delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. “The corruption & mutability of the Legislative Councils of the States.”
*The Elections Clause gives “legislatures” the power to set the “times, places, and manner” of elections. (And — to underline how little the Framers’ trusted state legislatures — Congress “may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”) Since the founding, “legislatures” has been understood to mean “state governments.”
*Voters across the country are trying to take back their elections. They are amending their constitutions to demand fair maps and taking their own lawmakers to court to ensure access to the ballot The independent state legislature theory would wipe those reforms away — along with countless state constitutional provisions that govern our elections.
"Sen. Scott: Left-Wing Groups Using Race, Lawsuits to Carry Out Election Fraud"
Epoch Times / Zero Hedge
*Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) says that Democrats are currently using claims that voter ID laws are racist in a bid to strike them down, although many such laws are commonplace in countries across Europe and elsewhere. [Note: Stacey Abrams and other Democrats have admitted voter ID is not racist.]
*Scott said that NRSC and Republican National Committee are now defending numerous lawsuits against election integrity laws across the United States.
*About a month ago, a judge in Florida ruled that the state’s new election law, SB 90, was unconstitutional, although state officials have appealed the order. That law was signed in May 2021 by the governor before it was challenged by several liberal advocacy groups, some of which accused the law of being racist.
*Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, an Obama appointee, said the law is discriminatory and claimed it violates the Constitution. He also issued a permanent injunction that prevented the enforcement of many of the provisions
*Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody last month appealed the ruling, while Gov. Ron DeSantis said he believes Walker’s ruling will be overturned.
Note: A federal appeals court just reinstated parts of Florida’s new law.
More Dirty Tricks Coming from the Democrats
Gateway Pundit
*Democrat National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison on Saturday appeared on MSNBC to discuss the Democrats’ strategy for the 2022 midterms
*MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross called Republicans “Fascists” as she wondered how the Democrat party can connect with more voters going into the midterms.
*[Harrison called this statement by Roland Martin a “good road map”]: “They’ve got to be willing to engage in war. You cannot play fair with people who don’t play fair. There are no rules. The other side has shown that they will do whatever is necessary in order to win. So you’ve got to say, America, when they didn’t care about you, we did.”
Note: If you believed this, what would you do?
May 3, 2022
CTCL Forming ‘Support Group’ for Local Elections Officials
Just the News
CTCL is laying plans to influence future elections, although the plan is vague on details.
*The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), the nonprofit that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used to pour nearly $350 million into local municipalities running the 2020 election, is creating a new election alliance while cutting back on its controversial grants for elections.
*CTCL announced on Monday the start of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a program which will provide $80 million over five years...
*The nonprofit framed the alliance as "a response to feedback from local election officials and their needs after the 2020 program."
*The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence will bring together world-class partners so that local election officials no longer have to go it alone."
*During the program's first year, the alliance says it will identify local election departments that want to join it "and serve as a support system for each other and for other election departments across the country."
Those Dastardly Republicans Are Planning to Steal the 2024 Election (Part 1)
CNN
*Trump's and the Republicans' far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.
*Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
*Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.
[Note: This is a classic case of liberal projection - the Left accusing the Right of what the Left has up to.]
Those Dastardly Republicans Are Planning to Steal the 2024 Election (Part 2)
The Guardian
*On Tuesday, the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League released the annual report in its analysis series The State of Black America. The report, called Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, outlines the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”.
*It focuses on four main tactics that it says are used in this effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.
*“The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.
CTCL Forming ‘Support Group’ for Local Elections Officials
Just the News
CTCL is laying plans to influence future elections, although the plan is vague on details.
*The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), the nonprofit that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used to pour nearly $350 million into local municipalities running the 2020 election, is creating a new election alliance while cutting back on its controversial grants for elections.
*CTCL announced on Monday the start of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a program which will provide $80 million over five years...
*The nonprofit framed the alliance as "a response to feedback from local election officials and their needs after the 2020 program."
*The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence will bring together world-class partners so that local election officials no longer have to go it alone."
*During the program's first year, the alliance says it will identify local election departments that want to join it "and serve as a support system for each other and for other election departments across the country."
Those Dastardly Republicans Are Planning to Steal the 2024 Election (Part 1)
CNN
*Trump's and the Republicans' far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.
*Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
*Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.
[Note: This is a classic case of liberal projection - the Left accusing the Right of what the Left has up to.]
Those Dastardly Republicans Are Planning to Steal the 2024 Election (Part 2)
The Guardian
*On Tuesday, the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League released the annual report in its analysis series The State of Black America. The report, called Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, outlines the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”.
*It focuses on four main tactics that it says are used in this effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.
*“The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.
April 25, 2022
Pennsylvania Election to Feature Unconstitutional Mail-In Balloting, Unless State Supreme Court Changes Course
The Federalist
* Before the 2020 election, politicians in the capital of Pennsylvania passed a new law. It was called Act 77, and it created a 50-day, no-excuse, mail-in ballot rule. This law provided virtually no security or integrity for the most important election of our lifetimes,
* George Bochetto is an attorney, election law and constitutional expert, and candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania
* He is running moslty on the agenda of canceling Act 77.
* Act 77 already has been declared unconstitutional by Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court, the state’s intermediate appellate court.
* The Pennsylvania state constitution requires in-person voting unless you meet stringent requirements, such as serving in the armed forces or being genuinely disabled
* The fight is now in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where the court has reinstated the act pending their review.
Judicial Watch Thinks DOJ Election Threat Task Force Has Something to Hide
Epoch Times
*Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) is being weaponized against opposing voices.
*Fitton’s group filed a lawsuit against the DOJ recently to get documents connected to the department’s election threat task force, after almost a year of no response to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Fitton thinks the DOJ has something they don’t want the public to know.
*According to the DOJ, “the task force is leading the Justice Department’s efforts to address threats of violence against election workers", and to ensure that all election workers—whether they be elected, appointed, or those who volunteer—be permitted to do their jobs free from threats and intimidation.” The task force will partner with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the FBI field offices to assess allegations of threats against election workers.
*The DOJ declined to comment on the lawsuit and why they had not released the documents to Judicial Watch.
Pennsylvania Election to Feature Unconstitutional Mail-In Balloting, Unless State Supreme Court Changes Course
The Federalist
* Before the 2020 election, politicians in the capital of Pennsylvania passed a new law. It was called Act 77, and it created a 50-day, no-excuse, mail-in ballot rule. This law provided virtually no security or integrity for the most important election of our lifetimes,
* George Bochetto is an attorney, election law and constitutional expert, and candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania
* He is running moslty on the agenda of canceling Act 77.
* Act 77 already has been declared unconstitutional by Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court, the state’s intermediate appellate court.
* The Pennsylvania state constitution requires in-person voting unless you meet stringent requirements, such as serving in the armed forces or being genuinely disabled
* The fight is now in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where the court has reinstated the act pending their review.
Judicial Watch Thinks DOJ Election Threat Task Force Has Something to Hide
Epoch Times
*Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) is being weaponized against opposing voices.
*Fitton’s group filed a lawsuit against the DOJ recently to get documents connected to the department’s election threat task force, after almost a year of no response to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Fitton thinks the DOJ has something they don’t want the public to know.
*According to the DOJ, “the task force is leading the Justice Department’s efforts to address threats of violence against election workers", and to ensure that all election workers—whether they be elected, appointed, or those who volunteer—be permitted to do their jobs free from threats and intimidation.” The task force will partner with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the FBI field offices to assess allegations of threats against election workers.
*The DOJ declined to comment on the lawsuit and why they had not released the documents to Judicial Watch.
April 10, 2022
Heads Up: ERIC Mounting Under-the-Table Democrat GOTV Drive
Heard on a national call: election clerks in Michigan are already seeing a ramp-up of requests from ERIC for new voter registrations. ‘The attempt to stuff the November ballot box has already started.’
Brennan Center Starts “Tracking the Big Lie in Races for Election Administration Positions”
Brennan Center
*The races for offices that administer elections were formerly sleepy contests for largely unknown bureaucrats, but the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 election has brought national attention. Our new series of Brennan Center resources focuses on these crucial elections in 10 swing states, tracking candidates’ statements about the legitimacy of American democracy. Each state’s page will be updated in the runup to November, when these races to decide who will run future elections will be decided.
Drumbeat Continues: ‘Election Workers Feel Threatened’ (I)
Brennan Center
*Nearly 80 percent of election officials think the federal government is either doing nothing to support them or taking some steps but not doing enough.
*Congress should authorize grants that can be used for physical safety training, including prevention and de-escalation training
*Congress should do its part to protect the workers who protect our elections.
Note: Attempted federalizing of the 2022 elections through executive order is not outside the realm of possibility and could leave little time for judicial recourse. To poison the well for such an eventuality, we should remind everyone of the constitutional primacy of the states in election issues, including the physical safety of electoral staff.
Drumbeat Continues: ‘Election Workers Feel Threatened’ (II)
NPR
*many election workers are eyeing the exits amid a contentious national environment, a new crop of public servants is stepping in to fill the void.
*Many election workers are considering leaving their roles. A recent survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 20% of them say they are unlikely to continue working in the 2024 election cycle, citing harassment, stress and other challenges.
Note: The issue of "vote insecurity" keeps reappearing in the corporate and leftist media, and the Senate and House Republicans need to hold the line against the attempts to federalize the elections under the pretext of insecurity. They need to pre-empt this possibility by passing a Secure Vote Act,
announcing funding of dedicated local police forces in each state, answering to local sheriffs and
investigating the cases of intimidation of the members of both parties.
Another Drumbeat: ‘We Need Zuckerbucks in Future Elections’
Brennan Center
*Even with only early data for this election cycle, it is clear there is an explosion in out-of-state donations to secretary of state candidates in battlegrounds. And outside spending from super PACs and dark money groups is sure to play a big role this year.
*Around Green Bay, Wisconsin, out-of-state groups used messages questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 elections to try to influence local races that will affect the way the 2024 elections are run
*Green Bay has been a target of election denial, mostly focused on the city’s acceptance of charitable donations from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which is funded largely by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
*The sense that candidates lost messaging control to national groups is highlighted by the fact that some candidates were overwhelmingly out-spent by outside interests.
Note: The Brennan Center is concerned that the patriotic outside groups outspent Zukerberg and are more effective in promoting candidates. This is an implicit admission that outside funding impacts electoral results - refer back to 2020.
Heads Up: ERIC Mounting Under-the-Table Democrat GOTV Drive
Heard on a national call: election clerks in Michigan are already seeing a ramp-up of requests from ERIC for new voter registrations. ‘The attempt to stuff the November ballot box has already started.’
Brennan Center Starts “Tracking the Big Lie in Races for Election Administration Positions”
Brennan Center
*The races for offices that administer elections were formerly sleepy contests for largely unknown bureaucrats, but the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 election has brought national attention. Our new series of Brennan Center resources focuses on these crucial elections in 10 swing states, tracking candidates’ statements about the legitimacy of American democracy. Each state’s page will be updated in the runup to November, when these races to decide who will run future elections will be decided.
Drumbeat Continues: ‘Election Workers Feel Threatened’ (I)
Brennan Center
*Nearly 80 percent of election officials think the federal government is either doing nothing to support them or taking some steps but not doing enough.
*Congress should authorize grants that can be used for physical safety training, including prevention and de-escalation training
*Congress should do its part to protect the workers who protect our elections.
Note: Attempted federalizing of the 2022 elections through executive order is not outside the realm of possibility and could leave little time for judicial recourse. To poison the well for such an eventuality, we should remind everyone of the constitutional primacy of the states in election issues, including the physical safety of electoral staff.
Drumbeat Continues: ‘Election Workers Feel Threatened’ (II)
NPR
*many election workers are eyeing the exits amid a contentious national environment, a new crop of public servants is stepping in to fill the void.
*Many election workers are considering leaving their roles. A recent survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 20% of them say they are unlikely to continue working in the 2024 election cycle, citing harassment, stress and other challenges.
Note: The issue of "vote insecurity" keeps reappearing in the corporate and leftist media, and the Senate and House Republicans need to hold the line against the attempts to federalize the elections under the pretext of insecurity. They need to pre-empt this possibility by passing a Secure Vote Act,
announcing funding of dedicated local police forces in each state, answering to local sheriffs and
investigating the cases of intimidation of the members of both parties.
Another Drumbeat: ‘We Need Zuckerbucks in Future Elections’
Brennan Center
*Even with only early data for this election cycle, it is clear there is an explosion in out-of-state donations to secretary of state candidates in battlegrounds. And outside spending from super PACs and dark money groups is sure to play a big role this year.
*Around Green Bay, Wisconsin, out-of-state groups used messages questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 elections to try to influence local races that will affect the way the 2024 elections are run
*Green Bay has been a target of election denial, mostly focused on the city’s acceptance of charitable donations from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which is funded largely by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
*The sense that candidates lost messaging control to national groups is highlighted by the fact that some candidates were overwhelmingly out-spent by outside interests.
Note: The Brennan Center is concerned that the patriotic outside groups outspent Zukerberg and are more effective in promoting candidates. This is an implicit admission that outside funding impacts electoral results - refer back to 2020.
April 3, 2022
Biden Budget Would Increase Federal Meddling in Elections
Roll Call
*The Biden administration called for spending $10 billion over the next decade to beef up the country’s elections infrastructure as part of the fiscal 2023 budget proposal released Monday
*The budget proposes to expand the Postal Service’s capacity in “underserved areas” and to increase vote-by-mail initiatives — including making ballots postage-free.
Note: the reason for the wide introduction of mail ballot was COVID. Why does this continue by inertia in 2022, instead of voting in person? The Democrats will only let go of mail-in voting under pressure. Mail-in voting will continue if the pressure is weak.
*The $10 billion proposal is less than the $20 billion the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life urged Congress to provide last spring. Tiana Epps-Johnson, the group’s executive director, said costs for paper ballots, staffing and mail have surged since then.
Note: what COVID did in 2020, "supply chain issues" will continue in 2022-2024.
*Expanding vote-by-mail programs in underserved areas could help people who live in rural areas and on Native lands vote more easily, Albert added.
Note: A great majority of citizens living in rural areas know how to drive, because it is difficult to survive without a car far away from a city. Furthermore, the rural residents or tribal members can give a ride to the neighbors and relatives who need help. This argument of "facilitation" is bogus.
*The proposal could also solidify a Postal Service policy to deliver ballots regardless of whether they have postage on them.
Note: That's great. Do they have a policy of time-stamping the envelope?
*The budget seeks $367 million, or $101 million more than fiscal 2021, for civil rights protection across the Justice Department, including police reform, voting rights enforcement, and hate crimes prosecution.
Note: What mischief is contained in "voting rights enforcement"? We are not in 1913, nobody is turned away from the precinct once they come and identify themselves.
Left Suddenly Discovers the Virtues of Audits
Brennan Center
*While both the census task force and Cyber Ninjas purported to provide independent oversight of a technical process crucial to a functioning democracy, the former consisted of experts conducting a fair, informed, and transparent audit, while the latter lacked each of these necessary components of credibility. As the next election cycle looms and politicians around the country continue to pursue partisan election reviews, the differences between these two efforts can shed valuable light on how credible audits can and should work. Let’s look at a few of the biggest differences.
Note: the matter-of-fact mentioning of audits is something new, these people were rabidly resisting any audit just 12 month ago, until Arizona broke the ice and they realized that fighting integrity so openly is more damaging than trying to subvert the effort. Throughout the article, the author berates Cyber Ninja (the company hired to audit Arizona in March 2021) and extolls Census Task Force:
* [Cyber Ninjas] was found in contempt of court and fined tens of thousands of dollars, after which it promptly dissolved.... Cyber Ninjas had no background in election reviews...
Note: You might recall that a Kansas court rejected Hans Von Spakovsky, great hero of the political Right, as an expert witness in an elections case because he lacked the requisite expertise. The Right needs to up its game and develop expert capabilities so its evaluations of election processes cannot so easily be questioned.
Left Defends Zuckerbucks, Drumbeat Starts for Private Financing of 2022/2024 Elections
NPR
*For voting officials, money from the private sector leading up to the 2020 election was a lifeline. In Philadelphia, the city was able to buy new high-speed machines to help sort mail ballots by ward and precinct, thanks to the roughly $10 million it received in donated funds.
*Since voting ended in 2020, more than a dozen states — all with Republican-controlled state legislatures — have enacted laws that prevent local election officials from accepting donations like they did leading up to that election.
* "There is an argument that funding should come from the government, so you don't open yourself up to criticism that you're being somehow persuaded by some partisan group. ... Perception-wise, it's cleaner," said David Maeda, the state elections director in Minnesota. "The problem has always been getting that [funding]."
Dominion Libel Suits Grind On
Brennan Center
*After the 2020 election, Powell alleged that Dominion’s voting machines were unreliable, hacked, or flipped votes. When she tried to get the Dominion’s defamation case dismissed, the district court ruled against her....
*Dominion is suing OAN and Fox News in separate suits for repeatedly airing claims like the ones articulated above by Ms. Powell.
*If the Supreme Court gets involved, the defamation cases against Fox News and One America News could end up changing long standing rules relating to the press.
Hit Job Smears Trump-Supporting Michigan Secretary of State Candidate
The Guardian
*Asked what would happen if the Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist [Kristina Karamo] won in November and took her job, Benson replied:
“Michigan would have a chief election officer more than willing to find those extra votes if the candidate asked them. It would be akin to putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department, or giving the keys to the vault to a bank robber.”
Note: This is how the shameless leftist propaganda machine operates. The article does not quote Kristine Karamo as stating that she is willing to find extra votes by fraudulent means. Instead, the article quotes Karamo's POLITICAL RIVAL BENSON ACCUSING HER WITHOUT ANY PROOF in the midst of campaign season, and THE GUARDIAN RUNS WITH THIS ACCUSATION AS IF IT IS A FACT. The title is absolutely misleading.
Clerks Advised to Ignore Wisconsin Supreme Court Order Banning Drop Boxes, Pending Final Ruling
Just the News
*The Wisconsin Supreme Court in February reinstated an order from a Waukesha County judge that banned ballot drop boxes and stated that voters can only return their own ballot to the polling place or elections office.
*But the League of Wisconsin Municipalities said in a letter to local election managers that ruling isn’t binding for everyone.
*“Ultimately, each clerk will need to decide what to do, taking into consideration both state and federal law, the different ways the absentee ballot statute can be interpreted, and the risks of choosing one option over another,” the letter from League lawyers said. “Clerks who refuse to accept absentee ballots delivered by third parties on behalf of disabled electors may face claims they effectively prevented those voters from voting and face litigation under the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and Americans with Disabilities Act, or both."
*Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to decide the question of ballot drop boxes, and likely the rules for absentee ballot returns, after they hear arguments in the case on April 13.
Biden Budget Would Increase Federal Meddling in Elections
Roll Call
*The Biden administration called for spending $10 billion over the next decade to beef up the country’s elections infrastructure as part of the fiscal 2023 budget proposal released Monday
*The budget proposes to expand the Postal Service’s capacity in “underserved areas” and to increase vote-by-mail initiatives — including making ballots postage-free.
Note: the reason for the wide introduction of mail ballot was COVID. Why does this continue by inertia in 2022, instead of voting in person? The Democrats will only let go of mail-in voting under pressure. Mail-in voting will continue if the pressure is weak.
*The $10 billion proposal is less than the $20 billion the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life urged Congress to provide last spring. Tiana Epps-Johnson, the group’s executive director, said costs for paper ballots, staffing and mail have surged since then.
Note: what COVID did in 2020, "supply chain issues" will continue in 2022-2024.
*Expanding vote-by-mail programs in underserved areas could help people who live in rural areas and on Native lands vote more easily, Albert added.
Note: A great majority of citizens living in rural areas know how to drive, because it is difficult to survive without a car far away from a city. Furthermore, the rural residents or tribal members can give a ride to the neighbors and relatives who need help. This argument of "facilitation" is bogus.
*The proposal could also solidify a Postal Service policy to deliver ballots regardless of whether they have postage on them.
Note: That's great. Do they have a policy of time-stamping the envelope?
*The budget seeks $367 million, or $101 million more than fiscal 2021, for civil rights protection across the Justice Department, including police reform, voting rights enforcement, and hate crimes prosecution.
Note: What mischief is contained in "voting rights enforcement"? We are not in 1913, nobody is turned away from the precinct once they come and identify themselves.
Left Suddenly Discovers the Virtues of Audits
Brennan Center
*While both the census task force and Cyber Ninjas purported to provide independent oversight of a technical process crucial to a functioning democracy, the former consisted of experts conducting a fair, informed, and transparent audit, while the latter lacked each of these necessary components of credibility. As the next election cycle looms and politicians around the country continue to pursue partisan election reviews, the differences between these two efforts can shed valuable light on how credible audits can and should work. Let’s look at a few of the biggest differences.
Note: the matter-of-fact mentioning of audits is something new, these people were rabidly resisting any audit just 12 month ago, until Arizona broke the ice and they realized that fighting integrity so openly is more damaging than trying to subvert the effort. Throughout the article, the author berates Cyber Ninja (the company hired to audit Arizona in March 2021) and extolls Census Task Force:
* [Cyber Ninjas] was found in contempt of court and fined tens of thousands of dollars, after which it promptly dissolved.... Cyber Ninjas had no background in election reviews...
Note: You might recall that a Kansas court rejected Hans Von Spakovsky, great hero of the political Right, as an expert witness in an elections case because he lacked the requisite expertise. The Right needs to up its game and develop expert capabilities so its evaluations of election processes cannot so easily be questioned.
Left Defends Zuckerbucks, Drumbeat Starts for Private Financing of 2022/2024 Elections
NPR
*For voting officials, money from the private sector leading up to the 2020 election was a lifeline. In Philadelphia, the city was able to buy new high-speed machines to help sort mail ballots by ward and precinct, thanks to the roughly $10 million it received in donated funds.
*Since voting ended in 2020, more than a dozen states — all with Republican-controlled state legislatures — have enacted laws that prevent local election officials from accepting donations like they did leading up to that election.
* "There is an argument that funding should come from the government, so you don't open yourself up to criticism that you're being somehow persuaded by some partisan group. ... Perception-wise, it's cleaner," said David Maeda, the state elections director in Minnesota. "The problem has always been getting that [funding]."
Dominion Libel Suits Grind On
Brennan Center
*After the 2020 election, Powell alleged that Dominion’s voting machines were unreliable, hacked, or flipped votes. When she tried to get the Dominion’s defamation case dismissed, the district court ruled against her....
*Dominion is suing OAN and Fox News in separate suits for repeatedly airing claims like the ones articulated above by Ms. Powell.
*If the Supreme Court gets involved, the defamation cases against Fox News and One America News could end up changing long standing rules relating to the press.
Hit Job Smears Trump-Supporting Michigan Secretary of State Candidate
The Guardian
*Asked what would happen if the Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist [Kristina Karamo] won in November and took her job, Benson replied:
“Michigan would have a chief election officer more than willing to find those extra votes if the candidate asked them. It would be akin to putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department, or giving the keys to the vault to a bank robber.”
Note: This is how the shameless leftist propaganda machine operates. The article does not quote Kristine Karamo as stating that she is willing to find extra votes by fraudulent means. Instead, the article quotes Karamo's POLITICAL RIVAL BENSON ACCUSING HER WITHOUT ANY PROOF in the midst of campaign season, and THE GUARDIAN RUNS WITH THIS ACCUSATION AS IF IT IS A FACT. The title is absolutely misleading.
Clerks Advised to Ignore Wisconsin Supreme Court Order Banning Drop Boxes, Pending Final Ruling
Just the News
*The Wisconsin Supreme Court in February reinstated an order from a Waukesha County judge that banned ballot drop boxes and stated that voters can only return their own ballot to the polling place or elections office.
*But the League of Wisconsin Municipalities said in a letter to local election managers that ruling isn’t binding for everyone.
*“Ultimately, each clerk will need to decide what to do, taking into consideration both state and federal law, the different ways the absentee ballot statute can be interpreted, and the risks of choosing one option over another,” the letter from League lawyers said. “Clerks who refuse to accept absentee ballots delivered by third parties on behalf of disabled electors may face claims they effectively prevented those voters from voting and face litigation under the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and Americans with Disabilities Act, or both."
*Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to decide the question of ballot drop boxes, and likely the rules for absentee ballot returns, after they hear arguments in the case on April 13.
March 27, 2022
Dems Attacking Election Law Enforcement
Brennan Center
*States across the country are establishing or empowering law enforcement agencies to aggressively pursue rare instances of voter fraud.
[Note: First, they complained about Florida’s new elections police force. Now they’re complaining about any stepped-up enforcement by existing authorities.]
[Note: The Dems didn’t think voter fraud was ‘rare’ after the 2016 election. They didn’t shut up about ‘election interference’ for four years, not to mention their earlier complaints:
https://nypost.com/2020/09/19/biden-spent-years-warning-of-voter-fraud-now-call-a-myth/
https://publicintegrity.org/politics/broken-elections-stolen-votes/
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/10/the-rigged-2000-florida-recount-and-the-path-to-trump.html
https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
https://inthesetimes.com/article/was-the-2004-election-stolen
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0607/S00170/michael-parenti-the-stolen-election-of-2004.htm]
The election police and post-election audits could help put to rest these complaints and allegations by both sides. These complaints by the Brennan Center could also be preparation for further federalizing elections through executive order.]
New Texas Voting Law Hurts Blacks
Salon
*The rate of rejected mail ballots soared in the March primary elections in Texas — and those rejections disproportionately affected Democrats, especially Black voters in the state's biggest county.
*Nearly 23,000 ballots, or about 13% of all returned mail ballots, were thrown out across 187 Texas counties in the March primaries, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. In past election years, the rejection rate was around 1% to 2%, according to the Texas Tribune.
[Note: this appears to be setting up a court challenge to the new Texas law. Disparate impact is a viable legal theory in some circumstances; discriminatory intent need not always be proven directly. A question here is whether the voter confusion and alleged disparate impact will persist in future elections. If the new Texas is ultimately upheld in court, it would provide another impetus to federalize elections by statute or executive order.]
Looming Paper Shortage - Chaos in the Election?
Politico
*Mary Clark, the clerk of Delta Township in Michigan and the president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, said she placed an order for 72,000 envelopes in mid-January but still hasn’t received it. She said it usually takes about two weeks to fulfill orders.
[Note: the danger of the situation is chaos that will make the election of 2022 disordered and manipulated. The situation with the stationery needs to be reported to the GOP at the local and Congress levels. What COVID did in 2020, "supply chain issues" can continue in 2022. The solution is to help the Electoral Commission to procure the stationary ahead of time. We have the Governor's office and VA GOP to keep tabs on these essentials.]
Zuckerbucks Still an Issue
Austin American-Statesman
*The Center for Tech and Civic Life distributed $350 million in grants for election to 2,500 jurisdictions like Boone County in 2020. "To be clear, I agree with those who say that the government should have provided these funds, not private citizens," Zuckerberg wrote in October 2020. Since then, Republican state lawmakers have made every effort to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
*"Without the additional grant funds, we would not have been able to purchase necessary safety and cleaning supplies, inform voters about changes to the election process or hire the number of additional temporary staff to serve voters," Lennon told PolitiFact.
[Note: The last few paragraphs show election officials are still pleading poverty, building a case for continuing with Zuckerbucks in future elections.]
"Michigan election officials in the dark on key procedures ahead of 2022 election"
Detroit Free Press
*One rule sought to clarify how clerks could verify signatures on absentee ballots. Republicans wanted a stricter process that The Secretary of State largely rejected, suggesting most of their proposed changes were inappropriate or burdensome. She used the same rationale to reject all proposed changes to a rule that would have banned applying online for an absentee ballot and most changes to procedures dictating the way clerks review affidavits submitted by potential candidates for office. Ahead of the 2020 election, the first major contest where any Michigan voter could request and receive an absentee ballot, Benson directed clerks to presume signatures on ballot applications were valid. However, in 2021, a court ruled she could not do that without creating a rule that explained how clerks would verify signatures.
*The GOP and Secretary of State appeared to have at least a smidgeon of agreement on a couple of procedural tweaks to the proposed rule, including an agreement to do away with the presumption that signatures were automatically valid.
*Florida and Ohio, among many other states, already allow early processing of absentee ballots. The benefit is to allow more time. But the process needs to be supervised in a bipartisan manner.
*The recent state audit of the Bureau of Elections also called on lawmakers to consider requiring a
statewide election audit prior to the vote certification. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has previously called for such a change. [Note: Seems like a great idea. The devil is in the details. Who will conduct the audit? The same officials that run the election or a neutral accredited provider, in the presence of bipartisan observers? Who can answer what is the case in VA and shall we conduct such an automatic post-election audit? If done correctly on a fraction of total vote, this audit will reassure all sides.]
*State auditors agree that the change would almost certainly require a longer timeline for canvassing the election results preceding the vote certification. [Note: [Yes indeed. However, extra 3-4 days to process 1% of the total vote as an audited sample will add peace of mind in such a socially explosive question. Pay attention - they now accept audits as NORMAL after rabidly fighting them a few months ago.]
*Out of the 5.5 million ballots counted, the audit identified 1,616 — 0.03% — by voters who appeared to be alive when they cast their ballot but died before Election Day. An analysis of recent elections found that the vast majority of these votes were cast by voters who died within 40 days of the election. The report recommended lawmakers consider granting county clerks the authority to update the state's files to remove deceased voters, because county clerks maintain death records. [Note: Updated file with the death records needs to be screened against the absentee ballot list. Is it done in VA?]
[Note re co-author co-author Clara Hendrickson: The left-wing GroundTruth Project is encouraging journalists to become advocates instead of report the news. It has unleashed 300 reporters in local newsrooms in 49 states, paying half their salaries, with plans to mobilize 1,000 by 2024. The group gets millions of dollars from Left-wing foundations (Ford, MacArthur, Knight, etc.) to do all this. Another leftist nonprofit, States Newsroom, is similar but won’t disclose its donors. That can’t be good.]
Shorts
Dems Attacking Election Law Enforcement
Brennan Center
*States across the country are establishing or empowering law enforcement agencies to aggressively pursue rare instances of voter fraud.
[Note: First, they complained about Florida’s new elections police force. Now they’re complaining about any stepped-up enforcement by existing authorities.]
[Note: The Dems didn’t think voter fraud was ‘rare’ after the 2016 election. They didn’t shut up about ‘election interference’ for four years, not to mention their earlier complaints:
https://nypost.com/2020/09/19/biden-spent-years-warning-of-voter-fraud-now-call-a-myth/
https://publicintegrity.org/politics/broken-elections-stolen-votes/
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/10/the-rigged-2000-florida-recount-and-the-path-to-trump.html
https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
https://inthesetimes.com/article/was-the-2004-election-stolen
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0607/S00170/michael-parenti-the-stolen-election-of-2004.htm]
The election police and post-election audits could help put to rest these complaints and allegations by both sides. These complaints by the Brennan Center could also be preparation for further federalizing elections through executive order.]
New Texas Voting Law Hurts Blacks
Salon
*The rate of rejected mail ballots soared in the March primary elections in Texas — and those rejections disproportionately affected Democrats, especially Black voters in the state's biggest county.
*Nearly 23,000 ballots, or about 13% of all returned mail ballots, were thrown out across 187 Texas counties in the March primaries, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. In past election years, the rejection rate was around 1% to 2%, according to the Texas Tribune.
[Note: this appears to be setting up a court challenge to the new Texas law. Disparate impact is a viable legal theory in some circumstances; discriminatory intent need not always be proven directly. A question here is whether the voter confusion and alleged disparate impact will persist in future elections. If the new Texas is ultimately upheld in court, it would provide another impetus to federalize elections by statute or executive order.]
Looming Paper Shortage - Chaos in the Election?
Politico
*Mary Clark, the clerk of Delta Township in Michigan and the president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, said she placed an order for 72,000 envelopes in mid-January but still hasn’t received it. She said it usually takes about two weeks to fulfill orders.
[Note: the danger of the situation is chaos that will make the election of 2022 disordered and manipulated. The situation with the stationery needs to be reported to the GOP at the local and Congress levels. What COVID did in 2020, "supply chain issues" can continue in 2022. The solution is to help the Electoral Commission to procure the stationary ahead of time. We have the Governor's office and VA GOP to keep tabs on these essentials.]
Zuckerbucks Still an Issue
Austin American-Statesman
*The Center for Tech and Civic Life distributed $350 million in grants for election to 2,500 jurisdictions like Boone County in 2020. "To be clear, I agree with those who say that the government should have provided these funds, not private citizens," Zuckerberg wrote in October 2020. Since then, Republican state lawmakers have made every effort to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
*"Without the additional grant funds, we would not have been able to purchase necessary safety and cleaning supplies, inform voters about changes to the election process or hire the number of additional temporary staff to serve voters," Lennon told PolitiFact.
[Note: The last few paragraphs show election officials are still pleading poverty, building a case for continuing with Zuckerbucks in future elections.]
"Michigan election officials in the dark on key procedures ahead of 2022 election"
Detroit Free Press
*One rule sought to clarify how clerks could verify signatures on absentee ballots. Republicans wanted a stricter process that The Secretary of State largely rejected, suggesting most of their proposed changes were inappropriate or burdensome. She used the same rationale to reject all proposed changes to a rule that would have banned applying online for an absentee ballot and most changes to procedures dictating the way clerks review affidavits submitted by potential candidates for office. Ahead of the 2020 election, the first major contest where any Michigan voter could request and receive an absentee ballot, Benson directed clerks to presume signatures on ballot applications were valid. However, in 2021, a court ruled she could not do that without creating a rule that explained how clerks would verify signatures.
*The GOP and Secretary of State appeared to have at least a smidgeon of agreement on a couple of procedural tweaks to the proposed rule, including an agreement to do away with the presumption that signatures were automatically valid.
*Florida and Ohio, among many other states, already allow early processing of absentee ballots. The benefit is to allow more time. But the process needs to be supervised in a bipartisan manner.
*The recent state audit of the Bureau of Elections also called on lawmakers to consider requiring a
statewide election audit prior to the vote certification. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has previously called for such a change. [Note: Seems like a great idea. The devil is in the details. Who will conduct the audit? The same officials that run the election or a neutral accredited provider, in the presence of bipartisan observers? Who can answer what is the case in VA and shall we conduct such an automatic post-election audit? If done correctly on a fraction of total vote, this audit will reassure all sides.]
*State auditors agree that the change would almost certainly require a longer timeline for canvassing the election results preceding the vote certification. [Note: [Yes indeed. However, extra 3-4 days to process 1% of the total vote as an audited sample will add peace of mind in such a socially explosive question. Pay attention - they now accept audits as NORMAL after rabidly fighting them a few months ago.]
*Out of the 5.5 million ballots counted, the audit identified 1,616 — 0.03% — by voters who appeared to be alive when they cast their ballot but died before Election Day. An analysis of recent elections found that the vast majority of these votes were cast by voters who died within 40 days of the election. The report recommended lawmakers consider granting county clerks the authority to update the state's files to remove deceased voters, because county clerks maintain death records. [Note: Updated file with the death records needs to be screened against the absentee ballot list. Is it done in VA?]
[Note re co-author co-author Clara Hendrickson: The left-wing GroundTruth Project is encouraging journalists to become advocates instead of report the news. It has unleashed 300 reporters in local newsrooms in 49 states, paying half their salaries, with plans to mobilize 1,000 by 2024. The group gets millions of dollars from Left-wing foundations (Ford, MacArthur, Knight, etc.) to do all this. Another leftist nonprofit, States Newsroom, is similar but won’t disclose its donors. That can’t be good.]
Shorts
- yet another attempt to block a Republican candidate (Marjorie Taylor Greene) through the 14th Amendment insurrection clause (none have been successful so far)
- school administrator helped find eligible voters for Georgia Dems by going through student records (this could easily happen elsewhere)
- Brennan Center holding conference on universal (compulsory) voting (3/24/22 mailing - background on universal voting here)
- Details on what federal agencies are doing on the previously announced whole-of-government push for voter participation published here
March 20, 2022
View from the Left: Replacing Old Voting Machines Will Improve Election Integrity
*Maybe not - see commentary below.
*From the Brennan Center
*Outdated voting systems, however, remain a problem. Machines are aging past their projected life cycle without being replaced, leaving jurisdictions with systems that are significantly more than a decade old.
*Many election officials using discontinued systems have expressed concerns to the Brennan Center about their ability to find replacement parts and technicians to service these machines.
*Of particular concern are jurisdictions that still use DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines. These machines, which may or may not produce a VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail), generally require a voter to use a touch-screen monitor to vote. In recent years, a number of these models have “flipped” votes, with the touch screen incorrectly registering voters’ choices due to calibration errors associated with aging hardware. That, in turn, has led to viral videos and conspiracy theories of machines “stealing votes”.
*New voting machines that produce a paper ballot for each vote cast make it possible for election officials to conduct post-election audits. Approximately half of all states and the District of Columbia conduct post-election audits, which require a review of paper ballots to check the accuracy of the votes cast. With partisan actors fueled by the Big Lie conducting partisan reviews that undermine confidence in our elections, it is becoming increasingly important for qualified election officials to conduct legitimate audits of their own. (Comment: a legitimate audit is ordered by legislature, not election officials.)
*The price tag as we get further out in time will only grow. The Center for Secure and Modern Elections has estimated that the full cost of replacing outdated voting machines over the next decade will amount to $1.8 billion.
*Comment: Having a paper trail where there was none before but new machines mean new state contracts and, thus opportunities to corrupt state and local officials in charge of signing the contracts. It is suspected that Republican Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger was corrupted by machine contracts and is now playing for the other side.
* Comment: New machines can still be programmed to generate flipped votes and the Dems can use the improved technical characteristics as an excuse to prevent or legally fight the sampling audits. They could argue, "We use improved technology; therefore, it is baseless to conduct audits or even talk about audits.” They could even criminalize these discussions as they are trying to do now with the January 6th committee. This resembles the argument about the Southern Border: ‘Let us put some sensors, and a few drones, and then we don't need to keep the border closed with border agents.’ Absurd? But this will be pushed by the entire might of the propaganda machine. Idea: build mandated sampling audits into the system so they are performed as a matter of routine.
The Drumbeat Has Started: ‘Conspiracy Theorists Have Made Election Officials Unsafe’
- Excuse for Federalizing Elections?
*The Brennan Center and others are pounding this theme:
*Between January 31 and February 14, we had the Benenson Strategy Group poll nearly 600 local election officials about their jobs
*More than half of the respondents said they’re concerned about the safety of their colleagues Nearly one in three know at least one colleague who quit their job in part or entirely because of safety concerns, increased threats, or intimidation
*Incidents led some election officials to flee their homes for safety.
*Nearly one in five respondents worry they will face pressure to certify election results in favor of a specific candidate or party.
*More than three out of four election officials believe the federal government should be doing more to support them. It’s time for Congress to take these threats against the people who run our elections seriously and protect them against the violent conspiracy theorists and partisans who continue to undermine the legitimacy of our election systems. Congress should make it a crime to intimidate election workers for the purpose of interfering with the vote tabulation process.
* Comment: Electoral officials should strive not to be an instrument of fraud. Barring of the election observers during the elections of 2020 or preventing them from approaching the election officers with questions and concerns in a number of states produced this problem. Further exacerbation developed after excessive resistance by the election officials to the audits or any other attempts to establish transparency. Bringing the entire enforcement apparatus of federal government into the system currently under scrutiny will escalate the situation and not resolve it. Instead, each case of intimidation should be addressed individually by the local police. Shielding the potential operators of knowingly faulty equipment or the malicious opponents of openness and transparency by the full power of the NSA/CIA/FBI will create additional alienation between the power structures and the nation,
and will create the same effect as the metal fences around the Congress. Furthermore, a potential complication can be the narrative that local states cannot provide the security for the election officers
and therefore federalization of elections is the only path forward. This is a dangerous, unconstitutional possibility since the owner of the electoral process in each state is the state legislature and it manages the issues of security. A reasonable compromise to take the ground from under the feet of this narrative is to establish a hotline with the local police where the election workers can file complaints.
A local police presence during key electoral events can be also reassuring for both sides of the aisle.
Republican electoral officials were severely intimidated in 2020 in Detroit, and local police presence needs to be boosted in such locations.
Defending Zuckerbucks
* from PolitiFact:
*Nearly a dozen Republican-led states have banned private donations for election administration, and more bans are under consideration. Denouncing "Zuckerbucks" for election offices has become part of the GOP playbook for candidates running for local, state and federal offices.
*The advocates insist that adequate funding of the precincts allows the smooth running of the elections from a technical standpoint.
*COVID forced more expensive and lengthy processing in 2020, and the shortage of funds was compensated by Zuckerberg.
*In 2002, with bipartisan support, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to give states money to replace outdated election equipment and create minimal standards for voter registration databases.
*PolitiFact contacted a handful of local offices to find out.
In Licking County, Ohio, a Republican area easily won by Trump, about $77,000 went toward new electronic poll books that elections workers used to check in voters at the polls.
In Brevard County, Florida, where voters overwhelmingly voted for Trump, election officials spent about $840,000 on machines and technology used at the polls and for mail ballots.
*Critics of the funding said that the largest amounts went to areas with high numbers of Democratic voters.
*Following the 2020 election, Republican state legislators sought various ways to rewrite election laws. Eleven states banned private funding: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. Governors who are Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina vetoed bans.
How the Florida Election Police Force Looks to the Left
*From Vice News:
*Florida’s state Legislature passed a bill to create what’s essentially a new, first-of-its-kind security force to address a problem that doesn’t exist. (Comment: Other articles echo the theme - e.g., here.)
*The bill approved by state legislators is dialed back from DeSantis’ original vision of a 52-member election integrity unit, which would include 20 sworn police officers who’d carry out investigations of election fraud. DeSantis wanted the unit to be able to arrest anyone caught casting an illegal vote or committing any other election-related violation, such as ballot harvesting.
*Instead, the version he’s expected to sign would create a smaller but still 15-strong “Office of Election Crimes and Security” within Florida’s state department. DeSantis would also be able to appoint up to 10 law enforcement officers to specifically probe election crimes. Additionally, the bill would prohibit ranked-choice voting in the state, increase the fine for interfering with third-party voter registration forms from $1,000 to $50,000, and require the Office of Election Crimes to submit detailed reports of its findings to the governor annually.
*With the bill’s passage in Florida, Morales Doyle says there’s a good chance we’ll see even more support from Republicans in other states who want to pass their own version of the bill. (Comment: Heartily agree! We need it in VA, it will protect and reassure BOTH sides. The Georgia House passed a similar bill, sending it to the state Senate. The Left is trying to undermine the idea, but it’s already spreading.)
* More background here
* Comment: The election police are likely to be demonized as partisan and repressive and racist. This demonization will be coupled with flat denial of any wrong-doing. "Baseless" - we all know the drill. These arguments can be countered aggressively by a threat of litigation for libel. The racially discriminatory motive needs to be proven in the court of law beyond reasonable doubt. The purpose of electoral police is building trust in the electoral system and increase of voter participation, while the systematic encouragement of electoral fraud by the Democratic Party is tantamount to voter suppression.
* Comment: The kind of massive, Left-wing, behind-the-scenes effort to swing the 2020 election described in the notorious Time Magazine article is incompatible with our democracy, they are modern day Tammany Halls attempting to disenfranchise millions. By obstructing measures to prevent such self-confessed, large-scale and secretive associations attacking voting rights of so many citizens, the Democrats do precisely what they accuse others of doing. Establishing an electoral police force is a necessary step to counter electoral crime. The Dems keep pointing to the miniscule number of cases and saying ‘there is no voter fraud’. That’s because states typically don’t investigate or prosecute very many cases to begin with. An electoral police force is a step in the right direction to ferreting out the fraud we know exists.
View from the Left: Replacing Old Voting Machines Will Improve Election Integrity
*Maybe not - see commentary below.
*From the Brennan Center
*Outdated voting systems, however, remain a problem. Machines are aging past their projected life cycle without being replaced, leaving jurisdictions with systems that are significantly more than a decade old.
*Many election officials using discontinued systems have expressed concerns to the Brennan Center about their ability to find replacement parts and technicians to service these machines.
*Of particular concern are jurisdictions that still use DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines. These machines, which may or may not produce a VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail), generally require a voter to use a touch-screen monitor to vote. In recent years, a number of these models have “flipped” votes, with the touch screen incorrectly registering voters’ choices due to calibration errors associated with aging hardware. That, in turn, has led to viral videos and conspiracy theories of machines “stealing votes”.
*New voting machines that produce a paper ballot for each vote cast make it possible for election officials to conduct post-election audits. Approximately half of all states and the District of Columbia conduct post-election audits, which require a review of paper ballots to check the accuracy of the votes cast. With partisan actors fueled by the Big Lie conducting partisan reviews that undermine confidence in our elections, it is becoming increasingly important for qualified election officials to conduct legitimate audits of their own. (Comment: a legitimate audit is ordered by legislature, not election officials.)
*The price tag as we get further out in time will only grow. The Center for Secure and Modern Elections has estimated that the full cost of replacing outdated voting machines over the next decade will amount to $1.8 billion.
*Comment: Having a paper trail where there was none before but new machines mean new state contracts and, thus opportunities to corrupt state and local officials in charge of signing the contracts. It is suspected that Republican Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger was corrupted by machine contracts and is now playing for the other side.
* Comment: New machines can still be programmed to generate flipped votes and the Dems can use the improved technical characteristics as an excuse to prevent or legally fight the sampling audits. They could argue, "We use improved technology; therefore, it is baseless to conduct audits or even talk about audits.” They could even criminalize these discussions as they are trying to do now with the January 6th committee. This resembles the argument about the Southern Border: ‘Let us put some sensors, and a few drones, and then we don't need to keep the border closed with border agents.’ Absurd? But this will be pushed by the entire might of the propaganda machine. Idea: build mandated sampling audits into the system so they are performed as a matter of routine.
The Drumbeat Has Started: ‘Conspiracy Theorists Have Made Election Officials Unsafe’
- Excuse for Federalizing Elections?
*The Brennan Center and others are pounding this theme:
*Between January 31 and February 14, we had the Benenson Strategy Group poll nearly 600 local election officials about their jobs
*More than half of the respondents said they’re concerned about the safety of their colleagues Nearly one in three know at least one colleague who quit their job in part or entirely because of safety concerns, increased threats, or intimidation
*Incidents led some election officials to flee their homes for safety.
*Nearly one in five respondents worry they will face pressure to certify election results in favor of a specific candidate or party.
*More than three out of four election officials believe the federal government should be doing more to support them. It’s time for Congress to take these threats against the people who run our elections seriously and protect them against the violent conspiracy theorists and partisans who continue to undermine the legitimacy of our election systems. Congress should make it a crime to intimidate election workers for the purpose of interfering with the vote tabulation process.
* Comment: Electoral officials should strive not to be an instrument of fraud. Barring of the election observers during the elections of 2020 or preventing them from approaching the election officers with questions and concerns in a number of states produced this problem. Further exacerbation developed after excessive resistance by the election officials to the audits or any other attempts to establish transparency. Bringing the entire enforcement apparatus of federal government into the system currently under scrutiny will escalate the situation and not resolve it. Instead, each case of intimidation should be addressed individually by the local police. Shielding the potential operators of knowingly faulty equipment or the malicious opponents of openness and transparency by the full power of the NSA/CIA/FBI will create additional alienation between the power structures and the nation,
and will create the same effect as the metal fences around the Congress. Furthermore, a potential complication can be the narrative that local states cannot provide the security for the election officers
and therefore federalization of elections is the only path forward. This is a dangerous, unconstitutional possibility since the owner of the electoral process in each state is the state legislature and it manages the issues of security. A reasonable compromise to take the ground from under the feet of this narrative is to establish a hotline with the local police where the election workers can file complaints.
A local police presence during key electoral events can be also reassuring for both sides of the aisle.
Republican electoral officials were severely intimidated in 2020 in Detroit, and local police presence needs to be boosted in such locations.
Defending Zuckerbucks
* from PolitiFact:
*Nearly a dozen Republican-led states have banned private donations for election administration, and more bans are under consideration. Denouncing "Zuckerbucks" for election offices has become part of the GOP playbook for candidates running for local, state and federal offices.
*The advocates insist that adequate funding of the precincts allows the smooth running of the elections from a technical standpoint.
*COVID forced more expensive and lengthy processing in 2020, and the shortage of funds was compensated by Zuckerberg.
*In 2002, with bipartisan support, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to give states money to replace outdated election equipment and create minimal standards for voter registration databases.
*PolitiFact contacted a handful of local offices to find out.
In Licking County, Ohio, a Republican area easily won by Trump, about $77,000 went toward new electronic poll books that elections workers used to check in voters at the polls.
In Brevard County, Florida, where voters overwhelmingly voted for Trump, election officials spent about $840,000 on machines and technology used at the polls and for mail ballots.
*Critics of the funding said that the largest amounts went to areas with high numbers of Democratic voters.
*Following the 2020 election, Republican state legislators sought various ways to rewrite election laws. Eleven states banned private funding: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. Governors who are Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina vetoed bans.
How the Florida Election Police Force Looks to the Left
*From Vice News:
*Florida’s state Legislature passed a bill to create what’s essentially a new, first-of-its-kind security force to address a problem that doesn’t exist. (Comment: Other articles echo the theme - e.g., here.)
*The bill approved by state legislators is dialed back from DeSantis’ original vision of a 52-member election integrity unit, which would include 20 sworn police officers who’d carry out investigations of election fraud. DeSantis wanted the unit to be able to arrest anyone caught casting an illegal vote or committing any other election-related violation, such as ballot harvesting.
*Instead, the version he’s expected to sign would create a smaller but still 15-strong “Office of Election Crimes and Security” within Florida’s state department. DeSantis would also be able to appoint up to 10 law enforcement officers to specifically probe election crimes. Additionally, the bill would prohibit ranked-choice voting in the state, increase the fine for interfering with third-party voter registration forms from $1,000 to $50,000, and require the Office of Election Crimes to submit detailed reports of its findings to the governor annually.
*With the bill’s passage in Florida, Morales Doyle says there’s a good chance we’ll see even more support from Republicans in other states who want to pass their own version of the bill. (Comment: Heartily agree! We need it in VA, it will protect and reassure BOTH sides. The Georgia House passed a similar bill, sending it to the state Senate. The Left is trying to undermine the idea, but it’s already spreading.)
* More background here
* Comment: The election police are likely to be demonized as partisan and repressive and racist. This demonization will be coupled with flat denial of any wrong-doing. "Baseless" - we all know the drill. These arguments can be countered aggressively by a threat of litigation for libel. The racially discriminatory motive needs to be proven in the court of law beyond reasonable doubt. The purpose of electoral police is building trust in the electoral system and increase of voter participation, while the systematic encouragement of electoral fraud by the Democratic Party is tantamount to voter suppression.
* Comment: The kind of massive, Left-wing, behind-the-scenes effort to swing the 2020 election described in the notorious Time Magazine article is incompatible with our democracy, they are modern day Tammany Halls attempting to disenfranchise millions. By obstructing measures to prevent such self-confessed, large-scale and secretive associations attacking voting rights of so many citizens, the Democrats do precisely what they accuse others of doing. Establishing an electoral police force is a necessary step to counter electoral crime. The Dems keep pointing to the miniscule number of cases and saying ‘there is no voter fraud’. That’s because states typically don’t investigate or prosecute very many cases to begin with. An electoral police force is a step in the right direction to ferreting out the fraud we know exists.
March 13, 2022
Dems Going After Republican Election Lawyers
* the group is set to spend millions on the effort to target 111 attorneys in 26 states, all of whom were involved in pushes to challenge or reverse 2020 election results. States targeted for advertisements include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
* Goal: “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.”…
*Far-left activists including David Brock, the founder of Media Matters and former Democratic Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle are targeting Trump attorneys in an attempt to deter conservatives from challenging any future election fraud schemes by the left.
*But Paul Davis, one of the attorneys targeted by the group, said, “This move is nothing more than a desperate attempt by leftist hacks and mercenaries.”
* Legal Insurrection Gateway Pundit The Hill
Dems Trying Again to Disqualify Republican Candidates on Insurrection Theory
* The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says candidates who engaged in insurrection while in office cannot hold office again. The Democrats previously failed in their attempts to invoke the insurrection clause against candidates in Indiana (Jim Banks) and North Carolina (Madison Cawthorn). A later statute removed the disqualification against office holder candidates who helped the Confederacy and it was found this effectively negated the insurrection clause.
* But the Dems are trying again against three Republican candidates in Wisconsin, including Ron Johnson.
* Gateway Pundit
Dems Fear Supreme Court Will Give State Legislatures Too Much Power
* Note: this is coming up in the redistricting context but Dems worry state legislatures would have unchecked power to change election laws if a new legal theory is adopted.
* Both emergency applications claim that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the sole independent right to set the “time, place, and manner” of holding federal elections, and that it provides no role for state courts. That power ranges from the drawing of congressional districts to the writing of election laws regarding voter registration, identification, polling locations and so on.
* “The Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules,” Gorsuch wrote.
* “It would be an unprecedented upheaval of the current election laws and foreclose any legal relief for voters when there is legitimate harm found under a state constitution”
* Huffington Post
Dems Going After Republican Election Lawyers
* the group is set to spend millions on the effort to target 111 attorneys in 26 states, all of whom were involved in pushes to challenge or reverse 2020 election results. States targeted for advertisements include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
* Goal: “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.”…
*Far-left activists including David Brock, the founder of Media Matters and former Democratic Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle are targeting Trump attorneys in an attempt to deter conservatives from challenging any future election fraud schemes by the left.
*But Paul Davis, one of the attorneys targeted by the group, said, “This move is nothing more than a desperate attempt by leftist hacks and mercenaries.”
* Legal Insurrection Gateway Pundit The Hill
Dems Trying Again to Disqualify Republican Candidates on Insurrection Theory
* The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says candidates who engaged in insurrection while in office cannot hold office again. The Democrats previously failed in their attempts to invoke the insurrection clause against candidates in Indiana (Jim Banks) and North Carolina (Madison Cawthorn). A later statute removed the disqualification against office holder candidates who helped the Confederacy and it was found this effectively negated the insurrection clause.
* But the Dems are trying again against three Republican candidates in Wisconsin, including Ron Johnson.
* Gateway Pundit
Dems Fear Supreme Court Will Give State Legislatures Too Much Power
* Note: this is coming up in the redistricting context but Dems worry state legislatures would have unchecked power to change election laws if a new legal theory is adopted.
* Both emergency applications claim that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the sole independent right to set the “time, place, and manner” of holding federal elections, and that it provides no role for state courts. That power ranges from the drawing of congressional districts to the writing of election laws regarding voter registration, identification, polling locations and so on.
* “The Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules,” Gorsuch wrote.
* “It would be an unprecedented upheaval of the current election laws and foreclose any legal relief for voters when there is legitimate harm found under a state constitution”
* Huffington Post
March 6, 2022
‘Insurrection’ Challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s Candidacy Fails
* A federal judge knocked it out on Friday.
* The judge ruled the 14th Amendment’s ‘disqualification’ clause was essentially repealed by the Amnesty Act of 1872, allowing Confederate officers and all future candidates to return to elected positions even if they had engaged in insurrection.
* The ruling could be appealed.
Dems Gearing Up for Legal Fights, RNC Thinks It’s Ready
Note: a left-wing perspective, explaining the language
*Democrats are gearing up to spend record sums on lawyers, advertising and other protect-the-vote efforts before the 2022 midterm elections, hoping to stave off Republican efforts they believe will choke off access to the ballot box.
*Democratic efforts are also being countered by an equally energized and well-funded Republican effort.
*A person familiar with the Republican National Committee’s spending said the party would budget “millions more” on voting issues and that ensuring that “the 2022 and 2024 elections proceed in a free, fair, and transparent fashion is one of our top priorities.” The party is hiring lawyers in 17 target states and is already engaged in over 30 related lawsuits, the person said.
‘Create Chaos’ - Cloward-Piven Strategy in Houston Primaries?
"Yesterday’s Election in Houston Was a Trainwreck – Republicans Prevented from Voting and ‘Glitches’ Reported in Voting Machines"
*Today is Election Day, and the website shows NO polling locations this morning. The voting location PDF was changed at 4:01 THIS MORNING. In Katy (conservative West Houston), for example, only ONE of the previously listed voting locations remains the same – there are more now than previously, but they are not at regular precinct polling sites; therefore, most voters will show up at their precincts not knowing they cannot vote there.
*In addition, PJs (Precinct Judges) who are working the polls have been assigned and reassigned to locations over the last few days; have had to work to find election clerks to assist (including this morning); have been given their PJ boxes minus any ballot paper and, as noted during early voting, are being forced to allow Republican and Democrat ballots to be commingled in the same drop boxes after being scanned.
*Comment from a Virginia observer: “Possible Dem misbehavior in yesterday’s Texas primary could happen in VA in an environment where progressives won’t change course to win mainstream support, and cheating is the only option left to avoid an electoral wipeout this year. And why not do it that way when they have successfully done it in the past, and they still have massive financial support, an army of election NGOs and at least 50% of the Repub party who don’t care enough to help prevent it.”
* Note: IMHO, this is a very important article, showing the issues that Virginia Republicans need to be aware of, and our network needs to play a role. That is to demand that VA GOP raises the issues with the Electoral Commission ahead of time. A party disinterested in its own fair win is a sham.
New Election Laws in Texas Cause Confusion - So What?
*Thousands of rejected mail-in ballots prior to the March 1 primary left some voters unsure how and whether they will be able to participate, including many people with disabilities and senior citizens, who are among those eligible to vote by mail.
*ID rules are a big source of confusion The law now requires voters who qualify for mail-in voting to provide either their driver's license number or a partial Social Security number. That number must match what is on file in their voter registration record. So if a voter registered decades ago with their Social Security number but applied this year using their driver's license instead, they'd be rejected.
*Texas has a call center advising the voters in case of confusion.
*The law's changes are not limited to identification requirements. It also includes a slew of other restrictions, including banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting sites, things that Harris County implemented in 2020 to help people vote more easily and safely during the pandemic.
* Editor’s Note - Any change will engender confusion and Texas instituted a call center to deal with it. To take the parade of horribles cited in the article and puff it up into a grand conclusion the new election integrity laws should be repealed is ridiculous. The Left often takes a kernel of truth and twists it into something else.
Democrat Bag of Tricks Getting Worn Out
* From a Tea Party Patriots mailing: ”Democrats are willing to do whatever it takes to win in 2022 and in future elections. The party's popularity is cratering because of Biden's disastrous leadership, but they see a way out. Democrats want to pass the "Freedom to Cheat" Act, allowing them to rig elections. According to David McIntosh and Scott Perry, ‘the left's plan for winning elections going forward is to rig the rules and undermine our republic Democrats have pinned their reelection hopes on trashing Americans' photo ID safeguards, allowing illegal aliens and non-citizens to vote in our elections, and a host of other rules to tip future elections in their favor. They hypocritically pursue their self-aggrandizing agenda - even though voter ID enjoys the overwhelming support of 81% of voters, according to an Honest Elections Project poll.’"
*Left-wing operatives and politicians have returned to their vile tactic of labeling all who stand in their way as "racist." But instead of bowing before the Democrat false idol of identity politics, Republicans and Independents must be strong and courageous in defending reasonable measures to eliminate election fraud.
*Biden, Obama, Pelosi and their cronies might think this trickery is a winning proposition, but with an overwhelming margin of 71% to 13%, voters prefer to vote for congressional candidates who support photo ID - according to a Rasmussen poll.
MoveOn Targets ‘QAnon’ Candidates
* This is quite the fund-raising pitch: “We're launching a multimillion-dollar effort to defeat Trump-backed QAnon candidates for secretary of state across the country and defend our free and fair elections.” (from a 2/28/22 mailing)
Supposition: Left-funded Journalists Might Be Writing Hit Pieces on Election Integrity Concerns
* The philanthropic Left is funding local journalism. That’s not disputed. The press routinely trashes Republican concerns about election integrity. That’s also beyond dispute. A group in Michigan theorizes left-funded journalists are behind the trashing. VEInet reviewed the information the group sent and found it did not substantiate the claim, but it remains an intriguing possibility.
‘Insurrection’ Challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s Candidacy Fails
* A federal judge knocked it out on Friday.
* The judge ruled the 14th Amendment’s ‘disqualification’ clause was essentially repealed by the Amnesty Act of 1872, allowing Confederate officers and all future candidates to return to elected positions even if they had engaged in insurrection.
* The ruling could be appealed.
Dems Gearing Up for Legal Fights, RNC Thinks It’s Ready
Note: a left-wing perspective, explaining the language
*Democrats are gearing up to spend record sums on lawyers, advertising and other protect-the-vote efforts before the 2022 midterm elections, hoping to stave off Republican efforts they believe will choke off access to the ballot box.
*Democratic efforts are also being countered by an equally energized and well-funded Republican effort.
*A person familiar with the Republican National Committee’s spending said the party would budget “millions more” on voting issues and that ensuring that “the 2022 and 2024 elections proceed in a free, fair, and transparent fashion is one of our top priorities.” The party is hiring lawyers in 17 target states and is already engaged in over 30 related lawsuits, the person said.
‘Create Chaos’ - Cloward-Piven Strategy in Houston Primaries?
"Yesterday’s Election in Houston Was a Trainwreck – Republicans Prevented from Voting and ‘Glitches’ Reported in Voting Machines"
*Today is Election Day, and the website shows NO polling locations this morning. The voting location PDF was changed at 4:01 THIS MORNING. In Katy (conservative West Houston), for example, only ONE of the previously listed voting locations remains the same – there are more now than previously, but they are not at regular precinct polling sites; therefore, most voters will show up at their precincts not knowing they cannot vote there.
*In addition, PJs (Precinct Judges) who are working the polls have been assigned and reassigned to locations over the last few days; have had to work to find election clerks to assist (including this morning); have been given their PJ boxes minus any ballot paper and, as noted during early voting, are being forced to allow Republican and Democrat ballots to be commingled in the same drop boxes after being scanned.
*Comment from a Virginia observer: “Possible Dem misbehavior in yesterday’s Texas primary could happen in VA in an environment where progressives won’t change course to win mainstream support, and cheating is the only option left to avoid an electoral wipeout this year. And why not do it that way when they have successfully done it in the past, and they still have massive financial support, an army of election NGOs and at least 50% of the Repub party who don’t care enough to help prevent it.”
* Note: IMHO, this is a very important article, showing the issues that Virginia Republicans need to be aware of, and our network needs to play a role. That is to demand that VA GOP raises the issues with the Electoral Commission ahead of time. A party disinterested in its own fair win is a sham.
New Election Laws in Texas Cause Confusion - So What?
*Thousands of rejected mail-in ballots prior to the March 1 primary left some voters unsure how and whether they will be able to participate, including many people with disabilities and senior citizens, who are among those eligible to vote by mail.
*ID rules are a big source of confusion The law now requires voters who qualify for mail-in voting to provide either their driver's license number or a partial Social Security number. That number must match what is on file in their voter registration record. So if a voter registered decades ago with their Social Security number but applied this year using their driver's license instead, they'd be rejected.
*Texas has a call center advising the voters in case of confusion.
*The law's changes are not limited to identification requirements. It also includes a slew of other restrictions, including banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting sites, things that Harris County implemented in 2020 to help people vote more easily and safely during the pandemic.
* Editor’s Note - Any change will engender confusion and Texas instituted a call center to deal with it. To take the parade of horribles cited in the article and puff it up into a grand conclusion the new election integrity laws should be repealed is ridiculous. The Left often takes a kernel of truth and twists it into something else.
Democrat Bag of Tricks Getting Worn Out
* From a Tea Party Patriots mailing: ”Democrats are willing to do whatever it takes to win in 2022 and in future elections. The party's popularity is cratering because of Biden's disastrous leadership, but they see a way out. Democrats want to pass the "Freedom to Cheat" Act, allowing them to rig elections. According to David McIntosh and Scott Perry, ‘the left's plan for winning elections going forward is to rig the rules and undermine our republic Democrats have pinned their reelection hopes on trashing Americans' photo ID safeguards, allowing illegal aliens and non-citizens to vote in our elections, and a host of other rules to tip future elections in their favor. They hypocritically pursue their self-aggrandizing agenda - even though voter ID enjoys the overwhelming support of 81% of voters, according to an Honest Elections Project poll.’"
*Left-wing operatives and politicians have returned to their vile tactic of labeling all who stand in their way as "racist." But instead of bowing before the Democrat false idol of identity politics, Republicans and Independents must be strong and courageous in defending reasonable measures to eliminate election fraud.
*Biden, Obama, Pelosi and their cronies might think this trickery is a winning proposition, but with an overwhelming margin of 71% to 13%, voters prefer to vote for congressional candidates who support photo ID - according to a Rasmussen poll.
MoveOn Targets ‘QAnon’ Candidates
* This is quite the fund-raising pitch: “We're launching a multimillion-dollar effort to defeat Trump-backed QAnon candidates for secretary of state across the country and defend our free and fair elections.” (from a 2/28/22 mailing)
Supposition: Left-funded Journalists Might Be Writing Hit Pieces on Election Integrity Concerns
* The philanthropic Left is funding local journalism. That’s not disputed. The press routinely trashes Republican concerns about election integrity. That’s also beyond dispute. A group in Michigan theorizes left-funded journalists are behind the trashing. VEInet reviewed the information the group sent and found it did not substantiate the claim, but it remains an intriguing possibility.