Arizona ballot audit backed by secretive donors linked to Trump’s inner circle | Sam Levine and Anna Massoglia/The Guardian

Dark money groups tied to Donald Trump’s inner circle and backed by people who have spread baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election appear to be playing a key role in funding an unprecedented review of 2.1m ballots in Arizona. Republicans in the Arizona state senate, which authorized the inquiry, allocated $150,000 in state funds to pay for it – just a fraction of the projected overall cost, which is still unknown. The state senate had enough money in its operating budget to pay for the investigation, the Arizona Mirror reported in April, but chose not to pay the full price. Instead, the effort is being paid for by private donors, who remain hidden from the public, according to a review by OpenSecrets and the Guardian. Arizona Republicans and Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company overseeing the review, have refused to say who is providing the rest of the money. “It is wholly inappropriate that the Arizona state senate is hiding the mechanisms by which their sanctioned activity is being funded,” said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who served as the top election official in Maricopa county, the target of the ballot review, until he lost his re-election bid last year. “The lack of transparency there is just grotesque.”

Full Article: Arizona ballot audit backed by secretive donors linked to Trump’s inner circle | US news | The Guardian

California: ‘They’re really on a rampage’: Departing San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder reflects on election conspiracies, racism | Lindsey Holden/San Luis Obispo Tribune

In a surprise move, San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong on Friday announced he’s resigning his position and leaving the area — exactly one month after enduring hours of election misinformation and racism at a Board of Supervisors meeting. Gong, the first Asian American elected to countywide office, will move to Contra Costa County in July to start a new job as a deputy clerk-recorder. On Friday, he told The Tribune the decision to leave was primarily motivated by a desire to be closer to family in the Bay Area, although attacks on his office following the 2020 election “probably played a factor” in his choice. Prior to making his exit public, Gong sat down with The Tribune to discuss the impacts of election conspiracy-mongering and anti-Asian racism and how his office can move forward and instill faith in the county’s voting system. … During the meeting, one caller made an explicitly racist comment asking if Gong is “a member of the Chinese Communist Party.” “It was interesting because we were hearing all of the scripted comments and everything, and your mind kind of goes numb as you’re listening,” Gong said. “That one did stick out, I will say. I was like, ‘Did I hear that right?’ You know, (it) was a little surprising. And my staff was with me, and it was like, ‘Oh yeah, wow.’” Gong grew up outside of Modesto, where his family ran a local chain of grocery stores. When he was going into kindergarten, Gong’s mother warned him that children may “call you names” or make racist comments. Hearing the racism at the meeting made Gong think back to that time.

Full Article: SLO elections official talks racism, voting misinformation | San Luis Obispo Tribune

Georgia 2020 Election Deniers Setting Sights On Higher Office | Stephen Fowler and David Armstrong/Georgia Public Broadcasting

For the past seven months, a group of Republican lawmakers have engaged in efforts to cast doubt on Georgia’s election integrity and overturn the results of a 2020 presidential race that was counted three times — each count upholding President Joe Biden’s victory. Now, some are parlaying their election skepticism into bids for higher office, launching campaigns for Congress, the governor’s mansion and the office of the top election official in the state, according to a GPB News and Georgia News Lab analysis. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, as confirmed by the original tally, a hand-counted risk-limiting audit of all the nearly five million votes for president, and a machine recount requested by the Trump campaign. But that hasn’t stopped prominent supporters of former President Donald Trump from promoting falsehoods about absentee ballot fraud, floating claims of illegal voting and parroting allegations of conspiracies that have been thoroughly debunked by election officials. Last month, a lawsuit backed by a well-known conspiracy theorist seeking to inspect 147,000 absentee ballots in Fulton County for evidence of counterfeits received the endorsement of former Sen. Kelly Loeffler and the state Republican Party. There is no evidence of counterfeit ballots or any other wrongdoing among Fulton’s absentee votes, and most of the allegations in the suit have long since been addressed by elections officials.

Full Article: Georgia 2020 Election Deniers Setting Sights On Higher Office | Georgia Public Broadcasting

Louisiana could change from voting machines to paper ballots after closed-door negotiations | Mark Ballard/The Advocate

Louisiana will be moving to elections using paper ballots under legislation finally approved about 90 minutes before the Legislature adjourned Thursday at 6 p.m. Senate Bill 221, by state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, had been negotiated behind closed doors for about two weeks. Agreement came in the closing moments of the two-month-old legislative session. The result merged much of the language from two similar House-passed bills with the Senate measure. Current law requires Louisiana votes in machines. The legislation would now require a paper ballot that would be scanned to count. Louisiana’s current fleet of voting machines are aging and replacement parts aren’t easy to find. Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin has been trying to nail down a deal for new machines. Dominion Voting Systems Corp., an equipment and software company founded in Canada with headquarters in Denver, won the early phase of a bidding process that was successfully challenged as unfair by the losers. Work on a new bidding process is still ongoing. After the presidential election in November, Dominion became the target of widespread and specious rumors of being involved in the unproven claims of widespread fraud in presidential election. “The machines are outdated and it’s time to make change,” Hewitt said, adding that she had heard the worries of some voters voiced about voting machine vendors.

Full Article: Louisiana could change from voting machines to paper ballots after closed-door negotiations | Legislature | theadvocate.com

Massachusetts House passes measure making no excuse mail-in voting permanent | Matt Stout/The Boston Globe

The Massachusetts House on Thursday passed a provision that would permanently allow every registered voter to cast a ballot by mail in state primaries, general elections, and some municipal races, extending what had been embraced as a pandemic-era option. Lawmakers tacked the measure onto a supplemental spending bill that easily passed the House on Thursday. The vote on the amendment, filed Wednesday, fell almost exclusively along party lines, with all 30 Republicans in the House opposing it, along with two Democrats. House Speaker Ronald Mariano, who previously said lawmakers would move to codify expanded voting by mail, said before the vote that he “conceptually supports” the proposal, bolstering its passage. The sudden emergence of the amendment puts the House somewhat at odds with the Senate. While Democratic leaders in both chambers support continuing to make voting by mail available to all voters, the Senate on Thursday passed a separate bill that would extend the measure temporarily to mid-December, signaling senators were still mapping out a more permanent option. A record 3.6 million ballots were cast in Massachusetts in November’s general election, with more voters embracing mail-in ballots — nearly 42 percent — than any other option. Before lawmakers passed a law amid the pandemic allowing every registered voter to cast an absentee ballot by mail, state law had limited absentee balloting to those who had specific reasons for not being able to make it to the polls, including if they are disabled or would be out of town on Election Day.

Full Article: Massachusetts House passes measure making mail-in voting permanent – The Boston Globe

Michigan Republicans demand ‘forensic audits’ of 2020 election, but party leaders say it’s time to move on | Malachi Barrett/MLive.com

Members of the Michigan Republican Party are working with activists to demand another audit of the 2020 election, but party leaders and top GOP lawmakers argue it’s time to move on from relitigating the results. Activists are collecting thousands of signatures on affidavits pressuring Republicans in control of the state House and Senate to request a “forensic audit” of the 2020 results. Michigan election officials already completed audits of the election, but former President Donald Trump’s supporters are unsatisfied. Seven months after Trump’s defeat, they’re looking for evidence that the race was “stolen.” Trump and his supporters hope other states will follow the lead of Arizona, where the Republican-controlled state Senate ordered an audit of the swing state’s most populated county. The former president told supporters the audit will spark reviews in other battleground states he lost. Some Trump supporters believe the audits could lead to Biden being ejected from the White House. A new Politico-Morning Consult poll published this week found 29% of Republican respondents believe Trump will be reinstated. MIGOP Executive Director Jason Roe said that’s not going to happen. “It is absolutely nutty for anyone to believe that Trump is going to be reinstated,” Roe said. The Michigan audit drive has support from grassroots organizers within the MIGOP who worked on Trump’s campaign in 2020. Meanwhile, Roe said “the data just doesn’t show a massive fraud conspiracy.” Roe said Republicans should focus on election reform bills and beating Democrats in 2022.

Full Article: Michigan Republicans demand ‘forensic audits’ of 2020 election, but party leaders say it’s time to move on – mlive.com

Pennsylvania Republicans’ proposed election overhaul includes stricter voter ID, in-person early-voting | Jonathan Lai and Marie Albiges/Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania Republicans proposed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s election system Thursday, with lawmakers in the state House calling for stricter voter identification requirements, in-person early voting, signature verification of mail ballots, and other major changes. State Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), chair of the House State Government Committee and House Republicans’ point person for election legislation, introduced the bill after months of hearings with elections administrators, experts, and voting-rights activists. The legislation is sure to draw intense scrutiny and faces steep obstacles as GOP leaders, who control both chambers of the legislature, try to keep their party unified while also winning the approval of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. For example, Republicans have long pushed stricter voter ID rules, saying they would prevent fraud. But there’s no evidence of widespread fraud, especially involving fake identities, and such rules can raise barriers for low-income and older voters, among others. Wolf said earlier this week that new voter ID requirements would be a nonstarter. A Wolf spokesperson on Thursday called the bill “an extremist proposal” meant to undermine trust in elections and make voting more difficult. Election administration has become a highly charged political issue in Harrisburg and across the country, with Democrats accusing Republicans of seeking to weaponize election rules to disenfranchise voters. Several GOP-controlled legislatures have sought to tighten voting laws in the aftermath of the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump’s lies about fraud and election rigging.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Republicans’ proposed election overhaul includes stricter voter ID, in-person early-voting

Rhode Island Lawmakers Push Election Cybersecurity Assessment | Katya Maruri/Government Technology

Conducting a cybersecurity assessment of Rhode Island’s election systems could soon fall to the secretary of state, if Gov. Daniel McKee signs a recently proposed bill by state lawmakers. According to Rep. Deborah Ruggiero, D-74, the bill aims to create a proactive plan to prevent future ransomware and cyber attacks against the state’s election systems and provide training to canvassers to deal with cyber incidents. “This bill is timely and relevant as it allows the secretary of state and the board of elections to take actions to enhance our election security,” Ruggiero said. “We saw firsthand in the 2016 election how the democratic process came under attack — through social media and technology.” During the 2016 presidential election, issues such as bots posing as social media users to spread false information and the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee finding that Russia employed over 1,000 people to create fake accounts to spread anti-Hillary Clinton rhetoric raised cybersecurity concerns. Because of incidents like these, she said, cybersecurity has become an adversary that’s everywhere, impacting various industries throughout the country, including businesses, education and government. However, in Rhode Island’s case, no cyber incidents have been reported.

Full Article: Rhode Island Lawmakers Push Election Cybersecurity Assessment

Texas State bar investigating Attorney General Ken Paxton over Trump election lawsuit | Jake Bleiberg/Associated Press

The Texas bar association is investigating whether state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on bogus claims of fraud amounted to professional misconduct. The State Bar of Texas initially declined to take up a Democratic Party activist’s complaint that Paxton’s petitioning of the U.S. Supreme Court to block Joe Biden’s victory was frivolous and unethical. But a tribunal that oversees grievances against lawyers overturned that decision late last month and ordered the bar to look into the accusations against the Republican official. The investigation is yet another liability for the embattled attorney general, who is facing a years-old criminal case, a separate, newer FBI investigation, and a Republican primary opponent who is seeking to make electoral hay of the various controversies. It also makes Paxton one of the highest profile lawyers to face professional blowback over their roles in Donald Trump’s effort to delegitimize his defeat. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Paxton’s defense lawyer, Philip Hilder, declined to comment. Kevin Moran, the 71-year-old president of the Galveston Island Democrats, shared his complaint with The Associated Press along with letters from the State Bar of Texas and the Board of Disciplinary Appeals that confirm the investigation. He said Paxton’s efforts to dismiss other states’ election results was a wasteful embarrassment for which the attorney general should lose his law license. “He wanted to disenfranchise the voters in four other states,” said Moran. “It’s just crazy.” Texas’ top appeals lawyer, who would usually argue the state’s cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, notably did not join Paxton in bringing the election suit. The high court threw it out.

Full Article: AP Exclusive: State bar investigating Texas attorney general

Vermont: Bucking national trend, Republicans back sweeping vote-by-mail expansion | Quinn Scanlan/ABC

When the Vermont legislature voted to mail ballots to every active voter for the pandemic general election, state Sen. Joe Benning, a Republican, was not on board. Neither was his local town clerk, also a Republican. “Not that either one of us believed there’s going to be widespread fraud but certainly [it] invited the opportunity by placing all of these live ballots out in the world with no restrictions,” Benning told ABC News. But then, he said, “a funny thing happened.” It was the election. The ballots did go out to active voters. Vermont, like the nation, saw record turnout. “I ended up with more votes than I had ever received before,” Benning said. “I attribute that to the fact that a whole lot of Republican voters who had been complacent about going to the voting booth, suddenly had a live ballot sitting on their kitchen table, and they decided to use it.” That, plus the lack of widespread fraud claims, which Benning said “was examined quite heavily,” changed his mind. “There just wasn’t any reason to look at it in any other way than to say it was providing more people with the opportunity to vote,” he said.

Full Article: Bucking national trend, Republicans in Vermont back sweeping vote-by-mail expansion – ABC News

Wisconsin Republican lawmakers plan trip to observe Arizona recount | Molly Beck Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A group of Republican state lawmakers plan to fly south to observe a controversial review of 2020 ballots in Arizona — an overnight trip that comes as legislative leaders launch an investigation of Wisconsin’s presidential contest. Six GOP lawmakers and one legislative staff member requested permission this week to take a trip to Phoenix on Friday and return Saturday to observe the review of ballots in Maricopa County, meet with lawmakers and talk to vendors who facilitated the review. “The point of the trip is to observe a large-scale recounting process using volunteers and contracted vendors to determine ballot integrity and possible reconstruction of the Dominion machine programming,” Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, said in a Wednesday letter to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester seeking approval for the trip. Vos approved the request, according to a spokeswoman. Brandtjen said the trip will be paid for by a group called Voices and Votes, self-described as an organization aimed at “protecting free speech from cancel culture.” The review of ballots in Maricopa County has drawn attention and criticism from around the country, including the county’s Republican-led board of supervisors, which last month called the project a “sham” and a “con.” Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-West Point, called the lawmakers “paranoid nuts” for taking the trip. “They are feeding into the biggest lie this country has ever seen … I hope they bring their tinfoil hats,” he said Thursday.

Full Article: Wisconsin Republican lawmakers plan trip to observe Arizona recount

Editorial: Congress Needs to Defend Vote Counting, Not Just Vote Casting | The New York Times

Republican-controlled state legislatures are whittling away at the integrity of electoral democracy in the United States, rushing to pass laws that make it harder for Americans to vote and easier for partisans to tamper with election results. It is a legislative assault motivated by the failure of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and justified by baseless allegations about the legitimacy of his defeat. Mr. Trump and his supporters pursued indiscriminate lawsuits to overturn the results and then, urged on by Mr. Trump, some of his supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the completion of the election process. Now they are seeking to rewrite the rules to make it easier for Republicans to win elections without winning the most votes. This effort is inimical to the most basic principles of free and fair elections: that all who are eligible should have an equal opportunity to vote, that all votes should be counted and that the losing side should accept defeat and acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome. In the face of these threats, Democrats in Congress have crafted an election bill, H.R. 1, that is poorly matched to the moment. The legislation attempts to accomplish more than is currently feasible, while failing to address some of the clearest threats to democracy, especially the prospect that state officials will seek to overturn the will of voters. Because there is little chance the bill will pass in its current form, Democrats face a clear choice. They can wage what might be a symbolic (and likely doomed) fight for all the changes they would like. Or they can confront the acute crisis at hand by crafting a more focused bill, perhaps more palatable for more senators, that aims squarely at ensuring that Americans can cast votes and that those votes are counted.

Full Article: Opinion | Congress Needs to Defend Vote Counting, Not Just Vote Casting – The New York Times

National: Mike Lindell’s ‘fraud’ allegations are even more ridiculous than you might think | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

If you were familiar with Mike Lindell a year or two ago, it was probably because you watch Fox News and had seen the ubiquitous ads for his company, MyPillow. Lindell appears in those ads to hype his pillows with Billy Mays levels of gruff enthusiasm. Over the past six months, though, Lindell’s become better known as a salesperson for something far less comforting: former president Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Lindell’s wealth has made him a particularly loud voice among those clamoring about the election. He has the resources to hire various dubious “investigators” and to produce shakily constructed videos detailing what they’ve found. He also has the resources to respond to a 10-figure defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, not by acquiescing to having spread unverifiable claims but, instead, with a countersuit of his own in which he repeats and elevates those claims. That countersuit, filed this week, is the written version of Lindell’s “documentaries,” melodramatic, glitchy, sweeping and deeply flawed in both obvious and non-obvious ways. Central to the effort are those claims that the election was stolen, a claim that the suit reiterates explicitly as an exculpatory point for Lindell’s assertions about Dominion’s voting machines. “Fact,” the suit states at one point: “Direct and circumstantial evidence demonstrates that, during the 2020 General Election, electronic voting machines like those manufactured and sold by Dominion were manipulated and hacked in a manner that caused votes for one candidate to be tallied for the opposing candidate.” This is, of course, not a fact, since it isn’t true. But this claim — that Lindell can prove or has proved that fraud occurred — is meant to bolster his public assertions about the company. After all, if rampant fraud occurred in places where Dominion’s machines were used, how could he be to blame for saying that they made that possible? The catch here is that Lindell offers very little that’s actually intended to serve as direct evidence of malfeasance. There is a lot of hand-waving about questions that had been raised about Dominion’s machines and lots of ad hominem assertions about the company and its employees, but the suit introduces very little that might be considered actual, direct evidence that votes were manipulated.

Full Article: Mike Lindell’s ‘fraud’ allegations are even more ridiculous than you might think – The Washington Post

National: Rejecting Biden’s Win, Rising Republicans Attack Legitimacy of Elections | Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer/The New York Times

A Republican House candidate from Wisconsin says he is appalled by the violence he witnessed at the Jan. 6 rally that turned into the siege at the Capitol. But he did not disagree with G.O.P. lawmakers’ effort to overturn the presidential election results that night. In Michigan, a woman known as the “MAGA bride” after photos of her Donald J. Trump-themed wedding dress went viral is running for Congress while falsely claiming that it is “highly probable” the former president carried her state and won re-election. And in Washington State, the Republican nominee for governor last year is making a bid for Congress months after finally dropping a lawsuit challenging his 2020 defeat — a contest he lost by 545,000 votes. Across the country, a rising class of Republican challengers has embraced the fiction that the 2020 election was illegitimate, marred by fraud and inconsistencies. Aggressively pushing Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that he was robbed of re-election, these candidates represent the next generation of aspiring G.O.P. leaders, who would bring to Congress the real possibility that the party’s assault on the legitimacy of elections, a bedrock principle of American democracy, could continue through the 2024 contests.

Full Article: Rejecting Biden’s Win, Rising Republicans Attack Legitimacy of Elections – The New York Times

National: The Republicans’ Wild Assault on Voting Rights in Texas and Arizona | Sue Halpern/The New Yorker

Afew hours after Michael Flynn, the retired three-star general and former national-security adviser and convicted felon, told a group of QAnon conspiracists who met in Dallas over Memorial Day weekend that the Biden Administration should be overthrown by force, Democratic legislators in the Texas statehouse, two hundred miles away in Austin, did something remarkable: they stopped their Republican colleagues from passing one of the most restrictive voting bills in the country. Flynn’s pronouncement and the Republicans’ efforts rely on repeating the same untruth: that the Presidency was stolen from Donald Trump by a cabal of Democrats, election officials, and poll workers who perpetrated election fraud. No matter that this claim has been litigated, relitigated, and debunked. Based on data collected by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the incidence of voter fraud in the two decades before last year’s election was about 0.00006 per cent of total ballots cast. It was negligible in 2020, too, as Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, acknowledged at the time.

Source: The Republicans’ Wild Assault on Voting Rights in Texas and Arizona | The New Yorker

National: Republicans want to change state election laws. Here’s how they’re doing it. | Zach Montellaro and Daniel Payne/Politico

Passing new election laws has been one of the top priorities for Republican state legislators in 2021 — and they are working from similar playbooks to tighten or restrict the old policies even in states with very different election systems. The latest flashpoint in the GOP drive to change voting rules came in Texas, where Democrats temporarily blocked a sweeping new bill this week that touched many of the same voting policies that drew wide notice in Georgia earlier this year. Republicans across the country have proposed significant changes to their states’ election rules after former President Donald Trump promoted conspiracy theories and spread false claims that he’d been robbed of victory there and elsewhere by massive fraud. Together, Texas and Georgia show which areas Republicans are focused on after Trump’s 2020 loss. Texas’ mail voting policies were already very tight, but both states sought to make their absentee policies stricter. Both states specifically targeted new voting policies piloted by big, blue counties in 2020. And Republicans in both states sought to impose new limits on election officials — and expose them to new criminal penalties for wrongdoing. Right now, there’s one key difference between the legislation in Georgia and Texas: Georgia’s became law, while Texas’ is stalled. But not for long: In an interview with Texas talk radio host Chad Hasty on Thursday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said a special legislative session to pass a new elections law will come soon.

Full Article: Republicans want to change state election laws. Here’s how they’re doing it. – POLITICO

National: From Vermont to Kentucky, some Republicans expand voting access in 2021 | Julia Harte/Reuters

Vermont’s Republican governor on Monday signed a law requiring the state’s top election official to send a mail ballot to every eligible voter, becoming one of the few Republican leaders at the state level to buck their party’s trend of trying to limit voting access. The law signed by Governor Phil Scott makes permanent a universal mail-in voting system that Vermont adopted in 2020 to address the challenges to voting in person during the COVID-19 pandemic. It puts Vermont in the company of just six other U.S. states that automatically mail ballots to all eligible voters. Republicans have passed a wave of new voting requirements and limits this year in battleground states such as Georgia, Florida and Arizona, citing a need to stamp out alleged electoral fraud that former President Donald Trump says, without evidence, cost him the November election. Democrats and voting rights advocates have sued state officials over the measures and denounce them as partisan power grabs. State and federal judges have dismissed more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump or his allies alleging fraud and other irregularities in November. But some Republicans lawmakers and election officials in states that are less competitive in national elections, such as Vermont, Kentucky and Oklahoma, say their party should be making it easier to vote, not harder – and support legislation to do just that.

Full Article: From Vermont to Kentucky, some Republicans expand voting access in 2021 | Reuters

National: Meadows Pressed Justice Dept. to Investigate Election Fraud Claims | Katie Benner/The New York Times

In Donald J. Trump’s final weeks in office, Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, according to newly uncovered emails provided to Congress, portions of which were reviewed by The New York Times. In five emails sent during the last week of December and early January, Mr. Meadows asked Jeffrey A. Rosen, then the acting attorney general, to examine debunked claims of election fraud in New Mexico and an array of baseless conspiracies that held that Mr. Trump had been the actual victor. That included a fantastical theory that people in Italy had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States and switch votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. None of the emails show Mr. Rosen agreeing to open the investigations suggested by Mr. Meadows, and former officials and people close to him said that he did not do so. An email to another Justice Department official indicated that Mr. Rosen had refused to broker a meeting between the F.B.I. and a man who had posted videos online promoting the Italy conspiracy theory, known as Italygate. But the communications between Mr. Meadows and Mr. Rosen, which have not previously been reported, show the increasingly urgent efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies during his last days in office to find some way to undermine, or even nullify, the election results while he still had control of the government.

Full Article: Meadows Pressed Justice Dept. to Investigate Election Fraud Claims – The New York Times

National: Joe Manchin will oppose For the People Act, putting Senate’s voting rights bill in peril | Matthew Brown/USA Today

Sen. Joe Manchin, the pivotal Democrat in a split Senate, announced he will vote against Democrats’ flagship voting reform package, the For the People Act, in a major blow to the party’s ambitions on voting rights. “I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act. Furthermore, I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster,” Manchin wrote in an op-ed published Sunday in the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail. Manchin’s decision to oppose the legislation, which would allow the federal government greater ability to implement a standard election framework across the country and allow the federal government to enforce civil rights law, was rooted in his desire for bipartisanship and opposition to what he sees as a near-sighted partisan effort by Democrats. While the House passed the bill in March, the legislation has been bogged down in the Senate, where a 60-vote filibuster is necessary to advance legislation. Manchin has repeatedly said he will not vote to eliminate the filibuster, a Senate rule with a complicated history.

Full Article: Joe Manchin will vote against For the People Act

Editorial: Joe Manchin retreats to fantasyland and sticks America with the consequences | Eugene Robinson/The Washington Post

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has the right to live in a make-believe wonderland if he so chooses. But his party and his nation will pay a terrible price for his hallucinations about the nature of today’s Republican Party. And even this sacrifice might not guarantee that Manchin can hold on to support back home. Manchin’s declaration Sunday that he will vote against sweeping legislation to guarantee voting rights nationwide and that he “will not vote to weaken or eliminate” the Senate filibuster is a huge blow to President Biden’s hopes of enacting his ambitious agenda. There’s no way to spin this as anything other than awful. Manchin’s decision is a catastrophe not just for this particular bill, though he has almost certainly doomed the legislation. A senior administration official told me Monday that “none of this is a surprise to those who have heard Manchin’s views” and that the White House will continue working to “make progress notwithstanding the difficult challenges in front of us, including a 50-vote Senate.” But thanks to Manchin’s decision, Biden doesn’t even have a 50-vote Senate for what many Democrats see as an existential fight against the GOP’s attempt to gain and keep power through voter suppression. The 49 Senate votes left after Manchin’s defection will take Biden and the Democrats precisely nowhere. Worse, Manchin is asking Democrats to respond to ruthlessness with delusion. In an op-ed in the West Virginia paper the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin said he will oppose the For the People Act, passed by the House in March, because it has no Republican support. “I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy,” he wrote.

Full Article: Opinion | Joe Manchin retreats to fantasyland and sticks America with the consequences – The Washington Post

Editorial: Are We Destined for a Crisis of Democracy in 2024? | Ross Douthat/The New York Times

I wrote my weekend column about three ways that Donald Trump might be prevented from plunging the country into crisis in 2024, should he reproduce both his 2020 defeat and his quest to overturn the outcome: first, through the dramatic electoral overhauls favored by progressives; second, through a Bidenist politics of normalcy that prevents the G.O.P. from capturing the House or Senate; or third, through the actions of Republican officials who keep their heads down and don’t break with Trump but, as in 2020, refuse to go along if he turns another loss into an attempted putsch. Because the big electoral overhauls aren’t happening, I noted, the progressive attitude risks becoming a counsel of despair. But that note didn’t adequately convey just how despairing a lot of progressives have become, treating the hypothetical where Trump (or, for that matter, some other Republican nominee) actually succeeds in overturning an election defeat not just as a possibility but as a likely outcome in 2024, the destination to which we’re probably headed absent some unexpected change. “This is where it’s going,” the press critic Jay Rosen of New York University tweeted recently, about a scenario in which state legislatures, the House and the Senate would simply hand the presidency to the G.O.P. nominee, “and there is presently nothing on the horizon that would stop it.” In response to my column, the Nation columnist and Substacker Jeet Heer suggested that none of the three approaches to forestalling a crisis seem plausible. “In sum, we can all see the disaster that is coming,” he wrote. “But there is no clear way to stop it.” This pessimism is, in a way, an extension of the arguments that went on throughout the Trump presidency, about how great a threat to democracy his authoritarian posturing really posed. As a voice on the less-alarmist side, I don’t think I was wrong about the practical limits on Trump’s power seeking: For all his postelection madness, he never came close to getting the institutional support, from the courts or Republican governors or, for that matter, Mitch McConnell, that he would have needed to even begin a process that could have overturned the result. Jan. 6 was a travesty and tragedy, but its deadly futility illustrated Trumpian weakness more than illiberal strength.

Full Article: Opinion | Are We Destined for a Crisis of Democracy in 2024? – The New York Times

Arizona: Is the Maricopa County election audit truly an audit? Here’s what professional auditors have to say | Jen Fifield/Arizona Republic

What to call the activity at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum this month? It’s not an “audit,” according to many of those watching. It doesn’t meet the formal criteria, they say. A better description would be a review or investigation — or, from some perspectives, “grift” or “clown show.” Some have taken to calling it a “fraudit.” Sierra Vista resident Ben Eaddy is one of many Arizonans who say calling this exercise an audit “lends it an appearance of legitimacy it simply does not deserve.” But many supporters of what the Arizona Senate’s contractors are doing say that this is an audit and should be called one. They believe that the multiple tests the county did before this to verify its election results should not be called “audits.” Ah, partisanship. But those in the profession? They get the final say. Most certified auditors contacted by The Arizona Republic, including accountants, internal auditors, and forensic auditors, say this is not an audit — or at least it doesn’t appear to be following the generally accepted standards for one, from the outside. … Mark Lindeman, acting co-director of national election integrity nonprofit Verified Voting, said he finds this contractor’s claim “deeply reprehensible.” Auditors should never release false and defamatory statements about the entity they are covering, he said, before, during or after their work. “It underscores all of the concerns we have had all along about a process skewed towards discrediting an election rather than establishing a truth about it,” he said.

Full Article: Arizona election audit: Is it truly an audit? Here’s what experts say

Arizona 2020 Election Review: Risks for Republicans and Democracy | Michael Wines/The New York Times

Rob Goins is 57, a former Marine and a lifelong Republican in a right-leaning jigsaw of golf courses, strip malls and gated retirement communities pieced together in the Arizona desert. But ask about the Republican-backed review of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 election victory here in Maricopa County, and Mr. Goins rejects the party line. “There’s a lot of folks out there trying to make something out of nothing,” he said recently as he loaded purchases into his vehicle outside a Home Depot. “I don’t think there was any fraud. My opinion of this is that it’s a big lie.”  Mr. Goins is flesh-and-blood evidence of what political analysts here are all but shouting: The Republican State Senate’s autopsy of the 2020 vote, broadly seen as a shambolic, partisan effort to nurse grievances about Donald J. Trump’s loss here in November, risks driving away some of the very people the party needs to win statewide elections in 2022. That Arizona Republicans are ignoring that message — and that Republicans in other states are now trying to mount their own Arizona-style audits — raises worrisome questions not just about their strategy, but about its impact on an American democracy facing fundamental threats.

Full Article: Arizona 2020 Election Review: Risks for Republicans and Democracy – The New York Times

How Georgia Could Conduct A Forensic Audit Of November’s Election | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

… An ongoing lawsuit in Fulton County seeks to unseal more than 145,000 absentee ballots only and inspect them for evidence of counterfeit or fraudulent ballots, but that is currently on hold after all of the defendants in the case filed motions to dismiss. But based on a GPB News analysis of Georgia election rules and practices, extensive reporting on Georgia’s new election system and interviews with elections experts, there is no way to “forensically audit” absentee ballots or votes printed out by ballot-marking devices, and numerous safeguards are in place to verify only legal votes are counted. Additionally, any “audit” done at this point could not alter the outcome or any election results, unlike pre-certification post-election audits many states conduct. The term “forensic audit” is traditionally used in the financial world to uncover embezzlement or other financial crimes by combing through minute details of accounts. These issues are traced to individual transactions or people — but that is not possible with elections. The right to a secret ballot means after a voter’s eligibility is confirmed (either in person or with signatures and identification for mail-in ballots), officials can no longer tie a ballot back to a specific person. This is by design. Amber McReynolds is a former elections director in the all-mail state of Colorado and the CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute and current member of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service. She said Republicans and other pro-Trump groups pushing for these so-called audits are asking for things that don’t exist, and are furthering conspiracy theories that show a lack of understanding about the secure election processes used across the country.

Full Article: Here’s How Georgia Could Conduct A Forensic Audit Of November’s Election | Georgia Public Broadcasting

Michigan: Doomed campaign to reinstate Trump comes to Antrim County, original home of the election lie  | Malachi Barrett/MLive.com

Conservative activists striving to prove the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” still believe an obscure Northern Michigan community holds the key to unraveling an international conspiracy. An election night error in Antrim County – which temporarily showed Donald Trump losing the historically Republican county – continues to fuel unproven allegation of voter fraud eight months later. This weekend, promoters of fraud claims and QAnon conspiracy theories are holding a summit in Antrim County to share ‘evidence’ amid a national push for forensic audits of voting machines and ballots across the United States. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is the scheduled keynote speaker for Saturday’s event at Friske’s Farm Market in Ellsworth. Lindell, who faces a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit over his claims of rigged election machines, recently predicted Trump will be reinstated as president in August. There is no legal mechanism to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory. John Pirich, a retired attorney who represented Trump in a 2016 election lawsuit, said there’s zero chance Trump will be reinstated. The Michigan Bureau of Elections conducted statewide audits already and released a report in April. Michigan’s certified results show Biden won the state by 154,000 votes, a difference of 3 percentage points. “It’s just spinning a fairy tale out of an event that is over with and done with,” Pirich said.

Full Article: Doomed campaign to reinstate Trump comes to Antrim County, original home of the election lie  – mlive.com

Nevada governor signs bill permanently expanding mail-in voting to all registered voters | Joseph Choi/The Hill

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) on Wednesday signed a new bill that expands mail-in voting to all registered voters, requiring local election officials to send out mail ballots before a primary or general election. “At a time when State legislatures across the country are attempting to roll back access to the polls, I am so proud that Nevada continues to push forward with proven strategies that make voting more accessible and secure,” Sisolak said in a press release. “Nevada has always been widely recognized as a leader in election administration and with this legislation, we will continue to build on that legacy.” This legislation expanding voter access comes as several GOP-controlled state legislatures have moved to tighten voter restrictions following the presidential election. The 2020 race saw record turnout as the pandemic required social distancing and states relied heavily on early and mail-in voting for Americans to cast their ballots. Lawmakers in 14 states, the majority of which have Republican legislatures and governors, have passed 22 bills to tighten voting restrictions, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The year’s tally of legislation like this is expected to grow. Among the restrictions, states like Iowa and Montana have passed legislation to reduce the hours of polling places. Others have scaled back early voting hours, and sought to limit ballot dropbox usage.

Full Article: Nevada governor signs bill permanently expanding mail-in voting to all registered voters | TheHill

New Hampshire Election Audit, part 2 | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

In my previous post I explained the preliminary conclusions from the three experts engaged by New Hampshire to examine an election anomaly in the town of Windham, November 2020. Improperly folded ballots (which shouldn’t have happened) had folds that were interpreted as votes (which also shouldn’t have happened) and this wasn’t noticed by any routine procedures (where either overvote rejection or RLAs would have caught and corrected the problem)–except that one candidate happened to ask for a recount. At least in New Hampshire it’s easy to ask for a recount and the Secretary of State’s office has lots of experience doing recounts.

Full Article: New Hampshire Election Audit, part 2

Pennsylvania Republican leaders face pressure to pursue Arizona-style 2020 election ‘audit’ | Andrew Seidman/Philadelphia Inquirer

Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature are coming under growing pressure to conduct a new review of the 2020 election, as former President Donald Trump and his supporters continue to make false claims that the vote was rife with widespread fraud. The push is dividing the party between those who want to put the presidential race behind them five months into the Biden administration, and others eager to curry favor with the GOP’s undisputed leader. The split also illuminates competing visions for how the party can win in next year’s high-stakes elections for governor and U.S. Senate. Lawmakers in Harrisburg spent months holding hearings about Pennsylvania’s election system, with GOP leaders taking pains to emphasize they want to improve state law — not relitigate the presidential race. Republicans’ point person on election legislation in the state House released a report last month outlining potential changes for a systematic overhaul of the election code, and GOP lawmakers expect to introduce a bill this month. But this week, three Republican lawmakers traveled to Phoenix to get a firsthand look at a controversial partisan review of last year’s election in Maricopa County, Ariz., which has been underway for months. The lawmakers — including State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a likely candidate for governor — then called for a similar review in Pennsylvania.

Full Article: Pa. Republican leaders face pressure to pursue Arizona-style 2020 election ‘audit’

Pennsylvania: How the national push by Trump allies to audit 2020 ballots started quietly in Pennsylvania | Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post

Joe Biden’s presidential victory in Pennsylvania had been certified for weeks when officials in some Republican-leaning counties began receiving strange phone calls from GOP state senators in late December. The lawmakers, who had been publicly questioning Biden’s win, had a request: Would the counties agree to a voluntary audit of their ballots? The push to conduct unofficial election audits in multiple counties, described in interviews and emails obtained by The Washington Post, served as a last-ditch effort by allies of former president Donald Trump to undercut Biden’s win after failing in the courts and the state legislature. The previously unreported lobbying foreshadowed a playbook now in use in Arizona and increasingly being sought in other communities across the country as Trump supporters clamor for reviews of the ballots cast last fall, citing false claims that the vote was corrupted by fraud. The former president’s backers argue that any evidence of problems they can uncover will prove the election system is vulnerable — and could have been manipulated to help Biden win. The audits are being pushed by a loose affiliation of GOP lawmakers, lawyers and self-described election experts, backed by private fundraising campaigns whose donors are unknown. In Pennsylvania, the state senators quietly targeted at least three small counties, all of which Trump had won handily. Their proposal was unorthodox: to have a private company scrutinize the county’s ballots, for free — a move outside the official processes used for election challenges. Only one county is known to have agreed to the senators’ request: rural Fulton County, on the Maryland border, where Trump performed better than anywhere else in the state, winning nearly 86 percent of the roughly 8,000 votes cast.

Full Article: How the national push by Trump allies to audit 2020 ballots started quietly in Pennsylvania – The Washington Post

Texas Attorney General Says Trump Would’ve ‘Lost’ State If It Hadn’t Blocked Mail-in Ballots Applications Being Sent Out | Jason Lemon/Newsweek

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said former President Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters. Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton’s office. “If we’d lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them,” Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter’s War Room podcast on Friday. “Had we not done that, we would have been in the very same situation—we would’ve been on Election Day, I was watching on election night and I knew, when I saw what was happening in these other states, that that would’ve been Texas. We would’ve been in the same boat. We would’ve been one of those battleground states that they were counting votes in Harris County for three days and Donald Trump would’ve lost the election,” the Republican official said.

Full Article: Texas AG Says Trump Would’ve ‘Lost’ State If It Hadn’t Blocked Mail-in Ballots Applications Being Sent Out