Author Archives: Warren Stewart

Arizona audit debunks Trump’s false claims, but the poison of misinformation still threatens the electoral process | Dan Balz/The Washington Post

Source: Arizona audit debunks Trump’s false claims, but the poison of misinformation still threatens the electoral process – The Washington Post

National: Special Report: Backers of Trump’s false fraud claims seek to control next elections | Tim Reid, Nathan Layne and Jason Lange/Reuters

One leading candidate seeking to become Georgia’s chief elections official, Republican Jody Hice, is a Congressman who voted to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win in the hours after the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Hice had posted on social media earlier that day: “This is our 1776 moment,” referencing the American Revolution. In Arizona, the contenders for the elections-chief office, secretary of state, include Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem, who attended the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally before the deadly insurrection and spoke at a similar gathering the previous day. In Nevada, one strong Republican candidate for elections chief is Jim Marchant, who unsuccessfully sued to have his own defeat in a 2020 congressional race reversed based on unfounded voter-fraud claims. The three candidates are part of a wider group of Republican secretary-of-state contenders in America’s swing states who have embraced former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he lost a “rigged” election. Their candidacies have alarmed Democrats and voting-rights groups, who fear that the politicians who tried hardest to undermine Americans’ faith in elections last year may soon be the ones running them – or deciding them, in future contested votes. Jena Griswold, chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and Colorado’s top elections official, said the secretary-of-state races reflect a much broader exploitation of phony voter-fraud claims by Republicans seeking all levels of elected office. “That is ‘code red’ for democracy,” she said in an interview.

Full Article: Special Report: Backers of Trump’s false fraud claims seek to control next elections | Reuters

National: Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Dominion Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Full Article: Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Dominion Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows – The New York Times

National: Disinformation May Be the New Normal, Election Officials Fear | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

As voting wound down last week during the California recall election, Natalie Adona, the assistant registrar of voters in Nevada County, got an irate phone call. A voter, driven by disinformation that Republican politicians had pushed for weeks, berated Adona over the state’s lack of a photo ID law, saying election officials exposed the voting system to fraud. Adona explained that election officials follow state law and verify signatures on mail-in ballots. After a tense back-and-forth, the voter called her a Nazi. Election officials across the country say such attacks have become commonplace. “It’s escalated to an unhealthy and dangerous level,” Adona said in an interview. “We are trying to talk over others who have a further reach, more money, more power and basically are more interested in winning elections than American democracy, even though they know what they’re saying is not true.” The lies about election fraud, which range from false claims about the winner of the 2020 presidential race to accusations about this month’s California recall process, have state and local election officials worried about the future. As gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia approach this fall, and next year’s national midterms near, election officials are struggling to combat disinformation and assure voters their ballots are secure.

Full Article: Disinformation May Be the New Normal, Election Officials Fear | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Harassed and Harangued, Poll Workers Now Have a New Form of Defense | Michael Wines/The New York Times

It is perhaps a metaphor for the times that even the volunteer who checked you into the polls in November now has a legal defense committee. The Election Official Legal Defense Network, which made its public debut on Sept. 7, offers to represent more than just poll workers, of course. Formed to counter the waves of political pressure and public bullying that election workers have faced in the last year, the organization pledges free legal services to anyone involved in the voting process, from secretaries of state to local election officials and volunteers. The group already has received inquiries from several election officials, said David J. Becker, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, which oversees the project. Without getting into details, Mr. Becker said their queries were “related to issues like harassment and intimidation.” The network is the creation of two powerhouses in Republican and Democratic legal circles, Benjamin L. Ginsberg and Bob Bauer. In a Washington Post opinion piece this month, the two — Mr. Ginsberg was a premier G.O.P. lawyer for 38 years and Mr. Bauer was both a Democratic Party lawyer and White House counsel in the Obama administration — wrote that such attacks on people “overseeing the counting and casting of ballots on an independent, nonpartisan basis are destructive to our democracy.”

Full Article: Harassed and Harangued, Poll Workers Now Have a New Form of Defense – The New York Times