Georgia finishes re-check of absentee ballot signatures – No election fraud found | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Law enforcement and election investigators didn’t find a single fraudulent absentee ballot during an audit of over 15,000 voter signatures, according to a report by the Georgia secretary of state’s office released Tuesday. The audit contradicted allegations that absentee ballots were rife with fraud after President Donald Trump said the election had been stolen, said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump lost to Joe Biden by about 12,000 votes in Georgia. There were 10 absentee ballots that had been accepted but voter signatures didn’t match or signatures were missing, according to the report. But agents from the GBI and investigators with the secretary of state’s office contacted those voters and confirmed they had submitted those ballots. In one case, a voter’s wife signed her husband’s ballot envelope. Another voter signed the front of the envelope instead of the back. Eight voters had mismatched signatures, but the voters told investigators the signatures were legitimate. Raffensperger, a Republican said the audit results confirmed the election outcome again after two recounts— both by hand and machine — of all 5 million ballots cast in Georgia’s presidential election. “The secretary of state’s office has always been focused on calling balls and strikes in elections, and in this case, three strikes against the voter claims and they’re out,” Raffensperger said. “This audit disproves the only credible allegations the Trump campaign had against the strength of Georgia’s signature match process.”

Full Article: Georgia finishes re-check of absentee ballot signatures – No election fraud found

Georgia’s Raffensperger should investigate Trump over phone call, state elections board member says | Teo Armus/The Washington Post

The only Democrat on Georgia’s state election board on Sunday called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to investigate possible civil and criminal violations committed by President Trump during a phone call over the weekend in which the president pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat. David J. Worley, an Atlanta lawyer, said a transcript of the hour-long call, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post, amounted to “probable cause” to believe that Trump had violated Georgia election code. “It’s a crime to solicit election fraud, and asking the secretary to change the votes is a textbook definition of election fraud,” he said in an interview with The Post on Sunday. In his letter to Raffensperger, Worley said that “such an incident, splashed as it is across every local and national news outlet, cannot be ignored or brushed aside.” Worley cited Georgia state code § 21-2-604, which makes it a crime to solicit someone else to commit election fraud. Such a violation can be punished by up to three years in prison.

Full Article: Georgia’s Raffensperger should investigate Trump over phone call, state elections board member says – The Washington Post

Georgia: Judge rolls back order on runoff voter challenges | Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney/Politico

A federal judge has agreed to allow a Georgia county to require that certain voters cast provisional ballots, just days before two runoff elections in the state that will decide control of the U.S. Senate. More than 4,000 voters faced eligibility challenges ahead of the Jan. 5 runoffs based on unverified postal change-of-address records. The new injunction from U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, issued just before midnight on Wednesday, replaces an earlier restraining order she had issued that prevented Muscogee County from forcing those voters to cast provisional ballots at all. The latest order represents a significant move in the direction the county board urged during a court hearing earlier Wednesday. Although the county may now require provisional ballots from those voters, Gardner’s order directs that no challenges to their eligibility be upheld based exclusively on data in the National Change of Address Registry, a U.S. Postal Service database that Democrats have worried is an unreliable and unverified indicator of whether individuals have changed their legal residence. “The challenge to their eligibility will not be sustained absent specific evidence of ineligibility,” ordered Gardner, who sits in Albany, Ga. “Such specific evidence shall not include the appearance of a voter’s name or other information on the NCOA registry” Her order also requires Muscogee County to notify any voters for whom it finds such evidence of ineligibility and give them a chance to present evidence to count their ballot by Jan. 8. The order came in a suit brought by Majority Forward, a Democratic nonprofit, affiliated with Senate Majority PAC, that focuses on voter registration.

Full Article: Judge rolls back order on Georgia runoff voter challenges – POLITICO

Iowa Legislature likely to address election recount inconsistencies | James Q. Lynch/Quad City Times

A still-unresolved U.S. House race in Iowa has prompted election officials to call for legislative action to address the procedures for recounts. Nine weeks after the Nov. 3 election, the outcome of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District is in the hands of the Democratic-controlled U.S. House. Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks had a 282-vote lead in the 24-county southeast Iowa district on election night. That narrowed to 47 votes after late-arriving mail-in absentee and provisional ballots were counted, and precinct reporting errors were corrected. Iowa election officials on Nov. 30 certified her the winner by just six votes. That prompted Democrat Rita Hart to challenge the outcome, filing a petition asking the U.S. House for a review of all ballots cast in the race. Miller-Meeks has been seated provisionally while the fate of the contest is decided, but the U.S. House could reverse that. County auditors, campaigns and others have raised concerns about the vote recount process not being consistent from one county to another. In some counties, complete hand recounts were conducted in the race. Other counties did machine recounts and some, including Johnson and Scott counties, used a hybrid version. Iowa House State Government Chairman Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, doesn’t have a solution — yet. However, leaving the outcome of an Iowa election in the hands of the U.S. House is unacceptable to him.

Full Article: Iowa Legislature likely to address election recount inconsistencies | Local News | qctimes.com

Michigan Attorney General: Attorney in Antrim County case should reveal names of elections review team Dave Boucher/Detroit Free Press

An attorney working with a team that reviewed voting machines in Antrim County wants a judge to prevent Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel from publicly revealing the names or other identifying information of those who conducted the review. The report is at the heart of conspiracies furthered by President Donald Trump and others that incorrectly assert there was widespread election fraud in November. Attorney Matthew DePerno said in a recent legal filing that revealing personal information would endanger the team, whose members “fear for their safety and the safety of their families in this hyper-political climate.” He also says he has been personally threatened. However, a copy of the 23-page report posted to his law firm’s website already includes the name of the firm that conducted the review on Dec. 6, and the name of the man who prepared the report. Attorneys working in Nessel’s office told the court they are willing to agree to an order that would prohibit the release of any contact information, like phone numbers or addresses, for everyone involved in creating the report. But by asking the court to prevent the release of the names of the people who conducted the review, they say DePerno and his client are trying to both publicize the report while withholding information that could bolster or undermine its credibility.

Full Article: AG: Names of Antrim County election review team should be public

New Jersey: Historic election prompts calls for voting reforms | Colleen O’Dea/NJ Spotlight News

The 2020 general election in New Jersey will go down in the history books for both the state’s ability to conduct its first mail-in paper ballot vote under extreme circumstances and for the voters who adapted with relatively few mistakes. Despite the success, most officials and many voters do not want to conduct future elections the way New Jersey did this year. At the top of the list for many, with the lessons learned from the 2020 elections serving to inform proposed reforms, is incorporating true early, in-person voting with electronic poll books. And while the number of votes rejected represented 1.4% of all ballots cast, a total of 66,506 ballots were rejected, according to the state Division of Elections, a number many advocates consider to be too large. “As we get ready for the 2021 elections, we need to be doing a deep dive into our entire election infrastructure — not just mail-in voting — to ensure our elections are robust and accessible,” said Jesse Burns, executive director of the League of Women Voters of New Jersey. Gov. Phil Murphy proclaimed the general election a success and said officials in his administration are still looking into the details of the voting and how to improve on it during a future election conducted in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic or similar crisis. Murphy points most often to allowing early voting in person and adopting electronic poll books. Last August, a Senate committee endorsed one early voting bill (S-99), and two months later an Assembly committee approved a different version (A-4830). Both bills currently are stalled in their respective appropriations committees. Using electronic poll books appears to be the only way the state could conduct the same kind of large-scale mail-in balloting as what occurred this year and still allow for some in-person voting by machine.

Full Article: Lessons learned in New Jersey from 2020 elections? | NJ Spotlight News

New York: Brindisi, Tenney argue, vote by vote, in epic nail-biter. How perfect does a voter have to be? | Patrick Lohmann/Syracuse Post-Standard

Thousands of disputed votes in New York’s 22nd Congressional District election will come under intense scrutiny this week as attorneys for both candidates fight for every vote in a race now divided by 29 of 311,695 cast. Attorneys for incumbent Anthony Brindisi (D-Utica) and challenger Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New Hartford, have detailed in written briefs the arguments they intend to make in court. State Supreme Court Judge Scott DelConte will rule on which ballots will count. Lawyers for Brindisi, who trails Tenney by 29 votes, are trying to get ballots that have been rejected to be included in the count by arguing that technicalities and alleged errors by government employees should not be enough to toss votes. Tenney’s attorneys are arguing that the judge should adhere strictly to what they say is established law. Dustin Czarny, Democratic election commissioner for Onondaga County, hadn’t read the briefs Saturday but said some of Brindisi’s arguments will be a “tough lift” based on a reporter’s description of them. Other arguments, he said, are fresh territory for the courts, so it’s not clear what will happen. Onondaga County is not part of the 22nd Congressional District. There are about 2,500 absentee and affidavit ballots that are contested from eight counties that comprise the district.

Full Article: Brindisi, Tenney argue, vote by vote, in epic nail-biter. How perfect does a voter have to be? – syracuse.com

Tennessee: AT&T not conducting voting machine audit near Nashville explosion site | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

CLAIM: AT&T got a contract to do a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and those machines were recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee — to the same AT&T building that was damaged in a Christmas morning explosion.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. AT&T did not have a contract to audit Dominion machines and was not holding Dominion machines in its Nashville building, both companies confirmed to The Associated Press. Authorities still don’t know the reason for the Christmas day bombing, but there’s no evidence it was election related.

THE FACTS: As federal officials work to piece together a motive for the blast that rattled downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, social media users have invented their own far-fetched theories. One theory shared thousands of times on Facebook over the weekend tries to connect the explosion to voting machines used in the Nov. 3 election. … These claims are groundless. Spokespeople for AT&T and Dominion confirmed to the AP that AT&T had no contract to audit Dominion machines, and no Dominion machines were to be sent to Nashville. Some of the posts attempted to further link AT&T to Dominion by claiming a former owner of the AT&T building was a board member of a firm that owns Dominion.

Cerberus Capital Management, the firm named in the posts, does not own Dominion, nor does it own the company that does own Dominion, Staple Street Capital. “Dominion has no connection to AT&T, the building, Nashville, family members of the Bidens or the Clintons, and Staple Street is not owned by Cerberus,” said Tony Fratto, a partner at the PR firm Hamilton Place Strategies who emailed the AP on behalf of Dominion. “These are conspiracies manufactured out of whole cloth.”

Full Article: AT&T not conducting voting machine audit near Nashville explosion site

Tennessee: Nashville bombing quickly linked with voting, 5G conspiracy theories | Adam Tamburin/Nashville Tennessean

Within minutes of the Christmas Day bombing that blew apart several buildings in downtown Nashville, conspiracy theories surfaced online tying the attack to familiar, debunked claims of voter fraud and the rise of the 5G mobile network. … Conspiracy theorists said the AT&T building near the blast housed tainted voting machines. That false claim was quickly denounced by company spokespeople, and multiple news outlets confirmed the conspiracy theory was not true. Dancy said public officials seeking to dampen the power of conspiracy theories should openly acknowledge uncertainty during emergencies and investigations. “Stick to the evidence,” Dancy said. “You have to be very honest about what you know and what you don’t know.”

Full Article: Nashville bombing quickly linked with voting, 5G conspiracy theories

Wisconsin: Trump Campaign Asks US Supreme Court To Take Case On Overturning Election Results | Danielle Kaeding/Wisconsin Public Radio

The Trump campaign wants the U.S. Supreme Court to consider its lawsuit seeking to overturn Wisconsin’s U.S. presidential election results after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against them this month. The Trump campaign’s lead attorney Rudy Giuliani announced the filing on Tuesday. The state Supreme Court rejected the campaign’s lawsuit in a 4-3 vote, ruling that President Donald Trump should have challenged Wisconsin’s rules prior to the November election if he had problems with them. “Regrettably, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in their 4-3 decision, refused to address the merits of our claim,” said Jim Troupis, Trump’s lead Wisconsin attorney. “This ‘Cert Petition’ asks them to address our claims, which, if allowed, would change the outcome of the election in Wisconsin.” Troupis highlighted that three conservative members of the state Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Pat Roggensack, dissented from the majority. In doing so, they voiced criticism of fellow conservative Brian Hagedorn, who sided with liberal justices in the 4-3 decision. The ruling came hours before the state’s electors were set to cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden. The Trump campaign wants the nation’s highest court to provide an expedited decision before Congress counts Electoral College votes on Jan. 6.

Full Article: Trump Campaign Asks US Supreme Court To Take Case On Overturning Wisconsin Election Results | Wisconsin Public Radio

Michigan: Threat against Wayne County canvasser leads to federal charges for New Hampshire woman | Robert Snell/The Detroit News

Federal prosecutors Wednesday filed charges against a New Hampshire woman accused of texting threats to the chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers following the presidential election and sending photos of a bloody mutilated female body. Katelyn Jones, 23, a former Olivet resident who lives in Epping, was charged with threatening violence through interstate commerce following an FBI investigation that probed lingering fallout from President Donald Trump’s defeat and baseless allegations about voting irregularities. The criminal complaint and an FBI affidavit filed in federal court describe threats made against Monica Palmer, chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, after the Republican canvasser voted against certifying the election results. Palmer faced intense scrutiny over her decision to decline certification, then certify and then attempt to rescind her vote on the final certification of roughly 878,000 votes in Michigan’s largest county. “The allegations in this case should make all of us disgusted,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider said in a statement. “There is simply no place in Michigan, or in the United States, for chilling threats like this to people who are simply doing what they believe is correct.” Palmer declined to comment Wednesday.

Full Article: Threat against Wayne Co. canvasser leads to federal charges for N.H. woman

National: Trump assembles a ragtag crew of conspiracy-minded allies in flailing bid to reverse election loss | Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey, Rosalind S. Helderman and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

With his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and GOP leaders, President Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss. The president’s orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a pardoned felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover. Members of the group assembled­ in the Oval Office on Friday for a marathon meeting that lasted more than four hours and included discussion of tactics ranging from imposing martial law in swing states to seizing voting machines through executive fiat. The meeting exploded into shouting matches as outside advisers and White House aides clashed over the lack of a cohesive strategy and disagreed about the constitutionality of some of the proposed solutions. Trump’s desire to remain in power was dampened further Monday as Barr said that he saw no basis for the federal government to seize voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud. “If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t, and I’m not going to,” Barr said during a news conference.

Full Article: Trump assembles a ragtag crew of conspiracy-minded allies in flailing bid to reverse election loss – The Washington Post

Pennsylvania election officials are burnt out and leaving their jobs after 2020 ‘nightmare’ | Spotlight PA

In the weeks before the general election, Sara May-Silfee’s office was overwhelmed. Phone calls from voters were incessant. Lines of people formed outside the building to apply for and cast mail ballots. In one instance, she said, impatient voters began chants outside her office that the waiting times amounted to voter suppression. The Monroe County elections director even got in the habit of closing her office’s shades at night, she said, because voters would knock on the windows, as late as 9, looking for assistance. “It was a nightmare,” May-Silfee said. “Everything was a nightmare.” Even before the pandemic emerged this spring, county election directors said they warned lawmakers and state officials that huge changes to Pennsylvania’s voting system were too much, too fast. Other states took years to implement statewide no-excuse mail voting. They had a few months.Since the passage of Act 77, the 2019 law that made sweeping changes to voting in Pennsylvania, at least 21 election directors and deputy directors from more than a dozen of the state’s 67 counties have left or will soon leave their posts, according to an analysis by Spotlight PA and Votebeat. A dozen current and former election officials said that’s no coincidence. “Mail-in voting has become like a second election that we have to run, that we never had to run before,” Lycoming County Elections Director Forrest Lehman said. “It has almost doubled the workload, and you know, nobody’s salaries have doubled at the same time.” Despite these challenges, Election Day went smoothly, with officials reporting few problems. Still, the people tasked with running elections are drained from dealing with regular verbal attacks from angry voters, confused or suspicious of the process this year.

Full Article: Pa. election officials are burnt out and leaving their jobs after 2020 ‘nightmare’ – pennlive.com

National: William Barr: No need for special counsels to investigate election fraud, Hunter Biden | Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

Outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday that he saw no basis for the federal government seizing voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud — again breaking with President Trump as the commander in chief entertains increasingly desperate measures to overturn the election. At a news conference to announce charges in a decades-old terrorism case, Barr — who has just two days left in office — was peppered with questions about whether he would consider steps proposed by allies of the president to advance Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud. Barr said that while he was “sure there was fraud in this election,” he had not seen evidence that it was so “systemic or broad-based” that it would change the result. He asserted he saw “no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government,” and he would not name a special counsel to explore the allegations of Trump and his allies. “If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t, and I’m not going to,” Barr said. Similarly, Barr said he would not name a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, President-elect Joe Biden’s son, who revealed earlier this month he was under investigation for possible tax crimes. Barr said the investigation was “being handled responsibly and professionally” by regular Justice Department prosecutors, and he hoped that would continue in the next administration. “To this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” Barr said.

Full Article: William Barr: no need for special counsels to investigate election fraud, Hunter Biden – The Washington Post

National: Fox News, Newsmax shoot down aired election claims after voting machine companies threaten legal action | David Bauder/Associated Press

Two election technology companies whose names have come up in President Donald Trump’s false charges of widespread voter fraud in the presidential election are fighting back, prompting unusual public statements from Fox News and Newsmax. The statements, over the weekend and on Monday, came after the companies Smartmatic and Dominion raised the prospect of legal action for reporting what they said was false information about them. Both companies were referenced in the campaign’s suggestion that vote counts in swing states were manipulated to the advantage of President-elect Joe Biden. The companies deny several statements made about them, and there is no evidence any voting system switched or deleted votes in the 2020 election. A nearly two-minute pre-taped segment was aired over the weekend on a Fox Business Network program hosted by Lou Dobbs and Fox News Channel shows with Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. That came days after Smartmatic sent a letter threatening legal action to Fox and two other networks popular with Trump supporters, Newsmax and One America News Network. The two-minute Fox segments aired in the form of a question-and-answer session between an offscreen voice and Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the nonpartisan Open Source Election Technology Institute. “I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change or alter anything related to vote tabulations,” Perez said. The company says its only work that involved the 2020 U.S. election came in Los Angeles. Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani has falsely claimed that Smartmatic was founded in Venezuela by former dictator Hugo Chavez for the goal of fixing elections. Smartmatic was started in Florida in 2000. Its founder is Venezuelan, but the company said Chavez was never involved, and its last work in Venezuela came in 2017 when its software found the government had reported false turnout numbers.

Full Article: Fox News, Newsmax shoot down aired election claims after voting machine companies threaten legal action – Chicago Tribune

National: Republicans desperate to avoid floor fight over Electoral College vote | Jonathan Easley/TheHill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has intervened, asking his members not to join Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) or any other House members looking to object to the results on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to certify the Electoral College count. President Trump is waging a pressure campaign to get senators to revolt. Incoming Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who will be sworn in Jan. 3, has said he’ll join the floor fight and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has said he believes the election was “stolen” from Trump, is always a wild card. Republican strategists are hoping McConnell can quash the insurgency, believing the debate over Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election is tearing the party apart ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia that will determine the balance of power in the Senate. They say it’s bad for the GOP’s efforts to win back swing suburban voters if the party is associated with erratic flamethrowers, such as pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and Rudy Giuliani. And after an election in which the GOP became more diverse, Republican strategists are furious over the harm they say is being done with Black voters, as the Trump campaign seeks to have the vote totals thrown out in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit and elsewhere.

Full Article: Republicans desperate to avoid floor fight over Electoral College vote | TheHill

National: No. 2 GOP senator: Efforts to overturn election would ‘go down like a shot dog’ | Jordain Carney/The Hill

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, warned on Monday that efforts to challenge the Electoral College vote in Congress next month would fall short in the Senate. The GOP senator — who has publicly and privately pushed back against the effort being led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) — argued that it would be futile to force both chambers to vote on an objection to the Electoral College vote that is “not going anywhere.” “I mean, in the Senate, it would … go down like a shot dog,” Thune told reporters. “I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.” His comments come after a group of House conservatives met with President Trump and Vice President Pence on Monday at the White House to strategize on the effort to challenge the Electoral College votes when Congress formally convenes to count and certify the votes next month.

Full Article: No. 2 GOP senator: Efforts to overturn election would ‘go down like a shot dog’ | TheHill

National: House conservatives strategize with Trump and Pence in push to challenge Biden’s win | Manu Raju and Daniella Diaz/CNN

Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks and fellow House conservatives met privately on Monday with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence as the lawmakers prepared to mount a long-shot bid in January to overturn the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the official winner of the election. The discussion focused on Trump’s baseless claims and conspiracies that the election was stolen from him, participants said, and lawmakers emerged confident that there were would be a contingent of House and Senate Republicans who would join the effort and prompt a marathon debate on the floor on January 6 that would spill into January 7. Pence’s involvement in the meeting is significant because he will preside over the joint session of Congress that would count the electoral votes that day. Brooks said that Pence attended “different parts” of the meeting. “I believe we have multiple senators and the question is not if but how many,” Brooks said, something that would defy the wishes of Senate Republican leaders who are eager to move on and urging senators not to participate since doing so could force them to cast a politically toxic vote against Trump. Brooks told CNN on Monday night that they would seek to challenge the election in at least six battleground states, saying he needs to coordinate “as many as 72” five-minute speeches that GOP lawmakers would make that day. “That’s a significant task,” he said.

Full Article: House conservatives strategize with Trump and Pence in push to challenge Biden’s win – CNNPolitics

National: How the much-litigated ballot deadlines affected the US election | Hanna Kozlowska/The Guardian

Americans shattered records for voting by mail in many states in the 2020 presidential election, a phenomenon that tested existing election laws, new pandemic-related regulations, postal service capacity, voter education efforts and voters’ own resolve. Some states had more wiggle room in accepting the mail-in votes than others, allowing ballots that were postmarked by election day to come in later, anywhere from the following day to nearly three weeks after. These grace periods became a highly contentious and politicized aspect of the election. The Trump campaign and its allies challenged them all the way up to the US supreme court as part of an overall campaign questioning the legitimacy of mail-in voting. Grace periods for mail-in ballots also became more significant as it became clear that the vote’s results would not be even close to final on election day and that the country would indeed experience the “big blue shift” that experts predicted. But what are the implications of letting ballots arrive late? A state-by-state look at the turnout data shows that the numbers weren’t large but were substantial enough to potentially sway a local race or a tighter election. It also shows a messy national picture, with chaotic regulations and poor record-keeping. Twenty-two states had grace periods for late-arriving ballots this election – some already had the provision written into their laws, some implemented special extensions just for the pandemic. Five states allowed ballots to arrive three days after election day (until 6 November) and five others allowed a full week (until 10 November). There is no uniform system in the United States for tracking data on ballots, and some of the data Votebeat collected are merely estimates.

Full Article: How the much-litigated ballot deadlines affected the US election | US news | The Guardian

Editorial: The System Is Not Working: The Lopsided Election Result, Not The Courts, Saved Our Democracy | Jonathan Manes/Just Security

For more than six weeks, President Donald Trump and his allies have waged a mendacious campaign to overturn the results of the election. Much of that campaign has hinged on the idea that the courts could, should, and would deliver the election to him despite the vote tallies after Election Day. But last week, in state capitals across the country, members of the electoral college met to cast their votes for President, and every single one of those electors corresponded to the winner of their state’s popular vote. Despite more than 60 lawsuits, hundreds of tweets, and a parade of made-for-TV “hearings” on supposed fraud, the president failed to persuade any court to reverse any result. To the contrary, the courts smoked out the campaign’s bogus claims of fraud by challenging the president and his allies to prove their allegations, which they failed, repeatedly to do. For many people, this looks like a triumph for the rule of law and a vindication of our judicial system as a safeguard of democracy. That reaction is naïve. The system does not deserve the credit. It was easy for judges to stay out of the way—and hard for them to get in the way—when the margin of victory was so clear and the claims of fraud so transparently false. The election was well beyond the margin of litigation, to use Rick Hasen’s useful phrase. Instead, a closer look at this cycle of election litigation paints a much more ominous picture, showing just how close our democracy is to failing. Over the past year, fringe legal theories that could upend future elections have moved to the mainstream. The courts have turned even more hostile to voting rights, standing in the way of even modest accommodations for voters. The president’s post-election litigation has crashed and burned, but it has reinforced the pernicious idea, born from Bush v. Gore, that it is appropriate for courts to step in and second-guess results after the ballots are counted. Our electoral system is a rickety old construction; there’s every reason to believe it could buckle when, inevitably, the votes in a future election are not so lopsided.

Full Article: The System Is Not Working: The Lopsided Election Result, Not The Courts, Saved Our Democracy – Just Security

Arizona: Ethics complaints filed with State Bar against attorneys in GOP election lawsuits | Andrew Oxford/Arizona Republic

Several local lawyers have sent complaints to the State Bar of Arizona accusing attorneys representing President Donald Trump and some of his supporters of violating ethics rules by repeatedly filing what they contend are frivolous election-related lawsuits. The lawyers named in the complaints were part of the flurry of litigation Trump and Republicans launched after his defeat in the general election, claiming in various lawsuits that Arizona’s election was beset by fraud, irregularities and other problems. Courts have dismissed these claims, and the complaints allege that the lawsuits were plainly meritless. The complaints charge that the lawyers treated the cases “as a platform for broadcasting ‘gossip and innuendo,’ utterly devoid of factual proof, as a political stunt.” “Clearly the suits were filed in bad faith, to spread disinformation about election results and add to the false claim that the election was ‘rigged,'” wrote one of the signers of the complaints, Robert McWhirter, who ran in the Democratic Party primary for county attorney and is currently a member of the State Bar of Arizona Board of Governors. “For politicians to spout that nonsense in a press conference is one thing, but for attorneys to try to use the courts solely for political disruption is not allowed.” One complaint filed last week named 21 attorneys, including a high-profile lawyer for Trump, Sidney Powell, who represented several would-be presidential electors supporting Trump in alleging “massive election fraud” involving voting machines, foreign interference and illegal votes.

Full Article: Ethics complaints filed with State Bar of Arizona against attorneys in GOP election lawsuits

Colorado: Election Conspiracy Theorists Focused On One Dominion Employee. His Life Will Never Be The Same | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

Eric Coomer has been living in hiding since one week after the presidential election ended. He’s director of product strategy and security for Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which has found itself at the center of numerous conspiracy theories about election theft. President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that Dominion machines fraudulently switched votes to Biden. And some of Trump’s supporters have come to focus on Coomer as the supposed mastermind behind a plot to steal the election. “I actually am in fear for my safety,” Coomer said recently, speaking by video chat from a secret location. “I’m in fear for my family’s safety. These are real, tangible things coming out of these baseless accusations.” He said in addition to his own information, the personal addresses of everyone from his parents and siblings to his ex-girlfriends have been posted online. Some have also received threatening letters. “I’ve been threatened more times than I could even count. Whether it’s the standard online trolls, voicemails that are left almost on a daily basis, being called a traitor to this country. I can’t even begin to describe what effect this has had on my life,” he said. Dominion provides election equipment and software to 28 states, including the majority of the equipment used in the swing states on which Trump has focused most of his post-election ire. The company gamed out all sorts of election problem scenarios, but it wasn’t on anyone’s radar that it — and its employees — could become the target of threats. While Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud have been a near constant presence in recent weeks, Coomer says the first threat directed at him personally took him by surprise. It came five days after the election.

Full Article: Election Conspiracy Theorists Focused On One Man In Colorado. His Life Will Never Be The Same | Colorado Public Radio

Georgia: Appeals court rejects absentee ballot signature lawsuit | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a Republican Party effort to reject more absentee ballots in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs by changing how election officials verify voters’ signatures. A three-judge panel ruled unanimously Sunday against the lawsuit brought by the political campaigns of Republican U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, as well as the Georgia Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. It’s the latest in a series of court decisions rebuffing challenges to Georgia’s election rules and procedures following President Donald Trump’s 12,000-vote loss to Joe Biden. Loeffler and Perdue face Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in runoffs Jan. 5 that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. The court found that it would be “contrary to state law” to order the secretary of state and State Election Board to conduct a different signature matching process. Elections in Georgia are run at the county level. “Since the secretary and the election board do not conduct the signature matching process, are not the election officials that review the voter’s signature, and do not control whether the signature matching process can be observed, the campaigns’ alleged injury is not traceable to the secretary,” wrote Judges Charles Wilson, Beverly Martin and Robert Luck.

Full Article: 11th Circuit denies appeal over Georgia absentee ballot signatures

Georgia Republican lawmakers say they were right to back Texas lawsuit against state | Maya T. Prabhu and Tia Mitchell/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For many legal scholars, it was a longshot effort at best: one state’s leaders suing over the elections in other states after their preferred candidate — President Donald Trump — lost. Still, 28 Republican state legislators and seven congressmen from Georgia said there were enough irregularities in the November presidential election that they filed a brief in support of a lawsuit brought by Texas officials against Georgia and other states. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly declined to consider the case, saying Texas did not have legal standing to sue Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over their handling of the election. In a brief decision, the court said Texas didn’t have the legal right to bring a lawsuit against elections run by other states. Most Georgia politicians — particularly Republicans — jealously guard and regularly cite states’ rights, and they are loath for any other state, or the federal government, to tell them what to do. But many of Georgia’s Republican elected officials were willing to side with Texas in its lawsuit against their state’s handling of the election. Some still say, without evidence, that Trump won the election in Georgia.

Full Article: Georgia Republican lawmakers say they were right to back Texas lawsuit against state

Michigan: Report alleging election fraud in Antrim County is ‘baseless’ | Claire Savage/AFP

A report that is part of a lawsuit against Antrim County, Michigan claims the county’s quickly-corrected election night vote tally glitch was not due to human error, as the state said, but rather intentional election fraud. This is false; Michigan’s secretary of state called the claims “baseless,” and the company that provided the vote tabulation machines denied the allegations. “The Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results,” says the December 13, 2020 report filed as part of the case. Outlets Newsmax, Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit legitimized and spread the false claims, and social media users shared the report findings as fact here and here. The report cites a “significant and fatal error rate” of more than 68 percent, claiming that Dominion Voting Systems “intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors,” leading to “bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail.” In November, articles shared thousands of times on social media claimed that an Antrim County reporting mistake — which temporarily misattributed Donald Trump votes to president-elect Joe Biden — posed a systemic risk to dozens of counties in the battleground state. The Michigan secretary of state’s office published a notice explaining that the glitch resulted from a user error, not a software problem, and that it did not affect the election results or other counties or states.

Source: Report alleging election fraud in Michigan county is ‘baseless’ | Fact Check

New York: Brindisi-Tenney result before start of Congress unlikely after Oneida County setback | Patrick Lohmann/Syracuse Post-Standard

Another delay in the review of ballots in Oneida County will likely mean that the new Congress will convene next month without representation for New York’s 22nd Congressional District. Incumbent Anthony Brindisi (D) and challenger Claudia Tenney (R) have been locked in a courtroom battle for more than a month to determine the winner of the Congressional race. State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte said he is waiting to rule on disputed ballots until all of the counties’ vote counts are updated. He hinted today that would mean the 22nd district would go without a federal representative, at least temporarily. “I’m personally disappointed that we’re talking about doing this early next year,” DelConte said. “I think we all know what that means for the voters of the 22nd congressional district. I wish there was something I could do.” Tenney leads Brindisi by just 19 ballots of more than 300,000 cast, according to unofficial returns from the eight counties in the district.

Full Article: Brindisi-Tenney result before start of Congress unlikely after Oneida County setback – syracuse.com

Pennsylvania: Delaware County man charged with registering dead relatives to vote for Trump in presidential election | Vinny Vella/Philadelphia Inquirer

In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Elizabeth Bartman and Elizabeth Weihman registered to vote as Republicans in Nether Providence Township, Delaware County officials said Monday. There was one problem: Both women had been dead for several years. The man behind those applications, Bruce Bartman, now faces two felony counts of perjury, as well as one count of unlawful voting for successfully casting an absentee ballot for President Donald Trump in the name of Elizabeth Bartman, his long-dead mother. Bartman was arraigned Friday and released on $100,000 unsecured bail. His lawyer, Samuel Stretton, said the 70-year-old takes full responsibility for the crimes, and will cooperate with investigators. “In his political frustration, he chose to do something stupid,” Stretton said. “And for that he is very sorry.” District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said Bartman admitted to casting the illegal ballot to “further the campaign of Donald Trump.” But the top prosecutor cautioned that Bartman’s arrest was an isolated incident, and not an indication of larger voting problems in the county. “For all the conspiracy theorists out there, this case today does not represent widespread voter fraud,” Stollsteimer said. “This case was evidence that one person committed voter fraud by casting an improper and illegal ballot.” Bartman used his mother’s driver’s license to register her to vote online, and then requested and filled out an absentee ballot in her name, Stollsteimer said. He repeated the process for Weihman, his mother-in-law, using her Social Security number. The state’s system flagged the information as belonging to a dead person, but Bartman signed a letter confirming the woman was still alive.

Full Article: Delaware County man charged with registering dead relatives to vote in presidential election

Texas: Ken Paxton’s beefed-up 2020 voter fraud unit closed 16 minor cases, all in Harris County | Taylor Goldenstein/Houston Chronicle

The Texas Attorney General’s office this year almost doubled the amount of time it spent looking into and working on voter fraud cases in 2018 — more than 22,000 staff hours — yet resolved just 16 prosecutions, half as many as in 2018, records show.All 16 cases involved Harris County residents who gave false addresses on their voter registration forms. None of them received any jail time.Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has made the hunt for voter fraud a top priority of his office, between January and October gave the election integrity unit access to eight additional law enforcement sergeants on top of the nine already assigned to it, and doubled the number of prosecutors to four, according to records obtained from the agency by nonprofit government watchdog American Oversight and shared with Hearst Newspapers.In its 15 years of its existence, the unit has prosecuted a few dozen cases in which offenders received jail time, none of them involving widespread fraud. Paxton’s approach to the issue is the same as that of other top Texas Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott who earlier this month backed the attorney general’s last-ditch election suit at the Supreme Court challenging president-elect Joe Biden’s win in four battleground states — relentlessly insist voter fraud is a major concern while citing no evidence that it is prevalent. As President Donald Trump claimed that the election was stolen from him in early November, Patrick went so far as to offer a $1 million reward for tips leading to voter fraud convictions anywhere in the country.

Full Article: Ken Paxton’s beefed-up 2020 voter fraud unit closed 16 minor cases, all in Harris County – HoustonChronicle.com

Wisconsin: Justices Face Anti-Semitic, Misogynist Attacks After Trump Ruling | Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

Trump supporters unleashed a barrage of obscenity on Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky after Karofsky joined the majority in a decision rejecting the Trump campaign’s lawsuit seeking to throw out more than 200,000 votes in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Progressive Magazine editor Bill Lueders has published the contents of some of those messages to Karofsky, which the Progressive received in response to an open records request. In an article co-published by the Wisconsin Examiner, Lueders also reported on the contents of critical voicemail and email messages aimed at conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, who wrote the majority decision rejecting the Trump campaign’s lawsuit. The messages to Karofsky were both cruder and more aggressive than those directed at Hagedorn. Justice Rebecca Dallet also shared email, voicemail, and written messages denouncing her for joining the decision. Karofsky and Dallet were the targets of an online anti-Semitic attack on a blog reposted by the white supremacist website Daily Stormer that identifies Karofsky and Dallet as “Wisconsin Jews.” “Powerful Jews came together to assure their people hold as many positions of power as possible,” it asserts, and repeats anti-Semitic canards about a cabal of wealthy Jews who dominate Ivy League universities and businesses. Both the blog post and the obscenity-laced messages to Karofsky’s office focus on her comment that the Trump campaign’s effort to throw out votes “smacks of racism.”

Full Article: Justices Face Anti-Semitic, Misogynist Attacks After Trump Ruling » Urban Milwaukee

National: A frustrated Trump redoubles efforts to challenge election result | Felicia Sonmez, Josh Dawsey, Dan Lamothe and Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

President Trump has intensified efforts to overturn the election, raising a series of radical measures in recent days, including military intervention, seizing voting machines and a 13th-hour appeal to the Supreme Court. On Sunday, Trump said in a radio interview that he had spoken with Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) about challenging the electoral vote count when the House and Senate convene on Jan. 6 to formally affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. “He’s so excited,” Trump said of Tuberville. “He said, ‘You made me the most popular politician in the United States.’ He said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ He’s great. Great senator.” Tuberville’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s statement, which the president made in an interview with Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on New York’s WABC radio station. Trump’s conversation with Tuberville is part of a much broader effort by the defeated president to invalidate the election. He is increasingly reaching out to allies like Giuliani and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro for ideas and searching his Twitter feed for information to promote, according to Trump advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Full Article: Trump says he spoke with Alabama Sen.-elect Tommy Tubervill