National: Scores of US poll workers tested positive for Covid over election period | Kira Lerner and Indrani Basu/The Guardian

On 5 November, two days after election day, an employee in the Onondaga county, New York, board of elections office went home early. She felt exhausted, according to the election commissioner Dustin Czarny, and assumed the long shifts were to blame. A week later she was hospitalized, tested for Covid-19, and learned she had contracted the virus. By then, unbeknown to the other employees, the virus had spread through the office where staff was working long shifts to count absentee ballots before New York’s certification deadline. Roughly 200 employees and volunteers who counted absentee ballots were sent home on 13 November and instructed to get tested. In total, 12 employees tested positive. “We had almost everybody in the office last week before Friday the 13th,” Czarny said. “Of course this all happened on Friday the 13th.” Czarny and the other commissioner closed the office and stopped vote counting for the week, informing New York they would miss the 28 November certification deadline. Czarny said the crisis is exactly what he’d hoped to avoid as they administered an election in the middle of a pandemic. “This is what we were fearing and it happened,” he said. For local election officials, the 2020 election was guaranteed to be a struggle. Record numbers of voters requested absentee ballots because of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing election administrators to adapt to an unprecedented election. Officials had to hire additional staff, find warehouses and other locations to store ballots, and acquire protective equipment to ensure that their staff stayed healthy and safe. Despite their best efforts to stop the virus’s spread, several dozen poll workers and election officials across the country have tested positive for Covid-19, even as the link to election day in most cases is unclear. According to a Votebeat analysis of local reports, there were Covid-19 cases among election workers in at least nine counties in five states before election day, and at least 24 counties in 14 states reported positive cases among election workers in the days and weeks after.

Full Article: Scores of US poll workers tested positive for Covid over election period | US news | The Guardian

Editorial: There’s no room for complacency about our post-election crisis | Max Boot/The Washington Post

I am not remotely surprised that, more than a month after the election, President Trump refuses to concede that he lost — and that he keeps spouting cockamamie conspiracy theories to claim that he actually won. I am not surprised that Trump is filing lawsuits and lobbying Republican state officials — such as Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia — to throw out the state’s election results and appoint electors pledged to him. I am not surprised that most national Republicans are too cowardly to challenge Trump’s attempt to usurp our democracy. In a Post survey of GOP members of Congress, only 27 admitted that Joe Biden won the election, two said that Trump won, and 220 avoided the question. And I am not surprised that many rank-and-file Republicans are eager to follow Trump into coup-coup land. In polls, many Republicans say that the election was rigged despite the Trump campaign’s inability to document a single case of fraud. I’m only surprised that Trump’s tactics are failing so miserably. His campaign is 1-48 so far in court and the election results have already been certified by all of the battleground states. It seems a foregone conclusion that on Jan. 20 Biden will be inaugurated as president. In June, I took part in post-election “wargames” organized by the nonpartisan Transition Integrity Project. We foresaw Trump’s attempts to steal the election and even the mechanisms that he would use to do so. What we didn’t expect was that his power grab would fall so flat. As Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown Law, who was one of the organizers of this project, wrote in The Post, most of the exercises “reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse.”

Full Article: Opinion | There’s no room for complacency about our post-election crisis – The Washington Post

Arizona: These lawsuits challenging the election outcome are in courts this week | Maria Polletta/Arizona Republic

The failure of at least six election-related lawsuits has not deterred Republicans who continue to dispute the legitimacy of Arizona’s presidential results. An additional lawsuitchallenging President-elect Joe Biden’s 10,457-vote victory will make its way through the court system this week, and a ruling issued last week was appealed to the state’s highest court. But challengers seeking to overturn results and name new presidential electors are rapidly running out of time. State officials certified the election on Nov. 30, and Tuesday is “safe harbor day” — the deadline by which states must resolve election-related disputes if they want to guarantee Congress will count their electors’ votes. Some attorneys and lawmakers have argued states in reality have until Dec. 14 — the day electors will meet virtually to cast their votes — to address election challenges. But Arizona judges have largely attempted to stick to Tuesday’s deadline.

Full Article: Arizona election challenges could wrap up in court this week

Arizona: Federal judge to hear another lawsuit Tuesday against election results | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Attorneys for state and county election officials head to federal court Tuesday, Dec. 8 to try to quash one of the two remaining attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Arizona. In legal papers filed in federal court, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tim Liddy said the lawsuit, filed by the 11 Republicans who hope to be electors for President Trump, is “woefully deficient.” He said the claim is based on “conspiracy-theory laden, unsigned, redacted declarations making wild accusations” about Dominion Software, which provides election equipment to the county. And Liddy told U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa that claims of hundreds of thousands of illegal votes appear to have come “out of thin air,” calling the lawsuit a “fishing expedition.” Roopali Desai, representing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, was even more direct in saying there’s nothing to the allegations of a conspiracy to throw the election to Biden. Republican challengers contend that conspiracy involves Dominion and its officers converting Trump votes into votes for Biden. “Plaintiffs allege that this plan somehow originated in Venezuela more than a decade ago, over the year enlisted ‘rogue actors’ from various ‘countries such as Serbia’ and ‘foreign interference by Iran and China,’ compromised voting machines and software in states across the country in this election, and was ultimately executed with the assistance of thousands of Democratic, Republican, and nonpartisan election officials despite the presence of both parties in numerous states across the country, including Arizona,” Desai told Humetewa. She called it “dystopian fiction.”

Full Article: Federal judge to hear lawsuit Tuesday against Arizona’s election results | Local news | tucson.com

Colorado GOP demand for probe ofDominion Voting Systems part of “debunked conspiracy theories,” House speaker says | Saja Hindi/The Denver Post

A group of Colorado House Republicans is calling for a third-party investigation into the state’s election software and voting machines along with the formation of an election integrity commission, despite a lack of evidence for any claims of large-scale voter fraud. Colorado election officials — including Republican county clerks — have pointed to the state’s proven track record of election security that has served as a model for other states, and federal judges have dismissed allegations by President Donald Trump that the election was stolen from him. But seven Colorado House Republicans and one representative-elect penned a letter Monday to outgoing House Speaker KC Becker calling for an audit of the Dominion Voting Systems software used by the state and creation of a special committee. Becker quickly dismissed the request, accusing the Republicans who wrote the letter of trafficking in “debunked conspiracy theories.” The letter was signed by Rep. Kevin Van Winkle, of Highlands Ranch; Rep. Kim Ransom, of Douglas County; Rep. Dave Williams, of Colorado Springs; outgoing Minority Leader Patrick Neville, of Castle Rock; outgoing Rep. Perry Buck, of Windsor; Rep. Shane Sandridge, of Colorado Springs; outgoing Rep. Steve Humphrey, of Severance; and Rep.-elect Ron Hanks, of Penrose. “Free and fair elections are foundational to keeping our Republic and voters must have confidence in the election system,” they wrote in the letter. “The committee through educational hearings and sworn witness testimony from experts can help uncover any fraud or weaknesses in Colorado systems to help restore faith in the election process.”

Full Article: GOP demand for probe of Colorado’s Dominion voting system part of “debunked conspiracy theories,” House speaker says

Georgia: Federal judge throws out ‘kraken’ lawsuit challenging election results | Mark Niesse  and David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge threw out a lawsuit Monday that relied on conspiracy theories to try to invalidate Georgia election results showing Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump. U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten dismissed the lawsuit brought by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell in an attempt to decertify Georgia’s election. He said overturning the election would have amounted to “judicial activism.” “They want this court to substitute its judgment for the 2.5 million voters who voted for Biden,” Batten, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said in court in Atlanta. “This I’m unwilling to do.” The decision leaves Georgia’s results intact, supporting state elections officials’ statements that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday recertified the election results after a second recount again confirmed Biden defeated Trump. Powell’s lawsuit had combined a series of theories, many of them discredited, about how the election could have been rigged for Trump to lose in Georgia.

Full Article: Federal judge throws out ‘kraken’ lawsuit challenging Georgia election results

Georgia Recertifies Election Results, Affirming Biden’s Victory | Richard Fausset and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Georgia election officials on Monday recertified the results of the state’s presidential race after another recount reaffirmed Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over President Trump, the third time that results showed that Mr. Trump had lost the state. The announcement delivered the latest blow to Mr. Trump’s tumultuous attempts to subvert the outcome of the election in Georgia, an effort that has caused infighting and name-calling among some Republicans. “We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged,” Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said at a news conference. Mr. Biden has prevailed in three separate counts of the ballots: the initial election tally; a hand recount ordered by the state; and the latest recount, which was requested by Mr. Trump’s campaign and completed by machines. The results of the machine recount on the secretary of state’s website show Mr. Biden with a lead of about 12,000 votes. Mr. Raffensperger’s announcement came less than 48 hours after Mr. Trump appeared in the state at a rally intended to support the candidacies of Georgia’s two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are locked in high-stakes runoff races on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate. The president, however, spent much of his appearance airing a long list of personal grievances over his loss to Mr. Biden in Georgia and elsewhere, claiming falsely that fraudulent voting had stolen the election from him.

Full Article: Georgia Recertifies Election Results, Affirming Biden’s Victory – The New York Times

Georgia: Why Governor Kemp won’t call a special session to illegally overturn election | Greg Bluestein/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

Gov. Brian Kemp has already defied President Donald Trump’s calls to illegally overturn Georgia’s election results. Now he and other Republican leaders are shooting down an effort by pro-Trump legislators to demand a special session to brazenly award Georgia’s 16 electoral votes to the GOP. The governor and other Republican leaders first ruled out a special session to help Trump undo Joe Biden’s victory on Nov. 10, and he rejected the president’s extraordinary personal plea to intervene in the election results on Saturday. But Kemp elaborated on his stance late Sunday after four Republican state senators – Brandon Beach, Greg Dolezal, William Ligon and Burt Jones – drafted a petition seeking an emergency special session because of “systemic failures” in the election system. State elections officials have said there is no widespread evidence of fraud and Georgia courts have thrown out several complaints seeking to block the certification of the vote. But Trump’s false narrative of a “stolen” election has seeped deeply into the Georgia GOP and sparked a bitter internal feud. The petition circulating over the weekend seeks to allow the Republican-controlled Legislature to “take back the power to appoint electors.” Jones, one of the organizers, said “untrustworthy” election results compelled the demand. “It is time for our legislative body to do its job,” he said. Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory on CNN on Sunday, issued a lengthy statement detailing that a special session is “not an option that is allowed under state or federal law” – a lengthier way of saying it was illegal. In the 1960s, the General Assembly decided that Georgia’s presidential electors would be determined by the winner of the state’s popular vote. Under Georgia law, the Legislature can only outline a new method of choosing electors if the timing of the vote was shifted from the date set in federal law.

Full Article: Why Kemp won’t call a special session to illegally overturn Georgia’s election

Michigan: Armed pro-Trump protesters gather outside Secretary of State’s home | Reuters

Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said dozens of armed protesters gathered in a threatening manner outside her home on Saturday evening chanting “bogus” claims about electoral fraud. Michigan officials last month certified the state’s election results showing President-elect Joe Biden had won Michigan, one of a handful of key battleground states, in the course of his 3 November election victory. Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, contrary to evidence, that the outcome was marred by widespread fraud in multiple states. State and federal officials have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence of fraud on any significant scale, and Biden is to be sworn in on 20 January. The protesters who rallied outside Benson’s home held up placards saying “Stop the Steal” and chanted the same message, according to various clips uploaded on social media. In a Twitter statement on Sunday, Benson said the protesters were trying to spread false information about the security and accuracy of the US election system. “The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening.” The Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, in a separate Twitter post, accused the pro-Trump demonstrators of “mob-like behavior [that] is an affront to basic morality and decency”. “Anyone can air legitimate grievances to Secretary Benson’s office through civil and democratic means, but terrorizing children and families in their own homes is not activism.”

Full Article: Armed pro-Trump protesters gather outside Michigan elections chief’s home | Michigan | The Guardian

Michigan: Trump campaign appeals election case to state Supreme Court | Paul Egan/Detroit Free Press

President Donald Trump’s campaign went to the Michigan Supreme Court on Monday in connection with its earliest Michigan case challenging ballot counting in Detroit and elsewhere in the Nov. 3 election. “Unfortunately, some local election jurisdictions, including Wayne County, did not conduct the general election as required by Michigan law,” lawyers for the campaign said in a court filing. “And Secretary of State (Jocelyn) Benson did not require local election jurisdictions to allow challengers to meaningfully observe the conduct of the election and the tabulation and tallying of ballots.” Similar claims have been rejected by Michigan judges at both the state and federal levels and the specific claims in this case were rejected by Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens on Nov. 5 and by the Michigan Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, on Friday. The Court of Appeals chastised the campaign for dragging its feet on the appeal, said the certification of Michigan’s election results by the Board of State Canvassers in the interim had made the lawsuit moot, and said that if the Trump campaign wanted to challenge the results it could have requested a recount, but did not. “Plaintiff failed to follow clear law in Michigan relative to such matters,” the court said. The campaign wanted an order directing Benson to require “meaningful access” for campaign poll watchers to the counting of state ballots, plus access to videotaped surveillance of ballot drop boxes installed around the state after Oct. 1. It had asked for a pause in ballot counting while the case was heard.

Full Article: Trump campaign appeals election case to Michigan Supreme Court

Michigan: Federal judge upholds election: ‘The people have spoken’ | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

A federal judge has rejected a last-minute push by Michigan Republicans who sought an emergency order to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, saying the effort aimed to “ignore the will of millions of voters.” The suit seemed “less about achieving the relief” the GOP plaintiffs sought and “more about the impact of their allegations on people’s faith in the democratic process and their trust in our government,” wrote Detroit U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker of Michigan’s Eastern District. “The People have spoken,” wrote Parker, who issued the ruling in the early morning hours of Monday, a week before the nation’s presidential electors will meet. Trump lost Michigan 51%-48% or by 154,000 votes to President-elect Joe Biden, and the Board of State Canvassers certified the tally on Nov. 23. On Nov. 25, six Michigan Republicans, represented by conservative attorney Sidney Powell, filed their lawsuit asking for “emergency relief,” including a court order requiring Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to sign off on certified election results that state “President Donald Trump is the winner of the election.” The suit also asked the federal judge to impound “all voting machines and software in Michigan for expert inspection.” The defendants in Powell’s suit are Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the Board of State Canvassers.

Full Article: Federal judge upholds Michigan election: ‘The people have spoken’

Michigan: Federal judge rejects GOP effort to overturn election results | Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein/Politico

A federal judge on Monday tore apart Republican efforts to overturn the election results in Michigan, calling the lawsuit itself — brought by President Donald Trump’s electors in the state — an apparent effort to damage democracy. “In fact, this lawsuit seems to be less about achieving the relief Plaintiffs seek — as much of that relief is beyond the power of this Court — and more about the impact of their allegations on People’s faith in the democratic process and their trust in our government,” said Judge Linda Parker, of the U.S. District Court of Eastern Michigan. Parker’s 35-page opinion, released after midnight Monday morning, found the legal argument of the Trump electors defective for multiple reasons, most notably that it was moot because the state had already certified President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state, sending his electors to the Electoral College. She also found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit, and brought it too late to be heard. But Parker was at her most forceful when she considered the GOP electors’ goal: reversing Michigan’s entire election, disenfranchising millions of voters and declaring Trump the winner. “With nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden, Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim fails,” Parker said.

Full Article: Federal judge rejects GOP effort to overturn Michigan election results – POLITICO

New Jersey Audit of Flawless Vote Could Change Future Elections | Josh Axelrod/Governing

In most election cycles, after the excitement and crisp chill of Election Day passes, inauguration comes quickly after, without a whole lot of attention paid to the bureaucratic processes in between. Only, 2020 is not like other years. Instead, New Jersey election officials have spent the past few days hunched over tables, parsing through thousands of ballots and ensuring they match up with their recorded totals. All the while, President Donald Trump continues to cast doubt over the results of the election, placing national focus on recounts, certifications and audits. In New Jersey, the auditing process has been mandated for more than a decade, and yet, due to a legislative anomaly, has never truly been carried out before. Now, in a year of many other firsts, the audit law is kicking in due to New Jersey’s vote-by-mail election. And the timing is just right, as election audits have never been a more crucial mechanism of democracy. “We really saw this past election how incredibly critical that’s been,” Penny Venetis, Director of Rutgers University’s International Human Rights Clinic, whose been litigating election security cases in New Jersey for years, told NJ Advance Media. “If we didn’t have these ways to independently count ballots, then there would have been a cloud over votes in Georgia and Wisconsin. We need the ability to do this, especially in such a polarized political environment.”

Full Article: New Jersey Audit of Flawless Vote Could Change Future Elections

New York: Still no ruling in Brindisi-Tenney election, but judge’s comments give hints about what could come next |Patrick Lohmann/Syracuse.com

Judge Scott DelConte had sharp words Monday for both sides in a court hearing that could decide whether Republican Claudia Tenney will defeat incumbent Anthony Brindisi in New York’s 22nd Congressional District. More than a month after election day, DelConte is considering how to proceed with an election so far marked by errors and delay. The issues with various counties’ attempts at counting arose over two days of hearings about what the judge should do with 809 contested ballots. Brindisi, a Democrat, is asking for a partial recount after, for example, Oneida County election officials admitted losing track of disputed ballots that had been marked with sticky notes. Those notes apparently fell off the ballots before a court hearing. Tenney’s lawyers are asking the judge to order counties to certify the election now, cementing her lead of just 12 votes in an election where more than 318,000 votes were cast. This is the only election still contested of all 435 Congressional Districts.

Full Article: Still no ruling in Brindisi-Tenney election, but judge’s comments give hints about what could come next – syracuse.com

Pennsylvania: Trump asks House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state | Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey and Rachael Bade/The Washington Post

President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make an extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result. The calls, confirmed by House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, make Pennsylvania the third state where Trump has directly attempted to overturn a result since he lost the election to former vice president Joe Biden. He previously reached out to Republicans in Michigan, and on Saturday he pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors. The president’s outreach to Pennsylvania’s Republican House leader came after his campaign and its allies decisively lost numerous legal challenges in the state in both state and federal court. Trump has continued to press his baseless claims of widespread voting irregularities both publicly and privately. “The president said, ‘I’m hearing about all these issues in Philadelphia, and these issues with your law,’ ” said Cutler spokesman Michael Straub, describing the House speaker’s two conversations with Trump. “ ‘What can we do to fix it?’ ” A White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls to Cutler, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors, Straub said. But late last week, the House speaker was among about 60 Republican state lawmakers who sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s congressional representatives urging them to object to the state’s electoral slate on Jan. 6, when Congress is set to formally accept the results.

Full Article: Trump asks Pennsylvania House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state – The Washington Post

Pennsylvania: With time running out, GOP state reps file new challenge to election results, citing already rejected claims of fraud | eremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

They requested the court withdraw Pennsylvania’s final vote tally — a case they supported with already debunked conspiracy theories and a bevy of complaints that have previously been rejected by state and federal judges in earlier legal fights. Meanwhile, in a separate filing, several of the same lawmakers joined more than 30 other GOP state House colleagues in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a push from U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.) to roll back Pennsylvania’s certified results based on his arguments that the state’s vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional. All this came as President Donald Trump’s lawyers waged a smaller-scale — but likely equally quixotic fight — over roughly 2,000 mail ballots they are seeking to disqualify in Bucks County in what has become the campaign’s last active legal challenge in the state. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where the campaign is pressing that case, already rejected similar suits involving ballots from Philadelphia and Montgomery County challenged over identical issues.With legal briefs flying, Lyndsay Kensinger, a spokesperson for Gov. Tom Wolf, dismissed the Republicans’ latest efforts Monday as “just another attempt … to spread disinformation and ignore reality.”

Full Article: With time running out, GOP state reps file new challenge to Pa.’s election results, citing already rejected claims of fraud

Texas: Rep. Ron Wright calls for investigation of election amid unsubstantiated fraud claims | Brian Lopez/Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Wright of Arlington is calling for an investigation into the 2020 election after Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Since Joe Biden won the election, President Donald Trump has challenged the result in key states with lawsuits, but Trump has found no success. In a statement Monday, Wright said he urges Barr to appoint a special counsel as it would ensure that allegations of voter fraud are investigated to the fullest extent by the Justice Department. Wright said an investigation would “ultimately restore the American people’s utmost faith in our democratic system.” The statement did not clarify if Wright was talking only about the presidential election or every election, which would include his victory. The Star-Telegram reached out to Wright, but his office did not immediately respond. Wright joins Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as Texas officials who have at one point refused to acknowledge Biden as the winner and have claimed that all legal votes need to be counted. Political experts have said Republicans don’t want to get on the bad side of the party and Trump, who is still in office, so they still voice support for him.

Full Article: Arlington TTX congressman wants investigation of election | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

National: Republicans Pushed to Restrict Voting. Millions of Americans Pushed Back. | Nick Corasaniti and Jim Rutenberg/The New York Times

Nearly 160 million Americans voted in the 2020 elections, by far the most in history and a level of turnout not seen in over a century, representing an extraordinary milestone of civic engagement in a year marked by a devastating pandemic, record unemployment and political unrest. With all but three states having completed their final count, and next week’s deadline for final certification of the results approaching, the sheer volume of Americans who actually voted in November was eye-opening: 66.7 percent of the voting-eligible population, according to the U.S. Election Project, a nonpartisan website run by Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who tracks county-level data. It is the highest percentage since 1900, when the voting pool was much smaller, and easily surpasses two high-water marks of the modern era: the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy and the 2008 election of Barack Obama. Since the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote and roughly doubled the voting eligible population, turnout had never surpassed 64 percent. The shifts that led to this year’s surge in voting, in particular the broad expansion of voting options and the prolonged period for casting ballots, could forever alter elections and political campaigns in America, providing a glimpse into the electoral future. A backlash from the right could prevent that, however. In many ways, the increase in voting is what Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are now openly campaigning against in their floundering bid to overturn his clear loss to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. — whose popular vote lead grew to seven million on Friday. Republicans have portrayed the burgeoning voting ranks as nefarious and the expanded access to voting options as ripe for fraud — despite the fact that the record turnout provided them numerous victories down ballot.

Full Article: Republicans Pushed to Restrict Voting. Millions of Americans Pushed Back. – The New York Times

It didn’t need to take that long: What Pennsylvania’s election could have looked like with earlier counting | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Polls had been closed in Florida for only a few hours last month when elections offices started closing up shop for the night, too. Almost all the votes were counted and reported, and there just wasn’t much left to do at that moment. News organizations had already projected President Donald Trump as the state’s winner. Things in Tampa, for example, shut down by 1 a.m., the county supervisor of elections said. In Philadelphia, meanwhile, elections officials weren’t even halfway through a 50-hour stretch without sleep, at the start of an around-the-clock vote counting process that would continue for days. “I wanted to take a 12-hour break to let people get some sleep, and it was just impossible,” said Lisa Deeley, Philadelphia’s chief elections official. “And there was no way I would be able to get away with that, because the sky would fall, and all anybody wanted was for us to keep counting.” It wasn’t until Saturday, four days after Election Day, that enough Pennsylvania votes had been counted for news organizations to declare that Joe Biden had won the state — and with it, the presidency. The long wait created an opening for false claims of fraud that Trump and his supporters have exploited. There are multiple reasons the full picture of Pennsylvania’s results took longer to emerge than in other large battleground states this year, but one stands out: Pennsylvania doesn’t allow mail ballots to be opened until Election Day. That prohibition was the major factor for the timing of Pennsylvania’s vote count, elections officials and experts said, and an Inquirer analysis of results reported by the Associated Press shows other large battleground states that began counting ballots earlier reported their results much sooner.

Full Article: It didn’t need to take that long: What Pennsylvania’s election could have looked like with earlier counting

National: 220 congressional Republicans won’t say whether Biden or Trump won the election, Washington Post survey finds | Paul Kane and  Scott Clement/The Washington Post

Just 27 congressional Republicans acknowledge Joe Biden’s win over President Trump a month after the former vice president’s clear victory of more than 7 million votes nationally and a convincing electoral-vote margin that exactly matched Trump’s 2016 tally. Two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence showing otherwise. And another 220 GOP members of the House and Senate — about 88 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election. Those are the findings of a Washington Post survey of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate that began the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president. A team of 25 Post reporters contacted aides for every Republican by email and phone asking three basic questions — who won the presidential contest, do you support or oppose Trump’s continuing efforts to claim victory and if Biden wins a majority in the electoral college, will you accept him as the legitimately elected president — and also researched public statements made by the GOP lawmakers in recent weeks to determine their stance on Biden’s win.

Full Article: 220 congressional Republicans won’t say whether Biden or Trump won the election, Washington Post survey finds – The Washington Post

National: Trump loves to win but keeps losing election lawsuits | Alana Durkin Richer/Associated Press

For a man obsessed with winning, President Donald Trump is losing a lot. He’s managed to lose not just once to Democrat Joe Biden at the ballot box but over and over again in courts across the country in a futile attempt to stay in power. The Republican president and his allies continue to mount new cases, recycling the same baseless claims, even after Trump’s own attorney general declared the Justice Department had uncovered no widespread fraud. “This will continue to be a losing strategy, and in a way it’s even bad for him: He gets to re-lose the election numerous times,” said Kent Greenfield, a professor at Boston College Law School. “The depths of his petulance and narcissism continues to surprise me.” In an Associated Press tally of roughly 50 cases brought by Trump’s campaign and his allies, more than 30 have been rejected or dropped. About a dozen are awaiting action. Trump has notched just one small victory, a case challenging a decision to move the deadline to provide missing proof of identification for certain absentee ballots and mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. Trump has refused to admit he lost, and this week posted a 46-minute speech to Facebook filled with conspiracies, misstatements and vows to keep up his fight to subvert the election. Five more losses came Friday. The Trump campaign lost its bid to overturn the results of the election in Nevada and the Michigan appeals court rejected a case from his campaign. The Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a challenge brought by GOP lawmakers. And in Arizona, a judge threw out thrown out a bid to undo Biden’s victory there, concluding that the state’s Republican Party chairwoman failed to prove fraud or misconduct and that the evidence presented at trial wouldn’t reverse Trump’s loss. The Wisconsin Supreme Court also declined to hear a lawsuit brought by a conservative group over Trump’s loss.

Full Article: Trump loves to win but keeps losing election lawsuits

National: He did breakthrough work on hacking voting machines. Now he’s beloved by conspiracy trolls | Jeff Pillets/NJ Spotlight News

For right-wing commentators and conspiracy theorists challenging the 2020 election, it looked like the perfect get: a Princeton University professor who can hack a voting machine in seven minutes flat and flip an election without leaving a trace. The extraordinary research of computer scientist Andrew Appel helped fuel a wave of new laws that brought safer voting machines to states across the country. He’s appeared before Congress and has been an expert witness in landmark voting cases that led to electoral reform. Now, his work is being touted by the likes of Sean Hannity and featured in fact-free lawsuits seeking to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. The Trump campaign has gleefully weaponized Appel’s research as well, via misleading, baseless tweets that claim tens of thousands of votes were stolen. Appel, who chaired Princeton’s computer science department for six years, has published dozens of scholarly papers on arcane cyber topics ranging from “floating point proofs” to “deep specification” and “polymorphic lemmas.” His most recent paper is titled “Abstraction and Subsumption in Modular Verification of C Programs.” But it is Appel’s exposing the ability to hack paperless voting machines — identical to those still in use across New Jersey — that gets all the attention. In an interview with NJ Spotlight News, the bespectacled and soft-spoken academic appeared more amused than angry when asked about his scholarly work propping up the fantasies of Trump supporters.

Full Article: Hacking expert shrugs off the trolls | NJ Spotlight News

National: Trump’s false fraud claims are laying groundwork for new voting restrictions, experts warn | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Even before the final votes in the 2020 election were tallied, President Donald Trump sent his attorneys to court alleging voter fraud. When it became clear that he had lost to President-elect Joe Biden, his claims — and his campaign’s court filings — accelerated. Trump attacked cities with large shares of Black voters, who had come out in force for Biden, while his lawyers baselessly alleged a global conspiracy and filed dozens of suits in six states. The legal strategy failed in court after court — not a single incident of voter fraud has been proven in the lawsuits — but experts warn the narrative is laying the groundwork for disenfranchisement of voters across the country. “I don’t actually think that all of this leads to a different result in January, but I am really afraid about what Donald Trump is currently doing to the country for February and beyond,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert and professor at Loyola Law School who worked at the Department of Justice during the Obama administration. Despite the large body of evidence that American elections are secure from both hacking and widespread voter fraud, federal and state politicians are already proposing new laws that will make it harder to vote.

Full Article: Trump’s false fraud claims are laying groundwork for new voting restrictions, experts warn

Editorial: Republicans are standing up to Trump. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late | Rebecca Solnit/The Guardian

The first time I watched Georgia voting systems implementation manager Gabriel Sterling’s furious tirade about the threats against him and his coworkers, I was impressed. Here was a Republican, a self-described conservative, telling off the president and all the people making those threats. “Death threats. Physical threats. Intimidation. They have lost the moral high ground. I don’t have all the words for this because I am angry.” He was clearly furious. He talked about a young contract worker: “There’s a noose out there with his name on it. This kid just took a job and it’s just wrong. I just can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have right now … Mr President, it looks like you probably lost the state of Georgia. Stop inspiring people to commit acts of violence.” It didn’t take long for me to sour on his indignation. They never had the moral high ground. The death threats and intimidation against him and his co-workers are wrong. However, they’re not the first people to get them but in some sense the last, and if you care about people the president has attacked verbally and urged violence against, you could have started caring during the 2016 campaign. Nothing suggests Mr Sterling did, since he belongs to a party that has supported Trump and, more broadly, campaigns of hate and discrimination for the last 40 years and more. In recent years, Trump has urged police to treat arrestees more roughly, audiences to harass and even rough up journalists and dissidents in his crowds, and is well-known for the 26 credible accounts of sexual abuse and violence with which women have charged him. He’s the guy who pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2017 for his conviction for disobeying a judge’s order to stop racial profiling.

Full Article: Republicans are standing up to Trump. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late | US news | The Guardian

Editorial: America may not be so lucky next time | Benjamin L. Ginsberg/The Washington Post

The country was lucky that President Trump and his reelection campaign were so inept. He ultimately lost by a wide margin, and his challenges to the results have been farcical. His rhetoric ramped up in inverse proportion to his ability to produce evidence supporting his charges of systemic “fraud” or “rigged” elections. The United States might not be so lucky next time. What if the 2020 election had been as close as it was in 2000, and the outcome hinged on a state (or states) with a truly narrow margin? How would the country have fared under a Trump-style assault on democracy’s foundations? Trump’s attempts to negate millions of votes by challenging state certifications revealed cracks in those foundations. Some shoring-up is clearly needed before the next election cycle begins. A good place to start might be with the appointment of a bipartisan commission that would propose election reforms to Congress and the states. Here are half a dozen suggestions to get things started: Revise the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a law that came perilously close to being invoked for the first time in its history. Its muddled language would not have provided clear answers to myriad crucial questions. What happens if a state submits competing slates of electors? How to determine if a “majority” of the electoral college refers to all 538 electors or only those present and voting? If choosing the president fell to the House, with a single vote for each state, could a majority of members prevent the swearing-in of enough minority members (who nonetheless represented more states) so that the majority’s presidential candidate would win? The 1887 law clearly needs updating and clarifying.

Full Article: Opinion | Ben Ginsberg: Here are the election reforms we need, because America won?t be so lucky next time – The Washington Post

Arizona GOP Speaker of the House rejects calls to overturn election | Ryan Randazzo, Jen Fifield, Andrew Oxford/Arizona Republic

Republican Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Rusty Bowers said Friday that pleas from some GOP lawmakers to overturn the results of the state’s presidential election are illegal and “cannot and will not” happen. State Reps. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, and Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, spent much of the day imploring their fellow legislators on social media to overturn the election results in favor of President Donald Trump. Bowers said such action would be both illegal and inappropriate. “As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” Bowers said in a prepared statement. “I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.” He noted that such an action would violate the oath lawmakers took to uphold the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions, along with, “the basic principles of republican government and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people’s vote based on unsupported theories of fraud. Under the laws that we wrote and voted upon, Arizona voters choose who wins, and our system requires that their choice be respected.”

Full Article: Arizona GOP Speaker of the House rejects calls to overturn election

Arizona: Judge throws out lawsuit, finds no fraud or misconduct in election | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

A judge tossed out a bid by the head of the Arizona Republican Party to void the election results that awarded the state’s 11 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden. The two days of testimony produced in the case brought by GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward produced no evidence of fraud or misconduct in how the vote was conducted in Maricopa County, said Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner in his Friday ruling. Warner acknowledged that there were some human errors made when ballots that could not be read by machines due to marks or other problems were duplicated by hand. But he said that a random sample of those duplicated ballots showed an accuracy rate of 99.45%. Warner said there was no evidence that the error rate, even if extrapolated to all the 27,869 duplicated ballots, would change the fact that Biden beat President Trump. The judge also threw out charges that there were illegal votes based on claims that the signatures on the envelopes containing early ballots were not properly compared with those already on file.

Full Article: Judge throws out lawsuit, finds no fraud or misconduct in Arizona election | Local news | tucson.com

Georgia: Trump calls governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state | Amy Gardner, Colby Itkowitz and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

President Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Saturday morning to urge him to persuade the state legislature to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state and asked the governor to order an audit of absentee ballot signatures, the latest brazen effort by the president to interfere in the 2020 election. Hours before he was scheduled to hold a rally in Georgia on behalf of the state’s two GOP senators, Trump pressed Kemp to call a special session of the state legislature for lawmakers to override the results and appoint electors who would back the president at the electoral college, according to two people familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private call. Trump also asked the governor to demand an audit of signatures on mail ballots, something Kemp has previously noted he has no power to do. Kemp declined the president’s entreaty, according to the people. The governor later referred to his conversation with Trump in a midday tweet, noting that he told the president that he’d already publicly advocated for a signature audit. Kemp’s spokesman, Cody Hall, confirmed that the two men spoke. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh declined to comment. The latest example of Trump’s extraordinary personal effort to overturn Biden’s win comes as his legal team has met with resounding failure in its attempts to use the courts to upend the election. On Friday, the president and his allies suffered legal defeats in six states, including decisive rejections in Arizona and Nevada of their claims of fraud and other irregularities.

Full Article: Trump calls Georgia governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state – The Washington Post

Georgia: Pro-Trump election lawsuit may ‘significantly hinder’ preparations for Senate runoffs, state says | Olivia Rubin and Matthew Mosk/ABC

Election officials in Georgia say a federal judge’s recent order to preserve voting machines at the request of attorney Sidney Powell, an ally of President Donald Trump, has the potential to “significantly hinder” their preparations for rapidly-approaching runoff elections that will determine control of the Senate. Powell is the lead lawyer on a number of federal lawsuits arguing that President Trump’s election loss should be reversed — alleging a widespread conspiracy that includes a false claim that voting machines were rigged to flip votes from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. Last week, Judge Timothy C. Batten, Sr., a Bush appointee, blocked the state from “altering, destroying, or erasing” any software or data on the voting machines that were used to tabulate presidential votes in three Georgia counties. The temporary hold is in place until the court can hear arguments on Powell’s demand to inspect the machines. State election officials submitted a new filing Thursday asking the judge to modify or dissolve the order so they can start preparing the machines for the highly-anticipated Senate runoff elections that are just a month away.

Full Article: Pro-Trump election lawsuit may ‘significantly hinder’ preparations for Georgia Senate runoffs, state says – ABC News

Michigan: Armed protesters rally outside Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home | Samuel Dodge/MLive.com

About 20-30 protesters, some open-carrying guns, gathered outside Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home Saturday night to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Michigan, police said. Officers responded to a public disturbance around 9:50 p.m., Dec. 5 outside of Benson’s Detroit residence, said the Michigan State Police. Some of the protesters carried weapons, police said, and the crowd dispersed once officers arrived. No protesters were arrested, police said. Detroit police were called to the scene, as well. Protesters posted two livestream videos of the rally, which showed people chanting for election audits and to “Stop the steal.” At least one individual shouted “you’re murderers” in the videos, according to a joint statement by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. The rally was a threat against not only Benson and her family, but also Michigan voters, Benson said in a statement. “The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening,” she said in the release. “They targeted me in my role as Michigan’s Chief Election Officer. But the threats of those gathered weren’t actually aimed at me – or any other elected officials in this state. They were aimed at the voters.” She noted in the release that she and her 4-year-old son were decorating the house for Christmas when the protesters arrived.

Full Article: Armed protesters rally outside Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home – mlive.com