Editorial: The Completely Insane Electoral College Strategy | Rich Lowry/Politico

Why limit yourself to the far-fetched when the utterly fantastical is an option? President Donald Trump is challenging the outcome of the Nov. 3 presidential election in several razor-thin battleground states, pushing for recounts and filing lawsuits that are very unlikely to overturn Joe Biden’s current leads. Faced with this prospect, some allies of the president are advocating, or beginning to whisper about, Republican state legislatures taking matters into their own hands and sending slates of Trump electors to Congress regardless of the vote count. This is a poisonous idea that stands out as radical and destructive, even in a year when we’ve been debating court-packing and defunding the police. The best that can be said for it is that it is almost certainly a nonstarter, which doesn’t mean that it won’t get more oxygen. Donald Trump Jr. has pushed this option and Sen. Lindsey Graham, now bonded to Trump more firmly and completely than he was to the late Sen. John McCain, says “everything should be on the table.” A conservative in the Pennsylvania House, Daryl Metcalfe, has declared, “Our Legislature must be prepared to use all constitutional authority to right the wrong.” We may be one presidential tweet away from this gambit becoming orthodoxy for much of the Republican Party.

Full Article: Opinion | The Completely Insane Electoral College Strategy – POLITICO

Arizona: Could election officials have done more to prevent ‘Sharpiegate’ this election? |  Jen Fifield/Arizona Republic

When Julie Flesch got home from voting at her local church on Election Day, she was still thinking about a few things that didn’t seem right. The Mesa resident said she didn’t see her name show up when she cast her ballot, and she had noticed how the Sharpie she had been given to mark her votes had bled through to the other side. She hoped her votes registered OK, after reading that any errant mark on a ballot could pose problems. That’s when she read on Facebook that the use of Sharpies was invalidating votes — a rumor that has since been debunked. “It corroborated the concern that I had,” she said. “Oh, now I understand why my vote didn’t count.” Flesch did research and eventually heard from the county that her ballot had been counted and learned that Sharpies are OK to use on the county’s ballots. But for Flesch and the other Arizona voters who walked into a polling place on Election Day with even an inkling of suspicion of voter fraud or a doubt of election integrity, the rumors about Sharpies circulating online in the hours and days after polls closed last week was enough to make them believe that their votes hadn’t been counted. That fueled a conspiracy theory about poll workers giving Republican voters Sharpies so their votes wouldn’t count.   The question is whether what has now been dubbed as “Sharpiegate” in Arizona could have been avoided.

Full Article: ‘Sharpiegate’: Could Arizona election officials have prevented it?

California: Trump falsely claims fraud in Los Angeles elections. The truth is there were few problems | Matt Stiles/Los Angeles Times

Voters may have differed on their ballot choices in last week’s election, but they seemed to be in agreement on one thing: Drop boxes are a great idea. The boxes sprinkled around Los Angeles County were a “phenomenal” success, according to the county’s top election official. President Trump thinks they’re evidence of fraud. Spoiler alert. They’re not. The president Wednesday tweeted a long-debunked video showing election workers collecting votes from a drop box on Nov. 4, the day after polls closed, suggesting that the process is evidence of fraud. In fact, the boxes had been closed and locked the night of the election, when the polls closed, and it took time for election workers to collect them in the following days. Under state law, mail votes cast by election day will be collected and counted until Nov. 20. The spurious suggestion of fraud is the latest in the president’s strategy to question the results of the election, in which former Vice President Joe Biden was declared the winner Saturday. Fact checkers have since debunked concerns about the drop boxes, more than 400 of which were spread from Lancaster to Long Beach.

Full Article: Trump falsely claims fraud in L.A. elections. The truth is there were few problems – Los Angeles Times

Georgia launches statewide hand recount of presidential race | Mark Niesse and Greg Bluestein/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took the extraordinary step on Wednesday to order a recount of all 5 million ballots cast in the presidential election, under mounting pressure by fellow Republicans who leveled unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud to discredit Joe Biden’s 14,000-vote lead in the state. Flanked by local elections officials at a Capitol press conference, Raffensperger said the count will be conducted by hand under Georgia’s election audit rules before a Nov. 20 deadline to finalize results. The cost of the enormous undertaking, requiring hundreds of poll workers, wasn’t immediately clear. The decision came after an immense effort by President Donald Trump and his supporters to cast doubt on Georgia’s election results, despite no evidence of any wrongdoing or irregularities. U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, facing Jan. 5 runoffs, called for Raffensperger’s resignation, and Trump’s campaign demanded the hand recount Tuesday. Raffensperger, who has said there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud, maintained that he wasn’t influenced by the outside pressure, which was amplified by Trump on Twitter. Instead, he cast it as an effort to bolster faith in the election results. “This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass, all at once,” Raffensperger said from the steps of the state Capitol. “It will be a heavy lift. But we will work with the counties to get this done in time for our state certification.”

Full Article: Georgia orders full recount of the presidential election vote

Georgia audit to trigger hand tally of presidential vote | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

Georgia’s secretary of state on Wednesday announced an audit of presidential election results that he said would be done with a full hand tally of ballots because the margin is so tight. State law requires an audit but leaves it up to the top elections official to choose the race. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at a news conference that the presidential race makes the most sense. Raffensperger’s office has said there’s no evidence of systemic problems with the voting or the count that shows Democrat Joe Biden with a lead of about 14,000 votes over President Donald Trump. Raffensperger said his office wants the process to begin by the end of the week and he expects it to take until Nov. 20, which is the state certification deadline. “It will be a heavy lift, but we will work with the counties to get this done in time for our state certification,” Raffensperger said, flanked by local election officials on the steps of the state Capitol. “We have all worked hard to bring fair and accurate counts to assure that the will of the voters is reflected in the final count and that every voter will have confidence in the outcome, whether their candidate won or lost.” Georgians cast nearly 5 million votes in the presidential race and counties have until Friday to certify their results.

Full Article: Georgia audit to trigger hand tally of presidential vote

Michigan: In poll watcher affidavits, Trump campaign offers no evidence of fraud in Detroit ballot-counting | David A. Fahrenthold, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger/The Washington Post

Inside Detroit’s absentee-ballot-counting center, one Republican poll watcher complained that workers were wearing Black Lives Matter gear. She thought one of them — a “man of intimidating size” — had followed her too closely. Another Republican poll watcher complained about the public address system. Workers were using it to make announcements. It was loud. “This was very distracting to those of us trying to concentrate,” he said. A third poll watcher noticed that when absentee ballots came in from military personnel, many showed votes for Democrats. He found that odd. “I can estimate that at least 80% of military ballots I saw were straight ticket Democrat or simply had Joe Biden’s name filled in on them,” the man wrote. “I had always been told that military people tended to be conservative, so this stuck out to me.” On Wednesday, President Trump’s campaign asked a federal judge to take a drastic step: block the state of Michigan from certifying the results of its presidential election. President-elect Joe Biden now leads Trump by about 148,000 votes there. To back up that lawsuit, Trump’s campaign had promised “shocking” evidence of misconduct. Instead, the campaign produced 238 pages of affidavits from Republican poll watchers across Michigan containing no evidence of significant fraud but rather allegations about ballot-counting procedures that state workers have already debunked — and in some cases, complaints about rude behavior or unpleasant looks from poll workers or Democratic poll watchers.

Full Article: In poll watcher affidavits, Trump campaign offers no evidence of fraud in Detroit ballot-counting – The Washington Post

Michigan: Detroit judge promises opinion on lawsuit alleging election fraud | Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press

The attorney who brought a lawsuit against Wayne County and Detroit election officials this week claimed at a hearing Wednesday that local election officials had failed to refute claims of election fraud leveled against them and stated his right to ask the court to intervene to block certification of the election results. The lawsuit, filed by attorney  David Kallman, also asks the court to void the Nov. 3 election and order a new one. Lawyers representing local election officials denied the claims of fraud and argued that the case, if allowed to proceed, would disenfranchise voters, give credence to election conspiracies and potentially prevent Michigan from being able to appoint electors in time to cast the state’s Electoral College votes. Wayne County Circuit Chief Judge Timothy M. Kenny promised to issue his ruling Friday. The lawsuit — filed on behalf of Wayne County residents Cheryl A. Costantino and Edward P. McCall Jr. — bases its claims on what it says are instances of election fraud observed at the  TCF Center, where Detroit election workers processed and counted absentee ballots cast by the city’s voters.

Full Article: Detroit judge promises opinion on lawsuit alleging election fraud

Nevada: Military voters included on Trump campaign list of ‘improperly cast’ ballots: reports | Josh Bowden/The Hill

A list produced by the Trump campaign purporting to detail just over 3,000 instances of alleged voter fraud in Nevada contains hundreds of addresses used by active-duty military members and their families. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the list of 3,062 alleged instances of people voting in Nevada while living elsewhere included hundreds of active-duty military members who apparently live in Nevada but are stationed elsewhere in the U.S. or overseas. Active-duty members of the armed services frequently vote absentee while stationed away from home. “Our voter registration is in Nevada, our cars are registered in Nevada, our licenses are in Nevada,” one woman whose husband is stationed in California told the Journal after finding their address on the list. “We just don’t live there because the military has told us to move somewhere else.” “To see my integrity challenged, along with other members of the military to be challenged in this way, it is a shock. And to be potentially disenfranchised because of these actions, that’s not OK,” the woman, Amy Rose, added to Military.com in a statement. “It’s pretty obvious that hundreds of military people are on this list. There didn’t seem to be any effort to look at this list before they made their accusations.”

Full Article: Military voters included on Trump campaign list of ‘improperly cast’ ballots: reports | TheHill

North Carolina doesn’t verify voter signatures on mail-in ballots. Is that a problem? | Helen Mamo/Charlotte Observer

As local boards of elections meet this week to review the final set of mail-in ballots, they’ll look to make sure that the voter’s name and signature are on the front of each envelope. But they won’t look to see if that signature matches one on file somewhere, because voter signature matching is not required in North Carolina. Signature matching is a common practice, required in 30 states, to help protect the legitimacy of absentee mail-in ballots. But it’s not mandated in everywhere, including in key battleground states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Karen Bell, the executive director of the N.C. State Board of Elections, explained North Carolina’s policy in a memo in August. “County boards shall accept the voter’s signature on the container-return envelope if it appears to be made by the voter, meaning the signature on the envelope appears to be the name of the voter and not some other person,” Bell wrote.

Full Article: North Carolina: No mail-in voter signature matching required | Charlotte Observer

Oregon: New secretary of state to examine election system warnings | Andrew Selsky/Associated Press

Oregon Secretary of State-elect Shemia Fagan, a Democrat, said she will examine the “critical warnings” that the state’s former elections director voiced before he was fired last week by the incumbent secretary of state. In a blunt memo to Fagan and her Republican challenger on the eve of the 2020 election, Oregon Elections Director Stephen Trout said some of the state’s election systems are running on an operating system that Microsoft stopped supporting last January, pointed out an absence of multifactor authentication to access those election systems and raised other issues. He said the current state of technology and lack of support in the agency made his job impossible. “Oregon’s former Elections Director, Steve Trout raised critical warnings that concern me as Oregon’s next Secretary of State,” Fagan tweeted late Tuesday, Nov. 10. “I spoke with Mr. Trout personally this week and we plan to speak later this week and go through his memo together, line by line.” Trout also said the secretary of state’s office used federal funds inappropriately and may need to be returned after an audit. It is unclear who would do an audit if it comes to that with no conflict of interest, since the secretary of state’s office runs the audits division, besides being in charge of elections.

Full Article: New secretary of state to examine election system warnings | State | eastoregonian.com

Pennsylvania: Trump’s campaign is challenging mail and provisional ballots at record rates in Philadelphia and its suburbs | Jeremy Roebuck and William Bender/Philadelphia Inquirer

Even as President Donald Trump’s campaign is waging a well-publicized legal war on the broad rules governing the presidential election in Pennsylvania, its lawyers are engaging in lower-profile but no less important, county-by-county trench battles to disqualify individual votes in Philadelphia and its suburbs over technicalities. In hearings before county Boards of Elections and Common Pleas Court judges, campaign attorneys have pushed for several thousand mail votes to be cast aside due to voter mistakes like failing to date the envelope. Meanwhile, they are pursuing record numbers of challenges to “provisional” ballots, in some cases for grounds as small as the name of the county being misspelled. But just as with the more sweeping lawsuits that Trump has filed in state and federal courts across the state seeking to cast doubt on the overall integrity of the electoral system, few of these county-level skirmishes have anything to do with the allegations of widespread and deliberate voter fraud that Trump and his allies have pushed without evidence for days. Instead, their filings ask courts and county boards to disenfranchise potentially thousands of legitimate voters in Philadelphia and its suburbs over procedural errors made when filing their ballots.

Full Article: rump’s campaign is challenging mail and provisional ballots at record rates in Philly and its suburbs

Wisconsin Republicans say election probe likely won’t change results | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin lawmakers plan to issue their first subpoenas in decades as part of an investigation into the Nov. 3 election, even as the top Republican in the Assembly acknowledges the probe is unlikely to change the outcome. The move comes as supporters of President Donald Trump grapple with a narrow loss in a state they won four years ago by a sliver. As in other states, Wisconsin Republicans are alleging voter fraud but so far are not providing evidence of widespread problems that would take away President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. “I think it is unlikely we would find enough cases of fraud to overturn the election. I think it’s unlikely, but I don’t know that. That’s why you have an investigation,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican from Rochester. The state Senate and Assembly’s committees on elections plan to hold a joint hearing next week on how the election was conducted, said Rep. Ron Tusler, a Harrison Republican and the chairman of the Assembly committee. He said he would call Meagan Wolfe, the director of the state Elections Commission, to testify and plans to subpoena municipal clerks or others to force them to come before the committees.

Full Article: Wisconsin Republicans say election probe likely won’t change results

Wisconsin: Republicans claim clerks illegally altered absentee ballots, but they were following election guidance | Haley BeMiller/USA Today

Wisconsin’s election is under a microscope as President Donald Trump cries fraud about the Nov. 3 presidential race that Democratic nominee Joe Biden is projected to win.  The president and his supporters have said, without evidence, that rampant voter fraud allowed his opponent to claim victory after he started election night ahead. Biden took the lead in Wisconsin and other key battleground states after clerks counted mail-in ballots largely cast by Democrats, according to unofficial results — a trend observers predicted heading into the election. Now, a new claim is making the rounds on social media. … Absentee voters in Wisconsin place their ballot in an envelope, also called a certificate, that they sign before returning it. A witness must also sign the envelope and provide their address. The state Elections Commission sent a memo to clerks on Oct. 19, 2020, instructing them how to spoil absentee ballots for voters who wanted to vote in person. The memo also provides guidance on how to handle absentee ballot errors, including missing witness signatures or addresses.  “The witness can appear without the voter to add their signature or address,” the memo states. “Please note that the clerk should attempt to resolve any missing witness address information prior to Election Day if possible, and this can be done through reliable information (personal knowledge, voter registration information, through a phone call with the voter or witness). The witness does not need to appear to add a missing address.”

Full Article: Wisconsin clerks altered ballot information according to guidance

National: As states press forward with vote counts, Trump advisers privately express pessimism about heading off Biden’s win | Amy Gardner, Tom Hamburger, Jon Swaine and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

Six states where President Trump has threatened to challenge his defeat continued their march toward declaring certified election results in the coming weeks, as his advisers privately acknowledged that President-elect Joe Biden’s official victory is less a question of “if” than “when.” Trump began the day tweeting about “BALLOT COUNTING ABUSE” as he and his allies touted unproven claims that fraud had tainted the election in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Vice President Pence gave a presentation to Republican senators on Capitol Hill about new litigation expected in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia — imploring them to stick with the president, according to several Republicans in the room. But even some of the president’s most publicly pugilistic aides, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and informal adviser Corey Lewandowski, have said privately that they are concerned about the lawsuits’ chances for success unless more evidence surfaces, according to people familiar with their views. Trump met with advisers again Tuesday afternoon to discuss whether there is a path forward, said a person with knowledge of the discussions, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. The person said Trump plans to keep fighting but understands it is going to be difficult. “He is all over the place. It changes from hour to hour,” the person said.

Full Article: As states press forward with vote counts, Trump advisers privately express pessimism about heading off Biden’s win – The Washington Post

The ‘orchestrated’ push to discredit Georgia’s election sparks more GOP infighting | Jim Galloway, Patricia Murphy, Greg Bluestein and Tia Mitchell/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

“Republicans in disarray.” That was the three-word response from Senate Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff late Monday to the extraordinary infighting that’s divided the Georgia GOP over President Donald Trump’s effort to taint Joe Biden’s victory. This was supposed to be the week that Republicans united behind U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue for a pair of Jan. 5 runoffs that could decide control of the Senate. Instead, the two senators leveled unfounded claims of a disastrous “embarrassment” of an election at fellow Republicans who oversaw last week’s vote – and called for the resignation of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. It was a brazen effort to appease Trump, who has falsely claimed electoral fraud despite no evidence of any wrongdoing as he and his supporters try to discredit Biden. We’re told the president and his top allies pressured the two Republican senators to take this step, lest he tweet a negative word about them and risk divorcing them from his base ahead of the consequential runoff.

Full Article: The Jolt: The ‘orchestrated’ push to discredit Georgia’s election sparks more GOP infighting

National: ‘What’s the downside for humoring him?’: A GOP official’s unintentionally revealing quote about the Trump era | Amy Gardner, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

When the history of the Trump era is written, we’ll struggle to find quotes that are as revealing as one recorded Monday evening by . Speaking about President Trump’s and his legal team’s myriad and baseless claims of massive voter fraud, an anonymous senior Republican official offered a rhetorical shrug. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” the official said. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.” Indeed, what’s a little undermining of democracy between friends?

Full Article: GOP official asks of Trump: ‘What’s the downside for humoring him?’ – The Washington Post

National: No Evidence of Systematic Fraud in U.S. Elections, International Observer Mission Reports | Jess Bravin/Wall Street Journal

A team of international observers invited by the Trump administration has issued a preliminary report giving high marks to the conduct of last week’s elections–and it criticizes President Trump for making baseless allegations that the outcome resulted from systematic fraud. A 28-member delegation from the Organization of American States followed events in several locations across the U.S., including in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan, both remotely and with observers at polling stations and counting centers. “While the OAS Mission has not directly observed any serious irregularities that call into question the results so far, it supports the right of all contesting parties in an election, to seek redress before the competent legal authorities when they believe they have been wronged,” the report said. “It is critical however, that candidates act responsibly by presenting and arguing legitimate claims before the courts, not unsubstantiated or harmful speculation in the public media.” The OAS assessment followed similar findings by an election observation team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions,” Michael Georg Link, leader of the short-term OSCE observer mission, said last week.

Full Article: No Evidence of Systematic Fraud in U.S. Elections, International Observer Mission Reports – WSJ.com

National: Shock and frustration inside Justice Dept. over Barr’s vote-investigation memo | Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

Current and former Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were stunned and frustrated by Attorney General William P. Barr’s move to loosen internal restrictions on how and when federal prosecutors investigate certain election-fraud cases before the results are certified — and worried that Barr was aiding President Trump’s effort to cast doubt on his defeat. The blow to morale was felt most acutely in the Justice Department’s criminal division, which is typically a key player in prosecuting election-related offenses and setting department policy in that area, people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Justice Department deliberations. Some weeks ago, when Barr had first proposed the move, officials in the criminal division — including political leadership — had pushed back vigorously and thought they had dissuaded the attorney general from taking such a step, the people said. Then, without warning, Barr’s memo hit their email inboxes Monday night. Within hours, the head of the department’s election-crimes branch, Richard Pilger, told colleagues he was stepping down from that job and taking a lesser position at the department, citing the new guidance, as others privately seethed.

Full Article: Barr election-fraud memo angers Justice Department officials – The Washington Post

National: Trump’s Legal Blitz Isn’t Contesting Enough Votes to Win | David Voreacos, Greg Stohr and Mark Niquette/Bloomberg

President Donald Trump’s hopes of reversing the outcome of the 2020 election in the courts are running into the reality that the numbers just aren’t there in terms of votes he can dispute — at least not yet. In their most advanced legal challenge, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are trying to have the U.S. Supreme Court toss Pennsylvania ballots that arrived after Nov. 3. But, with all but four of 67 counties reporting, state officials have only logged 7,800 such ballots, said Jacklin Rhoads, spokeswoman for Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania stood at more than 45,000 votes Monday afternoon, not including the late-arriving ballots at issue. “If those ballots couldn’t change the election to make any difference to how Pennsylvania will be decided, then he doesn’t have a claim he can bring,” said Deborah Hellman, a University of Virginia law professor.

Full Article: Trump’s Legal Blitz Isn’t Contesting Enough Votes to Win (1)

National: The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump’s election lies | Lois Beckett and Julia Carrie Wong/The Guardian

The networks have made their calls, world leaders have begun paying their respects, and even Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s other media outlets appear to have given up on a second term for Donald Trump. But in a video posted on Facebook on 7 November and viewed more than 16.5m times since, NewsMax host and former Trump administration official Carl Higbie spends three minutes spewing a laundry list of false and debunked claims casting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election. “I believe it’s time to hold the line,” said Higbie, who resigned from his government post over an extensive track record of racist, homophobic and bigoted remarks, to the Trump faithful. “I’m highly skeptical and you should be too.” The video, which has been shared more than 350,000 times on Facebook, is just one star in a constellation of pro-Trump misinformation that is leading millions of Americans to doubt or reject the results of the presidential election. Fully 70% of Republicans believe that the election was not “free and fair”, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted since election day. Among those doubters, large majorities believe two of Trump’s most brazen lies: that mail-in voting leads to fraud and that ballots were tampered with. Trump himself is the largest source of election misinformation; the president has barely addressed the public since Tuesday except to share lies and misinformation about the election. But his message attacking the electoral process is being amplified by a host of rightwing media outlets and pundits who appear to be jockeying to replace Fox News as the outlet of choice for Trumpists – and metastasizing on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

Full Article: The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump’s election lies | US news | The Guardian

National: Posts falsify ties between election tech firm and Democrats | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

As poll workers tallied votes from the U.S. presidential election, many social media users interpreted a clerk’s error in a small, Republican-leaning Michigan county as vote-rigging because it wrongly favored Joe Biden before being fixed. A week later, that misinterpreted mistake has snowballed into a deluge of false claims that Democrats have deep ties to Dominion Voting Systems, the company that supplies election equipment to Michigan and dozens of other states nationwide. Claims that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Clinton Foundation have interest or influence in Dominion are all unsubstantiated. But that didn’t stop tens of thousands of social media users from amplifying them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram this week.

Full Article: Posts falsify ties between election tech firm and Democrats

Alaska: Here’s why Alaska is the slowest in the nation when it comes to vote counting | Nathaniel Herz/Alaska Public Media

Questions, confusion and speculation about Alaska’s vote-counting process have erupted as state officials wait to count more than 100,000 absentee and other ballots until next week — long after other U.S. states count the vast majority of their votes. Alaska won’t start tallying its remaining ballots — at least 40% of the total — until Tuesday at the earliest, making the state stand out as a gray island in the ubiquitous red and blue electoral vote maps used by national outlets. It’s the only one to have counted less than 60% of its votes, according to figures collected by The New York Times. The timeline is one that Alaska has used before. But in past years, the absentee vote count has typically been an afterthought that affects only the closest of races. This year’s massive, pandemic-driven absentee turnout has changed that. State officials said the wait stems from Alaska’s huge size and complicated logistics: It has polling places in dozens of villages with no road access. Officials said they also need the extra week to finish the time-consuming process of logging the names of each Alaskan who voted on Election Day, then cross-referencing with absentee ballots to make sure no one’s votes are counted twice.

Full Article: Here’s why Alaska is the slowest in the nation when it comes to vote counting – Alaska Public Media

Arizona secretary of state rejects GOP lawmaker’s request for tests of voting machines | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Senate President Karen Fann is seeking an independent analysis of the testing of Arizona voting machines. In a letter to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Prescott Republican said she is not claiming there was fraud in the just-completed election. “But many others are making that claim,” Fann said. And she contends that the outside review will put the “current controversy” to rest. But Hobbs said Fann, while professing no belief in fraud, is herself trafficking in conspiracy theories by even suggesting that an extra – and legally unrequired – step is necessary to quell rumors. “It is patently unreasonable to suggest that, despite there being zero credible evidence of any impropriety or widespread irregularities, election officials nonetheless have a responsibility to prove a negative,” she wrote Tuesday in a response to Fann. “To be clear, there is no ‘current controversy’ regarding elections in Arizona, outside of theories floated by those seeking to undermine our democratic process for political gain,” Hobbs said. “Elected officials should work to build, rather than damage, public confidence in our system.” And the secretary left no doubt about what she intends to do. “I respectfully decline your request to push aside the work that remains to be done to ensure an orderly completion of this election and instead launch and fund with taxpayer dollars a boundless ‘independent’ evaluation of ‘all data related to the tabulation of votes in the 2020 General Election,”’ Hobbs wrote.

Full Article: Arizona secretary of state rejects GOP lawmaker’s request for tests of voting machines | Latest News | tucson.com

California may go all-mail in every election | John Wildermuth/San Francisco Chronicle

The huge turnout and the record number of Californians who cast their votes by mail in last week’s election could mean the end of the line for the garages, school cafeterias and other spots that for decades have been neighborhood polling places. Because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, every active voter in California received a ballot in the mail this fall. And what looks to be 80% of the more than 17 million voters used them. Even the counties that clung to their traditional polling places found few voters willing to use them on election day. In San Francisco, which had 588 polling places open for business, only 6% of its 443,000 voters cast their ballots in person in their local precincts, said John Arntz, the city’s elections director. Even the 43,000 people who dropped their mail ballots off at the polling places amounted to far fewer than in recent elections. “This is likely the last polling place election in San Francisco,” said Arntz, who is scheduled to submit a plan to the Board of Supervisors in February about what would be needed to move to an all-mail system.

Full Article: Goodbye to neighborhood polling places? California may go all-mail in every election – SFChronicle.com

Georgia: Fear of losing Senate majority in runoffs drives GOP embrace of Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud | Robert Costa, Paul Kane and Erica Werner/The Washington Post

Fear over losing the Senate majority by falling short in the upcoming runoff elections for two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia has become a driving and democracy-testing force inside the GOP, with party leaders on Tuesday seeking to delegitimize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory as they labored to rally voters in the state. Those intertwined efforts threaten to disrupt Biden’s hopes of establishing a smooth transition as Republicans in Washington and Georgia, worried about dispiriting the president’s core supporters, increasingly echo his unfounded claims of election fraud and back his refusal to concede. With their power on the line and Trump still the party’s lodestar, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies have made clear that they are now fixated on Jan. 5 — the date of the runoff elections — rather than on Jan. 20, when Biden will be sworn in as the nation’s 46th president. “These runoffs have become the political equivalent of ‘Braveheart’ where everyone paints their face blue and just charges across the field,” said Ralph Reed, a Georgia-based Republican and founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “If we can get the Trump vote back out in the suburbs, we should be able to get this done. But it will be very hard and extremely competitive.” Two Republican losses in January would split the Senate equally between Democrats and Republicans, giving the incoming vice president, Kamala D. Harris, a tie-breaking vote and Democrats control of all levers of government.

Full Article: Fear of losing Senate majority in Georgia runoffs drives GOP embrace of Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud – The Washington Post

Georgia: Trump campaign seeks hand recount, could get it | Jeff Amy and Kate Brumback/Associated Press

Republicans are making more demands of Georgia’s chief elections officer as they seek to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s 12,000-vote lead in the state’s presidential race. U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, who’s leading President Donald Trump’s recount team in Georgia, and state Republican Party Chairman David Shafer sent a letter to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Tuesday requesting that he order a hand recount of Georgia’s nearly 5 million ballots before certifying the results. The move comes a day after Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler called for Raffensperger’s resignation, claiming he ran the election poorly but citing no specific incidents of wrongdoing. Perdue will face Democrat Jon Ossoff and Loeffler will face Democrat Raphael Warnock in Jan. 5 runoffs that are likely to determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Raffensperger has refused to step down and defended how his office conducted the election. His office has refuted a number of claims made by Trump supporters. “The process of reporting results has been orderly and followed the law,” Raffensperger said in a Monday statement. “Where there have been specific allegations of illegal voting, my office has dispatched investigators.”

Full Article: Trump campaign seeks hand recount in Georgia, could get it

Michigan: Trump campaign says new lawsuit seeks to stop certification of election results | Dave Boucher/Detroit Free Press

The campaign of President Donald Trump said Tuesday it is suing Michigan in federal court in an effort to prevent final certification of the state’s election results, as Trump continues to refuse to concede to Joe Biden or accept the outcome of the race for the presidency. The allegations of election misconduct are similar to those outlined in other lawsuits in Michigan and additional states. These lawsuits have largely not succeeded; some incorporate allegations that have been debunked or refuted, either by the Free Press or elections officials.  Attorneys for the Trump campaign said the new lawsuit would be filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Although the bulk of the allegations appear to focus on Detroit, located on the other side of the state, the seat of state government in Lansing is located in the Western District.  As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, the lawsuit was not available in the federal court’s online document system.

Full Article: Trump campaign wants lawsuit to stop certification of election results

Nevada: No Evidence To Support Claims Californians Fraudulently Voted In Nevada Election | Chris Nichols/capradio

Several days after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Nevada, conservative groups continue to make unproven claims about voter fraud, even suggesting that votes from Californians helped Biden win in the Silver State. The Associated Press and other media organizations declared Biden the winner on Saturday. His margin has steadily increased to 36,000, with 97% of the votes counted as of Tuesday. Here’s why AP called the state for Biden. Last week, however, President Donald Trump’s campaign and Republicans in Nevada claimed without evidence that thousands of people who had moved out of Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas, had voted in the state’s presidential election. PolitiFact rated that claim False because it’s unproven, noting that people who move within 30 days before an election can cast a vote in their prior state of residence or their new state, either in-person or by mail, according to the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office. A Nevadan who goes to another state for college can also request a ballot and vote in the Silver State. The list provided last week by Trump’s lawyers included addresses for Americans serving overseas in the military, who are also legally allowed to vote absentee in Nevada.

Full Article: No Evidence To Support Claims Californians Fraudulently Voted In Nevada Election – capradio.org

North Carolina: Absentee ballots continue to narrow margins in uncalled elections | Danielle Battaglia/Raleigh News & Observer

North Carolina voters are waiting for six statewideraces to be called as elections officials meet to poreover absentee ballots. Boards of elections in all 100 counties will collect ballots with a Nov. 3 postmark through 5 p.m. Thursday. Then the boards will meet to finalize North Carolina’s election results. There are 27,500 absentee ballots that have been accepted by county boards after Election Day and 23,091 provisional ballots that haven’t been disqualified whichcould ultimately be counted toward the results, the state Board of Elections said in a written statement Tuesday afternoon. As boards continue to count the absentee ballots, the margins have narrowed between candidates in many of the uncalled races. As of Tuesday there were about 93,000 outstanding absentee ballots. Many of those ballots won’t be returned, and some might not be counted. Election Day was Nov. 3, but the margins between some candidates were too close for a winner to be declared.

Full Article: Absentee ballots continue to narrow margins in uncalled NC elections | Danielle Battaglia/Raleigh News & Observer

Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers to probe unverified fraud claims in election they largely won | by Cynthia Fernandez and Marie Albiges/Philadelphia Inquirer

As President Donald Trump continues to question the integrity of Pennsylvania’s election while repeating unverified claims of voter fraud, state Republicans are once again seeking greater powers to investigate the voting process. Roughly two dozen House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday called for the creation of an investigatory committee with subpoena power to conduct an immediate audit, saying they had fielded widespread doubts about the fairness of the Nov. 3 presidential election. House Republicans championed a similar proposal before the election but abandoned it after Democrats raised concerns it would be weaponized to impound ballots, interrogate election officials, and delay the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results. At the state Capitol, Rep. Dawn Keefer (R., York) said the assembled lawmakers’ offices had been “overwhelmed with calls and emails and other messages from constituents who are confused and outraged by the circumstances surrounding this election.” … Pennsylvania already has safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy of election results, experts told Spotlight PA and Votebeat. In addition to routine reviews in each county required by law, the state has started to pilot “risk-limiting” audits, a process that verifies whether a sample of paper ballots matches results captured electronically by voting machines.

Full Article: Pa. GOP lawmakers to probe unverified fraud claims in election they largely won