Three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. She told him that some Republican members of Congress believed the only path for President Donald Trump to change the outcome of the 2020 election and stay in power was for him to declare martial law. The text from Greene (R-Ga.), revealed this week, brought to the fore the chorus of Republicans who were publicly and privately advocating for Trump to try to use the military and defense apparatus of the U.S. government to strong-arm his way past an electoral defeat. Now, discussions involving the Trump White House about using emergency powers have become an important — but little-known — part of the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation of the 2021 attack on the Capitol. In subpoenas, document requests and court filings, the panel has demanded information about any Trump administration plans to use presidential emergency powers to invoke martial law or take other steps to overturn the 2020 election. Interviews with committee members and a review of the panel’s information requests reveals a focus on emergency powers that were being considered by Trump and his allies in several categories: invoking the Insurrection Act, declaring martial law, using presidential powers to justify seizing assets of voting-machine companies, and using the military to require a rerun of the election. “Trump’s invocation of these emergency powers would have been unprecedented in all of American history,” said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge.
States struggle to add paper trails to voting machines | Eric Geller/Politico
In a midterm election season where many Republicans are running for Congress on the false premise that the last presidential election was stolen, voters in eight states still vote on machines that don’t keep a hack-proof record of who they voted for — and progress on replacing those machines has been slow. After the extremely close 2000 election, which showed the pitfalls of relying on paper punchcard ballots, many jurisdictions turned to paperless electronic voting machines. But cybersecurity experts objected, warning that paperless machines undermined election security by making it impossible to reliably audit the results. Russia’s interference in the 2016 election galvanized a move back to paper records, albeit with new electronic machines that print out ballots. Since then, seven states have replaced paperless machines with devices that security experts consider safer.
Full Article: States struggle to add paper trails to voting machines