Editorials – The Voting News

Editorial: The Courts Are the Only Thing Holding Back Total Election Subversion | Richard L. Hasen/The Atlantic

November 4, 2022

The United States has failed its first important test for democracy since the 2020 election season: Election denialism has taken hold among a significant segment of Republican voters, and election deniers are poised to win elections next week. They will go on to oversee or certify some elections in 2024. The question that matters now is whether the next line of defense for American democracy—our system of state and federal courts—is strong enough for the task ahead. Things were bad enough at the end of 2020 and into early 2021. Donald Trump’s relentless invocation of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him through phantom fraud and technical irregularities led to frivolous lawsuits, protests and threats against election workers, and the violence of the January 6 insurrection. When Trump left the White House on January 20, courageous and focused Republican leadership could have quashed Trumpian antidemocratic forces, especially if Democratic leadership had had an earlier singular focus on preventing election subversion.

Full Article: The Courts Are the Only Thing Holding Back Total Election Subversion – The Atlantic

Editorial: The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has. | Jamelle Bouie/The New York Times

October 21, 2022

The move from democracy to autocracy isn’t a sudden shift. It is not a switch that flips from light to dark with nothing in between. But it’s also not quite right to call the path to authoritarianism a journey. To use a metaphor of travel or distance is to suggest something external, removed, foreign. It is better, in the U.S. context at least, to think of authoritarianism as something like a contradiction nestled within the American democratic tradition. It is part of the whole, a reflection of the fact that American notions of freedom and liberty are deeply informed by both the experience of slaveholding and the drive to seize land and expel its previous inhabitants. As the historian Edmund Morgan once wrote of the Virginians who helped lead the fight for Anglo-American independence, “The presence of men and women who were, in law at least, almost totally subject to the will of other men gave to those in control of them an immediate experience of what it could mean to be at the mercy of a tyrant.” Virginians, he continued, “may have had a special appreciation of the freedom dear to republicans, because they saw every day what life without it could be like.”

Full Article: Opinion | The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has. – The New York Times

Editorial: ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy | David Leonhardt /The New York Times

September 23, 2022

The United States has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War presented threats from global totalitarian movements. The 1960s and ’70s were marred by assassinations, riots, a losing war and a disgraced president. These earlier periods were each more alarming in some ways than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet during each of those previous times of tumult, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and attempt to address the country’s problems. The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades.

Full Article: ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy – The New York Times

Editorial: Congress’s first job right now: Safeguarding democracy | The Washington Post

September 9, 2022

Congress has a lot on its to-do list ahead of November’s midterm elections — confirming circuit-court judges, funding the government and possibly enshrining same-sex marriage protections along the way. But at least as important is a piece of business getting less attention: passing the Electoral Count Reform Act. The bipartisan bill would mend and modernize the archaic 1887 law that governs the counting and certifying of votes in presidential elections — the same law that President Donald Trump and his allies tried to exploit to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election results. Reform would protect the democratic process from future attacks from unprincipled politicians who would manipulate the system to install their favored candidates in the White House, regardless of the voters’ will. The reform bill was introduced to some fanfare over the summer, after months of negotiations led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). It’s essential that the measure not lose steam this fall, amid competing priorities and political tumult. The packed Senate schedule that Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his party must navigate is only one problem. Another is naysaying from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, which might soon issue its own recommendations. Certainly, tweaks to the bill — some of them under discussion as part of the Rules Committee’s work-up — would strengthen the proposal. Some of them are easy to make and should be uncontroversial. Others, sensible or not, could imperil the entire enterprise. These should be approached with caution.

Full Article: Opinion | Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act, now – The Washington Post

Editorial: American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic | Louis Menand/The New Yorker

August 16, 2022

To look on the bright side for a moment, one effect of the Republican assault on elections—which takes the form, naturally, of the very thing Republicans accuse Democrats of doing: rigging the system—might be to open our eyes to how undemocratic our democracy is. Strictly speaking, American government has never been a government “by the people.” This is so despite the fact that more Americans are voting than ever before. In 2020, sixty-seven per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot for President. That was the highest turnout since 1900, a year when few, if any, women, people under twenty-one, Asian immigrants (who could not become citizens), Native Americans (who were treated as foreigners), or Black Americans living in the South (who were openly disenfranchised) could vote. Eighteen per cent of the total population voted in that election. In 2020, forty-eight per cent voted. Some members of the loser’s party have concluded that a sixty-seven-per-cent turnout was too high. They apparently calculate that, if fewer people had voted, Donald Trump might have carried their states. Last year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, legislatures in nineteen states passed thirty-four laws imposing voting restrictions. (Trump and his allies had filed more than sixty lawsuits challenging the election results and lost all but one of them.) In Florida, it is now illegal to offer water to someone standing in line to vote. Georgia is allowing counties to eliminate voting on Sundays. In 2020, Texas limited the number of ballot-drop-off locations to one per county, insuring that Loving County, the home of fifty-seven people, has the same number of drop-off locations as Harris County, which includes Houston and has 4.7 million people.

Full Article: American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic | The New Yorker

Editorial: Preventing the Next Jan. 6 Riot | Wall Street Journal

July 22, 2022

Like a buried artillery shell from a long-ago war, the 1887 Electoral Count Act (ECA) was a law waiting to explode. By giving Congress a process for rejecting Electoral College votes, the ECA created a constitutional hazard that detonated on Jan. 6, 2021. This week 16 Senators, led by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Joe Manchin, unveiled legislation to overhaul the ECA and stop future electoral mischief. The bill isn’t perfect, but it’s worth passing.

Source: Preventing the Next Jan. 6 Riot – WSJ

Editorial: How the Supreme Court could make the Trumpist 2024 threat more dangerous | Greg Sargent/The Washington Post

July 8, 2022

Although there are reasons to be skeptical that Donald Trump will run for president in 2024, one thing could push him into it: Mounting legal troubles. With his potential crimes related to the insurrection becoming clearer, he is reportedly growing more serious about running, reasoning that as a candidate, he’ll be harder to prosecute. As it happens, this is unfolding even as the Supreme Court has announced plans to hear a case next term that could upend democracy. The court will likely validate in some form the “independent state legislature” theory, which could expand the power of state legislatures over elections in radically anti-democratic ways. That has generated much discussion of how the theory could enable hyperpartisan gerrymandering. But it could also enable more election subversion, which could dovetail with the looming Trump threat in combustible ways. Even if Trump doesn’t run, the tendencies he’s unleashed — Republicans are running for positions of control over election machinery while essentially vowing to treat future elections as subject to nullification — could be made more dangerous by the court’s ruling.

Full Article: Opinion | How the Supreme Court could make the Trumpist 2024 threat more dangerous – The Washington Post

America Is In Denial | Mitt Romney/The Atlantic

July 1, 2022

Even as we watch the reservoirs and lakes of the West go dry, we keep watering our lawns, soaking our golf courses, and growing water-thirsty crops. As inflation mounts and the national debt balloons, progressive politicians vote for ever more spending. As the ice caps melt and record temperatures make the evening news, we figure that buying a Prius and recycling the boxes from our daily Amazon deliveries will suffice. When TV news outlets broadcast video after video of people illegally crossing the nation’s southern border, many of us change the channel. And when a renowned conservative former federal appellate judge testifies that we are already in a war for our democracy and that January 6, 2021, was a genuine constitutional crisis, MAGA loyalists snicker that he speaks slowly and celebrate that most people weren’t watching. What accounts for the blithe dismissal of potentially cataclysmic threats? The left thinks the right is at fault for ignoring climate change and the attacks on our political system. The right thinks the left is the problem for ignoring illegal immigration and the national debt. But wishful thinking happens across the political spectrum. More and more, we are a nation in denial.

Full Articxle: Mitt Romney: America Is In Denial – The Atlantic

Editorial: The latest GOP primaries point to serious election chaos ahead | Paul Waldman/The Washington Post

June 17, 2022

We’re in primary season, which means that almost every Tuesday, a few new election deniers win the Republican nomination for seats from governor to senator to city councilperson. And what we’re seeing in the latest primaries is truly ominous for the future of democracy. November’s election is going to bring chaos. And as bad as it will be, it’s only a taste of what’s to come in 2024. That election could be an outright cataclysm — potentially nothing less than the end of democracy as we have known it. Consider the Nevada primaries that just concluded on Tuesday. Nevada is exactly the kind of swing state that could go to the opposition party in an off year, and the Republican Party there is now dominated by conspiracy theorists. Its nominee for Senate is Adam Laxalt, who insists that Donald Trump was the true winner in 2020 and has said that while fraud happens in cities where Democrats live, the vote in Republican areas is “legitimate.” Even worse, the Republican nominee for secretary of state is right-wing extremist Jim Marchant. He got into the election denial business when he lost a race for U.S. House; he claimed it was stolen from him. Marchant’s website says his top priority will be overhauling Nevada’s “fraudulent” elections, and he has said he would not have certified Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state. Marchant is just one of many election deniers running for governor and secretary of state this year, including in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan. Almost inevitably, some of them are going to win.

Full Article: Opinion | The latest GOP primaries point to serious election chaos ahead – The Washington Post

Editorial: The Jan 6. committee should be looking ahead to election threats in 2024 | Richard L. Hasen/The Washington Post

June 10, 2022

The special House committee hearings investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — which begin Thursday night in prime time — may serve multiple purposes: They could reveal more evidence that could be used to file criminal charges for attempted election subversion against some of former president Donald Trump’s lawyers, against people who tried to manipulate the count of electoral college votes and potentially against Trump himself. They could provide the most comprehensive account yet of the unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election — a gift to future historians. But the most important thing the hearings can do — given that, if someone tries to steal the next election, they won’t do it precisely the way Trump and his allies tried in 2020 — is to shift our gaze forward: They can highlight continuing vulnerabilities in our electoral system and propose ways to fix them, before it is too late. The hearings also represent the best chance to galvanize public support to address these weak points, which is important, because the window for passing such legislation is closing; if Republicans retake the House in November, they will never put forth bills that imply the country needs protection from Trump, their kingmaker. If these hearings don’t spur action by this summer or fall, expect Congress to do nothing before the 2024 elections, at which point American democracy will be in great danger. Any attempt to subvert the next presidential election is likely to be far more efficient and ruthlessly targeted than the last effort. It will be focused on holes and ambiguities in the arcane rules for counting electoral college votes set forth in the Constitution and in a poorly written 1887 law, the Electoral Count Act.

Full Article: The Jan 6. committee should be looking ahead to election threats in 2024 – The Washington Post

Editorial: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election | J. Michael Luttig/CNN

April 29, 2022

Nearly a year and a half later, surprisingly few understand what January 6 was all about. Fewer still understand why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the “stolen” election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen. January 6 was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square, under legislatively promulgated election rules in a handful of swing states that he and other Republicans contend were unlawfully changed by state election officials and state courts to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the Covid pandemic. The Republicans’ mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective. That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as they would have us believe. That’s constitutionally impossible. Trump’s and the Republicans’ far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.

Full Article: Opinion: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election – CNN

Editorial: The Other Way Trump Could Steal the White House in 2024 | Scott R. Anderson/Politico

April 25, 2022

The latest drip, drip, drip of news surrounding the effort to overturn the 2020 election underscores how much we still don’t know about the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021. But one thing that’s clear is that the procedural steps used to select the next president are ripe for abuse. Congress has finally begun to turn its attention to this issue, with a bipartisan group of lawmakers focused thus far on fixing the Electoral Count Act. The 1887 law regulates the process through which Congress counts the electoral votes after each presidential election; it also has a host of ambiguities, many of which were seized on by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to try to keep him in office despite his defeat. Congress is right to address vulnerabilities in our election process. But reformers can’t simply fight the last war if they truly want to protect the presidency. When counting the results of the 2024 presidential election, Trump’s supporters won’t control the vice presidency like they did in 2020. Hence, if they want to try and seize the White House again, they will have to use new strategies that use those political institutions they do control. At present, a House majority is perhaps the one thing Trump’s supporters seem most likely to run during the 2024 presidential election. But that alone might be enough to steal the presidency, unless and until Congress says otherwise.

Full Article: Opinion | The Other Way Trump Could Steal the White House in 2024 – POLITICO

Editorial: We shouldn’t abandon machine-counted election ballots | Douglas W. Jones/Des Moines Register

March 25, 2022

Proposals nationally to abandon voting machinery in favor of hand-counted paper ballots reported in the March 13 Register (“Some push for counts by hand,” Page 5A) pose significant problems. Hand counting works well where there is only one race on the ballot. In many parliamentary democracies, you vote for your member, the parliament elects the prime minster, and that’s it. Hand-counting such ballots is very fast; you just divide the ballots into stacks according to how they are voted and then count the number of pieces of paper in each stack. In contrast, hand counts of U.S.-style ballots are messy. A small rural county might have 20 races on the ballot, and larger urban counties usually have many more. By around 1930, the majority of urban voters in the United States were using mechanical voting machines, so you have to look before that to see how well, or poorly, hand counting works. Clerical errors were common when hand counting was the norm. We still see these errors when votes are processed by hand. The wild swings in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District in 2020 that led to a recount were all attributed to clerical errors. Machines were used to count the ballots in that race, but combining the results from multiple precincts and counties was not fully automated. Outright fraud attracts the most attention. In the days of hand counting, tally clerks sometimes parked pieces of pencil lead under their fingernails so they could mark on ballots they disliked. The mark didn’t even need to look like a vote because most states have laws that disqualify ballots having “identifying marks.” An even more subtle approach was for biased election workers to demand strict enforcement of disqualifying rules for ballots they disliked while being lenient about accepting ballots they liked. This leads to a spiraling arms race where partisan vote counters disqualify an ever-increasing fraction of the ballots until the election is determined by who can disqualify the most ballots instead of by how the voters feel.

Full Article: Opinion: Don’t abandon machine-counted election ballots

Editorial: How Liz Cheney could force voters to defend our foundational principles | Barney Frank/The Washington Post

February 11, 2022

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and the Democratic leadership have already done American democracy a major service by their mutually respectful cooperation in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Their demonstration that political leaders can jointly defend foundational principles while differing sharply on other issues is invaluable. It could also be the basis for a great opportunity for American voters: the chance to express their support for the integrity of the democratic process regardless of their views on any other questions. This can be accomplished with a two-step process. First, Cheney runs for reelection, not in the primary to become the official Republican nominee but as a principled independent in the general election who retains her personal Republican allegiance. Second, Wyoming Democrats do not support a candidate to oppose her. The result would be a November contest in which all citizens of Wyoming could choose between two candidates who are aligned on the broad range of public policy issues and differ largely on the question of Donald Trump’s assault on the electoral process. Cheney can make clear that if elected, she will not vote for a Democratic speaker or change her position on any substantive questions. This will make it possible for other Republican leaders who share her principled commitment to campaign for her even though she is not the official nominee.

Full Article: Opinion | How Liz Cheney could force voters to defend our foundational principles – The Washington Post

Editorial: Jan. 6 attack on multiracial democracy requires Senate to protect freedom to vote | Spencer Overton/The Hill

January 7, 2022

Last year’s assault on the U.S. Capitol is not over. While our nation grows more diverse each day, the attack on multiracial democracy continues today through schemes to suppress votes across the nation. In 2021, Georgia, Florida, Texas and 16 other states enacted 24 laws restricting access to voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The most popular restrictions make voter registration more difficult, expand opportunities to purge voters from the rolls, make it harder to vote by mail, limit early voting, reduce polling place availability and enact more restrictive photo ID requirements. Granted, these new voting restrictions are not as graphic as largely white insurrectionists parading Confederate flags and using violence to storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn legitimate election results. However, we must not dismiss this wave of voting restrictions as typical partisan bickering over regulatory minutiae. The last 12 months alone accounted for one-third of restrictive state voting laws enacted in the last decade. Just like the Jan. 6 attack, the new voting restrictions seek to thwart the will of our diverse nation and are fueled by the false premise that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump.

Full Article: Jan. 6 attack on multiracial democracy requires Senate to protect freedom to vote | TheHill

Editorial: Fixing the Electoral Count Act is no substitute for real election reform | Fred Wertheimer and Norman Eisen/The Washington Post

January 7, 2022

With the Senate finally scheduling action to address the national epidemic of voter suppression and election hijacking laws, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others in his party have suddenly found an alternative election reform they are signaling they will consider instead. They suggest reforming the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the statute that guides congressional handling of presidential elections once every four years. We should not fall for this bait and switch. We strongly support ECA reforms — but they are no substitute for addressing the larger election assault that is hitting every voter in every election. Indeed, ECA reform is meaningless without a fix for those more fundamental problems. It’s not just McConnell who is suddenly open to election reform. Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) just announced that the GOP could consider ECA fixes. The otherwise anti-reform Wall Street Journal editorial page took the same line. On “Meet the Press,” conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg contended that reforming the ECA would mean “dealing with the real problem.” Pieces in other prominent publications have sung the same tune. And news has now emerged of bipartisan discussions of the topic. Some of these individuals point to the fact that ambiguities in the ECA may have contributed to chaos exactly one year ago on Jan. 6, 2021. They also say that there might be bipartisan willingness to address these problems, as opposed to what they claim to be a partisan Democratic drive to pass the more comprehensive voting reforms of other bills that would counter open suppression of minority votes and the many other worst excesses of hundreds of state legislative efforts across the land. Last year, state lawmakers considered 440 bills that would restrict the vote or give legislatures the power to disregard it entirely. In 19 states, 34 of those bills have become law. And there is no reason to believe that the onslaught will stop in 2022.

Full Article: Fixing the Electoral Count Act is no substitute for real election reform – The Washington Post

Editorial: Intimidation of Wisconsin election officials corrodes democracy | Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

December 23, 2021

The recent pattern of attempted intimidation of state and local election officials, combined with attempts to inject partisan influence over the casting and counting of votes, has thrust Wisconsin into the harsh spotlight of a destructive nationwide trend which, if successful, will corrode public faith in our election process. We formed the bipartisan Election Officials Legal Defense Network precisely in response to these extraordinary developments — threats of physical harm and of criminal prosecutions directed against election officials who will not bend to one party’s desired outcomes. The network is managed by the nationally-respected, nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, and includes a bipartisan advisory board of more than 30 election officials and experts from around the country. All officials and staffers under attack who want free legal representation will have access to it through the network. We have been gratified by the number of lawyers and law firms prepared to offer their services, and seek additional volunteers. To underscore our commitment to this effort and make clear the availability of support through the network for election officials in Wisconsin as well around the nation, we will be holding a press event in Madison with election experts and a Wisconsin state senator to address the nature of this threat and the response that we believe is required. Actions and threats of prosecution by some Wisconsin legislators and the Racine County sheriff illustrate why the network is necessary.

Full Article: Intimidation of Wisconsin election officials corrodes democracy

Editorial: Republicans in Congress Should Update the Electoral Count Act Before It’s Too Late | Benjamin L. Ginsberg/National Review

December 10, 2021

Donald Trump should want the Electoral Count Act of 1887 amended. And he should want it done even though his some of his Democratic opponents may want the same thing. Designed to govern Congress’s tabulation of Electoral College votes — including disputes between the chambers — the aged law is a swamp of ambiguity. Its byzantine, vague, and muddled provisions do not provide sufficient answers to crucial questions that could arise in a genuinely close election. Despite the fact that the former president’s attempts to exploit those shortcomings failed in 2020, he and all Republicans should be haunted by the blueprint that he has created for his opponents if he were to run for office again in 2024. Republicans should not deceive themselves by thinking the current state of this law automatically works to their advantage. While many of them used it offensively on January 6, 2021, they did so because they were trailing in Electoral College votes. They poked at real flaws, and while not successful because the vice president rebuffed Trump’s legally unsupportable command that the states’ certifications be rejected, Republicans did show how the system can be maneuvered. Republicans should be in favor of clarifying the system now, if for no other reason than they will not be in as strong a position as they were in 2020. For starters, a Democratic vice president will be presiding over the Senate when the Electoral College votes are opened. Suppose Trump runs again, and wins. Now, suppose Vice President Harris believes that Trump’s reelection represents an existential threat to the county and does what Trump couldn’t persuade Mike Pence to do.

Full Article: Electoral Count Act: Congress Should Update | National Review

Editorial: With democracy under duress, a few — but too few — Republicans speak up | Scot Lehigh/The Boston Globe

November 30, 2021

For those who dwell in the rational world, one of the most disconcerting aspects of our current era is the extraordinary purchase falsity has gained in our nation’s politics. It’s not merely a foothold that has been secured, but a stronghold. The entire Republican Party, almost, if one counts not just those who propagate patently dishonest claims, but also those who enable those lies through their silence. I’m speaking here, obviously, about the enormous and corrosive falsehood that Donald Trump had a presidential election victory stolen from him last year. That’s evidence-free absurdity on stilts, which is why scores of Big Lie lawsuits failed in courts across the country. It’s why recounts and audits — including even the clownish Cyber Ninjas effort in Maricopa County, Ariz. — have confirmed Joe Biden’s victory. It’s why Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s reckless lawyer, was recently forced into the sheepish acknowledgment that he had culled some of his lurid voter fraud claims from social media posts (!) and sometimes hadn’t even made a cursory effort to investigate those allegations before spewing them out. Yet in the face of all that, the vast majority of congressional Republicans remain mute about the Big Lie, refusing either to reject it forcefully or to rebuke Trump for its telling. Discounting the occasional congressional kook, most obviously know better. Some stay silent to avoid Trump’s wrath. Others don’t have the fortitude to challenge a myth believed by 68 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of the Fox-washed faithful. Others are amoral accommodationists who believe the Republican Party’s best path back to party power is to keep Trump and his supporters on the GOP side of the political jungle.

Full Article: With democracy under duress, a few — but too few — Republicans speak up – The Boston Globe

Editorial: We must protect our elections now. National security is at stake. | James R. Clapper and Michael Hayden/The Washington Post

November 12, 2021

By now, it is well documented that in 2020 a sitting president and his allies tried to overturn the results of an election, triggering the worst political violence this country has seen in living memory. It is also clear that this attempt to undermine our democracy did not end with the transition to a new president, but continues with active efforts to make sure the next sabotage succeeds where the last one failed. What is less widely understood — and what keeps us up at night — is how great a threat these activities pose to our national security. This looming crisis is why we, along with nearly 100 other former national security and military officials, issued a statement urging Congress to prioritize protecting election integrity. We both served at the highest levels of our country’s intelligence community, under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, and we know that our foreign adversaries and other bad actors are licking their chops as they watch efforts to destabilize our elections. At the heart of the attack is a homegrown disinformation campaign meant to sow doubt in the U.S. voting system. Unfortunately, it is working — poll after poll shows declining trust in our elections and declining belief in the concept of democracy, particularly among Republicans. And these effects will not be contained to our borders. We have personally seen the lengths to which our foreign adversaries will go to take advantage of any cracks in the foundation of our democracy. One of us was director of national intelligence during the period leading up to the 2016 presidential vote and saw firsthand how Russia used social media to exploit disinformation, polarization and divisiveness. The Russians’ objective was to breed discord, and they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Now others have gone to school on the Russian example and will seek to prey on our country’s state of affairs in just the same way.

Full Article: Opinion | James Clapper and Michael Hayden: We must protect our elections now. National security is at stake. – The Washington Post

Editorial: John Eastman’s legal theory created for Trump is still alive. The Jan. 6 committee should kill it. | Greg Sargent/The Washington Post

October 22, 2021

As the Jan. 6 select committee kicks into high gear, one big thing it will examine is the role played by Mike Pence in the final days of Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his presidential reelection loss and remain in power illegitimately. As vice president, Pence ultimately rebuffed Trump’s pressure on him to halt the congressional count of electors and declare Trump winner. Whether he did so after seriously entertaining this scheme, and what other bad actors pressured him to execute it, are things we need to learn about. But we also need to do something else: We must kill off the dangerous legal theory that Trump and his co-conspirators hatched to justify that scheme, so it never rises again. Some new reporting on Pence’s role, combined with a new analysis of that legal theory, should give us the hook for this. It’s important, because there are new signs this legal theory remains alive, though in staggering zombie form. The theory is the one in the now-notorious Trump coup memo. Lawyer John Eastman outlined a scheme for Pence to ignore federal law and refuse to count President-elect Joe Biden’s electors, making Trump winner. Eastman discussed the theory with Trump and Pence a couple days before Jan. 6. Pence was unpersuaded. A new book by reporter David M. Drucker adds more detail to Pence’s handling of Trump’s pressure. As Drucker reports, Pence’s top advisers — counsel Greg Jacob and chief of staff Marc Short — deeply researched the theory and decided Pence should disavow it, which he did on Jan. 6.

Full Article: Opinion | John Eastman’s legal theory created for Trump is still alive. The Jan. 6 committee should kill it. – The Washington Post

Editorial: The 2020 Election Was Nothing Like Bush-Gore | Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg

October 13, 2021

In today’s exercise in whataboutism, it turns out that (as some pundits are keen to remind everyone) there are Democrats who have claimed that the 2000 election was stolen, which presumably is important to bring up because it somehow turns the behavior of Donald Trump and his apologists into normal politics and those who are worried about the future of democracy into partisan hypocrites. It’s worth thinking about this a bit, in part because it shows we don’t quite have the vocabulary for what’s happening now and why it’s so different and dangerous. There’s a long history of partisans complaining that an election was stolen. Many Republicans, to this day, will refer to the 1960 election as obviously stolen because of irregularities in Texas and Illinois. I’m aware of accusations about (at least) the 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 elections as well. Oh, and of course 1972, when Richard Nixon and his supporters did all sorts of illegal things to disrupt the election, although it turned out that he won by one of the largest landslides in history only in part because of the effects of this misconduct. In the others, there were accusations of everything from campaign perfidy to plots to alter vote counts to claims that a candidate was ineligible for office. To begin, I’d note that all the elections before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were stolen in the important sense that Black citizens and many others were disenfranchised. Which reminds us that not all talk of election theft is partisan. Nor is all of it based on lies. How can we talk about this stuff then? I can think of several important criteria to consider. How much evidence is there for the claims that are made? To what extent would the accusations, if true, actually affect the election results? How did the aggrieved party as a whole, and any particular member of that party, act? Did they just whine a lot, or did they take concrete actions to attempt to alter the results — and if the latter, were these actions consistent with the Constitution and the rule of law?

Full Article: The 2020 Election Was Nothing Like Bush-Gore – Bloomberg

Editorial: Trump Loses Arizona—Again – He still cries ‘fraud’ even after the audit he demanded found none. | Wall Street Journal

October 13, 2021

Former President Trump claims Arizona’s ballot audit found “massive fraud,” yet the new recount says he actually lost the state by 360 more votes than originally reported. He is now demanding an audit of the 2020 election in . . . Texas, which he won by nearly six points. When are Republicans going to quit playing this game? Arizona’s official results say President Biden won by 10,457 votes. Mr. Trump never accepted the loss, so the GOP state Senate launched an “audit” by hiring Cyber Ninjas, a company without experience reviewing elections. After repeated delays and various pratfalls, here’s the result: A hand recount of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots says that Mr. Biden won the state by 10,817 votes. There’s no reason to prefer this tally over the certified one, given the audit’s erratic process and lack of transparency. For details, see a June report co-written by Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s former GOP Secretary of State, warning that Cyber Ninjas “will not produce findings that should be trusted.” The good news is they don’t need to be trusted, since the result is the same, except with worse numbers for Mr. Trump. True to his nature, Mr. Trump is claiming vindication based on the audit’s analysis of voter files. As the biggest example, he says Arizona’s results include “23,344 mail-in ballots, despite the person no longer living at that address. Phantom voters!” No. Did he read the report? This figure comes from comparing voter records to a commercial database on change-of-address filings, but look at the caveats.

Full Article: Trump Loses Arizona—Again – WSJ

Editorial: Will 2024 Be the Year American Democracy Dies? | Spencer Bokat-Lindell/The New York Times

October 5, 2021

Nearly nine months after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, a question still lingers over how to place it in history: Were the events of Jan. 6 the doomed conclusion of an unusually anti-democratic moment in American political life, or a preview of where the country is still heading? Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law and an expert in election law, believes the second possibility shouldn’t be ruled out. In a paper published this month, he wrote that “The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly, and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules.” It could be a bloodless coup, he warns, executed not by rioters with nooses but “lawyers in fine suits”: Between January and June, Republican-controlled legislatures passed 24 laws across 14 states to increase their control over how elections are run, stripping secretaries of state of their power and making it easier to overturn results. How much danger is American democracy really in, and what can be done to safeguard it? Here’s what people are saying.

Source: Opinion | Will 2024 Be the Year American Democracy Dies? – The New York Times

Editorial: Don’t be afraid of the election audits — they may be our only ticket out of this mess | Benjamin L. Ginsberg/The Washington Post

October 5, 2021

Bring on the audits. Really. As a Republican election lawyer who has participated in more than 30 post-election recounts, contests and audits, I am extremely confident: They won’t find anything. The massive fraud that former president Donald Trump claims tarnished the 2020 election has been and will remain illusory — because it didn’t exist. But audits, I believe, can be the friend of sanity, helping everyone in the political process, especially the Republicans who understand that convincing their voters that elections are hopelessly rigged is no way to win elections. Denying reality is not a successful electoral strategy. My argument to Republicans is simple: In the end, Trump’s elections-are-rigged message is going to hurt not only our democracy but also Republicans more than it hurts Democrats. So to the extent that some of those who have bought into Trump’s delusional claims of a stolen election can be dislodged from this view by the repeated conclusions of the audits he himself has called for, my advice is: Bring it on. Welcome them with open arms. The furies have already been unleashed. And if there’s a better plan to dispel the “big lie” out there, no one’s described it. The status quo is not sustainable, Trump is corroding American democracy with his unproven charges of fraudulent elections. Almost 30 percent of the electorate — and an astonishing 66 percent of Republicans — say they buy into Trump’s “big lie.” Constant fact-checking and reprobation by mainstream media outlets and good-government groups have not budged that number.

Full Article: Opinion | Don’t be afraid of the election audits — they may be our only ticket out of this mess – The Washington Post

Editorial: The GOP isn’t just re-litigating 2020. It’s pre-litigating 2022. And 2024. | Olivier Knox/The Washington Post

October 1, 2021

The best way to understand the aggressive Republican push to cast doubt on the 2020 election results and rewrite voting procedures in states the GOP controls is not as re-litigating President Biden’s victory, though that is a tool for trying to undermine him. Instead, it’s better understood as pre-litigating 2022 and 2024: Laying the foundation for challenging or even overturning Democratic victories of the lowercase “d” democratic variety in the future. Yes, I know that this has been blindingly obvious for some time. (Also, I offer my apologies to all of my English teachers for “pre-litigating.” I blame years of covering State of the Union “preactions.”) But consider what we’ve learned — though “confirmed” might be a better word — over the past week about former president Donald Trump’s avalanche of false claims he was cheated out of a second term. And consider he’s flirting with running again and has been repeating this nonsense at campaign-style rallies. First, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — hardly “Never Trump” politicians — personally investigated the Trump camp’s claims of widespread irregularities and found nothing to deter them from voting to certify Biden’s victory.

Full Article: The GOP isn’t just re-litigating 2020. It’s pre-litigating 2022. And 2024. – The Washington Post

Editorial: America would be much better off if our elections were as boring as Germany’s | Max Boot/The Washington Post

October 1, 2021

Imagine that we lived in an alternative universe where Republican George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1980 and stayed in office until 1996. He was then followed by Democrat Michael Dukakis for two terms. Then, for the next 16 years, Republican Mitt Romney was in office. And finally, in 2020, Romney was succeeded by his vice president — Democrat Joe Biden. In this universe, our politics would be more boring — and a lot more sane and sensible. That, roughly, is what Germany has achieved. Helmut Kohl of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was chancellor from 1982 to 1998. He was followed by Gerhard Schroeder of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1998 to 2005. For the past 16 years, Germany has been led by the CDU’s Angela Merkel, governing for most of that time in coalition with the SPD. Chancellor Merkel — who makes Romney look like the life of the party by comparison — leaves office with higher approval ratings than any other world leader. She has reduced the German unemployment rate, maintained stability and successfully navigated challenges such as a euro-zone debt crisis in 2009, a massive influx of refugees in 2015 and a coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Little wonder that the leaders of the CDU and SPD were competing over who would be seen as her heir. The winner, by a hair, in Sunday’s balloting was the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, who served as Merkel’s vice chancellor and finance minister for the past three and a half years. He marketed himself as “Angela the second,” right down to making the same diamond-shaped hand gesture as Merkel. His chief challenger, the CDU’s Armin Laschet — who might still be able to form a governing coalition with smaller parties — was just as dull. “It’s Election Season in Germany,” a New York Times article noted. “No Charisma, Please!”

Full Article: Opinion | America would be much better off if our elections were as boring as Germany’s – The Washington Post

Editorial: Election officials need our legal help against repressive laws and personal threats | Bob Bauer and Benjamin L. Ginsberg/The Washington Post

September 10, 2021

Election officials are coming under unprecedented attack for doing their jobs. Some states are attempting to criminalize the exercise of these officials’ trained professional judgments; some officials have been the target of threats to themselves and their families. Any American — whether Republican, Democrat or independent — must know that systematic efforts to undermine the ability of those overseeing the counting and casting of ballots on an independent, nonpartisan basis are destructive to our democracy. The two of us have been partisan opponents in the past, representing opposing political parties to the best of our abilities. But at this moment in time, we share a grave concern about attacks on those public servants who successfully oversaw what was arguably the most secure and transparent election in our country’s history, with record turnout, during a global pandemic. If such attacks go unaddressed, our system of self-governance will suffer long-term damage. So, in partnership with the nonprofit and nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, we are launching the Election Official Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), which will connect licensed, qualified, pro bono attorneys with election administrators who need advice or assistance. State and local election workers anywhere in the country can go to EOLDN.org, or call the toll-free number (877) 313-5210, at any time, 24/7, to request to be connected with a lawyer who can help them, at no cost.

Full Article: Opinion | Election officials need our legal help against repressive laws and personal threats – The Washington Post

Editorial: The lessons from Trump’s ‘Kraken’ lawyer sanctions in Michigan – How to protect against this type of attack in the future | Scott L. Cummings/NBC

September 7, 2021

The only thing surprising about U.S. District Judge Linda Parker’s order early last month imposing monetary sanctions on nine Trump attorneys was that it was so long in coming. These lawyers — led by conspiracy-theorists-in-chief Sidney Powell and Lin Wood — made outlandish claims of election fraud in Michigan and other key battleground states, all of which were roundly rejected by every court that considered them. The Michigan suit was part of multistate litigation that Powell called the “Kraken” after the mythic sea monster (the release of which she claimed would destroy President Joe Biden’s victory). The Trump legal team made unsubstantiated claims of computerized ballot stuffing by a deceased foreign dictator and late-night ballot dumps by mysterious trucks, leading Parker to lambaste the lawsuit as “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.” The Kraken suit, and others brought by Trump campaign attorneys, imposed a stress test on the American legal system by seeking to co-opt courts to advance a fabricated account of the election results. Parker’s order suggests that the American system passed this test — just barely, and just for now. To protect against this type of attack in the future requires a concerted effort by the entire legal profession. It is therefore crucial that the lawyers on the bench and in the bar take seriously what they can do — and must do — better.

Source: Scott L. Cummings: The lessons from Trump’s ‘Kraken’ lawyer sanctions in Michigan

Editorial: How to prevent the next Jan. 6, as revealed in an important new analysis | Greg Sargent/The Washington Post

August 31, 2021

We cannot say we weren’t warned. As the select committee examining the Jan. 6 violence ramps up, one of its lesser-known goals is to offer “recommendations” to prevent a future effort to overthrow U.S. democracy through mob assault and intimidation. As it happens, there is a critical way Congress can minimize the possibility of another Jan. 6 — by addressing glaring legal vulnerabilities in the presidential electoral process that encouraged Donald Trump’s movement to try to overturn his loss, creating the conditions for the worst outbreak of U.S. political violence in recent times. We’re talking about revising the Electoral Count Act (ECA) of 1887. That may sound dry and unexciting, but it would shore up hidden weaknesses that made the 2020 breakdown possible. This week, a bipartisan coalition of pro-democracy experts will release a new blueprint laying out a way to revise the ECA along those lines. The report from the National Task Force on Election Crises — which includes dozens of experts in election law and voting rights — outlines major fixes.

Full Article: Opinion | How to prevent the next Jan. 6, as revealed in an important new analysis – The Washington Post