Category Archives: Editorials

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial: Trump is not the problem with American democracy, we are | Tom Nichols/USA Today

I’ve written about a lot of unpleasant, even frightening, subjects. For most of my career, I have been a specialist in national security affairs, a cheerless area of study. I’ve written about war, terrorism, and even about the possibility of nuclear apocalypse, a project that required staring at maps and charts of how entire cities would be turned into ash and left for eternity as desolated mass graveyards. And yet nothing was more difficult than writing about democracy in my own country. In the past, I brought – I hope – a scholarly and dispassionate eye to unpleasant subjects. Now, I was anguished. I was no longer writing about notional future wars or the faraway Russians. Now I was writing about my own people: my fellow citizens, my friends, my neighbors, my family. And I did not like what I saw. The people I have always counted on to be patriotic, sensible, and steady – like our ancestors had been under far more trying circumstances than our own – were now sirens of drama and complaint. Everything, they said, is as bad as it’s ever been. These, they were sure, are the worst times ever. We are all victims. Someone must pay. This is not the America in which I was raised. Something was wrong, and I wanted to know why millions of the citizens of my own nation – some of them near and dear to me – were now, astonishingly, embracing illiberalism and authoritarianism.

Full Article: Trump is not the problem with American democracy, we are: Tom Nichols

Editorial: Trump is planning a much more respectable coup next time | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

Full Article: Trump is planning a much more respectable coup next time.

Editorial: It is time for Congress to act again to protect the right to vote | Merrick B. Garland/The Washington Post

Full Article: Opinion | Merrick Garland: It is time for Congress to act again to protect the right to vote – The Washington Post

Editorial: Trust in U.S. Elections Is Slipping. It’s Time to Go on Offense. | William P. Crowell and Gregory A. Miller/Barron’s

The 2020 election was a wake-up call. Nearly half of voters expressed concern and even distrust in the voting process, due in no small part to the looming threat of foreign (and domestic) interference. That trust won’t come back on its own. We need to act to restore faith in election infrastructure and arm our election administrators for far better defense. Our election infrastructure includes the people who run elections, the people who oversee and validate the processes, and the technology that are used to conduct voting. The integrity of that infrastructure is critical to the functioning of our democracy. And yet, in many parts of this country, we have been witnessing attacks on the election system for decades. Some of the attacks are obviously politically motivated and intended to favor one political party or another. At the nonprofit OSET Institute, for 16 years we have focused most of our activities on developing new technology solutions that increase confidence in elections and their outcomes. We are deeply involved in the rethinking of the hardware, software, standards, and verification systems for election machines and processes. It would appear that is not enough. A robust campaign to strengthen our election infrastructure will require us to, first, disrupt and impede the spread of misinformation and disinformation about our election systems. The Internet has become the channel of choice for amplifying false information about voting, elections, candidates, and election integrity. Today we operate against offensive disinformation primarily using only defensive tools in cyberspace. A defense-only approach to disinformation is doomed to failure. Imagine if our military forces fought battles strictly by staying in their foxholes and never venturing out to engage the enemy. It would result in only one outcome: defeat. We need to balance our defensive efforts with offensive efforts that take advantage of the attackers’ weaknesses. We can use active means to counter false information. We can strike at the sources with cyber means of diminishing their outbursts.

Full Article: Restoring Trust in U.S. Elections Will Require Going on Offense | Barron’s

Editorial: Why easy voter access vs. election security is a false choice. Americans want both. | Will Friedman/USA Today

Last week, President Joe Biden referred to the pitched political battle underway between Republicans and Democrats on voting rights as the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” In response, the president said, Democrats plan to work harder than ever to increase access, starting an effort to “register (people) to vote, and then get the vote out.” Republicans argue that voter fraud is the real threat to democracy, and that more restrictions and tighter security are the answer. This includes limiting the times and places where people can vote and rolling back systems put in place to make voting easier and safer during the pandemic. What’s interesting is that the American public reject this argument as a false dichotomy and have their own way of looking at what ought to be done to improve elections. In my role as a senior fellow at the nonpartisan organization Public Agenda, I recently co-led a survey of the American public on how to fix what’s ailing our democracy, discussed in our new report, America’s Hidden Common Ground on Renewing Democracy. On questions of voting reform, my colleagues and I decided not to ask whether the public favors one side or the other of the argument described above – plenty of pollsters were doing that already.

Full Article: Voter access vs. security is false choice: Hidden Common Ground

Editorial: The GOP’s violent rhetoric could make future elections much more dangerous | Ruth Ben-Ghiat/The Washington Post

In June, an anchor on One America News suggested that execution might be an apt punishment for the “tens of thousands” of “traitors” who, he claimed, stole the election from former president Donald Trump. A sitting member of Congress, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), told Americans in May that they “have an obligation to use” the Second Amendment, which is not about recreation but “the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary.” And at a recent rally, Trump called for the public naming of the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 insurrection, claiming, “If that were on the other side, the person who did the shooting would be strung up and hung.” The uptick in violent rhetoric among the GOP and its propagandists previews America’s turbulent future. The Jan. 6 attack failed to keep Trump in office, but it showed Republican constituencies the potential of violence as a path to power. The history of authoritarianism suggests that the threat and reality of violence are likely to be integral to the right’s bid to transform the country into an electoral autocracy — a system in which the voting process is manipulated so the ruling party can remain continuously in office. This Republican culture of violence and threat builds on histories of racial persecution and on policing used as an instrument of terror against non-Whites. Habituation to such violence, reinforced by the presentation of non-Whites as an existential threat to the future of America (as in the “great replacement theory” that Tucker Carlson has referenced on Fox News) makes it easier for the public to accept violence around political events, like elections, as necessary to “save the country.” Tellingly, the participants in the January coup attempt, which was billed as just this kind of patriotic act, included 57 local and state GOP officials and at least 52 active and retired military, law enforcement, and government personnel.

Full Article: The GOP’s violent rhetoric could make future elections much more dangerous – The Washington Post

Editorial: The Supreme Court clearly won’t protect voting rights. But Congress can. | Sean Morales-Doyle/The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a severe blow to a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement and the nation’s best defense against racially discriminatory voting laws, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The court’s ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee makes it substantially harder for voters to challenge such laws, hacking away at federal courts’ powers to protect Americans from efforts to impede their access to the ballot box. It’s the latest sign that if the voting rights of all Americans are to be defended, Congress, not the nation’s highest court, will have to provide that defense. The case concerns two provisions of Arizona’s voting laws under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. One of these said that someone who cast their vote at the wrong precinct would have their entire ballot tossed out, even for races such as president or governor, where precinct would not be a factor. The other restricted the circumstances under which vote-by-mail ballots could be turned in on behalf of a nonrelative neighbor or friend. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found both policies to be discriminatory because of the way they interact with the real-life conditions for minority voters in the state. For example, a brief filed by the Navajo Nation noted: “Arizona’s ballot collection law criminalizes ways in which Navajos historically participated in early voting by mail. Due to the remoteness of the Nation and lack of transportation, it is not uncommon for Navajos to ask their neighbors or clan members to deliver their mail.”

Full Article: The Supreme Court clearly won’t protect voting rights. But Congress can. – The Washington Post

Editorial: The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk | Richard L. Hasen/The New York Times

In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court’s term, the court’s six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy. In one case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court has weakened the last remaining legal tool for protecting minority voters in federal courts from a new wave of legislation seeking to suppress the vote that is emanating from Republican-controlled states. In the other, Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta, the court has laid the groundwork for lower courts to strike down campaign finance disclosure laws and laws that limit campaign contributions to federal, state and local candidates. The court is putting our democratic form of government at risk not only in these two decisions but in its overall course over the past few decades. Let’s begin with voting rights. In Brnovich, the court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, held that two Arizona rules — one that does not count votes for any office cast by a voter in the wrong precinct and another that prevents third-party collection of absentee ballots (sometimes pejoratively referred to by Donald Trump and his allies as ballot harvesting) — do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Full Article: Opinion | The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk – The New York Times

Editorial: No, the election wasn’t stolen in Antrim County Michigan either | David Von Drehle/The Washington Post

If you remember that the lower part of Michigan is shaped a bit like a left-handed mitten, look for Antrim County between the tips of the middle and ring fingers. It’s a beautiful place. The Lake Michigan beaches are delightful in summer. The fishing is fantastic year-round. Unlikely as it seems, this is an epicenter of Stolen Election mania. Now, meet Ed McBroom: a Michigan state senator and conservative Republican from the Upper Peninsula, an even more remote part of the state on the opposite side of the lake. Before the election, McBroom was going about his conservative business representing his constituents on such issues as the large population of wolves in Michigan’s far north and whether hunting them should be legal. After the election, McBroom accepted the thankless job of hunting down the truth about the supposedly Stolen Election. Together with two other Republicans and one Democrat, McBroom reports, “We have collectively spent innumerable hours watching and listening and reading.” What they found was a mostly well-run exercise in civic duty, slightly smirched by honest mistakes quickly rectified — and then buried in an avalanche of fantasy, fever dreams, grifter fiction and “blatherskite.” More on blatherskite later. The report of the McBroom committee makes for chewy reading but is worthwhile nonetheless. Plunging down one rabbit hole after another, the truth-hunters make every effort to find solid evidence for persistent claims of vote-shifting, machine-hacking, ballot-stuffing, algorithmic manipulation or any other means of overturning the will of the people.

Full Article: Opinion | No, the election wasn’t stolen in Antrim County, Mich., either – The Washington Post

Editorial: The Really Big Fight on Voting Rights Is Just Around the Corner | Richard H. Pildes/The New York Times

With the For the People Act on indefinite hold after a filibuster by Republicans in the Senate on Tuesday, the Voting Rights Act is about to return to center stage in Washington. The Supreme Court will soon decide a case on how a crucial part of the landmark law applies to voting laws challenged as racially discriminatory. The country is already roiling with controversies over whether a variety of post-2020 state voting changes reflect legitimate policy concerns or racially discriminatory ones. In Congress, Senators Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski have turned a spotlight on the Voting Rights Act with their endorsement of a version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. It would reaffirm Congress’s central role in protecting the right to vote against racially discriminatory changes and give the Justice Department (or, in Mr. Manchin’s version, the federal courts) the critical power to approve changes that are legitimate and block those that are invidious. The John Lewis Act might well offer the best chance of new national legislation protecting the right to vote in America, and its significance is best seen in historical context, especially that of two Supreme Court cases. The John Lewis Act would restore provisions of the Voting Rights Act (Sections 4 and 5) that were effectively invalidated by the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder. When enacted in 1965, these provisions identified certain parts of the country and put their voting systems under a regime of federal control. These areas had to submit voting changes to the federal government, which had the power to block a proposal if it would diminish minority voter power. The federal government does not normally have veto power over state laws, but Section 5 created one.

Full Article: Opinion | The Really Big Fight on Voting Rights Is Just Around the Corner – The New York Times

Editorial: How Joe Manchin could escape the trap he set for himself | Edward B. Foley/The Washington Post

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is correct that any electoral reform enacted by Congress must be bipartisan — not one party’s rules imposed over the other’s unified opposition. But his position on the filibuster may need some adjustment if his own stated standard for bipartisan electoral reform is to prevail. First, let’s focus on why Manchin is right to nix the Democratic Party’s dream elections bill, For the People Act (H.R. 1/S.B. 1), in its current form. Not only does it contain components that are dubious on policy grounds, including campaign finance provisions that would increase funds for extremists such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). It also has items that are poison pills for Republicans, such as mandatory “same-day” registration and eliminating voter identification requirements for on-demand vote-by-mail. H.R. 1 passed the House with zero Republican votes, and the companion S.B. 1 has zero GOP support in the Senate. That’s because it’s a purely partisan bill aimed at helping the Democratic Party win elections, not impartial reform designed to foster fair electoral competition in America’s traditional two-party system. If Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), keep saying that H.R. 1/S.B. 1, as currently drafted, is essential to secure democracy, they are self-deceived or deceitful. Same-day registration is hardly necessary for the preservation of self-government.

Full Article: Opinion | How Joe Manchin could escape the trap he set for himself – The Washington Post

Editorial: GOP preparing the ground to steal an election | Juan Williams/TheHill

We need to talk about Jan. 6. I’m talking about Jan. 6, 2025. That’s when the U.S. Congress will meet to certify the winner of the 2024 presidential election. “How to Get Away With Murder” was a recent TV crime show. As the 2024 race approaches, the Trump-GOP’s current weekly drama is titled “How to Get Away with Murdering Democracy.” Step One — Don’t mention Jan. 6, 2021. If it comes up, say Trump’s violent radicals did not stop certification of President Biden’s win over Trump. It was just like a “tourist visit,” according to one GOP congressman, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.). Too bad for him he was photographed that day with a look of terror on his face. Next, prevent a bipartisan, independent commission from looking into the violent Republican riot. Twist the arms of the honest Republicans left on Capitol Hill by scaring them with previews of the commission’s probable findings and the damage those stories could do to the party’s efforts to regain control of the House, Senate and White House. Step Two — Change election laws in states with GOP-majority legislatures. New laws in Georgia, for example, take power away from independent election boards and the secretary of state to certify election results. Georgia’s new laws give unprecedented power to the Republican legislature to determine the winner of the 2024 election. They can override local and state election officials in certifying votes. In 2020, the Georgia secretary of state — a Republican, Brad Raffensperger — defied Trump’s demand to “find” enough votes to make him the winner of the presidential race. Raffensperger or his successor will not have that power come 2024.

Full Article: Juan Williams: GOP preparing the ground to steal an election | TheHill

Editorial: Democrats are wasting time pursuing their dream elections reform bill. Here’s a better path. | Edward B. Foley/The Washington Post

It’s become increasingly clear that Democrats lack the votes in the Senate to pass their dream elections bill, the behemoth known as S. 1. Before time runs out, they would be wise to come up with a backup plan that would not do as much but could still achieve significant progress in protecting the right to vote. Frankly, it’s less important what specific election reforms Democrats can negotiate than that the Democrats find some common ground with Republicans. What the country needs now is a genuinely bipartisan statement of shared commitments on how electoral competition is supposed to operate. Is it possible for a measure to attract the support of 10 Republicans? That’s a tall order in the current environment. But the universe includes the five who are retiring — Roy Blunt (Mo.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Richard C. Shelby (Ala.) and Patrick J. Toomey (Penn.) — plus Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Ben Sasse (Neb.).

Full Article: Opinion | Democrats are wasting time pursuing their dream elections reform bill. Here’s a better path. – The Washington Post

Editorial: The Assault on Voting is an Assault on Local Democracy | Zachary Roth/Brennan Center for Justice

Last spring, in the weeks and months after life was first reshaped by the coronavirus pandemic, local governments stepped up to help save the 2020 election. Knowing that many voters might not want to risk their health by casting a ballot in person, cities like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Houston, and Miami expanded access to mail voting by sending absentee ballots or ballot applications to all registered voters, sometimes with pre-paid postage, and by providing ballot drop boxes, among other moves. I suggested at the time that Republican-leaning rural counties in the same states might follow suit, in order to ensure that rural voters would enjoy the same expanded access as urban ones. A race to the top, in other words. I should have known that was too optimistic. After an election in which both mail voting and overall turnout soared, several GOP-led states, as we know, are desperate to restrict voting. And as part of that effort, they’re looking to clamp down on local governments’ authority to make voting easier — or in some cases, to run elections at all. Two states have already done so. Among the most dangerous parts of the sweeping voter suppression law Georgia passed last month is a provision that allows the state election board to suspend and temporarily replace local election officials. In practice, that means the state board — which, thanks to a different part of the law, will have a majority of members appointed by the GOP-controlled legislature — will be able to oust any local election official who seeks to expand access to the polls in ways the state doesn’t like. That could prevent county officials from taking individual on-the-ground conditions into account in order to devise election plans that best serve their voters. One part of the restrictive voting law Iowa passed last month could have a similar effect, making it a felony for local election officials not to follow guidance from the secretary of state. And a bill in Arkansas would likewise allow the state election commission to take over local election boards under certain circumstances — it failed once in committee but can be brought up again.

Full Article: The Assault on Voting is an Assault on Local Democracy | Brennan Center for Justice

Editorial: Arizona Senate is abusing its authority. End its election ‘audit’ now | Arizona Republic

Republicans in the Arizona Legislature have set aside dollars, hired consultants, procured the hardware and software to conduct what they call “an audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County. What they don’t have is the moral authority to make it credible. Their conduct post-election has been so nakedly partisan that whatever their audit finds, its results will not be believed. They’ll be mocked and derided. State Senate Republicans insist they are not trying to reverse the election, but are rather trying to build greater trust in the system. But how can anyone trust them? They have overreached from the beginning, abusing their subpoena power to try to criminalize a dispute with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. County officials resisted their demands to hand over county tabulating machines and ballots. The system had already gone through rigorous testing, established by election law. And even the Republican governor of Arizona and the Democrat secretary of state affirmed the integrity of the election.

Full Article: Arizona Senate is abusing its authority. End its election ‘audit’ now

Editorial: Farcical Maricopa County election audit just a sideshow to Trump circus | Tim Steller/Arizona Daily Star

Don’t look at the bias — that’s not what really matters. So claims Doug Logan, CEO of the firm called Cyber Ninjas that is playing at auditing Maricopa County’s elections as a contractor for Arizona’s state Senate Republicans. Logan put out a statement Tuesday responding to what he termed the “spurious clamor over bias insinuations.” I appreciated the fun word choice, but it couldn’t cover up his conclusion: He may be biased, but that doesn’t matter because the audit will be so, so good. Those aren’t his precise words, but they were the gist of his meaning when he said, “The big question should not be ‘Am I biased,’ but ‘Will this audit be transparent, truthful and accurate?’ The answer to the latter question is a resounding ‘Yes.’ ” In truth, the Arizona Senate Republicans’ so-called audit of the presidential election in Maricopa County is dead on arrival. In an effort to appease the GOP conspiracy caucus, Senate President Karen Fann and her sidekick, Sen. Warren Petersen, have chosen a team that has no credibility with anyone but conservative election conspiracists. For the rest of the state’s population, this audit is just a final sideshow of the Trump circus, best ignored or jeered at, but certainly not believed.

Full Article: Tim Steller’s opinion: Farcical Maricopa election audit just a sideshow to Trump circus | Local news | tucson.com

Editorial: The lack of federal voting rights protections returns us to the pre-Civil War era | Kate Masur/The Washington Post

As Senate Democrats push to extend federal protection of voting rights, bills to restrict citizens’ access to the vote — many based on models produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation — have been introduced in 43 states. On Thursday, Georgia enacted a law that limits voters’ options and makes it easier for the state legislature to interfere with election results. The current absence of strong federal protection for voting rights resembles the United States before the Civil War and reminds us of why Americans changed the Constitution to protect individual rights during Reconstruction. From the nation’s founding through the Civil War, the states had virtually unchallengeable power to define the status and rights of their residents. Slavery was only the most extreme example. Northern states such as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania chose to abolish slavery in the years following independence from Britain, but across the Southern tier of states, legislatures perpetuated slavery and codified it in law. Congress admitted new slave states to the Union, putting its imprimatur on states’ “right” to legalize slavery and to people’s right to hold Black people in bondage, denying them rights that many considered fundamental to personhood. Beyond slavery, all slave states and some free states placed strictures on the basic rights of free African Americans. After joining the Union as a free state in 1803, for example, Ohio adopted laws that required free African Americans who wanted to live in the state to prove their freedom and register with local officials. Laws forbade them from testifying in court cases involving White people, and barred Black children from public education. Ohio’s constitution granted voting rights to White men only. By contrast, Massachusetts placed no racial restrictions on men’s right to vote and had no racist or testimony residency laws. It did, however, bar interracial marriage and prohibit Black men from serving in the state militia.

Full Article: The lack of federal voting rights protections returns us to the pre-Civil War era – The Washington Post

Editorial: Arizona Republicans’ desperate crusade to find nonexistent voter fraud | The Washington Post

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R) says she is determined to “ensure the integrity of the vote” in her state. Which is supposedly why, five months after Election Day, following multiple credible audits that found no hint of substantial fraud, she insists that the state Senate must conduct yet another audit, re-scanning and hand-counting every ballot cast in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, as well as digging into electronic election systems. This would be a big job for even the most experienced election official or voting company, never mind state legislators. So Ms. Fann and her Senate colleagues tapped Cyber Ninjas, a little-known Florida cybersecurity firm that boasts that it provides “general consulting” and “ethical hacking” services, to lead the audit. Arizona journalists quickly discovered one possible reason for this puzzling choice: Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan appears to have pushed pro-Trump election conspiracy theories on a Twitter account he apparently deleted in January. “The parallels between the statistical analysis of Venezuela and this year’s election are astonishing,” one tweet read, which included the hashtag #StopTheSteal. “I’m tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real, and people better get wise fast,” read a tweet Mr. Logan apparently retweeted in December. He was also involved in a lawsuit claiming election fraud in Michigan. “This firm’s CEO not only harbors conspiratorial beliefs about the 2020 election, but has shared conspiracies about Dominion election equipment, the exact equipment he has been hired to audit,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) objected.

Full Article: Opinion | Arizona Republicans’ desperate crusade to find nonexistent voter fraud – The Washington Post