National

The Biden administration is directing federal agencies to let federal workers take leave to vote — and to serve as poll workers. Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted that new guidance from the Office of Personnel Management during a virtual event Thursday afternoon, delivering remarks from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “We believe the federal government should serve as a model employer — and, by the way, we’re the largest employer in the country, so we can do this and we should do this — and then therefore serve as a model employer when it comes to helping employees participate in their democracy,” Harris said. “And we’re going to therefore call on all employers to do the same.” The new policy for federal workers was one of several deliverables tied to the anniversary of President Joe Biden’s March 7, 2021, executive order on efforts to expand voting access. Thursday’s event also focused on two new reports stating what can be done to help support voting access for people with disabilities, as well as in tribal communities. “I’m proud to announce that the National Institute of Standards and Technology is releasing a report that lays out a comprehensive assessment of the barriers that disabled Americans face when they’re voting and offers specific recommendations for what we must do with a sense of urgency to break down those barriers — for example, including more disabled people in the design of election procedures because, of course, we should be having the leaders lead and — and not replacing what we think is, is important with what leaders can tell us is important,” Harris said.

Full Article: Biden administration to give federal employees time off to vote, work the polls – Roll Call

National: Contentious Fringe Legal Theory Could Reshape State Election Laws | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

The U.S. Supreme Court this month left open the possibility that it could endorse a fringe conservative legal theory that would give state legislatures unchecked powers over election rules before the 2024 presidential election. Republican officials cited the theory, which asserts that state courts do not have jurisdiction over election policy, in two key cases filed in North Carolina and Pennsylvania over congressional maps selected by their highest courts. Groups in those states—which included voters, Republican state senators and representatives, an election official and a congressional candidate—petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the respective maps. They argued in federal court filings that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the sole power to set rules for federal elections. The high court rejected emergency requests to block the maps, allowing the ones chosen by state courts to stay in place for the 2022 midterm elections. But in a dissent to the North Carolina decision, three conservative justices endorsed the theory known as the “independent state legislature doctrine,” while another signaled he wanted to formally consider the question. That means there appears to be enough votes to put the issue—and the possible legitimization of the doctrine—on the court’s 2023 calendar.

Full Article: Contentious Fringe Legal Theory Could Reshape State Election Laws | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? | Charles Homans/The New York Times

Early last year, Freedom House, an American organization that since World War II has warned against autocracy and repression on the march around the world, issued a special report on a country that had not usually warranted such attention: its own. Noting that the United States had slid down its ranking of countries by political rights and civil liberties — it is now 59th on Freedom House’s list, slightly below Argentina and Mongolia — the report warned that the country faced “an acute crisis for democracy.” In November, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an influential Stockholm-based think tank, followed suit, adding the United States to its list of “backsliding democracies” for the first time. The impetus for these reassessments was Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that followed. But as the reassessments themselves noted, those shocks to the system hardly came out of nowhere; like the Trump presidency itself, they were both products and accelerants of a process of American democratic erosion and disunion that had been underway for years and has continued since. In states across the country, Republican candidates are running for office on the platform that the 2020 election was stolen — a view held by about three-quarters of Republican voters. Since the beginning of 2021, Republicans in at least 25 state legislatures have tried, albeit mostly unsuccessfully, to pass legislation directly targeting the election system: bills that would place election oversight or certification in the hands of partisan legislatures, for instance, and in some cases even bills specifically punishing officials who blocked attempts to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Trump’s favor. And those are just the new developments, happening against a backdrop of a decade-long erosion of voting rights and a steady resurgence of political extremism and violence, and of course a world newly at war over the principles of self-determination and democracy.

Full Article: Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? – The New York Times

National: Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party | Isaac Arnsdorf/ProPublica

Former President Donald Trump has officially endorsed a plan, created by a man who has self-identified with the Oath Keeper militia, that aims to have Trump supporters consolidate control of the Republican Party. The plan, known as the “precinct strategy,” has been repeatedly promoted on Steve Bannon’s popular podcast. As ProPublica detailed last year, it has already inspired thousands of people to fill positions at the lowest rung of the party ladder. Though these positions are low-profile and often vacant, they hold critical powers: They help elect higher-ranking party officers, influence which candidates appear on the ballot, turn out voters on Election Day and even staff the polling precincts where people vote and the election boards that certify the results. “Just heard about an incredible effort underway that will strengthen the Republican Party,” Trump said Sunday in a statement emailed to his supporters. “If members of our Great movement start getting involved (that means YOU becoming a precinct committeeman for your voting precinct), we can take back our great Country from the ground up.”

Full Article: Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party — ProPublica

National: Securing the Midterms: Smarter Tools Watch Over Voter Records | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

Can automated alerts and machine learning help midterm elections go smoothly and securely? That’s the hope of a Harvard University technology lab and Protect Democracy, a nonprofit focused on preserving democracy in the U.S. Each group offers its own free tool designed to monitor for any unwarranted changes to voter registration records and deliver timely alerts. Harvard Public Interest Tech Lab’s VoteFlare is designed to alert voters, while Protect Democracy’s VoteShield is for election officials’ use. If all goes well, the tools will help constituents and public officials closely monitor for any signs of honest errors or deliberate attacks, allowing them to sort out voting registration discrepancies quickly before they impede ballot casting. Constituents whose information does not match that on their voting records could run into difficulties. Having the wrong party affiliation down prevents voting in the closed primaries, for example. Meanwhile, a mismatch in addresses could block individuals from voting entirely, restrict them to casting a provisional ballot — which is not always counted — or require them to somehow figure out the address on record so they can vote in that precinct, warned Latanya Sweeney, Ji Su Yoo and Jinyan Zang in a 2017 report. Two of those report authors — Sweeney and Zang — helped create VoteFlare. Sweeney, a Harvard professor of the Practice of Government and Technology, led the team.

Full Article: Securing the Midterms: Smarter Tools Watch Over Voter Records

National: White House releases report on Native American voting rights | Felicia Fonseca/Associated Press

Local, state and federal officials must do more to ensure Native Americans facing persistent, longstanding and deep-rooted barriers to voting have equal access to ballots, a White House report released Thursday said. Native Americans and Alaska Natives vote at lower rates than the national average but have been a key constituency in tight races and states with large Native populations. A surge in voter turnout among tribal members in Arizona, for example, helped lead Joe Biden to victory in the state that hadn’t supported a Democrat in a White House contest since 1996. The Biden administration’s report comes a year after he issued an executive order promoting voting rights and establishing a steering committee to look at particular barriers to voting in Indigenous communities. Those include state laws and local practices that disenfranchise Indigenous voters, unequal access to early voting and reliance on a mail system that is unreliable, the report stated. “For far too long, members of tribal nations and Native communities have faced unnecessary burdens when they attempt to exercise their sacred right to vote,” the White House said. The administration called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation, including the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and another focused on Native Americans. But those bills are going nowhere. Republicans wouldn’t support them, and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have been unwilling to override the filibuster to allow the legislation to pass.

Full Article: White House releases report on Native American voting rights | AP News

Some in GOP want ballots to be counted by hand, not machines | Holly Ramer and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Growing suspicion about the security of voting systems has kindled a back-to-the future moment among conservatives in some parts of the U.S. Republican lawmakers in at least six states have introduced legislation that would require all election ballots to be counted by hand instead of electronic tabulators. Similar proposals have been floated within some local governments, including about a dozen New Hampshire towns and Washoe County in the presidential battleground state of Nevada. The push for hand-counting ballots comes amid mistrust of elections among many Republicans who believe the false narrative that widespread fraud cost former President Donald Trump reelection in the 2020 presidential contest. Despite no evidence of widespread fraud or major irregularities, conspiracy theories have proliferated among his allies that voting systems were somehow manipulated to favor Democrat Joe Biden. That has prompted calls to ban electronic tabulators used to scan ballots, record votes and compile race tallies.

Full Article: Some in GOP want ballots to be counted by hand, not machines | AP News

National: ‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracy | Joan E Greve/The Guardian

Last year, Brad Raffensperger was attracting national headlines for taking a stand against Donald Trump and his lies about the 2020 election. In a phone call that was quickly made public, Trump demanded that Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, “find” enough votes to deprive Joe Biden of a victory in the battleground state. Raffensperger refused to do so and won widespread praise for his courage. Raffensperger is paying for his actions in a way that reveals how his once obscure elected position is now at the center of a battle for the future of American democracy – and attracting all the big money and political heat that entails. This year, Raffensperger is facing a brutal primary race against a Trump-backed candidate, the US congressman Jody Hice, and trying to cling on to his job. Hice, who has said the 2020 results in Georgia would have been different if the race had been “fair”, has already raised more than twice as much money as Raffensperger. Hice’s impressive haul is partly thanks to the unusually high number of out-of-state donations that his campaign has attracted, as more Americans across the country zero in on secretary of state races.

Full Article: ‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracy | US midterm elections 2022 | The Guardian

National: An election without ‘I voted’ stickers? Election officials scrambling amid paper shortage | Rick Rouan/USA Today

American elections are the latest industry to feel the squeeze of inflation and global supply chain disruptions. As voters begin to cast ballots in the 2022 primaries, the election industry has been scrambling to get enough paper products to print ballots, stuff envelopes and produce other materials critical to the voting process. Warnings about the availability of paper have circulated among election officials for months. But in February, a working group of election industry officials said in a report that orders typically filled in days or weeks now are taking months. Prices, too, have spiked. With demand ticking up ahead of the election and a smaller supply from paper mills, election officials say they are paying more for paper products, putting more strain on an elections system that advocates say has been underfunded for years. The shortage already is making it harder on voters. In Texas, some vote-by-mail ballots went out later than usual because local elections officials could not get their stock of paper early enough.

Source: 2022 Elections face paper shortages caused by supply chain, inflation

National: Decline in federal grant funding for local elections criticized by advocates | Kira Lerner/States Newsroom

The $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress last week includes $75 million in Help America Vote Act grants — a major reduction compared to years past. Experts say the $75 million is insufficient to fund local elections and leaves local election offices without resources to improve election infrastructure and protect the security of elections. Though Congress has only funded local elections three times since 2010, the $75 million in the latest spending bill is far from the $53 billion over 10 years that election security experts say is necessary. It’s also far less than the $500 million proposed by the House in its original spending proposal. “It’s always great to see Congress getting resources to state and local election officials and really recognizing their responsibility to help fund elections, but $75 million is far short of what is needed right now to really secure and protect our election infrastructure,” said Derek Tisler, counsel with the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s also considerably less than the funding we saw in recent years leading up to the 2020 election.” In 2018 and 2020 respectively, Congress approved $380 million and $425 million in HAVA Election Security Funds for states to improve the administration of elections for federal office.

Full Article: Decline in federal grant funding for local elections criticized by advocates – Idaho Capital Sun

National: Democrats urge DOJ to address ‘insider threats’ from candidates who deny 2020 results | Mychael Schnell/The Hill

More than a dozen House Democrats are urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to address “insider threats to election systems,” which they say are posed by candidates who are running to fill local election positions motivated by former President Trump‘s false claims about the 2020 presidential election. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland dated Wednesday, the Democratic lawmakers said they are worried that those candidates may attempt to influence the outcomes of future races if they are installed as election officials. “Unfortunately, many of the candidates seeking to fill newly vacated state and local election posts support former President Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen,” the lawmakers wrote. “We are concerned that this new cohort of election officials may be inclined to abuse their authority to directly influence the results of future elections.” They pointed to “the recent resurgence of anti-democratic tactics among election officials in key battleground states,” adding that they are “deeply concerned about bad actors who may dismiss their legal obligations in order to secure victory for their favored candidate or candidates.” The House members said there is an “active effort to recruit and convince election officials at all levels of governance to sabotage future elections by spreading conspiracy theories and promoting the claims of election deniers,” pointing to incidents in Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania and various races for secretary of state and state attorney general.

Full Article: Democrats urge DOJ to address ‘insider threats’ from candidates who deny 2020 results | TheHill

National: Trump White House aide was secret author of Dominion Report used to push ‘big lie’ | Hugo Lowell/The Guardian

Weeks after the 2020 election, at least one Trump White House aide was named as secretly producing a report that alleged Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden because of Dominion Voting Systems – research that formed the basis of the former president’s wider efforts to overturn the election. The Dominion report, subtitled “OVERVIEW 12/2/20 – History, Executives, Vote Manipulation Ability and Design, Foreign Ties”, was initially prepared so that it could be sent to legislatures in states where the Trump White House was trying to have Biden’s win reversed. But top Trump officials would also use the research that stemmed from the White House aide-produced report to weigh other options to return Trump to the presidency, including having the former president sign off on executive orders to authorize sweeping emergency powers. The previously unreported involvement of the Trump White House aide in the preparation of the Dominion report raises the extraordinary situation of at least one administration official being among the original sources of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The publicly available version of the Dominion report, which first surfaced in early December 2020 on the conservative outlet the Gateway Pundit, names on the cover and in metadata as its author Katherine Friess, a volunteer on the Trump post-election legal team. But the Dominion report was in fact produced by the senior Trump White House policy aide Joanna Miller, according to the original version of the document reviewed by the Guardian and a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Full Article: Trump White House aide was secret author of report used to push ‘big lie’ | US elections 2020 | The Guardian

National: Election Officials Say Safety Threats May Drive Away Poll Workers | Daniel C. Vock/Route Fifty

Local election officials have long worried about whether they can find enough people to work in polls on Election Day. After all, the hours are long, the pay is low and, in recent years, workers have worried about the spread of Covid-19. Now they’re worried a new phenomenon may keep workers away: threats to their physical safety. Three out of every five respondents in a new Brennan Center for Justice survey of election officials said they were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” that “that threats, harassment and intimidation against local election officials will make it more difficult to retain or recruit election workers in future elections.” The concerns about danger are part of the fall-out of the acrimonious 2020 presidential election. President Joe Biden clearly won the contest, but former President Donald Trump has fomented challenges based on conspiracy theories and riled up his followers to attack election administrators and workers. “Counties organize about 800,000 volunteers each election cycle, and it’s getting harder and harder,” said Matthew Chase, the CEO and executive director of the National Association of Counties. “During the pandemic, we struggled because a lot of our election volunteers were older and they certainly didn’t want to show up in the middle of pandemic and volunteer,” he said. “Now you layer on the harassment that they’re facing in the community for being a civic-minded individual, and we’re really concerned.”

Full Article: Election Officials Say Safety Threats May Drive Away Poll Workers – Route Fifty

National: Fox News countersues a voting machine maker, saying its damage estimate is inflated | Christopher Dean Hopkins/NPR

Fox News today filed a counterclaim against voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic, saying the company’s claim that it suffered $2.7 billion in losses is massively inflated. Fox News argues it warrants punishment under rules, known as anti-SLAPP laws, that are designed to protect the media from abusive litigation. The news network seeks payment of its attorneys’ fees and “other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.” A report that Fox News had produced by University of Chicago business law professor Daniel R. Fischel found that Smartmatic had sustained millions of dollars in losses in the years leading up to the election. Year-over-year growth of nearly 75% would be needed to reach the amount it’s seeking from the news network, the report said. “While the recovery of fees and costs will not undo all the damage this First Amendment-defying lawsuit has wrought,” the lawsuit says, “at least it may cause the next plaintiff to think twice before trying to penalize the press to the tune of billions of dollars in nonexistent damages.” Smartmatic’s lawsuit, filed in February 2021, stemmed from the network’s coverage of fraud claims — which had no basis in fact — by President Trump and his allies following the 2020 election, as well as opinions voiced by some of Fox News hosts. The company argues that coverage amounted to willing participation in a disinformation campaign that hurt Smartmatic’s business prospects.

Full Article: Fox News countersues a voting machine maker, saying its damage estimate is inflated | WYPR

National: The elections police are coming | Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena/CNN

A measure moving through the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature would hand new election policing powers to the state’s bureau of investigations. The bill under consideration in the Georgia House would give the Georgia Bureau of Investigations the power to probe election fraud allegations — supplementing the work currently overseen by state election officials. If the proposal becomes law, the Peach State would become the second state in recent weeks to beef up enforcement of election fraud — a crime that federal and state officials say is exceedingly rare. Last week, the Florida legislature created a scaled-back version of a new election police force that had been sought by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is on the ballot for reelection this year and has presidential ambitions for 2024. The measure, headed to DeSantis’ desk for his signature, would establish an Office of Election Crimes and Security within the Department of State with a staff of 15 to conduct preliminary investigations of election fraud. In addition, the measure calls for DeSantis to appoint up to 10 law enforcement officers to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to probe election crimes.

The Florida measure also makes it a felony to return more than two mail-in ballots on behalf of other voters.

Full Article: The elections police are coming – CNNPolitics

National: States Want to Boost Protections for Threatened Local Election Officials | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

From her second-floor office window in Medford, Oregon, elections administrator Chris Walker vividly remembers reading the unsettling words painted in big white letters on the parking lot below in late November 2020: “Vote don’t work. Next time bullets.” Her heart sank, she recalls, wondering whether or when the threat would materialize. Former President Donald Trump had won her southern Oregon community, and despite his lie that the election was stolen, she never expected this anger. While her office is nonpartisan, Walker, the Jackson County clerk, has been a registered Republican for as long as she’s been able to vote. She’s frustrated to see the amount of election misinformation from members of her party. The pressure from constituents has not let up over the past two years. In emails, she is called a crook and a criminal just for doing her job: running elections. “It really was shocking,” she said. “We are normal, everyday people. We’ve been charged with an extraordinary task. We have to continue to do our work. We’ve not let it control what we do here.” Walker is one of many election officials around the country who have faced violent threats and harassment since the 2020 presidential election, as Trump and his allies continue to perpetuate repeatedly disproven myths about voter fraud. This pressure, meant to exhaust and scare local officials into resigning, could usher in new election personnel who seek to skew results, election experts say.

Full Article: States Want to Boost Protections for Threatened Local Election Officials | The Pew Charitable Trusts

Another way to protect voting rights: Hack-proof our elections | Matthew Germer/The Hill

In recent years, leading computer scientists and network security experts have found real vulnerabilities in election technology that could allow even lower-tier hackers to pose threats. As this technology ages, dozens of states are now in dire need of new equipment and support for managing security issues. Public reports from the Director of National Intelligence and other cybersecurity experts suggest that threats could come from Russia, Iran, China or North Korea, as well as non-state actors with radical agendas. But all is not lost. There is growing agreement across the political spectrum on how to improve election security: voter-verified paper ballots that create permanent, physical records of votes; risk-limiting audits that use robust statistical analysis to ensure accurate counts and ample, consistent funding for state and local election administrators in order to carry out trustworthy elections for years to come. There is also support for even stronger protection from hackers and foreign interference through improved federal oversight of voting machine vendors and by keeping voting and tabulation infrastructure off the internet.

Full Article: Another way to protect voting rights: Hack-proof our elections | TheHill

National: 2020 Was a Banner Year for U.S. Election Administration | Claire DeSoi/Elections Performance Index

Despite widespread claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent or poorly managed, election administration did not just persevere under unexpected and challenging conditions—it improved. The 2020 election was an anomaly in many ways, but the Election Performance Index (EPI) shows us that election administration continued to trend in the direction it was already heading: up. While there was more early voting and voting by mail than previous years (a pre-existing trend that 2020 accelerated), overall, more states improved their practices, data, and reporting. When looking at the index for 2020, we must of course remain mindful of the 2020 election atmosphere and context. In an election year like 2020, though, where administrators and election officials had to adapt quickly to unprecedented challenges, data-driven measures became even more important in finding and telling the story of how elections in the US are managed.

Full Article: 2020 Was a Banner Year for U.S. Election Administration | Elections Performance Index

National: Local election officials are exhausted, under threat and thinking about quitting | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Election officials feel besieged by conspiracy theorists and fear that a lack of support for their work is going to squeeze experts out of the field, according to a new poll. The survey from the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning think tank and advocacy group, showed that nearly 8 in 10 local election officials feel that threats against them and their colleagues have increased in recent years, and a majority say that they are either very or somewhat concerned about the safety of their fellow administrators. The question of how to deal with threats has become a constant conversation among election officials at all levels of government, many of whom fear that it could discourage people from staying in their field of election administration, or even joining it in the first place. “Over the long run, if this continues, it will be a lot harder to get folks to stick around,” said Natalie Adona, the assistant county clerk-recorder of Nevada County, Calif. “People will retire maybe because they’re just ready to retire because they’ve been doing this for so dang long — or maybe because they feel that the risk is not worth it. But there will be more retirements.” The poll results confirm Adona’s feeling, with 3 in 10 of the officials surveyed saying they know at least one or two election workers who have left their jobs in part because of fears for their safety. Sixty percent of the respondents said they are concerned that those issues will make it more difficult to retain or recruit election workers in the future.

Full Article: Local election officials are exhausted, under threat and thinking about quitting – POLITICO

National: 1 in 5 local election officials say they’re likely to quit before 2024 | Miles Parks/NPR

For the past two years, the people who run America’s elections have been sounding the alarm. The polarized voting environment that’s come out of the 2020 election has led to near daily harassment and death threats for some election officials, and made the profession unsustainable for many. Now, there’s new data to back up those concerns. A new survey of local election officials released Thursday by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 1 in 5 local election administrators say they are likely to leave their jobs before the 2024 presidential election. “There’s a crisis in election administration,” said Larry Norden, the senior director of elections and government at the Brennan Center. “[Election administrators] are concerned, and they’re not getting the support that they need.” The Brennan Center worked with the Benenson Strategy Group, which has worked for a number of national Democratic political campaigns, to conduct the poll over two weeks in early February among 596 local election officials. Respondents were split fairly evenly across the political spectrum: 26% identified as Democrats, 30% as Republicans, and 44% said they were independent. The margin of error was about 4%.

Full Article: 1 in 5 local election officials say they’re likely to quit before 2024 : NPR

National; Could the Supreme Court give Republicans more control over how to run elections? | Amber Phillips/The Washington Post

Democrats got a break from the Supreme Court on Monday when the justices essentially decided not to let Republicans draw congressional maps in two states that are battlegrounds for control of Congress, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. That means members of Congress in those states will run on maps drawn by state courts that are more favorable to Democrats than they would have otherwise been. But then four conservative justices opened the door to something else much more worrisome for the left: They indicated they’re open to letting state lawmakers run federal elections without state courts or even the state constitution having a say. It’s based on a conservative push of something called the “independent state legislature” doctrine, and it would be a drastic change from the way the Supreme Court has seen the role of state courts — as a check on legislatures, reports The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes. And it comes as former president Donald Trump continues his efforts to undermine faith in federal elections, primarily by pressuring state legislatures to try to overturn his election loss. “It would throw election administration into nationwide chaos,” the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters argued to the Supreme Court.

Full Article: Could the Supreme Court give Republicans more control over how to run elections? – The Washington Post

National: Judge denies Fox News motion to dismiss defamation suit by election-tech company Smartmatic | Jeremy Barr/The Washington Post

A judge allowed an election technology company’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News to proceed on Tuesday, though he dismissed specific claims made against host Jeanine Pirro and two of the network’s guests. New York Supreme Court Judge David B. Cohen denied Fox’s motion to dismiss the 2021 lawsuit, in which the company, Smartmatic, alleged that the network and several of its on-air personalities “decimated its future business prospects” by falsely accusing it of rigging the 2020 election against Donald Trump. But in the same ruling, Cohen dropped Pirro from the lawsuit, noting that while she floated election conspiracy theories, she did not specifically accuse Smartmatic of wrongdoing. He also dropped Trump-affiliated lawyer Sidney Powell from the suit, saying his court has no jurisdiction over her as a Texas resident. And he dismissed some of Smartmatic’s claims against Rudolph W. Giuliani while allowing others to continue, noting that the Trump lawyer explicitly alleged that Smartmatic committed crimes — comments, Cohen wrote, that “if false, were defamatory per se.”

Full Article: Smartmatic lawsuit against Fox News upheld by judge – The Washington Post

National: Vice President Kamala Harris marks ‘Bloody Sunday’ anniversary in Selma | Kim Chandler/Associated Press

Vice President Kamala Harris visited Selma, Alabama, on Sunday to commemorate a defining moment in the fight for equal voting rights, even as congressional efforts to restore the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act have faltered. Under a blazing blue sky, Harris linked arms with rank-and-file activists from the civil rights movement and led thousands across the bridge where, on March 7, 1965, white state troopers attacked Black voting rights marchers attempting to cross. The images of violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge — originally named for a Confederate general — shocked the nation and helped galvanize support for passage of the Voting Rights Act. Harris called the site hallowed ground where people fought for the “most fundamental right of American citizenship: the right to vote.” “Today, we stand on this bridge at a different time,” Harris said in a speech before the gathered crowd. “We again, however, find ourselves caught in between. Between injustice and justice. Between disappointment and determination. Still in a fight to form a more perfect union. And nowhere is that more clear than when it comes to the ongoing fight to secure the freedom to vote.”

Full Article: Kamala Harris marks ‘Bloody Sunday’ anniversary in Selma | AP News

National: GOP pushes for an ‘earthquake in American electoral power’ | Zach Montellaro/Politico

A legal argument lurking in two Supreme Court cases could give Republican legislators in battleground states sweeping control over election procedures, with ramifications that could include power over how states select presidential electors. Republicans from Pennsylvania and North Carolina challenged court-ordered redistricting plans in their states based on the “independent legislature” theory. It’s a reading of the Constitution, stemming from the 2000 election recount in Florida, that argues legislators have ultimate power over elections in their states and that state courts have a limited ability — or even none at all — to check it. The Supreme Court turned away the GOP redistricting challenges on Monday, largely on procedural grounds. But at least four justices embraced the “independent legislature” theory to some degree, which would consolidate power over election administration in key states with GOP-dominated state legislatures, from the ability to draw district lines unchallenged to passing new restrictions on voting. Taken to its extreme, some proponents of the theory argue it would give legislators power to override the choice of presidential electors after voting in their states. Even if five justices signed on to a version of the independent legislature theory, it is unclear how far reaching a ruling will be, said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine School of Law who does not support the theory. “There’s a lot of potential for nuance here,” he said. “Even if you had a majority of justices that agreed that there’s something to this theory, they might not agree that a particular state has violated it.”

Full Article: GOP pushes for an ‘earthquake in American electoral power’ – POLITICO

National: Replacing outdated voting equipment could cost $350M, researchers say | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

Jurisdictions in 23 states are using voting equipment that’s more than decade old and no longer manufactured, according to a report published Tuesday by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. And equipment designed to assist voters with physical disabilities to cast private ballots is still being used in parts or all of 26 states. All told, it could cost upward of $350 million to replace all the outmoded equipment, researchers concluded. The glimpse at assistive voting machines was one part of a now-biennial report the Brennan Center conducts on the state of election infrastructure across the United States. While state and local election officials nationwide have made significant upgrades to their voting technology in recent years — fueled in large part by $380 million in federal grants awarded in 2018 and private donations from the likes of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — tens of millions of voters still reside in jurisdictions where balloting devices are aged, no longer supported by their original vendors or both, the Brennan Center found. “Machines are aging past their projected life cycle without being replaced, leaving jurisdictions with systems that are significantly more than a decade old,” the report reads. “Many of these systems are no longer manufactured, which can make it difficult or impossible to find replacement parts.” The 23 states where principal voting machines are no longer in production account for about 21 million registered voters, according to the Brennan Center. When including the states and territories where the assistive devices are also out-of-date — a group that includes Florida and New York — that figure approaches 40 million registered voters.

Full Article: Replacing outdated voting equipment could cost $350M, researchers say

National: Is the Supreme Court ready to upend the power of state courts in disputes over federal elections? | Ariane de Vogue/CNN

As the Supreme Court continues to mull major questions concerning the future of Roe v. Wade and the Second Amendment, Republicans in North Carolina are now asking the justices — on an emergency basis — to possibly change how US elections are decided. Election law experts are carefully watching the case, believing that the justices will ultimately reject a request from Republicans to freeze an opinion by the North Carolina Supreme Court that blocked a congressional map, drawn by the GOP-led legislature, that favors Republicans. Among other reasons, the justices may not want to step in with changes too close to election deadlines. But embedded in the case are arguments that have attracted some members of the court’s right wing in the past as they apply to setting election rules and played a role in the litigation surrounding then-President Donald Trump’s quest to use the courts to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. If a majority of the court were ever to adopt those arguments, it could profoundly change the landscape of election law.

Full Article: Is the Supreme Court ready to upend the power of state courts in disputes over federal elections? – CNNPolitics

National: Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump | Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result. In a court filing in a civil case in California, the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman and other allies could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people. The filing also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been stolen amounted to common law fraud. The filing disclosed only limited new evidence, and the committee asked the judge in the civil case to review the relevant material behind closed doors. In asserting the potential for criminality, the committee largely relied on the extensive and detailed accounts already made public of the actions Mr. Trump and his allies took to keep him in office after his defeat.

Full Article: Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump – The New York Times

National: New evidence shows Trump was told many times there was no voter fraud — but he kept saying it anyway | Rosalind S. Helderman, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger/The Washington Post

A data expert for former president Donald Trump’s campaign told him bluntly not long after polls closed in November 2020 that he was definitely going to lose his campaign for reelection. In the weeks that followed, multiple top officials at the Justice Department informed Trump that they had closely examined allegations of fraud that were being circulated by Trump’s close allies — and had found them simply untrue. And in the days leading up to the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, even Trump’s loyal vice president, Mike Pence, repeatedly conveyed to Trump that he did not believe the Constitution gave him the power to overturn the election as he presided over the counting of electoral college votes giving the presidency to Joe Biden. These and other new details were included in a legal brief filed late Wednesday by lawyers for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as they began to build a case that Trump was knowingly misleading his followers about the election and pressuring Pence to break the law in the weeks and hours before the assault. According to the panel and others, at least 11 aides and close confidants told Trump directly in the weeks after the election that there was no fraud and no legal way to overturn the result. The committee’s goal was to convince a federal judge there is a “good-faith basis” for concluding Trump and others engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to defraud the United States and obstruct Congress before the attack on the Capitol — and to prove that Trump was acting corruptly by continuing to spread lies about the election long after he had reason to know he had legitimately lost.

Full Article: New evidence shows Trump was told many times there was no voter fraud — but he kept saying it anyway – The Washington Post

National: Attacks from within seen as a growing threat to elections | Christia A. Cassidy/Associated Press