National

Mother Jones magazine published video on Thursday obtained by the group Documented and depicting a donor meeting in Arizona last month hosted by the advocacy group Heritage Action. You’re likely familiar with the nonprofit conservative think tank Heritage Foundation; Heritage Action is its sibling that raises often-anonymous money to focus on political advocacy. In the video from the meeting in Tucson, the organization’s executive director, Jessica Anderson, boasts about the group’s efforts to influence legislation aimed at restricting voting in states. “We’re working with these state legislators to make sure they have all of the information they need to draft the bills,” Anderson says at one point. “In some cases we actually draft them for them.” She also tells the donors, according to Mother Jones’s Ari Berman and Nick Surgey, that the organization has also “hired state lobbyists to make sure that in these targeted states we’re meeting with the right people” to advance the proposals. At another point, she and her colleague Hans von Spakovsky discuss a call with a number of secretaries of state a few weeks prior. They brag that they’d managed to share information with “the best conservative secretaries of state” without a single leak to their political opponents. This sort of privacy is a focal point; Anderson also crows about the work the organization did in Iowa that “honestly? Nobody noticed.” Both Anderson and von Spakovsky have ties to the Trump administration. Anderson worked in the Office of Management and Budget as an associate director. Thanks to his years of focus on the issue, von Spakovsky was an instrumental part of former president Donald Trump’s ill-fated voter-fraud commission that collapsed early in his term. Given that shared background, it’s not surprising that Anderson articulated Heritage Action’s goal as being to “take the fierce fire that is in every single one of our bellies to right the wrongs of November.”

Full Article: Group that can’t find systemic voter fraud eager to help combat systemic voter fraud – The Washington Post

National: Conservative group boasts of secret role in voting laws | Nicholas Riccardi and Anthony Izaguirre/Associated Press

The head of a national conservative group told supporters it secretly helped draft legislation in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country as part of a coordinated network of organizations pushing to tighten voting laws across the country. Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, made the claim during a recent meeting with supporters in Arizona. A recording of the event was released by the liberal investigative website Documented, which made a copy available for The Associated Press to review. Heritage Action confirmed its authenticity. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” Anderson said of legislation written for state lawmakers. “Or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation, so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.” Anderson’s comments shed additional light on precisely how well-funded national organizations have seized on false claims about the 2020 election to try to tighten state voting laws. While it is known that Heritage Action and several other groups are working with state lawmakers on legislation, it is rare to hear a leader detail how a group masks involvement to give the bills the appearance of broad political support. Anderson gave the example of Georgia, where she said an activist affiliated with Heritage had given a letter outlining the group’s recommendations to key legislators. The activist first had the proposal signed by thousands of other activists. Other states where she said the group helped write bills included Iowa and Texas — though in Iowa, the authors of the voting legislation said they never spoke with Heritage. In a statement Friday, Anderson said: “Heritage Action is proud of our work to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. That work begins at the state level through our grassroots and continues in state legislatures throughout the country.”

Full Article: Conservative group boasts of secret role in voting laws

National: Here’s How Disinformation Drives Voting Laws | Maggie Astor/The New York Times

When State Representative Bobby Kaufmann of Iowa spoke in February in support of a restrictive voting bill he was sponsoring, he made what might once have been a startling acknowledgment: He could not point to any problems with November’s election that demonstrated a need for new rules. But many Iowans believed there had been problems, he said. And that was reason enough to allow less early voting, shorten Election Day polling hours, put new limits on absentee balloting and forbid counties to have more than one ballot drop box. “The ultimate voter suppression is a very large swath of the electorate not having faith in our election systems,” Mr. Kaufmann, a Republican, said in defense of his bill, which was signed into law in March. “And for whatever reason, political or not, there are thousands upon thousands of Iowans that do not have faith in our election systems.” Former President Donald J. Trump’s monthslong campaign to delegitimize the 2020 election didn’t overturn the results. But his unfounded claims gutted his supporters’ trust in the electoral system, laying the foundation for numerous Republican-led bills pushing more restrictive voter rules. The bills demonstrate how disinformation can take on a life of its own, forming a feedback loop that shapes policy for years to come. When promoted with sufficient intensity, falsehoods — whether about election security or the coronavirus or other topics — can shape voters’ attitudes toward policies, and lawmakers can cite those attitudes as the basis for major changes.

Full Article: Here’s How Disinformation Drives Voting Laws – The New York Times

National: Manchin, Murkowski call on Congress to reauthorize Voting Rights Act | Sahil Kapur/NBC

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, wrote a letter Monday calling on Congress to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, seeking to jump-start a debate on a bipartisan path to bolstering voting access. “Protecting Americans’ access to democracy has not been a partisan issue for the past 56 years, and we must not allow it to become one now,” they wrote to the top four congressional leaders. While the letter didn’t name the bill, a Manchin aide said the senators are referring to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which aims to require states with a recent record of discrimination in voting rights to get federal pre-approval before changing their election laws. The Supreme Court in 2013 gutted the formula established by Congress to determine which states are subject to the rule, calling it outdated. The issue has since languished on Capitol Hill, with Republicans uninterested in re-establishing a “preclearance” requirement, and GOP-led states around the country moving to pass restrictive voting laws. The Manchin-Murkowski letter is designed to show that there is some bipartisan support for the cause of protecting voting rights. It comes as Manchin faces progressive criticism for being the lone Democratic holdout on the “For The People Act,” a sweeping bill that aims to allow more ballot access and that all states must follow. The Democratic-controlled House approved that bill but it hasn’t taken up the bill named for John Lewis. Manchin has insisted that any attempt to overhaul federal voting laws have support from both parties.

Full Article: Manchin, Murkowski call on Congress to reauthorize Voting Rights Act

Arizona: Cyber Ninjas, UV lights and far-right funding: inside the strange Arizona 2020 election ‘audit’ | Sam Levine/The Guardian

One of the first things you see when you step outside Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the ageing arena in Phoenix, is the Crazy Times Carnival, a temporary spectacle set up in the parking lot. In the evenings, just as the sun is setting, lights from the ferris wheel, the jingle of the carousel and shrieks of joy fill the massive desert sky. Inside the coliseum – nicknamed the Madhouse on McDowell – there is another carnival of sorts happening. The arena floor is where the Arizona senate, controlled by Republicans, is performing its own audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa county, home of Phoenix and most of the state’s registered voters. The effort, which comes after multiple audits affirming the results of the November election in the county in favor or Joe Biden, includes an examination of voting equipment, an authentication of ballot paper, and a hand recount of the nearly 2.1m ballots cast there. Republicans in the state legislature are simultaneously considering measures that would make it harder to vote in Arizona, which Biden carried by about 10,000 votes in November. The review – unprecedented in American politics – may also be one of the clearest manifestations to date of Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud and the conspiracy theories that spread after the election (the former president and allies have loudly cheered on the Arizona effort). Far-right conspiracy theorists appear to be connected to the effort and the firm hired to lead the charge, a Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas, has little experience in elections. The firm’s CEO has voiced support for the idea that the election was stolen from Trump. Election experts are watching the unfolding effort with deep alarm, pointing out that officials are not using a reliable methodology – they hesitate to even label it an audit – and will produce a results that will give more fodder for conspiracy theorists. More troublingly, they worry the Arizona audit could be a model for Republicans to try elsewhere.

Full Article: Cyber Ninjas, UV lights and far-right funding: inside the strange Arizona 2020 election ‘audit’ | Arizona | The Guardian

The making of a myth: How the election-fraud myth was spread by Russell Ramsland and the Texas security company ASOG | Emma Brown, Aaron C. Davis, Jon Swaine and Josh Dawsey/Washington Post

Key elements of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump took shape in an airplane hangar here two years earlier, promoted by a Republican businessman who has sold everything from Tex-Mex food in London to a wellness technology that beams light into the human bloodstream. At meetings beginning late in 2018, as Republicans were smarting from midterm losses in Texas and across the country, Russell J. Ramsland Jr. and his associates delivered alarming presentations on electronic voting to a procession of conservative lawmakers, activists and donors. Briefings in the hangar had a clandestine air. Guests were asked to leave their cellphones outside before assembling in a windowless room. A member of Ramsland’s team purporting to be a “white-hat hacker” identified himself only by a code name. Ramsland, a failed congressional candidate with a Harvard MBA, pitched a claim that seemed rooted in evidence: Voting-machine audit logs — lines of codes and time stamps that document the machines’ activities — contained indications of vote manipulation. In the retrofitted hangar that served as his company’s offices at the edge of a municipal airstrip outside Dallas, Ramsland attempted to persuade failed Republican candidates to challenge their election results and force the release of additional data that might prove manipulation. “We had to find the right candidate,” said Laura Pressley, a former Ramsland ally whose own claim that audit logs showed fraud had been rejected in court two years earlier. “We had to find one who knew they won.”

Full Article: How the election-fraud myth was spread by Russell Ramsland and the Texas security company ASOG – Washington Post

National: ‘Do or die’: Democrats plan revisions to sweeping voting rights bill in Senate committee | Sahil Kapur/NBC

The Senate is headed for a showdown over Democrats’ sweeping voting rights and election overhaul bill as a key committee plans to mark up the legislation Tuesday. The bill, the For The People Act, goes before the Democratic-controlled Rules Committee when Congress returns from recess. Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and the lead sponsor, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., plan a “manager’s amendment” with a series of changes to the bill from the House-passed version. The Democrats’ revisions would mostly extend deadlines, ease some rules and add flexibility for states to implement parts of the bill. Democrats don’t expect Republican support for the final version, but they won’t need it to send the bill out of committee to the full Senate. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has promised floor consideration of the bill, known on Capitol Hill as S.1, after it goes through committee. Democrats as well as Republicans are expected to offer other amendments, and aides are bracing for what could be days of markup. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has made it a priority to kill the bill, is expected to participate in the committee, an aide said. GOP-led states like Texas, Florida and Georgia have advanced voting restrictions that President Joe Biden and other Democrats have compared to Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised nonwhite Americans. The bill seeks to impose a national standard for voting rights, which Republicans decry as a partisan power grab to supersede state autonomy.

Full Article: ‘Do or die’: Democrats plan revisions to sweeping voting rights bill in Senate committee

National: Democrats tweak marquee voting bill as they seek path out of Senate | Mike DeBonis/The Washington Post

Congressional Democrats have tweaked their marquee voting-rights, campaign-finance and ethics bill ahead of a Senate committee vote next week, addressing concerns raised by elections administrators but forgoing a more radical rewrite of the legislation. The changes to the For the People Act come after the bill passed the House on a largely party-line vote in March and ahead of a critical vote Tuesday in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee that could advance the legislation to the floor. The legislation is meant to curtail state-level pushes to restrict voter access, such as the nationally controversial effort in Georgia, and President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have all called the bill one of the Democratic Party’s top legislative priorities. The For the People Act, however, presently has no viable route to enactment in the 50-50 Senate. The tweaks made Tuesday aren’t likely to change that. Republicans are uniformly opposed to the bill, meaning it will be unable to clear a Senate filibuster, which can be defeated only with a 60-vote supermajority. While many activists and some senators are eager to change the chamber’s rules to allow the bill to pass with a simple majority, multiple Democratic senators have expressed misgivings about doing so.

Full Article: Democrats change voting bill, HR1 – The Washington Post

National: Lawmakers want greater resources, authorities for CISA to protect critical infrastructure | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Leading voices in Congress say the nation’s top cybersecurity agency needs better resources to handle growing threats to critical services like water and power. One step: centralizing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s authority to track vulnerabilities in industrial control systems that power the nation’s critical infrastructure, Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) said yesterday. The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee touted legislation he helped introduce earlier this year that would grant CISA leadership the authority to coordinate federal response to such vulnerabilities. Concerns about cybersecurity threats to the systems powering America’s critical infrastructure have escalated after a cybercriminal attempted to poison a water plant on Oldsmar, Florida earlier this year. A series of foreign attacks on popular software used by critical systems, including SolarWinds and Microsoft exchange, have also underscored the need for better protective efforts.

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Lawmakers want greater resources, authorities for CISA to protect critical infrastructure – The Washington Post

National: Fox News made me do it: Capitol attack suspect pulls ‘Foxitis’ defense | Luke O’Neil/The Guardian

The lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is floating a unique defense: Fox News made him do it. Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the rightwing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing on Thursday. Antonio spent the six months before the riots mainlining Fox News while unemployed, Hurley said, likening the side effects of such a steady diet of misinformation to a mental health syndrome. “Fox television played constantly,” he said. “He became hooked with what I call ‘Foxitis’ or ‘Foxmania’, and became interested in the political aspect and started believing what was being fed to him.” Antonio’s segment was somehow only the second most notable part of the hearing. Another defendant shouted obscenities, sending the proceedings into near chaos at one point.

Full Article: Fox News made me do it: Capitol attack suspect pulls ‘Foxitis’ defense | US Capitol breach | The Guardian

National: Despite GOP rhetoric, there have been fewer than two dozen charged cases of voter fraud since the election | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

On Election Day last year, a man named Ralph Thurman allegedly walked into Sugartown Elementary School in Malvern, Pa., to cast his vote. He allegedly asked whether he needed to produce identification and was told he didn’t. He then allegedly asked if he could vote for his son and was told he couldn’t. He left. Forty-five minutes later, Thurman (again, allegedly) returned, wearing sunglasses. He claimed to be his son and asked for a ballot. Somehow, the people at the polling place saw through his scheme. Thurman faces felony fraud charges. Before 2020, this is how President Donald Trump claimed voter fraud worked: People would vote, leave, come back in a hat and vote again. There was never evidence that this happened with any regularity, particularly given the challenge of pulling it off (as Mr. Thurman can attest). There was even less evidence that there was somehow a secret cabal orchestrating widespread fraud that could swing a federal election, something Trump suggested had been responsible for his 2016 popular-vote loss. With the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Trump switched his focus. Out were the multiple-hatted fraudsters; in were vague allegations of fraud committed through absentee ballots. Out, too, was a casual, hand-wavey allegation of rampant fraud, replaced by a concerted, hyperactive insistence on it. That accelerated after Trump lost his reelection bid and continues even now, six months later: The 2020 election, he and his party claim, was riddled with illegal votes. Yet for all of those claims and even with the Republican Party’s concentrated focus on the idea during the past six months, there remains no credible evidence that any significant fraud occurred. There’s lots of putative evidence, sure, random affidavits in which nonexperts allege weirdness or claims about ballot nefariousness that is quickly debunked. But even after months and months and months of formal and informal scrutiny, there have been no demonstrated examples of systemic efforts to commit voter fraud.

Full Article: Despite GOP rhetoric, there have been fewer than two dozen charged cases of voter fraud since the election – The Washington Post

National: Sidney Powell Can’t Be Let Off the Hook for Lies, Dominion Says | Erik Larson/Bloomberg

Dominion Voting Systems Inc. blasted former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell for telling a judge that her claims about a vast election-fraud conspiracy were merely opinions in order to dodge the company’s $1.3 billion defamation suit. Powell repeatedly and falsely claimed in public that she had proof Dominion rigged the 2020 election against Donald Trump, saying she could “hardly wait to put forth all the evidence” and that “you would have to be a damn fool” not to believe it, Dominion said in a filing late Monday against Powell’s request to dismiss the lawsuit. “Powell did not even attempt to couch her accusations as opinions,” Dominion said in the filing in Washington federal court. “She leveled the falsehoods as deadly serious assertions of fact backed by evidence that she claimed would prove that Dominion had in fact stolen the 2020 election.” Powell’s conspiracy theory and other disinformation preceded a deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 by a mob of Trump supporters, and Trump continues to claim the election was stolen, even though his own attorney general said he hadn’t found evidence of fraud that would have affected the result. Letting Powell off the hook for her statements now would effectively create a “propaganda exception” for defamation liability, the company said. Powell didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Full Article: Sidney Powell Can’t Be Let Off the Hook for Lies, Dominion Says – Bloomberg

Editorial: Republicans aren’t just making it harder to vote. They’re going after election officials, too. | Joshua A. Douglas/The Washington Post

The right to vote is under attack, as are the people who protect that right. Multiple states have passed or are considering new restrictive voting rules in response to the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. There is, of course, no evidence of massive voter fraud in 2020 — and President Biden legitimately won the election — but that has not stopped unscrupulous politicians in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Iowa from considering new strict rules on absentee balloting, the ability to use a drop box, and even providing food or water to voters waiting in line. These attacks on our democracy have received much attention. Far less noticed, however, have been provisions in these laws that penalize local election officials who administer our elections. Iowa, in addition to limiting voter access by cutting early voting days and forbidding local election officials from mailing out absentee ballot request forms without a specific request from a voter, will now make it a crime if election workers violate the new rules. Florida has enacted a rule that limits ballot drop box availability to only during early voting hours, and provides that, “If any drop box at an early voting site is left accessible for the return of ballots outside of early voting hours, the supervisor is subject to a civil penalty of $25,000.” A Texas proposed bill would subject a local registrar to fines if the registrar fails to mail out notices demanding proof of citizenship to individuals otherwise deemed ineligible to vote. It would also criminalize election workers who “distance or obstruct the view of a [poll] watcher in a way that makes observation reasonably ineffective.” Arizona legislators want to make it a felony for an election worker to mail an early ballot to a voter who has not requested one.

Full Article: Opinion | Republicans aren’t just making it harder to vote. They’re going after election officials, too. – The Washington Post

In Arizona, a Troubled Voting Review Plods On as Questions Mount | Michael Wines/The New York Times

Directly outside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum near downtown Phoenix, the Crazy Times Carnival wraps up an 11-day run on Sunday, a spectacle of thrill rides, games and food stands that headlines the Arizona State Fair this year. Inside the coliseum, a Republican-ordered exhumation and review of 2.1 million votes in the state’s November election is heading into its third week, an exercise that has risen to become the lodestar of rigged-vote theorists — and shows no sign of ending soon. Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs noted the carnival’s presence outside the coliseum when she challenged the competence and objectivity of the review last week, expressing concern about the security of the ballots inside in an apparent dig at what has become a spectacle of a very different sort. There is no evidence that former President Donald J. Trump’s narrow loss in Arizona’s presidential election in the fall was fraudulent. Nonetheless, 16 Republicans in the State Senate voted to subpoena ballots in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and two-thirds of the state’s vote in November, for an audit to show Trump die-hards that their fraud concerns were taken seriously. As recently as a week ago, officials said the review would be completed by May 14. But with that deadline a week away, only about 250,000 of the county’s 2.1 million ballots have been processed in the hand recount that is a central part of the review, Ken Bennett, a liaison between those conducting the review and the senators, said on Saturday. At that rate, the hand recount would not be finished until August.

Source: Arizona Voting Review Faces More Questions – The New York Times

National: Constitutional Challenges Loom Over Proposed Voting Bill | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

If the sweeping voting rights bill that the House passed in March overcomes substantial hurdles in the Senate to become law, it would reshape American elections and represent a triumph for Democrats eager to combat the wave of election restrictions moving through Republican-controlled state legislatures. But passage of the bill, known as H.R. 1, would end a legislative fight and start a legal war that could dwarf the court challenges aimed at the Affordable Care Act over the past decade. “I have no doubt that if H.R. 1 passes, we’re going to have a dozen major Supreme Court cases on different pieces of it,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard. The potential for the bill to set off a sprawling constitutional battle is largely a function of its ambitions. It would end felon disenfranchisement, require independent commissions to draw congressional districts, establish public financing for congressional candidates, order presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns, address dark money in political advertising and restructure the Federal Election Commission. The bill’s opponents say that it is, in the words of an editorial in The National Review, “a frontal assault on the Constitution” and “the most comprehensively unconstitutional bill in modern American history.”

Full Article: Constitutional Challenges Loom Over Proposed Voting Bill – The New York Times

National: G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The red dot of a laser pointer circled downtown Houston on a map during a virtual training of poll watchers by the Harris County Republican Party. It highlighted densely populated, largely Black, Latino and Asian neighborhoods. “This is where the fraud is occurring,” a county Republican official said falsely in a leaked video of the training, which was held in March. A precinct chair in the northeastern, largely white suburbs of Houston, he said he was trying to recruit people from his area “to have the confidence and courage” to act as poll watchers in the circled areas in upcoming elections. A question at the bottom corner of the slide indicated just how many poll watchers the party wanted to mobilize: “Can we build a 10K Election Integrity Brigade?” As Republican lawmakers in major battleground states seek to make voting harder and more confusing through a web of new election laws, they are simultaneously making a concerted legislative push to grant more autonomy and access to partisan poll watchers — citizens trained by a campaign or a party and authorized by local election officials to observe the electoral process. This effort has alarmed election officials and voting rights activists alike: There is a long history of poll watchers being used to intimidate voters and harass election workers, often in ways that target Democratic-leaning communities of color and stoke fears that have the overall effect of voter suppression. During the 2020 election, President Donald J. Trump’s campaign repeatedly promoted its “army” of poll watchers as he publicly implored supporters to venture into heavily Black and Latino cities and hunt for voter fraud.

Full Article: G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries – The New York Times

National: The slow, painful death of Trump allies’ voting-machine conspiracy theories | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

Among the many wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, few rank as high when it comes to both baselessness and reach as those involving voting machines. The theory that voting machines were programmed to steal the election from President Donald Trump had the benefit, while being utterly without merit, of at least being simple and easy for people to grasp. There were big swings in the vote totals! (Because Biden did a lot better in mail balloting, which were often added to the totals en masse!) Unfortunately for its proponents, these theories carried one very significant drawback: legal liability. While broad claims of voter fraud are relatively unspecific and involve many potential perpetrators, there are relatively few voting-machine companies. Claiming such things means impugning them specifically and creating a situation in which your baseless claims can lead to calculable personal and business harm, which is important when it comes to suing someone for defamation. And sue they have. The result: Many if not most of the high-profile purveyors of such claims have since backed off. One by one, they’ve succumbed to legal pressure by issuing corrections, clarifications or apologies. While some true believers of these theories viewed such lawsuits as opportunities to prove malfeasance once and for all, through the discovery process, those facing penalties have repeatedly left them high and dry — almost as if these theories were completely baseless in the first place and they didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Full Article: The slow, painful death of Trump allies’ voting-machine conspiracy theories – The Washington Post

National: Newsmax apologizes to Dominion employee Eric Coomer for falsely alleging he manipulated votes against Trump | Amy B Wang/The Washington Post

The conservative news network Newsmax has apologized to an employee of Dominion Voting Systems for baselessly alleging that he had rigged the company’s voting machines and vote counts against President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In a statement Friday, Newsmax said it wanted to “clarify” its coverage of Eric Coomer, the director of product strategy and security at Dominion, who filed a defamation lawsuit against the right-wing network in December. After the election, misinformation about Coomer’s supposed role in manipulating the vote proliferated on right-wing sites, including Newsmax. Coomer said he had been forced into hiding after receiving death threats from Trump supporters, who believed Trump’s false assertion that the election had been stolen from him and that Coomer had played a role. On Friday, Newsmax said there was no evidence that such allegations were true. “There are several facts that our viewers should be aware of,” Newsmax’s statement read. “Newsmax has found no evidence that Dr. Coomer interfered with Dominion voting machines or voting software in any way, nor that Dr. Coomer ever claimed to have done so. Nor has Newsmax found any evidence that Dr. Coomer ever participated in any conversation with members of ‘Antifa,’ nor that he was directly involved with any partisan political organization.”

Full Article: Newsmax apologizes to Dominion employee Eric Coomer for falsely alleging he manipulated votes against Trump – The Washington Post

National: Senate Democrats agonize over voting rights strategy | Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine/Politico

Senate Democrats made a major commitment to muscle through Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ethics and voting reform bill. Yet many say they have no idea how to pass it and wonder what exactly the end game is for a signature Democratic priority. Democrats are preparing to kick off a sensitive internal debate over the issue this month as the Senate Rules Committee takes up the sprawling House package. But no Republicans support it, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) hasn’t signed on and at least a half-dozen Democrats have issues with the bill, according to senators and aides. That’s not to mention the constraints of the filibuster in a 50-50 Senate. “We know we’ve got to pass voting rights,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). “We ought to have 10 Republicans … in that sense the ball is in their court. I’m not saying the outcome is in their court.” What’s at stake is not only the party’s promise on a key issue, but also potentially the future Democratic majorities. Many in the party privately worry that frontline Democrats, like Warnock or House Democrats vulnerable to redistricting, could lose their seats if Congress doesn’t send a federal election and ethics bill to President Joe Biden’s desk by this summer.

Full Article: Senate Dems agonize over voting rights strategy – POLITICO

Florida Republicans rushed to curb mail voting after Trump’s attacks on the practice. Now some fear it could lower GOP turnout. | Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

Republican operatives worth their salt remember well the Sunshine State’s 1988 U.S. Senate race. Floridians went to sleep that Nov. 8 believing that Democrat Buddy MacKay had prevailed with a slim lead of less than one percentage point. The television networks had called the race for him. The St. Petersburg Times published a story the…

With Florida Bill, Republicans Continue Unrelenting Push to Restrict Voting | Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein/The New York Times

The pleas from Florida election officials were direct and dire: Passing the state’s new voting bill would be a “grave security risk,” “unnecessary” and a “travesty.” The restrictions imposed by the new law, they warned, would make it harder to vote and hurt confidence in the balloting process. But their objections were brushed aside on Thursday night as the Legislature gave final passage to a bill that would limit voting by mail, curtail the use of drop boxes and prohibit actions to help people waiting in line to vote, among other restrictions, while imposing penalties on those who do not follow the rules. It was perhaps the clearest sign yet that Republicans are determined to march forward across state capitols to establish new restrictions on voting. The Republican effort puts added pressure on Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass federal voting laws, including a sweeping overhaul known as the For the People Act. But in Washington, just as in state capitols across the country, Republicans have remained united and steadfast against the Democratic efforts. Georgia Republicans in March enacted far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and forbid the distribution of food and water to voters waiting in line. Iowa has also imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and in-person voting hours on Election Day. Next up is Texas, where Republicans in the legislature are trampling protestations from corporate titans like Dell Technologies and American Airlines and moving on a vast election bill that would be among the most severe in the nation. It would impose new restrictions on early voting, ban drive-through voting, threaten election officials with harsher penalties and greatly empower partisan poll watchers. The main bill passed a key committee in a late-night session on Thursday, and could head to a full floor vote in the House as early as next week. Bills to restrict voting have also been moving through Republican-led legislatures in Arizona and Michigan.

Full Article: With Florida Bill, Republicans Continue Unrelenting Push to Restrict Voting – The New York Times

National: Nine major sports unions join forces to oppose U.S. state voting restrictions | Reuters

May 4, 2021

Nine major U.S. sports unions joined together on Monday to declare their opposition to state legislative efforts restricting the right to vote. A number of voting rights groups say the restrictions passed by Georgia, and being weighed in Texas and Arizona among other states, target Black people and other racial minorities. The statement was co-signed by the National Basketball Players Association, the Basketball Players Union, Major League Soccer Players Association, National Football League Players Association, and the United States Women’s National Team Players Association along with players’ bodies representing elite-level women’s ice hockey, soccer and basketball. The Republican-backed Georgia law strengthened identification requirements for absentee ballots, shortened early voting periods for runoffs and made it a misdemeanor for members of the public to offer food and water to voters waiting in line. The sports unions said they were joining hundreds of individuals and corporations in taking a ‘Stand for Democracy’.

Full Article: Nine major sports unions join forces to oppose U.S. state voting restrictions | Reuters

As Trump seizes on Arizona ballot audit, election officials fear partisan vote counts could be the norm in future elections | Rosalind S. Helderman and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

Full Article: As Trump seizes on Arizona ballot audit, election officials fear partisan vote counts could be the norm in future elections – The Washington Post

More than five months after the 2020 presidential election, and after numerous failed attempts to overturn the results, former president Donald Trump has seized on a new avenue to try to call the outcome into question: a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Arizona’s largest county. Several advisers said the former president has become fixated on the unorthodox process underway in Phoenix, where the GOP-led state Senate took ballots and voting equipment from Maricopa County and turned them over to Cyber Ninjas, a private contractor whose chief executive has echoed baseless claims that the election was fraudulent but has now promised a fair review of the November results. Ensconced at his private club in Florida, Trump asks aides for updates about the process multiple times a day, advisers said, expressing particular interest in the use of UV lights to scrutinize Maricopa’s ballots — a method that has bewildered election experts, who say it could damage the votes. “He talks about it constantly,” said one person who recently visited Mar-a-Lago and listened to Trump discuss the recount for about 45 minutes, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump’s embrace of the Arizona effort — which he and his allies claim will prove that the election was stolen — has come amid mounting anxiety among election officials that similar partisan vote counts could become the norm. “I’m very concerned this has ramifications for every state in the country,” Kim Wyman, a Republican who serves as secretary of state in Washington state, said in an interview. “This is politicizing an administrative process with no real structure or laws or rules in place to guide how it goes.”

The Republicans’ staggering effort to attack voting rights in Biden’s first 100 days | Sam Levine/The Guardian

The most urgent crisis facing the US during the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency has been a ticking time bomb that has unfolded far from the White House and the halls of Congress.It’s an emergency that has unfolded in state capitols across America, where lawmakers have taken up an unprecedented effort to make it harder to vote. Even as attacks on voting rights have escalated in recent years, the Republican effort since January marks a new, more dangerous phase for American democracy, experts say. From the moment Biden was elected, Republicans have waged an unprecedented effort to undermine confidence in the results in the election, thrusting the foundation of American democracy to the center of American politics. An alarming peak in that effort came on 6 January, when Republican lies about the election fomented the attack on the US capitol and several GOP senators tried to block certification of the electoral college vote.

Full Article: The Republicans’ staggering effort to attack voting rights in Biden’s first 100 days | US news | The Guardian

National: Biden calls on Congress to pass voting, elections reform bills | Max Greenwood/The Hill

President Biden in his address to Congress on Tuesday called on lawmakers to pass a sweeping set of elections and voting reforms that hold the potential to reshape the U.S. political landscape, from how campaigns are financed to the laws governing the decennial redistricting process. In his remarks to a joint session of Congress, Biden boasted that the 2020 election had seen the highest turnout in modern history despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. But instead of being celebrated, he said, the right to vote “is being attacked.” “If we truly want to restore the soul of America, we need to protect the sacred right to vote,” Biden said. “More people voted in the last presidential election than any time in American history in the middle of the worst pandemic ever.” He called on Congress to quickly pass H.R. 1, a wide-reaching elections reform bill already approved by the House, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would strengthen or reinstate parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. “Congress should pass H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and send them to my desk right away,” Biden said. “The country supports it, and Congress should act now.” H.R. 1 seeks a broad overhaul of the nation’s political systems. Among the proposals included in the measure is a mandate for states to use nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw congressional lines, as well as new financial disclosure requirements for super PACs and political nonprofits, often dubbed “dark money groups.” The bill would also create a set of national standards for voter registration and mail-in balloting. One provision would require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns, something that former President Donald Trump never did, despite decades of precedent.

Full Article: Biden calls on Congress to pass voting, elections reform bills | TheHill

National: What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About Mail-In Ballots and Early Voting in 2020 | Ryan Teague Beckwith/Bloomberg

What happened in the 2020 U.S. election? Here’s a quick summary that may sound familiar. Spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, states expanded early voting and voting by mail, leading to historic turnout that helped Joe Biden win. The problem: Almost everything about that summary is likely wrong. Recent studies have confirmed that changes to voting in 2020 had little or no effect on turnout, and even though Democrats took more advantage of mail voting, there’s no evidence that those voters wouldn’t have shown up anyway. And if there was a partisan benefit from expanding voting by mail, it probably helped Republicans, not Democrats. These misconceptions aren’t just a matter of historical interest. Along with other urban legends about how elections work, they appear to be driving legislation at the state and federal level that would change how elections are run in the future. State lawmakers across the country have filed more than 1,200 bills seeking to change voting laws, with Republicans looking to roll back early and absentee voting and Democrats seeking to make voter registration easier. In Congress, House Democrats have passed a bill, H.R. 1, that would require states to offer early voting and expand access to voting by mail, but it remains stalled in the Senate because of Republican opposition.

Full Article: What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About Mail-In Ballots and Early Voting in 2020 – Bloomberg

National: Biden allies launch voting rights initiative | Rebecca Shabad/NBC

An outside political group formed by allies of President Joe Biden is launching a voting rights initiative focused on strengthening pro-voter policies and protecting against suppression efforts. The nonprofit Building Back Together announced the project Wednesday, saying in a release that the group “will work to counter proposed changes to those laws that impede access, particularly for voters of color and historically disadvantaged and densely populated communities.” The group will focus first on a slew of battleground states, some of which have implemented laws that voting rights advocates say seek to prevent people from casting ballots. The states include Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, recently signed a highly restrictive voting measure into law that has prompted lawsuits and threats to boycott of businesses that haven’t voiced opposition to the legislation.

Full Article: Biden allies launch voting rights initiative

National: Veterans group shifts focus from military voting to bigger election reforms | Leo Shane III/Military Times