National

In the weeks since his loss to Joe Biden, President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign have attempted to cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election and filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits in multiple states over alleged voter fraud and election administration infractions. Trump has not conceded and has given no indication that he will, breaking with centuries of precedent in the United States. When the head of the General Services Administration finally released delayed federal transition resources to Biden on Monday, President Trump simply tweeted that “the GSA does not determine who the next President of the United States will be.” That job falls to the Electoral College. In spite of the Trump campaign’s vows to continue the fight, the wheels of the American election process have kept turning. More than half the states have already certified their results, meaning they have committed their electoral votes according to their state election outcomes. On Monday, Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis said in a statement that “certification by state officials is simply a procedural step.” But this framing ignores the next phase of the process underpinned by certification: On December 14, Electoral College members will formally cast their votes based on their states’ certified results, resolving any possible ambiguity that Biden is the president-elect. “It’s over on December 14,” says Elaine Kamarck, founding director of the Brookings Institute’s Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in its Governance Studies Program. “We forget that the electors are actual people, but they go to their state capitals and sign their ballots. Then the US Senate opens them, reads them out, and does the count on January 6, but there’s nothing else the Senate can do. Once they’re signed on the 14th and are on their way to Washington, that’s the end of the game.” The Trump campaign may well continue into next year with its claims that the election results were fraudulent, but there won’t be any obvious legal or political paths remaining to challenge the results or attempt to overturn the outcome after December 14. So far, every state is on track to certify in time. Even in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, where the Trump campaign has made specific allegations of fraud, the campaign’s lawsuits have been roundly dismissed, and all three states wrapped up their certifications at the beginning of the week.

Full Article: Trump’s Election Attack Ends December 14—Whether He Knows It or Not | WIRED

National: Dominion Voting Systems Employees Threatened, Including Bounty Placed On One Worker, Amid Election Controversy | Emily Czachor/Newsweek

Employees at Dominion Voting Systems, a manufacturing company that produces hardware and software used to tabulate votes electronically, are facing extensive harassment as unsubstantiated allegations of fraudulent election activity continue to circulate. The company supplied software to support voting processes in 28 U.S. states during the general election, several of which were considered key battleground states in the race for president. Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden, now the President-elect, won a majority of popular and electoral votes by margins that many recognized as a combined landslide. Following initial ballot tallies, and even after states began to certify official results, Republican incumbent Donald Trump sought to invalidate the election’s outcome and went to great lengths in his efforts to do so. Dominion Voting Systems became a leading target in the Trump campaign’s multi-pronged attempt to contradict ballot counts across the country in the weeks trailing Election Day. As multiple lawsuits aiming to disqualify votes and suspend states’ certification procedures met prompt dismissals in court, the campaign’s legal team broadened its attacks on election officials to include machinery they used to tabulate ballots, as well as companies from which the electronic tools were purchased.

Full Article: Dominion Voting Systems Employees Threatened, Including Bounty Placed On One Worker, Amid Election Controversy

National: With Recounts, States Mix Civics, Spectator Sport and a Bit of Tedium | Sara Randazzo and Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

By the time Travis Weipert reported to the office Nov. 4, he knew his work as steward of the elections in Johnson County, Iowa, was far from over. The two candidates vying for the local congressional seat in the previous day’s election were separated by less than a percentage point. A recount, he sensed, was inevitable. “We knew to buckle up for a long ride,” Mr. Weipert said. After ping-ponging for a few days, the districtwide results showed Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks ahead of Rita Hart, the Democratic candidate, by 47 votes out of more than 394,400 cast. Ms. Hart called for a recount Nov. 12, kicking off a process that is still under way and that Iowa hadn’t undertaken for a race of this scale in more than a century. By Friday, Ms. Miller-Meeks’s lead had narrowed to just eight votes. This year’s drawn-out election cycle, spurred in part by the rise of mail-in ballots cast during the coronavirus pandemic, has been even longer in states where initial tallies showed races ending in razor-thin margins. Recounts in Iowa, Wisconsin, Georgia and elsewhere have involved legions of local election officials and volunteer election workers, who must follow exacting and at times arcane methods designed to ensure every vote gets counted properly. They are counting ballots in tight races up and down the ballot, not just for president. For the public and the candidates, the recounts become part civics lesson, part spectator sport.

Full Article: With Recounts, States Mix Civics, Spectator Sport and a Bit of Tedium – WSJ

National: Krebs says allegations of foreign interference in 2020 election ‘farcical’ | Martin Gstalter/The Hill

Christopher Krebs, the top federal cybersecurity official who was fired by President Trump last week due to his efforts to dispel concerns on 2020 election safety, said claims of foreign meddling this year are “farcical.” In an excerpt released Friday from a “60 minutes” interview set to air on Sunday, Krebs was asked to react to allegations from Trump’s legal team that votes were tabulated in foreign countries. “So all the votes — all votes in the United States of America are counted in the United States of America,” Krebs said. “I don’t — I don’t understand this claim. All votes in the United States of America are counted in the United States of America. Period.” Interviewer Scott Pelley referenced baseless claims from Sidney Powell, the lawyer who had loose ties to the Trump campaign, that linked former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to problems with voting machines. During a press conference last week, Powell alleged without evidence that Dominion Voting Systems, which supplies voting machines across the United States, used technology developed by Chávez, who died in 2013. She said votes were being manipulated overseas to favor Joe Biden. Krebs said there is “no evidence that any machine that I’m aware of has been manipulated by a foreign power. Period.” … “Look, I think these — we can go on and on with all the farcical claims alleging interference in the 2020 election, but the proof is in the ballots,” Krebs said. “The recounts are consistent with the initial count, and to me, that’s further evidence, that’s confirmation that the systems used in the 2020 election performed as expected, and the American people should have 100 percent confidence in their vote.”

Full Article: Krebs says allegations of foreign interference in 2020 election ‘farcical’ | TheHill

National: Election Security After 2020: Big Questions Lie Ahead | Philip Ewing/NPR

The 2020 elections ran well and were largely free from foreign interference, U.S. officials say. That doesn’t mean the story is over. Improving elections practices is a “race without a finish line,” as Pennsylvania’s secretary of state told NPR in 2019, and big questions remain about what’s to become of the fast maturing but still partly formed discipline of election security. A range of pending decisions, moves and countermoves now stands between governments, voters and their ballots in upcoming races, meaning the environment likely will continue to evolve even as the big players — the United States, Russia, China and others — likely stay the same. Here are some of the unresolved issues as the clock begins to tick toward Americans voting again in large numbers, including in important U.S. Senate runoff elections early next year in Georgia.

Full Article: Election Security After 2020: Big Questions Lie Ahead : NPR

National: Footsoldiers of democracy, election officials became targets of rage | Story Hinckley/CSMonitor

Gerald Lawrence takes copious notes as public comments submitted to the Delaware County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania are read out loud. Some are congratulatory, thanking Mr. Lawrence and his colleagues for running a safe and secure election during a pandemic. The vast majority, however, are not. A voter named Richard tells the board he believes there was serious fraud. Greg and Renee claim their votes weren’t counted. “Delaware County deserves a free and fair election, and I, for one, have zero confidence that this was the case,” asserts a voter named Robert. “Please do not certify this election.” Mr. Lawrence patiently addresses the accusations one by one, trying his best to assure his constituents that claims of widespread fraud simply aren’t valid. Typically, these certification meetings last 20 minutes and are unremarkable, sparsely attended affairs. Monday’s event was unlike anything Mr. Lawrence has experienced in his more than 15 years on the board. Streamed live on YouTube, it took nearly three hours. “It’s gratifying to see so many people have a passionate interest in the political process and democracy this year,” says Mr. Lawrence. “But it’s disheartening that some in the community circulate misinformation in an attempt to mislead people.”

Full Article: Election officials faced long hours, then a tide of threats and abuse – CSMonitor.com

Kentucky: ‘Good, Honest, Capable, and Willing People:’ A Take on Election Administrators Goes Viral | Kate Elizabeth Queram/Route Fifty

With a background in election administration—first as the director of elections in Louisville, Kentucky and now working at a company that helps to make elections more accessible to people with disabilities—James Young is accustomed to fielding questions about voting. But the inquiries he got about this year’s election were different. In the days following the Nov. 3 contest, all of the questions—from friends, professional acquaintances and family members—focused on the same topic: whether the election had been rigged to ensure that President Donald Trump would lose to Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who prevailed in the race and is now the president-elect. “I had a very, very close, personal friend who is a registered Republican—as am I—send me a conspiracy theory suggesting that election administrators were knowingly coordinating to prevent Donald Trump from winning re-election,” said Young, who is now a regional sales manager for the company Inclusion Solutions. “Of course,” he added, “I realized there was nothing that was going to change this person’s mind, and after I again reiterated my work with these individuals that he was suggesting had the fix in, he asked, ‘Well, whose side are you on?’”

Full Article: ‘Good, Honest, Capable, and Willing People:’ A Take on Election Administrators Goes Viral – Route Fifty

Pennsylvania: Trump’s Battle to Undermine the Vote | Eliza Griswold/The New Yorker

Since November 3rd, Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Philadelphia, has received a stream of threatening text messages and e-mails from voters. “You must not certify the fraudulent results of this election until all LEGAL ballots are counted,” Steven P. wrote to Kenyatta. “If you do, I will work tirelessly to make sure you are not reelected.” Kenyatta has also received death threats; the most disturbing, sent from an e-mail account registered in his own name, was laden with expletives and included the words, “How much death? So much death!” Kenyatta, who is thirty, with a baby face, believes that the threats are a by-product of a near-constant campaign waged by Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues to undermine the results of a free and fair election. “There is a contingent of Republicans who are afraid of Trump,” he told me. “Others really believe him.” In recent weeks, Trump has claimed baselessly that he lost the Presidential election because of widespread voter fraud, and has launched lawsuits in key states to try to get ballots invalidated. He has also pressured Republican state legislatures to intervene on his behalf. In Pennsylvania, this legislative threat has taken different forms, but all have originated in the State Government Committee, a Republican-led group that focusses on oversight. Kenyatta is in the committee’s Democratic minority, and is one of its most vocal members. Before the election, it put forward a resolution to establish an Election Integrity Committee, tasked with investigating potential election irregularities, and to grant the panel the power to summon election officials and impound ballot boxes. The effort seemed designed to drum up claims of voter fraud to support Trump in the case, then theoretical, that he refused to concede. It also seemed intended to stall the count: by some interpretations of the state’s constitution, if the governor is not able to certify the vote before December 8th, the Republican legislature could appoint its own electors. Kenyatta argued so vociferously against the resolution that the previous chair of the committee threatened to call security and have him removed. After Kenyatta and others exposed the effort, several Republicans, worried about their Election Day prospects, withdrew their support, and the committee was forced to scuttle it.

Full Article: Trump’s Battle to Undermine the Vote in Pennsylvania | The New Yorker

How Government Officials Delivered a Disaster-Free Election | Carl Smith/Governing

The 2020 general election was an epic test of election official fortitude. Added to the usual complexities of planning and executing a national election was responsibility for the very lives of voters during a pandemic that has claimed twice as many American lives as two years of fighting in World War I. As they prepared, election officials were on constant watch for potential cyberattacks and foreign disinformation designed to disrupt their operations and American democracy itself. This work was further complicated by a campaign undertaken by President Trump, who vigorously used the power of his office, social media and campaign rallies to cast doubt on their plans and to undermine confidence in the election process. Despite all, they prevailed. Election Day disasters that had been imagined as real possibilities did not materialize. A statement released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called the election “the most secure in American history.” Wendy Underhill, director of elections and redistricting and the National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL), isn’t surprised. “These are people who, when you give them a job, they say, ‘Let me make a list. Let me make a plan. Now I’m going to execute it,’” she says. “Worrying about the political universe floating about them is not on that list.”

Full Article: How Government Officials Delivered a Disaster-Free Election

National: Foreign observers shocked by chaos over U.S. election | Carol Morello/The Washington Post

These are challenging times for foreigners whose job it is to interpret American politics for people in other countries. As President Trump has used a string of maneuvers to attack the election he lost as fraudulent and illegitimate, many observers are perplexed as they watch the country they have known and admired floundering in a constitutional crisis and growing mistrust of democratic institutions. For many, it is a struggle to maintain confidence that America’s principles and ideals will prevail. “People who know the U.S. are shocked it’s going on so long,” said Michal Baranowski, the German Marshall Fund director of the office in Warsaw, of the post-election uncertainty and Trump’s refusal to concede. “We still say it will work out, because of the strength of U.S. institutions. But, man, it’s taking a long time, and I’m beginning to worry.” Some foreign observers are also struggling to explain the U.S. political drama to their baffled friends and colleagues. Beyond the usual questions about the electoral college and why anyone cares about the vote in Broward County, Fla., Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal, keeps getting asked whether a country considered the beacon of democracy will have a peaceful transition of power come January.

Full Article: Foreign observers shocked by chaos over U.S. election – The Washington Post

National: How Trump’s legal battles to overturn the election undermine the Black vote | Janell Ross and Janelle Griffith/NBC

For the Rev. Steve Bland, the day’s agenda was dominated by one thing. He drove about 90 miles west from Detroit, where he is the senior pastor of the Liberty Temple Baptist Church, to Lansing, Michigan. With several members of the state’s Interfaith Council, Bland stood on the steps of the Capitol complex where the Michigan Board of Canvassers would vote on whether to certify the November general election ballot counts. The group prayed that the board’s four members — including two Republicans — would reject the baseless claims made by President Donald Trump and his allies that something was wrong with the ballots cast in Detroit and other cities around the country with large Black populations. Bland, president of the region’s Council of Baptist Pastors, and other clergy took turns praying that voters in Detroit, where half of that state’s Black population resides, would see their legal rights stand. “What we are seeing, in this press of activities here in Michigan and around the country,” Bland said as he drove toward Lansing, “what we have witnessed is a fight to remain in the grips of total white domination or to accept that Black voters and the ballots they cast are every bit as essential and definitive in what this country can and should be as anyone else’s. Anything less is not a democracy but it would be sadly very consistent with the pattern of American history.”

Full Article: How Trump’s legal battles to overturn the election undermine the Black vote

National: Trump’s assault on the election could leave a lasting mark on American democracy | Toluse Olorunnipa, Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post

When President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, he will face a fundamental challenge unlike any incoming president before him: Tens of millions of Americans who doubt his legitimacy and question the stability of the country’s democratic traditions — in part because of his predecessor’s unprecedented attempt to set both ablaze before leaving office. For the past three weeks, as President Trump has refused to concede the election, the federal government, the Trump campaign legal team and whole swaths of the Republican Party have worked in tandem to interfere with the peaceful transition of power. By lodging baseless claims of voter fraud and embracing — or declining to reject — outlandish conspiracy theories about the electoral process, Trump and his allies have normalized the kind of post-election assault on institutions typically seen in less-developed democracies, according to historians, former administration officials, and lawmakers and diplomats from across the political spectrum. Lingering damage to the U.S. electoral system could be among the most consequential legacies of the Trump presidency, said Michael Chertoff, a homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush. Trump’s effort to overturn the election results in the days after the race has so far proved unsuccessful, as Biden has moved ahead with hallmarks of a presidential transition such as building a Cabinet. But Chertoff and others said the harm inflicted on the democratic process since Nov. 3 should not be underestimated.

Full Article: Trump’s assault on the election could leave a lasting mark on American democracy – The Washington Post

National: As States Certify Election Results, An Extraordinary Election Ends | Pam Fessler/NPR

Signs of a tattered, but resilient, voting system were on full display this week, as one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history rolled toward completion. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina put the final stamp of approval on their official vote counts, as workers re-tallied millions of ballots in Georgia and Wisconsin to assure the Trump campaign that the initial count was accurate. Courts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere reviewed and almost uniformly, rejected legal challenges for lack of merit. The 2020 election was extraordinary in so many ways. A pandemic forced election workers to shift their attention from guarding against Russian phishing attacks to acquiring adequate supplies of hand sanitizers and printing millions of mail-in ballots. But more extraordinary were the unrelenting attacks on the legitimacy of the system, primarily by President Trump and his allies, and the resulting decline in public trust. The depth of these partisan divisions was reflected in almost every action taken to resolve the disputed outcome. In Luzerne County, Pa. — where earlier news that a few Trump ballots had been discarded by a temp worker was widely, and inaccurately, touted by the President as Exhibit A of a system riddled with fraud — the election board voted on Monday to certify that Trump had indeed won the county over Joe Biden. But, in a sign of the times, the board split 3-2 along party lines.

Full Article: As States Certify Election Results, An Extraordinary Election Ends : NPR

Nevada: Judge rejects bid for re-vote in state Senate race | Ken Ritter/Associated Press

A judge in Las Vegas refused Tuesday to order a new election for a Republican state Senate candidate who argued that ballot discrepancies reported by Clark County’s elections chief might have made a difference in her 631-vote loss to the Legislature’s top Democrat. Clark County District Court Judge Joe Hardy Jr. denied, on procedural grounds, the effort by GOP candidate April Becker to force a re-vote in the race won by incumbent state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro. Hardy noted that Cannizzaro wasn’t a named party in Becker’s court filing against county Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria over his handling of the election, and that the case is actually a contest-of-election action. County lawmakers signed off on a canvass of the election on Nov. 16, after Gloria reported 936 “discrepancies” had been found among the more than 974,000 votes counted countywide. The registrar said the results in only the closest race — a commission seat — might have been affected. Hardy acknowledged that county commission members expressed a willingness to hold a new election to decide that race, where 10 votes separate two candidates. But he told Becker’s attorney, Craig Mueller, that ordering a new election in state Senate District 6, where more than 67,000 votes were cast, could invalidate other elections and disenfranchise voters in the state’s most populous county.

Full Article: Judge rejects bid for re-vote in Nevada state Senate race

Trump Administration Approves Start of Formal Transition to Biden | Michael D. Shear, Maggie Haberman, Nick Corasaniti and Jim Rutenberg/The New York Times

President Trump’s government on Monday authorized President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to begin a formal transition process after Michigan certified Mr. Biden as its winner, a strong sign that the president’s last-ditch bid to overturn the results of the election was coming to an end. Mr. Trump did not concede, and vowed to persist with efforts to change the vote, which have so far proved fruitless. But the president said on Twitter on Monday night that he accepted the decision by Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, to allow a transition to proceed. In his tweet, Mr. Trump said that he had told his officials to begin “initial protocols” involving the handoff to Mr. Biden “in the best interest of our country,” even though he had spent weeks of trying to subvert a free and fair election with false claims of fraud. Hours later, he tried to play down the significance of Ms. Murphy’s action, tweeting that it was simply “preliminarily work with the Dems” that would not stop efforts to change the election results. Still, Ms. Murphy’s designation of Mr. Biden as the apparent victor provides the incoming administration with federal funds and resources and clears the way for the president-elect’s advisers to coordinate with Trump administration officials. The decision from Ms. Murphy came after several additional senior Republican lawmakers, as well as leading figures from business and world affairs, denounced the delay in allowing the peaceful transfer of power to begin, a holdup that Mr. Biden and his top aides said was threatening national security and the ability of the incoming administration to effectively plan for combating the coronavirus pandemic. And it followed a key court decision in Pennsylvania, where the state’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the Trump campaign and the president’s Republican allies, stating that roughly 8,000 ballots with signature or date irregularities must be counted.

Full Article: Trump Administration Approves Start of Formal Transition to Biden – The New York Times

National: What you need to know about Dominion, the company that Trump and his lawyers baselessly claim ‘stole’ the election | Neena Satija/The Washington Post

President Trump and his allies have sought to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election by challenging everything from poll-watching procedures to the dates on absentee ballots to the addresses on file for voters. In recent days, Trump and his legal advisers have found a new target: Dominion Voting Systems, a company that supplies voting technology for election jurisdictions across the United States. Egged on by Trump-friendly One America News and lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the president has accused Dominion of deleting votes for him with a system that is “horrible, inaccurate and anything but secure.” Trump’s advisers also claim Dominion’s software was created at the behest of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to win that country’s elections. While there’s no evidence for any of those accusations — The Post’s Fact Checker debunks the alleged ties to Venezuela in detail — they’re bringing fresh attention to the way U.S. elections are run and to private companies like Dominion that have long played a starring role in the process. They’ve also deeply unsettled cybersecurity and election administration experts, who worry that valid concerns about election integrity are now being overshadowed by claims that have no basis in reality. The bottom line is that private companies do play a huge role in running elections in the United States, and observers across the political spectrum have complained about it for years. But that doesn’t mean that any votes have been stolen. Here’s what you need to know.

Full Article: Dominion: What you need to know about the voting company Trump claims “stole” the election – The Washington Post

National security experts call on GOP leaders to rebuke Trump?s election claims | Tom Hamburger and Ellen Nakashima/The Washington Post

A group of leading GOP national security experts — including former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge — urged congressional Republicans on Monday to demand President Trump concede the election and immediately begin the transition to the incoming Biden administration. “President Trump’s refusal to permit the presidential transition poses significant risks to our national security, at a time when the U.S. confronts a global pandemic and faces serious threats from global adversaries, terrorist groups, and other forces,” said a statement signed by more than 100 GOP luminaries. The signers included Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who served as homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush, former CIA director Michael Hayden and John D. Negroponte, who served as director of national intelligence. The message called on “Republican leaders — especially those in Congress — to publicly demand that President Trump cease his anti-democratic assault on the integrity of the presidential election.” Trump has refused to acknowledge his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden and continues to wage a clamorous, unsuccessful bid to overturn the election’s outcome in several key states that turned the race in Biden’s favor. In the popular vote, Biden is projected to best Trump by a margin of approximately 6 million. In a nod to these developments, the statement’s signers urged Republican leaders to “strongly oppose” Trump’s “dangerous and extra-legal efforts to threaten and intimidate state officials in order to prevent a vote by the Electoral College.”

Full Article: National security experts call on GOP leaders to rebuke Trump?s election claims – The Washington Post

National: Trump relents on transition as Republicans join mounting calls for him to acknowledge Biden’s win | Josh Dewsey, Tom Hamburger, Beth Reinhard and Kayla Ruble/The Washington Post

The Michigan Board of Canvassers voted Monday to certify the state’s election results, effectively awarding the state’s 16 electoral votes to President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated President Trump with a margin of more than 155,000 votes. The decision dealt another blow to Trump’s unprecedented effort to undo Biden’s win by attempting to delay the certification of the election results in key states. Three out the four board members — including one Republican — voted for certification, capping a dramatic political dispute that had roiled the state. The Michigan canvassing board had never before refused to certify a statewide vote, but pressure on the once-obscure panel had built over the past week. In the run-up to Monday’s meeting, Trump made an extraordinary personal intervention into Michigan, reaching out personally to state and local officials. His supporters called on the GOP-controlled legislature to appoint their own set of electors before the electoral college meets on Dec. 14.

Full Article: Michigan board votes to certify the state’s election results, dealing Trump another blow – The Washington Post

National: How Misinformation ‘Superspreaders’ Seed False Election Theories | Sheera Frenkel/The New York Times

On the morning of Nov. 5, Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, asked his Facebook followers to report cases of voter fraud with the hashtag, Stop the Steal. His post was shared over 5,000 times. Over the next week, the phrase “Stop the Steal” was used to promote dozens of rallies that spread false voter fraud claims about the U.S. presidential elections. New research from Avaaz, a global human rights group, the Elections Integrity Partnership and The New York Times shows how a small group of people — mostly right-wing personalities with outsized influence on social media — helped spread the false voter-fraud narrative that led to those rallies. That group, like the guests of a large wedding held during the pandemic, were “superspreaders” of misinformation around voter fraud, seeding falsehoods that include the claims that dead people voted, voting machines had technical glitches, and mail-in ballots were not correctly counted. “Because of how Facebook’s algorithm functions, these superspreaders are capable of priming a discourse,” said Fadi Quran, a director at Avaaz. “There is often this assumption that misinformation or rumors just catch on. These superspreaders show that there is an intentional effort to redefine the public narrative.”

Full Article: How Misinformation ‘Superspreaders’ Seed False Election Theories – The New York Times

Editorial: Trump’s Legal Farce Is Having Tragic Results | Richard L. Hasen/The New York Times

Even as the campaign lawsuits brought by President Trump over the 2020 election enter their death throes, many people continue to worry that Mr. Trump will find three Republican legislatures to magically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They are concerned that he will pull off an antidemocratic hat trick through maneuvers like delaying recounts in Wisconsin and blocking certification in Michigan to allow these legislatures to submit competing slates of electors to Congress. The goal is to prevent Joe Biden from securing the Electoral College votes he needs on Jan. 6 for Congress to declare him president. The good news is that there is no real prospect that Mr. Trump can avoid a reluctant handover of power on Jan. 20. The bad news is that Mr. Trump’s wildly unsubstantiated claims of a vast voter fraud conspiracy and the litigation he has brought against voting rights have done — and will increasingly do — serious damage to our democracy. Our problems will deepen, in particular, because Mr. Trump’s litigation strategy has led to the emergence of a voter-hostile jurisprudence in the federal courts. New judicial doctrines will put more power in the hands of Republican legislatures to suppress the vote and take voters, state courts and federal courts out of key backstop roles. Let’s start on the positive side. A federal district court opinion issued in Pennsylvania Saturday laid bare both the dangerousness and vacuousness of Mr. Trump’s litigation strategy. Rudy Giuliani, acting as one of the president’s lawyers, failed to persuade Judge Matthew Brann — an Obama-appointed Federalist Society member and former Republican official — to disenfranchise nearly seven million Pennsylvania voters and to let the state legislature name a slate of presidential electors. The court held that the Trump campaign offered a “Frankenstein’s monster” of a legal theory and that the complaint was full of nothing more than “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.”

Full Article: Opinion | Trump’s Legal Farce Is Having Tragic Results – The New York Times

Trump administration informs Biden it is ready to begin transition | Felicia Sonmez, John Wagner and Paulina Firozi/ The Washington Post

The head of the General Services Administration said in a letter to President-elect Joe Biden on Monday that her office is ready to begin the formal presidential transition, after weeks of pressure from Democrats to allow the process to go ahead. “I take this role seriously and, because of recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results, am transmitting this letter today to make those resources and services available to you,” GSA head Emily Murphy said in the letter. The letter came after a four-member canvassing board in Michigan certified that state’s election results, effectively awarding Michigan’s 16 electoral votes to Biden, who defeated President Trump with a margin of more than 155,000 votes. Earlier Monday, Biden announced several picks for top jobs in national security and foreign relations, and is also expected to name Janet L. Yellen as treasury secretary, according to three people in close communication with aides to the president-elect. The nominations are: Alejandro Mayorkas to head the Department of Homeland Security, the first immigrant in that position; Avril D. Haines as director of national intelligence, the first woman in that position; and former secretary of state John F. Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate.

Full Article: Biden transition live updates: Biden set to name Avril Haines as DNI, Janet Yellen as treasury secretary – The Washington Post

Trump’s Attempts to Overturn the Election Are Unparalleled in U.S. History | David E. Sanger/The New York Times

President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election are unprecedented in American history and an even more audacious use of brute political force to gain the White House than when Congress gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency during Reconstruction. Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding are somewhere between remote and impossible, and a sign of his desperation after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by nearly six million popular votes and counting, as well as a clear Electoral College margin. Yet the fact that Mr. Trump is even trying has set off widespread alarms, not least in Mr. Biden’s camp. “I’m confident he knows he hasn’t won,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Wilmington, Del., on Thursday, before adding, “It’s just outrageous what he’s doing.” Although Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Trump’s behavior as embarrassing, he acknowledged that “incredibly damaging messages are being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions.” Mr. Trump has only weeks to make his last-ditch effort work: Most of the states he needs to strip Mr. Biden of votes are scheduled to certify their electors by the beginning of next week. The electors cast their ballots on Dec. 14, and Congress opens them in a joint session on Jan. 6. Even if Mr. Trump somehow pulled off his electoral vote switch, there are other safeguards in place, assuming people in power do not simply bend to the president’s will. The first test will be Michigan, where Mr. Trump is trying to get the State Legislature to overturn Mr. Biden’s 157,000-vote margin of victory. He has taken the extraordinary step of inviting a delegation of state Republican leaders to the White House, hoping to persuade them to ignore the popular vote outcome.

Full Article: Why Trump’s Attempts to Overturn 2020 Election Are Unparalleled in US History – The New York Times

National: Leadership changes at top cyber agency raise national security concerns | Maggie Miller/The Hill

The departure of the three of the Department of Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity officials over the past week is leading experts and officials to voice concerns that the United States has been left vulnerable to attacks in cyberspace, with national security potentially compromised. The concerns come after President Trump fired Christopher Krebs, the director of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and after both CISA Deputy Director Matthew Travis and top cybersecurity official Bryan Ware resigned following pressure from the White House. These changes left the nation’s key cybersecurity agency without Senate-confirmed leadership in the last months of Trump’s presidency, amid a shakeup of major government officials following a contentious election.“Today, cybersecurity and disinformation threats are among the most significant risks our nation confronts,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Hill in a statement Friday. “For that reason, it’s enormously disturbing that the president has paired an unwillingness to begin an orderly transition with a zeal to gut key national security agencies of their senior-most leadership.”

Full Article: Leadership changes at top cyber agency raise national security concerns | TheHill

National: Trump uses power of presidency to try to overturn the election and stay in office | Philip Rucker, Amy Gardner and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

President Trump is using the power of his office to try to reverse the results of the election, orchestrating a far-reaching pressure campaign to persuade Republican officials in Michigan, Georgia and elsewhere to overturn the will of voters in what critics decried Thursday as an unprecedented subversion of democracy. After courts rejected the Trump campaign’s baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, the president is now trying to remain in power with a wholesale assault on the integrity of the vote by spreading misinformation and trying to persuade loyal Republicans to manipulate the electoral system on his behalf. In an extraordinary news conference Thursday at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Trump’s attorneys claimed without evidence there was a centralized conspiracy with roots in Venezuela to rig the U.S. presidential election. They alleged voter fraud in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and other cities whose municipal governments are controlled by Democrats and where President-elect Joe Biden won by large margins. “We cannot allow these crooks — ’cause that’s what they are — to steal an election from the American people,” said one of the attorneys, Rudolph W. Giuliani. “They elected Donald Trump; they didn’t elect Joe Biden. Joe Biden is in the lead because of the fraudulent ballots, the illegal ballots that were produced and that were allowed to be used after the election was over. Give us an opportunity to prove it in court and we will.” Neither Giuliani nor other Trump attorneys have furnished evidence to support that or any other claim of widespread fraud.

Full Article: Trump uses power of presidency to try to overturn the election and stay in office – The Washington Post

National: Trump calls on GOP state legislatures to overturn election results | Kyle Cheney/Politico

President Donald Trump made explicit Saturday the strategy his legal team has been hinting at for days: He wants Republican-led legislatures to overturn election results in states that Joe Biden won. “Why is Joe Biden so quickly forming a Cabinet when my investigators have found hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes, enough to “flip” at least four States, which in turn is more than enough to win the Election?” Trump said, despite refusing to produce any such evidence either publicly or in court cases filed by his attorneys. “Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself,” Trump said. Trump’s comment came after a string of legal defeats, including a rejection by a federal judge in Pennsylvania Saturday who said the Trump team presented no evidence of election fraud or misconduct, despite seeking to invalidate millions of votes. Trump’s lead lawyer in the case, Rudy Giuliani, said he intends to appeal the case to the Third Circuit and, if necessary, the Supreme Court. But with few cases pending in courts, Trump’s options have narrowed and he is becoming increasingly reliant on longshot scenarios where election results are not certified and Republican-controlled statehouses in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia intervene to declare him the winner. GOP legislative leaders in those states have not endorsed this approach. Trump summoned Michigan legislative leaders to the White House on Friday, but they later issued a statement indicating they had not seen any reason to intervene on Trump’s behalf.

Full Article: Trump calls on GOP state legislatures to overturn election results – POLITICO

National: Justice Dept meets Trump, Giuliani election fraud claims with silent skepticism | Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

The Justice Department has met President Trump’s fantastical claims of widespread voter fraud with two weeks of skeptical silence, not taking any overt moves to investigate what Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, claims is a globe-spanning conspiracy to steal the election. Such deafening silence from one of the government’s main enforcers of election law indicates just how little evidence there is to support the wild, wide-ranging claims made by Trump and his supporters, most notably Giuliani in a Thursday news conference held inside the Republican National Committee headquarters. Privately, Justice Department officials have said they are willing to investigate legitimate claims of vote fraud; Attorney General William P. Barr even loosened some restrictions that might otherwise have discouraged prosecutors from doing so before results are certified. But current and former officials said they thought Giuliani’s accusations sounded “crazy,” and they have not seen or heard of any evidence suggesting large-scale fraud, let alone the kind of intercontinental conspiracy described by the president’s lawyer. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive matter. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Full Article: Justice Dept meets Trump, Giuliani election fraud claims with silent skepticism – The Washington Post

National: Election Disinformation Fears Came True for State Officials | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

The disinformation scenario that local election officials feared months ago has come true: President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud have been picked up by many state and local Republican officials across the country, and polls now show that more than two-thirds of GOP voters believe the 2020 election was neither free nor fair. Last week, 10 state attorneys general signed an amicus brief supporting the president’s unsuccessful bid to block an extension for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. And state lawmakers from South Carolina wrote a letter in support of court challenges that had nothing to do with their own state. This week, the Republican members of a county election board in Michigan held up certification for hours, triggering national news stories and a flood of outcries with no clear resolution in sight. Arizona Republicans are trying to block the certification of Maricopa County’s results. And three statewide candidates, including one running for governor, have refused to acknowledge their losses and concede. It has been frustrating for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who said she has received death threats because of “extremely dangerous” and “broad and baseless conspiracy theories” being repeated by Republican officials in her state. That rhetoric, she said, could suppress turnout and participation in future elections. She and other election officials warned of this nightmare scenario for months. “It’s just unfortunate that we’re at this place where what we said would happen is actually happening,” she told Stateline. “It makes me sad for our country.”

Full Article: Election Disinformation Fears Came True for State Officials | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: The Founders didn’t prepare for a president who refuses to step down, historians say | Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post

President Trump continued Friday to deny the results of the election, pressuring state officials in Michigan and Georgia to overturn the will of voters and increasing fears that he might refuse to cede power to President-elect Joe Biden. But those looking to the nation’s Founders, or the Constitution they framed, for answers to such a crisis will come up empty-handed. There is nothing in the Constitution about what to do if a president refuses to step down when his term expires, according to three historians and a constitutional law professor. “No, the framers did not envisage a president refusing to step down or discuss what should be done in such a situation,” Princeton historian Sean Wilentz said. “There’s obviously nothing in the Constitution about it.” “This is a contingency that no one would have actively contemplated until this fall,” said historian Jack Rakove, a professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Full Article: The Founding Fathers and Trump’s refusal to concede: What historians say – The Washington Post

National: Conspiracy theories are all that’s left in Trump’s effort to overturn the election | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The Trump campaign’s latest effort to overturn the election results pits the allure of conspiracy theories against years of efforts to create the most secure and auditable election in U.S. history. Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell presented no evidence for their claims during a lengthy news conference that the election was rigged by faulty voting machines, foreign powers and an opaque cast of corrupt politicians. Officials who ran the election and are preparing to certify it, meanwhile, have spent years improving security protections, testing technology and ensuring there are paper records of votes that can be audited after an election to prove they were tallied correctly. Indeed, the same day President Trump’s lawyers lobbed their baseless accusations, Georgia completed a hand count audit of its votes that found no evidence of fraud and upheld Joe Biden’s narrow win in that state. But the Trump argument now is based in paranoia and gut feeling rather than evidence and logic. “It’s very easy to assert nefarious connections and to cast doubt,” Edward Perez, global director of technology development at OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization, told me. “We’d like to believe that official statements from all national election officials and from agencies including DHS about the integrity of the election and the absence of deleted votes or compromised machines should make a difference. It should be enough, but clearly it’s not.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Conspiracy theories are all that’s left in Trump’s effort to overturn the election – The Washington Post

National: Trump campaign cuts ties with attorney Sidney Powell after bizarre election fraud claims | Eric Tucker/Associated Press