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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — October 28, 2022

By October 28, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Election Officials Brace For Unprecedented Disruption And Potential Violence 

  • Axios: Officials Brace For Unprecedented Efforts To Disrupt 2022 Vote: U.S. election officials are anticipating unprecedented efforts to disrupt the 2022 election, and putting battleground states on heightened alert. Why it matters: Efforts to intimidate voters and spread misinformation can erode the public’s trust in the democratic process, and safety concerns are making it hard to recruit election workers in some states. Zoom in: In Colorado, Pennsylvania and other states, officials report that election deniers are signing on as poll watchers, which could create tense situations at polling places. The “greatest fear” is that election conspiracy theories “could incite somebody to do something violent,” said Matt Crane, the associate director for Colorado’s association of county clerks.
  • CNN: ‘Our Security Here Is A Joke’: Election Workers Lament Lack Of Federal Spending On Security Ahead Of Crucial Midterms: Millions in federal dollars could have gone to protect election workers and improve the physical security of their offices, but in a classic tale of bureaucratic red tape, most of it remains untapped less than two weeks before the midterm elections. The botched funding opportunity comes as election officials across the country have faced an unprecedented wave of violent threats stemming from conspiracy theories about the voting process. Now, things like additional lighting or security guards for some election offices may not be in place for Election Day on November 8. “Our security here is a joke,” said Scott McDonell, the Democratic clerk for Dane County, Wisconsin’s second largest. His office is a block from the state capitol building in Madison, where thousands of people have previously gathered to protest the 2020 election results. McDonell worries that people “could walk right in” to confront him.
  • The Guardian: ‘A Madness Has Taken Hold’ Ahead Of Us Midterms: Local Election Officials Fear For Safety:  Inside the office of the Shasta county clerk and registrar of voters, which runs elections for about 111,000 people in this part of far northern California, Cathy Darling Allen can see all the security improvements she would make if she had the budget. “We have plexi on the counter downstairs for Covid but that won’t stop a person. It’s literally just clamped to the counters,” the county clerk and registrar said. For about $50,000, the office could secure the front, limiting access to upstairs offices, she estimated. Another county put bulletproof glass in their lobby years earlier, she knew, something officials there at one point considered removing, though not any more. Elections offices didn’t used to think about security in this way, Allen said. Now they can’t afford not to. Following Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Allen says the once low-profile job of non-partisan local election official has transformed in counties like hers. A culture of misinformation has sown doubt in the US election system and subjected officials from Nevada to Michigan to harassment and threats. The FBI has received more than 1,000 reports of threats against election workers in the past year alone. In California, officials in small, rural and underresourced counties such as Shasta say they are encountering hostility and aggressive bullying from residents who believe there is widespread voter fraud – many are inundating local elections offices with public records requests as part of a relentless quest to try to prove their claims.

A Key January 6 Plotter Is Encouraging A Plan To Try Overturn The 2022 Vote 

  • Politico: ‘Raise The Challenge’: Eastman Exhorts Poll Watchers To Build A Record: At a speech last week before prospective GOP poll workers and challengers in New Mexico, former Trump attorney John Eastman urged his allies to file complaints that could form the basis for court challenges to the upcoming midterm and presidential elections. The comments, outlined in a new audio recording obtained by POLITICO, suggest that Eastman and some other conservative activists see aggressive challenges to the legitimacy of individual votes as part of a larger strategy to build evidence that can be used to invalidate a county or state election. “Document what you’ve seen, raise the challenge. And [note] which of the judges on that election board decline to accept your challenge. Get it all written down,” said Eastman, a New Mexico resident. “That then becomes the basis for an affidavit in a court challenge after the fact,” he said. Speaking to an Oct. 19 “Election Integrity Network” summit in Albuquerque, Eastman — a target of the House Jan. 6 committee for his role in advising the former president on ways to overturn the 2020 election in Congress — repeatedly said he personally wants to play a role in assisting those who challenge voters, including by connecting party poll challengers to local prosecutors.

Election Deniers See Battle Over Hand Counting Ballots In Nevada As A Roadmap For The Future 

  • Washington Post: Election Deniers Hope A Hand Count In Nevada Offers A Roadmap For The Future: Jay Goldberg, a retired electrician who enjoys four-wheeling with his wife, Bonnie, in the dusty hills that loom over this desert town, sat in a tiny government office here this week counting ballots by hand because he believes the 2020 vote was rigged against Donald Trump. “If something can be manipulated, it eventually will be,” said Goldberg, 70, referring to unproven claims that tabulation machines made by Dominion Voting Systems threw the presidency to Joe Biden. “It’s that simple.” And to Goldberg, there’s a simple answer: Go back to hand counts. It’s a solution being embraced this fall in Nye County, a rural outpost of 53,000 where officials who deny the results of the 2020 election hold sway. Should Republicans prevail statewide in November, officials could be pushing it across Nevada next year. Like-minded GOP candidates nationwide have offered similar proposals, even as election experts and Democratic candidates have argued that such steps are only likely to further undermine faith in American democracy. The rejection of voting machines and embrace of 2020 conspiracy theories make Nye County — a vast area that boomed, then busted, on the back of gold and silver mining more than a century ago and today thrives in part thanks to legal prostitution — a harbinger of the country’s future should election deniers take charge.
  • Associated Press: Hand Vote Count On Hold After Nevada High Court Says Illegal: An unprecedented hand-count of mail-in ballots in a rural Nevada county is on hold and may not resume after the Nevada Supreme Court said in an after-hours ruling the current process is illegal and the Republican secretary of state directed the county clerk to “cease immediately.” Volunteers in rural Nye County had wrapped up a second day of hand-counting the ballots on Thursday by the time the Supreme Court issued a three-page opinion siding with objections raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who is in charge of elections and has been been one of the GOP’s most vocal critics of the sort of voter-fraud conspiracy theories that fueled the hand tallying of ballots, said the “hand-counting process must cease immediately.” She requested in a letter to Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf that he confirm to her office Thursday night that the hand count process “had been stopped.” Cegavske’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests from The Associated Press for an update. But the ACLU said in a statement that Nye County’s attorneys had informed the organization’s legal staff that “its hand-count process has been shut down.”

Arizona Ballot Box “Monitors” And Georgia Lawsuit Linked To Debunked 2000 Mules Conspiracy Theory 

  • Votebeat: Drop Box Watchers In Arizona Connected To National Effort From “2000 Mules” Creators: The movement to try to catch illegal voting at ballot drop boxes in Arizona, which is spurring complaints and lawsuits alleging voter intimidation, is not the local grassroots effort it appears to be.  The drop box watchers are part of a coordinated fast-growing national effort with thousands of volunteers who say they want to help try to collect evidence of people illegally depositing others’ ballots during the midterm election, according to a Votebeat review of internal discussions among group organizers, internal contact lists, and posts and videos on right-wing media sites. One group behind it all: True the Vote, the Texas-based nonprofit organization that has repeatedly promoted debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud via drop boxes. True the Vote created the “2000 Mules” movie claiming widespread “ballot harvesting” at drop boxes, without offering evidence to back up the claims. This new project appears to be an attempt to gather the evidence missing from their first try.
  • Atlanta Journal Constitution: Georgia Voter Sues Over False Election Fraud Accusation In ‘2000 Mules’: An auditor from Gwinnett County who was falsely accused of election fraud in the film “2000 Mules” is suing the movie’s makers, Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, alleging they lied to advance a phony narrative at his expense. The lawsuit filed in federal court Wednesday said that Mark Andrews faced threats of violence and lives in fear since he was included in the movie without his knowledge or permission. The movie shows Andrews, with his face blurred, as he deposits five ballots for himself and his family into a drop box before the 2020 presidential election. As the video rolls, D’Souza says: “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.” A state investigation found that Andrews followed Georgia law when he delivered ballots for his three adult children, his wife and himself. State law allows voters, family members or caregivers of disabled voters to drop off ballots. The State Election Board dismissed a complaint against Andrews in May.

In The States 

FLORIDA: Ron DeSantis’ Voting Arrests Escalate “Culture Of Fear” 

  • Bolts: Arrests Over Voting Escalate a “Culture of Fear” in Florida: In August, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced charges against 20 people who he claimed had committed voter fraud, Rodney Johnson took notice. The 51-year-old has a felony on his record, like all of the people DeSantis had arrested. He wondered if the governor would come after him next, because he had just voted in the August primary. Johnson was convicted of drug trafficking and released in 2002 after serving 22 months in prison. For years after his release, he was barred from voting due to Florida’s draconian rules. In 2018, voters passed Amendment 4, a landmark ballot initiative that overrode the 19th century policy barring anyone with a felony conviction from voting for life. Amendment 4 allowed people convicted of most felonies to vote once they complete their sentence. Johnson’s first time voting was in 2020 and he’s been engaged with electoral politics ever since.  But a series of arrests this year have rocked the reform’s promise. Earlier this year, county prosecutors charged people for voting despite owing court debt, due to a law signed by DeSantis in 2019 that rolled back Amendment 4 by imposing financial payments. The people who were then charged in August had been convicted of murder and sexual assault, offenses carved out by Amendment 4. But several said that they thought the amendment allowed them to legally vote, especially because they had been provided with voter IDs by local election officials—with the approval of the DeSantis administration.  Now, leading up to the November 8 general election, Johnson is wondering what legal stunt DeSantis might pull next.

MICHIGAN: GOP Candidate For Secretary Of State Sues To Block Detroiters From Voting By Mail 

  • Detroit News: Gop Candidate’s Voting Lawsuit Targets Detroit 2 Weeks Before Election: Kristina Karamo, the Republican candidate to be Michigan’s secretary of state, has filed a lawsuit, two weeks before Election Day, asking a judge to require residents of Detroit to vote in person or obtain their ballots in person at the clerk’s office. The suit, which is unlikely to succeed and appears to conflict with the state constitution, would throw into question thousands of absentee ballots that were obtained through the mail in Michigan’s largest city. The filing was among the first legal moves targeting the 2022 midterm election in the state after a rush of litigation by supporters of former President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 vote. Karamo, who’s running to be the state’s top election official, is listed as the lead plaintiff for the new suit. It was dated Wednesday and filed in Wayne County Circuit Court. Five other individuals and the Election Integrity Fund and Force — a Troy-based nonprofit that has advanced unproven claims of election fraud — were the other plaintiffs.

OHIO:  Conspiracy Theory Spreading Among Republican Voters In Ohio May Cause Them To Be Unable To Vote 

  • Associated Press: Ohio Elections Chief: Precincts Can’t Take Absentee Ballots: Ohio law does not permit voters to return absentee ballots at their precincts on Election Day, the state’s elections chief is cautioning amid a misinformation campaign around the security of voting machines that’s urging them to do so. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said those voters who heed advice from a prominent national group of Republican election deniers and hold onto their paper ballots until Nov. 8 must deliver them to their county board of elections office. Poll workers at precinct-level voting locations cannot accept them, he said. “This is why it’s dangerous for people who don’t know what they’re talking about to be dispensing bad elections-related advice to people,” he said in an Associated Press interview Tuesday. “Because if someone is telling voters to take their absentee ballot to their polling location on Election Day, they’re effectively instructing them how to disenfranchise themselves.” LaRose said that possibility has caused concern among county election officials. The GOP activists — including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — echo lies that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and are urging GOP voters not to use the U.S. mail or a voting machine to cast their votes. Instead, they have encouraged them to fill out a paper absentee ballot and return it in person at the last minute.

WISCONSIN: Ron Johnson Attacks Election Integrity, Urges Supporters Not To Early Vote In Milwaukee 

  • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ‘innuendos And Baseless Allegations’: Milwaukee Claps Back After Ron Johnson Sows Doubts About Early Voting In The City: As voters have already begun streaming to the polls, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson this week raised doubts about early in-person absentee voting in Milwaukee and suggested his supporters in the city hold off from casting their ballots until election day. But Johnson, who faces Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in the Nov. 8 election, encouraged Republicans to vote early in other areas of the state. “I would recommend early voting if you have a Republican election clerk,” Johnson said during a tele-town hall Monday night in a clip tweeted by the advocacy group Heartland Signal. “I’m not sure I would recommend a Republican go vote in Milwaukee,” he added. “I don’t know about the bipartisan observation of those early votes. It might be possible.” A spokeswoman for Johnson claimed the senator was joshing. “Obviously the senator meant that as a tongue-in-cheek comment,” Alexa Henning said. “The senator was just in Waukesha Tuesday where he encouraged early voting. We are confident we have Republican observers and poll workers in place, Wisconsinites should turn out and vote everywhere, including Milwaukee.”

What Experts Are Saying

Noah Bookbinder, Norman L. Eisen, Debra Perlin, E. Danya Perry, Jason Powell, Donald Simon, Joshua Stanton and Fred Wertheimer: “In this latest edition of our January 6th Hearings Criminal Evidence Tracker, we add the evidence set forth in the eighth and ninth hearings to our prior inventory. The eighth hearing focused almost entirely on Trump’s failure to act to protect the Capitol in the hours following his rally. The ninth hearing was more broad ranging, providing key details about Trump’s intent and knowledge both before January 6 and on the day itself—as well as presenting some of the more damning evidence from a recently obtained cache of records from the United States Secret Service. With this update of the tracker we have now cataloged the substantial new evidence all nine hearings have derived in support of the subpoena—and of possible criminal charges against Trump.” Just Security: The January 6th Hearings: Criminal Evidence Tracker – Trump Subpoena Edition | Criminal Evidence Tracker PDF 

States United Democracy Center: “On behalf of a bipartisan group of former prosecutors, @statesunited and @KaplanHecker submit an amicus brief asking #SCOTUS to ensure that Senator Lindsey Graham testifies about interference in the 2020 election.” Tweet 

Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at George Mason University: “A lot of white Americans who are really threatened are willing to reject democratic norms,” she said, “because they see it as a way to protect their status.” The New York Times 

Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard Law Carl M. Loeb university professor emeritus, Dennis Aftergut, former federal prosecutor: “Even with a temporary stay, [Clarence] Thomas cannot legally thumb his nose at the federal prohibition on participating in judicial decisions where a reasonable person could question the jurist’s impartiality. Certainly, that is in question because his wife has been a leading MAGA operative actively promoting the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was fraudulent.” LA Times Op-Ed: Justice Thomas’ refusal to recuse himself is thumbing his nose at the law

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Associated Press: GOP’s Cheney endorsing Michigan Democrat Slotkin in a first

CNBC: ‘We’re going to hang you’: DOJ cracks down on threats to election workers ahead of high-stakes midterms

Insider: Threats against judges skyrocketed during the Trump era, and experts are now fearing for the worst

New York Times: European Election Observers Warn of Republican Election Deniers

Washington Post: Big Tech is failing to fight election lies, civil rights groups charge

January 6 And The 2020 Election

New York Times: Man Who Dragged Officer Into Jan. 6 Mob Is Sentenced to 90 Months

Politico: Fulton prosecutors to Supreme Court: Don’t let Lindsey Graham get out of testifying

Other Trump Investigations 

New York Times: Appeals Court Upholds House’s Effort to See Trump’s Tax Returns

Opinion

New York Times (Frank Bruni): The Republican Double Standard That’s Endangering American Democracy

Political Violence

Miami Herald: GOP Canvasser Didn’t Tell Cops Brutal Beating Was Political Until After Rubio Tweeted 

In The States 

Arizona Republic: Phoenix police identify man arrested on suspicion of burglary in Hobbs’ campaign office break-in

Axios: GOP scoffs at Stacey Abrams’ voter-suppression warnings in Georgia

Bloomberg: Masked Poll Watchers Are Showing Up at Voting Sites With Handguns and Kevlar Vests

CNN: Michigan GOP gubernatorial nominee invoked conspiracy claiming Democrats sought to ‘topple’ US in retaliation for losing Civil War

Nevada Current: Nye County ballot counting a ‘historic disaster’ at a ‘snail’s pace,’ ACLU says