What To Watch For Today:
It’s Election Day! When to expect results.
Driving the Day:
MAGA Republican activists and candidates are already setting the stage to claim elections they lose are stolen.https://t.co/9R8p4U0PhD
— Defend Democracy Project (@DemocracyNowUS) November 8, 2022
Must Read Stories
Fears And Suspicion Cloud Election Day As DOJ Sends Monitors To 64 Jurisdictions To Protect The Vote
- New York Times: Fears and Suspicion Hang Over Voting on Cusp of Election Day: Voters go to the polls on Tuesday after a campaign season so filled with conspiracy theories and lies that officials worry they will undermine confidence in the election no matter how the balloting goes. While early voting has been largely uneventful — 40 million Americans have already cast their ballots — the signs of strain are everywhere. A court ordered armed activists to stop patrolling drop boxes in Arizona. Tens of thousands of voter registrations are being challenged in Georgia. Voting rights groups have trained volunteers in de-escalation methods. Voters have been videotaped by groups hunting for fraud as they drop off their ballots. Even Republican officials say they are bracing for a renewed onslaught after Election Day, one most likely to be fueled by their own party. “I’ve felt like I’ve been stabbed in the back repeatedly so much that I don’t have anything but scar tissue,” said Clint Hickman, a Republican on the county board of supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz., home to Phoenix. The county’s election office, which was targeted in right-wing protests in 2020, has beefed up its security, fortifying the building with a new metal perimeter fence. As Republican candidates across the country continue to amplify former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of corrupted elections, officials are readying for disruptions after polls have closed. Activists and lawyers are prepared to challenge ballots and dispute counting procedures, and losing candidates who have cast doubt on the integrity of the process may file lawsuits.
- Washington Post: Justice Dept. Dispatching Election Day Monitors To 64 Jurisdictions: The Justice Department announced that it will dispatch workers to 64 jurisdictions in 24 states on Election Day to ensure that they are in compliance with federal voting law, an increase from the 44 jurisdictions to which it sent monitors for the 2020 presidential election. The Justice Department noted in a statement that it has dispatched people from its Civil Rights Division and other units to monitor the voting process since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But this year’s midterm elections arrive as Republicans have waged a sustained campaign against alleged voter fraud over the past two years, despite scant evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, and as threats against politicians, their families and election workers have spiked around the country. Election officials in battleground states are anticipating delayed results and protracted fights once the polls close Tuesday night.
Election Results Will Take Time To Be Fully And Accurately Counted
- Politico: ‘Don’t Expect Election Results On Election Night’: Election officials in some of the closest battlegrounds in the country are warning — again — that election results may take longer to tally than voters expect. The warnings come as concern mounts over potential violence or intimidation of poll workers caused by misinformation spread by those who believe President Donald Trump’s discredited allegations about American elections. “Certainly we would be fools if we weren’t thinking of what might happen when we announce initial results, just given what happened in 2020,” said Stephen Richer, a Republican and the chief election officer of Maricopa County, Ariz., who has clashed with election deniers in his state. “And we’ve taken measures to be cautious about that.” In an attempt to head off disputes, election officials in several major states with close elections are already warning voters and the news media that it is possible, and in some cases likely, that definitive election results won’t be available on the night of the election.
Republicans Are Setting Stage To Claim Elections They Lose Are Stolen
- Politico: GOP Activists And Candidates Set Stage To Claim Elections They Lose Are Stolen: Imagine this, mused Abe Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for state attorney general, on Twitter last week: 1940’s-era election officials were able count all U.S. ballots on election night. So why, he implied, can’t Arizona’s modern-day election tabulators do the same? The kicker: Hamadeh’s tweet showed the historic picture of Harry Truman holding up 1948 a front page headline blaring “Dewey defeats Truman” — which is, of course, historic for being wrong. The apparent missed irony is just one example of the eagerness of Trump allies — many of whom subscribe to debunked conspiracy theories around voting machines and Democrats’ manipulating computer algorithms — to stoke suspicion of election results in the run-up to Election Day. Meanwhile, they’re encouraging voters to do the very things likely to cause vote-counting delays. The most recent example is Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, who said in a recent interview that it will look “very suspicious” if states fail to determine results by election night or early Wednesday. Yet GOP party activists across the nation have been encouraging voters to wait until Election Day to cast ballots in person or turn in their mail-in ballots.
- Axios: Dem Campaigns Sound Alarm About “Red Mirage” Redux: Democrats running the party’s national campaign arm held a private call with allies and stakeholders Monday night to discuss “urgent messaging” if a flurry of GOP candidates claim victory prematurely, Axios has learned. Why it matters: In 2020, day-of returns in key states appeared to favor Republicans while it took days to count the mail-in ballots that helped put Democrats over the top. The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the emergence of GOP candidates declining to say they’ll accept election results if they lose, is stirring concerns about misinformation. The Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association (DGA), the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC), and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) convened an election-eve call with party allies about these concerns and to lay out the mechanics and timeframes for tabulating results in different states. Individual campaigns went public with similar approaches. As Axios has reported, more than 200 election deniers — candidates promoting baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump — are on the ballot around the U.S. Between the lines: It’s also possible Democrats could lose control of one or both chambers of Congress even after all mail-in ballots are counted. Either way, these stakeholders say it’s essential that the public understands that it could be days or weeks until the final results are known.
Far Right Groups Prepare To Challenge The Vote
- New York Times: Fueled by Falsehoods, a Michigan Group Is Ready to Challenge the Vote: The invitation went out in early July. Republican activists, lawyers and elected officials in Michigan who call the results of the 2020 election fraudulent would unite with a single focus: “to provide ongoing citizen oversight, transparency, and accountability” in elections. They adopted the name Michigan Fair Elections and the simple slogan, “Choose Freedom.” Over the next months, the participants got to work trying to remake democracy in the nation’s 10th largest state under the banner of integrity. They recruited and trained challengers to spot and document minute ballot irregularities; filed lawsuits to undermine protections for the vote-counting process; and debated the merits of calling 911 on poll workers deemed to be violating rules. In weekly Zoom meetings, they discussed friendly insiders positioned on Michigan canvassing boards, which certify results; repeated debunked conspiracy theories about election machines, ballot “mules” and widespread voter fraud; and obsessed over the idea that Democrats “cheat” to win elections. “If there is a close election, it’s going to be up to us to fix it,” said Erick Kaardal, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group in Chicago, during an Oct. 27 Zoom attended by more than 50 people. “We’re the team that’s going to have to fix an election in Michigan if it’s rigged.” The New York Times reviewed more than 20 hours of recordings of Michigan Fair Elections meetings, along with training sessions and organizing calls from closely linked groups. What emerged was a picture of an organization fueled by falsehoods, bent on trying to influence the 2022 midterms and determined to change the voting system in ways that would benefit Republicans.
- Politico: Report: Far-Right Social Media Site Users Claim They’ll Be Poll Workers: Members of far-right social media sites Gab, Gettr and Truth Social who believe fraud was committed in the 2020 election have stated they intend to serve as official poll workers in their jurisdictions on Tuesday, according to a new report. The report from Advance Democracy Inc. found examples of users on sites Truth Social — the social media site owned by former President Donald Trump — and pro-Trump online forums who follow QAnon conspiracy theories. In posts compiled between March and late October of this year, several discuss their intent to identify voter fraud, including by installing their own software into elections computers. They also discussed bringing cameras to polling places and falsely claiming to be Democrats on their election worker applications. “Individuals seeking to become election workers to prove unsubstantiated theories of election fraud, or to disqualify certain votes to change election outcomes, present a threat to the security of American elections,” read the report, first shared with POLITICO. Advance Democracy is a nonprofit research organization that studies misinformation and other election threats.
Donald Trump Says He Will Announce 2024 Campaign On November 15
- Associated Press: Trump Says He’ll Make ‘Big Announcement’ Nov. 15 In Florida: Former President Donald Trump said Monday he will be making a “big announcement” next week as he teased a third presidential run while campaigning on the eve of the final day of voting in this year’s midterm elections. “I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, Nov. 15 at Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said before a cheering crowd in Vandalia, Ohio, Monday night, where he was holding his final rally of the midterm season to bolster Senate candidate JD Vance. Trump explained that he wanted “nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow,” even after he had sparked a frantic effort to hold him off after he had told people he was considering officially launching his next campaign Monday night at the rally. Trump has been increasingly explicit about his plans to seek another term, saying in recent days that he would “very, very, very probably” run again and would be formalizing his intentions “very, very soon.”
In The States
ARIZONA: Judge Blocks Cochise County Plan To Hand Count Ballots
- Arizona Mirror: Judge Blocks Cochise County’s Plan For Full Hand Count Of Ballots: A judge ruled Monday that Cochise County cannot conduct a hand count of all ballots cast in the midterm election, saying that it is not legal in Arizona. The decision blocks, for now, the latest effort by GOP leaders to hand-count ballots, a method experts say is slower and less accurate than machine counts. Republicans nationwide have nonetheless pushed hand counts in the wake of the 2020 election, saying they distrust the security and accuracy of vote-counting machines even after multiple court reviews and investigations across the country found that machines tallied the votes accurately.
GEORGIA: Hundreds Of Ballots Overnighted To Voters After Clerical Error In Cobb County
- Washington Post: Ga. County Will Overnight Hundreds Of Absentee Ballots After ‘Clerical Error’: Election officials in Georgia’s third most populous county announced Monday that they are shipping hundreds of ballots overnight to voters who requested an absentee ballot but never received it because of a clerical error. Officials in Cobb County, a fast-growing suburb of metropolitan Atlanta, said on Friday that they failed to mail more than 1,000 requested absentee ballots because the election worker in charge of the machine used to package and mail absentee ballots improperly used a flash drive that records which requested ballots have been sent to voters. Since the error was discovered, many of those voters have received an absentee ballot or have opted to vote by another method, according to county officials. The rest will have a ballot overnighted to them.
MICHIGAN: Judge Torches Kristina Karamo Suit To Disenfranchise Absentee Voters In Detroit
- Detroit News: Wayne County Judge Rejects Karamo’s ‘False Flag’ Lawsuit Over Detroit Voting: A Wayne County judge has denied a request Monday to change Detroit’s absentee voting processes ahead of Tuesday’s election, ruling that all of the claims advanced in a lawsuit filed by GOP Secretary of State candidate Kristina Karamo were “unsubstantiated and/or misinterpret Michigan election law.” Additionally, the plaintiffs’ initial request to have Detroiters vote in person or obtain an absentee ballot in person is a “clear violation” of constitutional rights to vote absentee in person or by mail, Wayne County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Kenny ruled Monday. Kenny not only denied a request for a preliminary injunction but dismissed the complaint altogether, calling it a “false flag” that sought to “demonize” Detroit election workers.
PENNSYLVANIA: Voters Scramble To Cast New Ballots As Fetterman Sues To Allow Counting Of Undated Mail Votes
- Washington Post: Pennsylvania Voters Scramble To Cast New Ballots After Gop Lawsuit: Six days after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court invalidated thousands of mail-in ballots in response to a Republican lawsuit, citizens in Philadelphia and other parts of this battleground state scrambled to cast replacements so their votes will be counted on Election Day. Kirby Smith said after he and his wife were told that their ballots would not count, because they were missing dates, they stood in line for two hours at Philadelphia City Hall on Monday to cast new ones, missing much of the workday. “Oh I’m going to vote. It’s not a question,” said Smith, a 59-year-old Democrat who said he viewed the court decision as part of an attempt to block people from voting. “I’m going to fight back.” Multiple judges have ruled over the past two years that mail ballots returned on time by eligible Pennsylvania voters should be counted even if they lack a date on the outer envelope. Republicans sued in October to reverse that policy, arguing that it violated state law. Last Tuesday, they won a favorable ruling from the state Supreme Court, which directed counties not to count ballots with missing or inaccurate dates.
- Philadelphia Inquirer: John Fetterman’s Pa. Senate Campaign Is Suing To Have Undated And Misdated Ballots Counted: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s campaign for U.S. Senate has joined the legal fight over whether mail ballots with no date or the incorrect date should be counted in Tuesday’s election. The Democratic campaign sued Pennsylvania elections officials Monday asking a federal judge to order that all mail ballots be counted regardless of what date, if any, voters wrote on the outside of the envelope.
What Experts Are Saying
Lara Putnam, UCIS Research Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and co-lead of the Southwest PA Civic Resilience Initiative of the Pitt Disinformation Lab at the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security: “Everything we know from the breakdown of democracies in other nations underlines this basic fact: to avoid authoritarian cascade, it’s critical that the leaders of all political parties affirm their commitment to shared electoral rules, including the rules regarding who will be the arbiters in cases of dispute. Without that, lawsuits themselves can become a wedge to subvert the rule of law, providing pretext for vigilante action. More than 60 Pennsylvanians faced criminal charges for participating in the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.We cannot allow the threat of vigilante intervention to become a de facto part of the partisan toolkit. Pennsylvanians deserve to have every vote calmly counted.” Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Commentary: Why we need to say no to vigilantism after Election Day too
Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause: “Critics argue that the overall purpose is to separate Republicans and Democrats by method of voting and then to use lawsuits to void mail ballots that are disproportionately Democratic. ‘They’re looking for every advantage they can get, and they’ve calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats,’ said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy organization. ‘Research has shown that absentee ballots are more likely to be discarded if they are voted by young people and people of color, which are not generally seen as the Republican base.’” Washington Post
Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington: “For the United States was not built on a foundation of democracy. And forestalling Republican authoritarianism and reaction, as crucial as it is, will not keep democracy “solidly in place,” for democracy in America has never been solidly in place. And, alas, the version of democracy we are now called upon to defend—and defend it we must!—is in many ways anemic, alienating, and not very democratic at all.” Common Dreams
Joyce Vance, former US attorney (MSNBC Video): “Former federal prosecutor @JoyceWhiteVance previews what to expect from the Department of Justice in the face of Republican attacks on the integrity of election results: ‘DOJ’s marching orders are to lay low this close to an election. … DOJ does not pick winners in elections.’” The Recount Tweet
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
The Bulwark: Conspiracists Beware: Post-Election Lies Could Land You in Legal Hot Water
Grid: Republican megadonors are backing MAGA candidates— even if they don’t like Trump
New York Times: Resistance to misinformation is weakening on Twitter, a report found.
New York Times: Supreme Court Case on State Legislatures Could Open Litigation Floodgates
Politico: The looming election disaster
Texas Tribune: Federal appeals court releases True the Vote leaders from jail
Vanity Fair: Active Shooter Trainings, Poll-Worker Shortages: How Trump’s Lies Forever Changed Elections
Washington Post (Analysis): U.S. democracy slides toward ‘competitive authoritarianism’
Washington Post (Analysis): Ronna McDaniel’s disingenuous defense of election denialism
Washington Post: A meme about blue pens shows 2020 false claims still warp voting in 2022
January 6 And The 2020 Election
The Hill: Ex-DC officer injured during Jan. 6 riot endorses Fetterman
Politico: Oath Keepers leader tells jury he never wanted his group in the Capitol on Jan. 6
Other Trump Investigations
Politico: Trump Org. CFO will spill tax fraud to New York jury, prosecutors say
Political Violence
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin man with a history of making threats charged with threatening to kill Gov. Tony Evers
Politico: Trump calls Pelosi ‘an animal’
In The States
Michigan Advance: A quarter of local election officials received violent threats after 2020 election, survey finds
PennLive: Owner of site that Oz picked for election night party organized buses to Jan. 6 rally
Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly is considering a last-minute change that will slow down the counting of votes
Washington Post: Maricopa County readies plan to defend vote counts, results
Washington Post: Black voters in Florida express fear, confusion as DeSantis election laws kick in
Washington Post: In closing pitch, GOP makes Arizona a hotbed for far-right politics
WRAL: At least 16 intimidation, interference, incidents reported at NC polls
