Driving the Day:
NEWS: Donald Trump signed legal documents describing evidence of election fraud that he knew were false. https://t.co/oGpgHOezuf
— Defend Democracy Project (@DemocracyNowUS) October 20, 2022
Must Read Stories
Election Officials In Key States Are Being Hounded Out Of Office By Conspiracy Theorists
- Reuters: Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorists Hound Election Officials Out Of Office: Last year, as documented by Reuters, U.S. election officials endured an onslaught of intimidation by Trump’s supporters after the 2020 election. This year, they’re facing well-funded campaigns such as the one in Washoe. Officials who resist baseless stolen-election claims have faced accusations of treason or other crimes. Reuters identified 44 counties in 15 states where local officials have faced efforts to change rules on voting since the 2020 election. All of them were led by Trump loyalists or Republican Party activists driven by false voter-fraud theories. The campaigns are having impact. In Washoe, Beadles’ attacks helped drive out Spikula. Ten of Nevada’s 17 counties, including Washoe, have seen their top election official resign, retire or decline to seek re-election since the 2020 vote, which the state government calls a drastic exodus. Four of the officials told Reuters that harassment or sustained efforts to challenge the 2020 election results were among their reasons for leaving.
- Five Thirty Eight: It’s Hard To Run Elections These Days. Just Ask Nevada’s Election Officials: “We’ve had the death threats,” Stacie Wilke-McCulloch said. “We’ve had the, ‘We know where you live,’ and all that.” As a trustee on the school board for Carson City, Nevada, for the past 14 years, Wilke-McCulloch is no stranger to harassment, particularly as school boards bore the brunt of criticism over controversial curricula and school closures related to COVID-19. As a result, she’s gained a thick skin that may serve her well in what she hopes will be her next job: Carson City County Clerk-Recorder. Once occupying a low-profile, largely bureaucratic position, county clerks are increasingly the target of intense public vitriol. Typically the chief election official for their communities, county clerks and other local election workers have faced harassment from voters convinced the 2020 election was fraudulent, thanks to former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. As a result, some election officials are leaving their posts — and in some places, election deniers are signing up to replace them.
- Axios: FBI Identifies Arizona As One Of Top States For Threats Against Election Workers: The DOJ and FBI have identified Arizona as one of the top states for threats to election officials and poll workers. Why it matters: Widespread misinformation about election fraud has already resulted in several serious threats in Arizona and danger could increase now that early voting is underway. An Iowa man was arrested earlier this month for threatening to hang Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman. Over the summer, a Massachusetts man was arrested for threatening to detonate a bomb in Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ “personal space.” Zoom out: In a letter to elections officials obtained by Axios, the federal law enforcement agencies said they’d reviewed more than 1,000 threats nationwide made against people involved with elections. 58% of those contacts were made in states such as Arizona, Colorado and Pennsylvania, where there were audits, recounts or public disputes over the 2020 election results.
Judge Rules Trump Signed Court Document That Knowingly Included False Claims About Voter Fraud
- Politico: Judge: Trump Signed Court Document That Knowingly Included False Voter Fraud Stats: Former President Donald Trump signed legal documents describing evidence of election fraud that he knew were false, a federal judge indicated on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge David Carter wrote in an 18-page opinion that emails from attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election, needed to be turned over to the Jan. 6 select committee. Those emails, Carter wrote, “show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.” The emails are among the files that Eastman had been declining to turn over to the committee, citing attorney-client privilege. While Carter concluded that some of the materials fell under that privilege, he ruled that Eastman must disclose four emails to congressional investigators because they are evidence of a likely crime.
Election Deniers Could Make Radical Changes To Voting In Arizona
- Associated Press: Election Deniers Could Make Deep Changes To Arizona Voting: Gathered at a table in the state Capitol a little less than two years ago, two Republicans and a Democrat took part in a ceremony prescribed by state law that made official Joe Biden’s 10,500-vote victory in Arizona’s 2020 presidential contest. While sifting through pages, pen in hand and cameras rolling, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey stopped to silence the “hail to the chief” ringtone on his cell phone. It was a call from President Donald Trump, who was in the midst of a frenetic fight to reverse the results of the election he had lost. Ducey continued signing the papers, in what some saw as a dramatic affirmation of democracy at work. How a similar scene would play out in 2024 if the three Republicans running for the top statewide offices win in November is anyone’s guess. Each has said they would not have signed off on the 2020 results if they had held office at the time. Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor, and Mark Finchem, running for secretary of state, have signaled support for vastly overhauling election rules. Lake, Finchem and Abraham Hamadeh, the attorney general nominee, are running for offices that play a central role in administering or certifying elections and earned Trump’s support by spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election.
- Reuters: Why A Small Midterm Race In Arizona Could Have Big Consequences For U.S. Democracy: The fight to become Arizona’s next attorney general in November’s midterm elections smashed fundraising records this week. One major reason: the normally backwater contest has potentially big implications for U.S. democracy, election experts said. Arizona is a kingmaker state in U.S. presidential elections, and under Arizona law the attorney general must witness the certification of the election result, has the power to challenge certifications in the courts if they violate state law, and must approve the rulebook that governs how elections are run.
Unnecessary Hand Counting Of Ballots And Frivolous Legal Challenges Could Delay Election Results
- New York Times: Some Republicans Want to Count Votes by Hand. Bad Idea, Experts Say: Over the past two years, Republicans have pursued an array of changes to how Americans vote. The past few weeks have drawn attention to a particularly drastic idea: counting all ballots by hand. Officials in Cochise County, Ariz., recently pushed to do that in next month’s election, and whether or not they go through with it, the efforts may spread. Republicans in at least six states introduced bills this year that would have banned machine tabulation, and several candidates for statewide offices have expressed support, including Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the party’s nominees for Arizona’s governor and secretary of state, and Jim Marchant, its nominee for Nevada’s secretary of state. The New York Times spoke with six experts in election administration, and all said the same thing: While hand counting is an important tool for recounts and audits, tallying entire elections by hand in any but the smallest jurisdictions would cause chaos and make results less accurate, not more.
- News From The States: Prolonged Challenges By Losing Candidates Could Overshadow November Election Results: Across the country, Republicans following in Trump’s shadow who deny the results of the 2020 election are running for prominent statewide offices, including governor and secretary of state. Many have already said they will not accept the results of their election if they lose. In some cases, the races may turn out closer than Gilbert’s, and prolonged, costly challenges could allow for the spread of misinformation. “I am extremely concerned about the risk that candidates for all kinds of office will refuse to accept the results of their elections,” said Rachel Orey, associate director of the elections project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank that uses ideas from both parties. “The incentives are misaligned currently.” Candidates know that denying results will generate publicity and help them fundraise for their party or for themselves, Orey explained. “The incentives are moving away from fostering trust in democratic culture and toward temporary political gain, which has extremely troublesome consequences for the future of U.S. democracy.”
In The States
ARIZONA: Voter Intimidation Referred To State Department Of Justice
- KNXV: AZ Secretary of State: Report of voter intimidation referred to Department of Justice: An official with the Arizona Secretary of State’s office has confirmed that they have referred a report of voter intimidation to the Department of Justice and Arizona’s attorney general. The SOS office tells ABC15 that a voter was approached, and followed by a group of individuals, “the voter was trying to drop off their ballot at an early voting drop box on Monday,” an email stated. Maricopa County has two official drop box locations in the county — one outside their main election tabulation center in downtown Phoenix and another in Mesa outside the Juvenile Justice Court. The alleged intimidation happened outside the Mesa location.
GEORGIA: Officials Investigate After Fake Ballot Found At Early Voting Location
- WSB: GA Election Officials Investigating After Suspected Fake Ballot Discovered At Early Voting Location: State election officials say a possibly fake ballot was discovered at an early voting location in Spalding County Wednesday morning, officials confirmed to Channel 2 Action News. A full-scale investigation is now underway about who created it and why. Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne spoke to state elections director Blake Evans, who said officials at the Georgia Secretary of State’s office believes someone was trying to cast doubt on election integrity. Evans said officials in Spalding immediately notified them when they spotted something off with a ballot. “They identified one ballot that looked visibly different than the rest of the ballots and that appears to be a fake ballot,” Evans said. “They alerted us and we have opened and are conducting an investigation into the matter.”
TEXAS: Texas’s “Election Denier In Chief” Closes In On Another Term
- Texas Tribune: Ken Paxton, Texas’ Election Denier-In-Chief, Closes In On Third Term: In the days leading up to the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged his followers on social media to “stand with President Trump” and “#StopTheSteal.” On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, he tweeted that “a lot of voters, as well as myself, believe something went wrong in this election.” And after the attack unfolded, he tweeted that he didn’t believe violence is the answer but was “sorely disappointed today in the certification of the election.” He made those claims even after Trump’s own U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr declared there had been no widespread vote fraud that could have affected the results of the presidential election. Paxton, who is seeking his third term as attorney general, isn’t a run-of-the-mill election denier, casually casting false doubt on election security. He’s a loyal Trump ally, who tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in four states where President Joe Biden had won the election. The court rejected the suit within days, and Paxton was subsequently sued by the Texas state bar for professional misconduct related to the effort. Paxton’s attempt to dismiss the case is pending. He called the case against him a political attack. That Paxton is so close to securing his reelection this November as the state’s chief legal officer is raising alarms from election experts about the impact he could have on future close elections, particularly if Trump runs for president again in 2024.
WISCONSIN: Election Conspiracy Theorist Ron Johnson Encourages Supporters To Report Suspicious Voting Activity
- New York Times: Ron Johnson Website and Video Urge Reporting of Suspected Election Problems: Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has amplified unfounded claims of voter fraud for years, launched a website and a video on Wednesday encouraging people to report suspected “election integrity” problems and instructing poll workers in how to spot and report “disqualifying issues” with absentee ballots. The move by Mr. Johnson, a Republican, was not part of the usual get-out-the-vote effort that is typical in the final weeks of a midterm election. Instead, the senator and his campaign seemed eager to put his supporters on alert for suspicious voting activity. “Everyone in Wisconsin should have the assurance that their vote counts, and it will not be canceled by a fraudulent vote,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement his campaign released. The website that was launched by the Johnson campaign provides voters with a form to report incidents involving “election integrity” and to submit any files or images of such incidents. A corresponding 45-second video appears to be a brief instruction guide aimed at poll workers or election monitors. It describes how to spot “disqualifying issues” with absentee ballots, including verifying that both signature sections are completed. And it urges viewers to fully document any problems with a ballot if a ballot is accepted despite their objections.
What Experts Are Saying
Norm Eisen, Brookings Institution senior fellow: “The new emails Eastman was trying to hide are evidence that Trump lied under oath about his 2020 election claims[.] The criminal case was already strong—these emails make it stronger” Tweet
Harry Litman, former US attorney (MSNBC video): “The big question… would a Department of Justice charge a former president with seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge that’s been brought to date in all of the January 6th cases” MSNBC’s Deadline WH Tweet
Erica Chenoweth, political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School, and Zoe Marks, political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School: “This report proposes nonviolent resistance strategies and support systems that could be relevant for protecting local communities and subjugated groups, and for informing a broad-based pro- democracy struggle under a hypothetical authoritarian administration. We suggest some immediate investments in infrastructure that could support effective pro-democracy organizing and mobilizing, both today and in the event of authoritarian decline or consolidation across all branches of government.” Harvard Kennedy School of Government: Faculty Research Working Paper Series
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Los Angeles Times: Two democracies are forming in the U.S. Zip code determines which one you’re in
Politico: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago fundraising boost came with big costs
Washington Post: GOP hopefuls stump for election deniers despite distancing from Trump lies
January 6 And The 2020 Election
ABC: Jan. 6 committee has yet to find a Trump lawyer who’ll accept service of subpoena, sources say
Atlanta Journal Constitution: Texts from Loeffler’s phone shed light on activities ahead of Jan. 6 and 2021 runoff
CNN: Retired Republican judge joins fight against ‘centerpiece’ of Trump’s effort to overturn election
The Hill: Most in new poll say Trump should testify before Jan. 6 panel
NPR: A former UCLA student was sentenced to over three years in prison for Capitol riot
Other Trump Investigations
CNN: Trump considers allowing federal investigators to search Mar-a-Lago again
Politico: Trump deposed in defamation suit filed by E. Jean Carroll
Opinion
Philadelphia Inquirer (Editorial): As Election Day nears, Jan. 6 committee hearing serves as a reminder that democracy is on the ballo
Washington Post (Karen Tumulty): Where the Jan. 6 committee failed
Political Violence
New York Times: Police Arrest Man Found With Guns in Vehicle Near U.S. Capitol
Reuters: Pennsylvania man charged with threatening to kill Jan. 6 investigator
In The States
ABC: Georgia early midterms voting so far surpassing 2020 presidential election
Bridge Michigan: Michigan warns absentee ballots deluge may delay Nov. 8 election results
Houston Public Media: Texas agencies’ plan to monitor Harris County elections raises concerns among observers
Talking Points Memo: Rubio Argues Ballot Drop Boxes Are Dangerous Bomb Targets While Rejecting Gun Control
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Green Bay and Racine election clerks receive cease and desist letters over the returning of absentee ballots
NBC: Democrats hit Sen. Ron Johnson on Jan. 6 remarks in new Wisconsin Senate ad
Washington Post (Analysis): ‘Naked ballots’ are back — and they’re a danger to democracy
