Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[LFC]

The first paragraph of this piece over at TAC is a bit off the rails but then the author hits the meat of the article and admits what most Republicans refuse to admit: the Georgia election law changes clearly target blacks and Republicans would rather block their votes than earn them. Despite talk in the past they have no interest in reaching out to "those people."

A question I find more interesting than these meta-debates is the legislation itself. What it actually enjoins (having the same piece of paper you need to buy a six-pack or board an airplane) and forbids (handing out beverages to voters) matters less than the very real strategy behind it.

There is no point in dissembling. Republicans in Georgia are responding to the loss of two Senate seats and to the results of the last presidential election by trying to undo the electoral advantages conferred upon their opponents by universal mail-in voting and other changes. Specifically, they are hoping to dismantle the remarkably efficient turnout machine engineered by Stacey Abrams, whom too many of them dismissed as a hapless kook after she insisted that her own defeat in the 2018 gubernatorial election was a result of widespread irregularities.

If 2020 showed us anything, it was that Abrams was not wrong in insisting that Democrats were capable of winning statewide office in Georgia if conditions on the ground were altered. In response to this, Republicans have decided to live up to their established public image by passing legislation that (whatever its proponents say to the contrary) is straightforwardly meant to suppress the African American electorate, which was ultimately responsible for their losses in the fall.

[LFC]

Arizona Republicans are trying to throw out enough votes in Maricopa County to overturn the election. There have been 2 independent audits and no fraud was found but they're going to perform a truly independent audit ... with a company that has pushed The Big Lie. Now we find out that they've been a lot more involved in The Big Lie than just social media posts. They've been right in the middle of it.

The controversial effort by Arizona’s GOP Senate to “audit” the 2020 election results from the state’s largest county has taken an even more shambolic turn.

The cyber contractor the Republicans hired to lead the audit was already under fire for his promotion of “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theories on his Twitter account. On Friday, it was revealed he had helped craft a document posted on Sidney Powell’s website detailing several bogus election fraud claims.

The auditor, Douglas Logan of the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas, defended the document in a statement provided to TPM by Senate President Karen Fann, who is leading the lawmakers’ charge towards the review.

Logan’s hand in writing the document was first reported by the Arizona Mirror, which found him listed as an author in the document’s metadata.

Among other things, the document — titled “Election Fraud Facts & Details” — made wild claims about the ties that a voting machine company, Dominion, allegedly had to “communist Venezuela” and Hugo Chavez. It said a Dominion exec had made “anti-USA, anti-police, anti-Trump and pro-Antifa” statements. It alleged other foreign countries, including Iran and China, were in a position to influence the U.S. election. And it referenced false claims by other Trump supporters of ballots being “run through the scanners multiple times.”

Many of the claims in the document have been debunked, while Dominion is pursuing defamation lawsuits against Powell and others who participated in the smear campaign against the company.

I think Douglas Logan may find himself being served by Dominion with a massive lawsuit in the near future.

[LFC]

More Republican punishment for honest handling of an election. This is now an all out war on fair elections and democracy as GOP fascism continues to goose step forward.

Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske (R), swiped at her Party’s state committee after it censured her for refusing to uphold ex-President Donald Trump’s false narrative claiming that the 2020 elections were tainted by voter fraud.

“While I have been loyal to the Nevada Republican Party during my over two decades as an elected official, I have been unwavering in my commitment to oversee elections and administer Nevada’s election laws in a neutral, nonpartisan manner,” the official said in a statement to the Washington Post.

“My job is to carry out the duties of my office as enacted by the Nevada Legislature, not carry water for the state GOP or put my thumb on the scale of democracy,” she continued. “Unfortunately, members of my own party continue to believe the 2020 general election was wrought with fraud — and that somehow I had a part in it — despite a complete lack of evidence to support that belief.”

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) defended Cegavske via Twitter on Sunday, praising the official as “a steadfast leader who consistently puts Nevada first by serving with the utmost integrity.”

The Nevada GOP passed a resolution to censure Cegavske on Saturday that claimed she had “put the reliability of our elections in Nevada in question” by publicly disputing Trump’s lies about voter fraud.

Up is down, black is white, and one party simply chooses its own reality. Welcome to 1984, just a little late.

[LFC]

Another shot to Georgia's wallet.

Actor Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua announced on Monday that their upcoming film production “Emancipation” will no longer take place in Georgia in response to the state’s restrictive voting law.

Produced and financed by Apple Studios, Smith and Fuqua’s slavery-era drama is the first major production to directly point to the new Georgia law in their decision to relocate its production out of the state.

“At this moment in time, the nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” Smith and Fuqua said in a joint statement. “We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access.”

Smith and Fuqua liken the new Georgia voting law to “voting impediments that were passed at the end of Reconstruction” that restricted voting access for many Americans.

“Regrettably, we feel compelled to move our film production work from Georgia to another state,” Smith and Fuqua said.

The film, which is scheduled to begin production this summer, features Smith playing a character based off of a real-life enslaved man named Peter, who joined the Union Army after emancipating himself from a Southern plantation.

[LFC]

State Republican lawmakers are continuing their assault on fair, accessible elections across the country. (Paywalled.)

It’s not just Georgia. New ID requirements and other mandates that will make mail voting more cumbersome are moving forward in legislation across the story.

Republican lawmakers in both New Hampshire and Indiana have gotten closer to implementing a mail voting ID regime that is similar to what’s in Georgia’s new law. Limits on who can return mail ballots on behalf of voters are also advancing in legislation in Idaho and Kansas.

Elsewhere, measures that will make the ballot more accessible have gained some steam:

• Washington, DC is hosting town halls to discuss whether to make permanent the expansion of mail voting and early voting the district adopted for the pandemic.
  
• Maryland lawmakers are considering the creation of a permanent mail voting list that voters would be able to opt into.
  
• A bill creating online voter registration in Maine got a committee hearing last week.
  

 
Conservative Bid For Mass Purge Of WI Rolls Dealt Another Setback: Yet again, the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against a lawsuit seeking to purge tens of thousands of Wisconsinites from the voter rolls. In its latest ruling, the court said that the state elections commission was not obligated under state law to move quickly to invalidate the registrations. The commission is still deciding how to handle the registrations of the 72,000 people in question. The lawsuit, brought by a conservative group in 2019, originally sought the removals of more than 200,000 registrants before the 2020 election. The state Supreme Court blocked that effort, and sure enough, thousands of those voters cast ballots in 2020, showing that the original purge list was far too sweeping.

Fights Are Erupting Over Types Of Data Used For Redistricting: With the Census Bureau forecasting a six-month delay in producing census redistricting data this year, some states are considering using other kinds of data to draw their maps — prompting criticism and threats of lawsuits from voting rights groups that say that those alternative sources are less accurate. Since my story tallying the states discussing the option last week, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled in favor of state lawmakers’ request to move back the entire redistricting calendar by several months instead; in this case, the Oregon Secretary of State was advocating for the use of other data to get the maps started.

Those Who Boosted Trump’s Election Reversal Gambit Are Being Haunted By Those Efforts: As Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel seeks sanctions for Sidney Powell for Powell’s Trump-aligned effort to subvert the election results, Nessel wants the court to look at how Powell described that gambit in the separate libel lawsuit Powell is facing from Dominion, the election equipment company she and Trump smeared. In the libel case, Powell said “no reasonable person” would have construed her wild claims about Dominion as “truly statements of fact.” Nessel told the court in the Michigan case that the admission from Powell showed that she “knew there was no reasonable basis for the statements they made in this litigation, but they made them anyway.”

Powell is not the only one from the Stop the Steal brigade who is still facing blowback from that endeavor. The cyber security consultant who has been tapped by Arizona Senate Republicans to lead their audit of the 2020 election is getting flack for having produced a document posted by Powell on her website making several unsubstantiated claims of “election fraud.”

[LFC]

Here's an interesting analysis of the screeching defense of Georgia's voter laws in comparison with other states.

When Major League Baseball relocated the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in response to Georgia’s new voting law, Fox News was quick to react. “Is the White House concerned that Major League baseball is moving their All-Star Game to Colorado, where voting regulations are very similar to Georgia?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki last week.

The network also featured Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia and former secretary of state there, claiming that it was “hypocritical” to move the game to Colorado, which, after all, has only half the number of early voting days and more strenuous ID requirements than those the new Georgia law has enacted. In a Republican National Lawyers Association Q&A this week, Kemp said the battle over the law—which pits Georgia-based companies and voting-rights activists against the state’s Republicans—represented the “fight of our lives” against “cancel culture.”

All of this misses the point. It is futile to attempt an apples-to-apples comparison of one state’s voting policies to another’s, because there are wide variations in local voting cultures, demographics, geographies, and legal idiosyncrasies. Comparing Georgia’s voting requirements to Colorado’s without this context is like asking why you can play Beethoven on a piano but not a tambourine, as both happen to be instruments.

For example, although it is factually true that Georgia has double the number of early voting days as Colorado, it’s important to acknowledge that most Georgians vote in person while almost no Coloradans do. To say that this is an advantage over Colorado is to fundamentally misunderstand how Coloradans vote. And the proof is in the numbers: Turnout in 2020 was 10 percentage points higher in Colorado than it was in Georgia. It’s unpersuasive to claim that your state is the same as another state when the results are so different, akin to two stores with the exact same security policies but with far different rates of theft because, say, one store is in a mall and the other is in an outdoor market.

These misleading comparisons between states show the need for a smarter measuring stick. We should compare states to themselves. Would this bill make voting in this state harder to access than the current rules do? That standard would enable appropriate scrutiny of states that choose to make their own laws worse, negating the need for red-state-blue-state pissing matches, and instead holding the line and demanding states don’t undo their own good work.

“If we want to talk about comparing one state to comparing the other, let’s see what trajectory they’re on,” Bob Brandon, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Fair Elections Center, recently told NBC News. Similarly, Justin Levitt, law professor at Loyola Law School at Loyola Marymount University in California, rejected state-by-state comparisons. Having an outdated law on the books is a lot different from “looking back on that law, in the current context, and saying, ‘Yeah, we need one of those,’” he said. “‘Somebody else screwed up’ is not an excuse for screwing up. That’s the inane part about whatabout-ism.”

[LFC]

GM and Ford are none too happy about Michigan Republicans' voter suppression efforts and are saying so out loud.

Major employers in the state of Michigan, including its two iconic car manufacturers, are blasting the state's Republican Party for its new voter suppression bill.

The Detroit Free Press reports that Detroit auto titans General Motors and Ford have come out against the Michigan GOP's new voting restrictions that they said would make voting unnecessarily onerous.

"Government must support equitable access to the ballot," the companies wrote in their statement opposing the proposed GOP measures. "Government must avoid actions that reduce participation in elections, particularly among historically disenfranchised communities."
Tired of ads? Want to support our progressive journalism? Click to learn more.

The companies also called on election laws to be developed "in a bipartisan fashion" rather than having parties use their majorities to cement their holds on power.

The Detroit Free Press writes that the Michigan GOP's proposed new voting laws would, among other things, "require absentee voters to mail in a paper copy of their ID with their ballot application, shorten the deadline for returning absentee ballots, bar clerks from purchasing prepaid postage for absentee ballot return envelopes and limit the secretary of state's ability to help voters request an absentee ballot."

In addition to GM and Ford, major Michigan employers including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Quicken Loans, and First Independence Bank also signed on to oppose the proposed changes.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 13, 2021 20:44:32 GMT LFC said:

GM and Ford are none too happy about Michigan Republicans' voter suppression efforts and are saying so out loud.

Major employers in the state of Michigan, including its two iconic car manufacturers, are blasting the state's Republican Party for its new voter suppression bill.

The Detroit Free Press reports that Detroit auto titans General Motors and Ford have come out against the Michigan GOP's new voting restrictions that they said would make voting unnecessarily onerous.

"Government must support equitable access to the ballot," the companies wrote in their statement opposing the proposed GOP measures. "Government must avoid actions that reduce participation in elections, particularly among historically disenfranchised communities."
Tired of ads? Want to support our progressive journalism? Click to learn more.

The companies also called on election laws to be developed "in a bipartisan fashion" rather than having parties use their majorities to cement their holds on power.

The Detroit Free Press writes that the Michigan GOP's proposed new voting laws would, among other things, "require absentee voters to mail in a paper copy of their ID with their ballot application, shorten the deadline for returning absentee ballots, bar clerks from purchasing prepaid postage for absentee ballot return envelopes and limit the secretary of state's ability to help voters request an absentee ballot."

In addition to GM and Ford, major Michigan employers including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Quicken Loans, and First Independence Bank also signed on to oppose the proposed changes.

Day-um even the blue chip companies are woke...it's not just Big Tech and wimpy Coca Cola.

[LFC]

Groups representing real Americans provided grants all over the country to aid in creating the infrastructure needed to hold a free and fair election during a pandemic. Republican fascists are, of course, against that and trying to make it illegal.

As the global pandemic required election officials to drastically rethink how voting would work in 2020, philanthropic groups stepped up and contributed millions of dollars that paid for much of the changes needed to election infrastructure. Officials have since said that that money — particularly in light of how Congress struggled to provide enough federal election funding — helped them thwart a pandemic voting fiasco. The charity grants covered everything from election equipment to temp workers to personal protective gear, and some local election offices saw their 2020 budgets doubled by the private funding they received.

But going forward, that kind of private bailout for U.S. elections may not be an option for many places across the country, as several Republican-controlled states consider new restrictions on whether election officials can accept charity money in the future.

Already this year, Georgia and Arizona have made proposed limits on private election funding law, and lawmakers have put forward similar measures in at least 11 other states (though some of those bills have stalled out or face vetoes from Democratic governors). The backlash to the charity election grants are part of a wave of legislation propelled by President Trump’s lies about his 2020 defeat.

“I have no doubt that the concern stems from what happened in the 2020 election,” said Rick Hasen, a UC-Irvine law professor who runs the election law blog and has written several books about election administration. “Anything that helped that election run smoothly and effectively and cleanly is now the target for attack.”

[LFC]

Georgia's voter suppression laws came up in a committee hearing about statehood for the District of Columbia. I'd say that the defense offered by the Representative from Georgia was ... telling.

The House Oversight Committee’s markup session on H.R. 51, the bill aiming to make the District of Colombia a state, on Wednesday veered into a bizarre argument over Georgia Republicans’ new voting restriction law.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) brought up the law while taking aim at Republicans’ main gripe with D.C. statehood: That it would give Democrats more voting power, particularly in the Senate, where D.C.’s overwhelmingly blue voting bloc would all but guarantee the addition of two more Democratic senators.

Raskin asserted that the Georgia law, which Republicans pushed after the Peach State swung blue for Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and the GOP’s opposition to D.C. statehood are all part of a broader GOP effort to disenfranchise voters in order to stay in power. Civil rights advocates have slammed the law and have labeled refusals to grant D.C. statehood — which has a Black plurality — as forms of voter suppression against Black Americans, though Raskin did not make this point in his remarks.

Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), a Trump loyalist who’s also running for Georgia secretary of state in a virtually unheard of career move for a sitting U.S. congressman, defended his state’s law by insisting, without prompting, that it wasn’t racist.

“I would just like to say there is nothing racist about the bill that was just passed in Georgia,” Hice declared.

Raskin pointed out that he hadn’t said anything about race.

“That’s on your mind, not my mind,” the Democrat retorted. “I didn’t raise that at all.”

[LFC]

Despite signing the Georgia Republicans' voter suppression bill into law Gov. Brian Kemp was just censured by two Republican county organization for not stealing the election.

Despite signing Georgia’s GOP-led restrictive voting rights legislation into law, Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) reputation among fellow Republicans hangs in the balance following his refusal to do then-President Trump’s bidding of overturning the 2020 presidential election results.

Republican Party officials in two deeply conservative counties in northern Georgia overwhelmingly voted to censure Kemp, citing complaints that the Georgia governor didn’t challenge Trump’s defeat.

Republican officials in Whitfield County, in northwest Georgia, unanimously voted to condemn Kemp because the governor “stood by and did nothing” to overturn the presidential election results.

“Governor Kemp’s inaction angered Republican voters, many of whom refused to vote in the January 5th runoff and Kemp helped cost the Republicans two Senate seats,” read the Whitfield County resolution.

The Whitfield County resolution also took aim at two other Georgia officials who became punching bags of Trump after they refused to go along with his bogus claims of widespread election fraud.

The resolution called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s (R) to resign, citing his frequent media appearances that disputed unfounded claims of election fraud by Trump and the Georgia Republican Party.

The Whitfield County GOP similarly voted to censure Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) in light of his refusal to peddle Trump’s falsehoods as well as his refusal to preside over the state Senate amid lawmakers considering a bill that would sharply restrict absentee ballot voting. Earlier this month, Duncan argued in an op-ed published in USA Today that the new Georgia voting law was a direct result of the misinformation campaign led by Trump.

Murray County, also in northern Georgia, adopted a similar resolution that voted to censure Kemp, Raffensperger and Duncan by a nearly unanimous vote.

Although the resolutions simply serve as an official condemnation, Georgia GOP officials told the New York Times that the moves are intended to signal to Kemp and other Republican lawmakers that their terms are on the line because they dared to buck Trump.

The message is clear to even remotely sane Republicans: obey or face the consequences. The overwhelming majority have chosen to obey the fascist leaders of their party.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 15, 2021 15:32:44 GMT LFC said:

Despite signing the Georgia Republicans' voter suppression bill into law Gov. Brian Kemp was just censured by two Republican county organization for not stealing the election.

The message is clear to even remotely sane Republicans: obey or face the consequences. The overwhelming majority have chosen to obey the fascist leaders of their party.

Trump is the party, the party is Trump.   Mitt Romney and some other senators need to understand that and create their own party.

[LFC]

As if the Maricopa County recount couldn't become more of a farce (no evidence, 2 independent recounts already performed, lead "investigator" hired for this one is rabidly in on The Big Lie) it has descended further into stupidity. Here's the lead-in but there's plenty of further details.

The audit that Arizona’s GOP Senate has ordered of the 2020 election in the state’s largest county will be partially bankrolled by private donations — including from a fundraising effort spearheaded by some of the loudest promoters of President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

Lin Wood, who brought several lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, claims his organization has donated a five-figure sum to a fundraiser led by One America News correspondents to help pay for the audit, which is also running into a whole host of logistical issues.

Wood, TPM can exclusively report, has a preexisting relationship with Doug Logan, a cyber security consultant and CEO of “Cyber Ninjas,” which the state Senate tapped to lead the audit of Maricopa County.

Logan has already faced scrutiny for how he promoted baseless 2020 fraud theories on social media, as well as for a document he drafted listing “Election Fraud Facts & Details” that was posted on Sidney Powell’s website.

Wood told TPM on Thursday night that Logan was at his South Carolina property late last year because Logan, as Wood understood, was working with others on an investigation into the 2020 elections.

Logan has not returned texts and voicemails from TPM.

“He was there working on the investigation into election fraud,” Wood told TPM, adding that Logan was working with “others” on the 2020 election investigation, not with Wood himself.

“I opened up my home to allow people to work on the election fraud investigation,” Wood said.

[LFC]

A shrill, pathetic Chuckles Gr-Assley (R-IAmADouchnozzle) continues to squeal like a spoiled, whiny child about Major League Baseball expressing an opinion that he doesn't like. Another Republican asshole who seemed to have no problem with corporations being people too and being entitled to free speech as long as they never voiced real objections to the GOP agenda. Now that they've gone full on fascist and these companies are using their voices it's all "WAAHHHH!!!" all the time. This one deserves a bit of fisking (italics mine).

Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) set the tone for his party’s reaction to Democratic accusations of voter suppression Tuesday, railing against MLB’s decision to move the All Star Game out of Atlanta as “economic terrorism.
EEEEEKKKK!!! Economic TERRORISM! Hyperbole much?

MLB announced that it’d be moving the game earlier this month following Governor Brian Kemp’s (R) signing of a restrictive voting bill. Republicans have been furious ever since. Grassley also seemed to make a gaffe, claiming that the MLB’s decision cost Georgia “100 million jobs.”
Really Chuckles? 100 million jobs lost in a state with 10.6 million people? No wonder you vote for budget busting tax cuts all the time. You can't grasp basic math.

Grassley also mentioned a state senator losing his job at a law firm because he backed restrictive voter legislation, a seeming reference to state Sen. John Albers (R) who has said he’s a victim of “cancel culture.”
It sounds like this guy (who lied about the size and responsibility of his role when he worked at AT&T) was taken out by the Lincoln Project when he sponsored a bill for more restrictive voting laws that impact people of color more. He said it was a lie and that he believed in the sanctity of voting security but since voting proved itself to be extremely secure any legislation the obvious question is, what security problem that didn't happen are you trying to "fix?"

“When partisans and companies collude to ruin the livelihoods of their opponents, there’s a term for that: it’s economic terrorism,” Grassley intoned.
No, there's not a term for that or at least no that one. You just made that shit up.

Grassley followed Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL), who, aided by a video montage of civil rights leaders, likened the new wave of restrictive voting laws from GOP-led state legislatures to the Jim Crow era.

Grassley harrumphed at Durbin’s argument, calling it an insult to minorities who suffered during Jim Crow at the hands of “southern Democrats.”
That wasn't a harrumph. That was him horking up his pudding. As for any Trump supporting Republican in Congress (i.e. virtually every one of them) he has no business talking about what insults any minorities, alive or dead. This wretched old goat needs to be sent off to the farm for his remaining days. He's just a horrible, lying, disgusting person.

[LFC]

Interestingly among Georgia voters there is real bipartisan agreement that the worst of the voter suppression provisions really do suck. Not that the Republican politicians care about the views of actual voters, even their own. (Paywalled)

The most obviously bad parts of the Georgia voting law are seen, by voters of both parties, as obviously bad, according to a new poll.

That poll, from the University of Georgia, shows that while most Georgians are split along party lines about certain components of the new restrictive voting law in their state, there was bipartisan opposition to some of the aspects of the law that prompted the most concern from voting rights advocates: bans on giving out food and water to voters waiting in line and allowing the state legislature to seize a greater level of control from state and local election officials.

The University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs surveyed 887 voters from March 31 to April 19. The poll found that while feelings about drop box limits, absentee ballot ID requirements and shorter absentee ballot deadlines were split along party lines, the majority of those surveyed are fans of weekend early voting options and overwhelmingly agreed that the law was spurred on by Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden.

Most interestingly, voters agreed on their distaste for two of the more egregious components of the law. According to the study — the results of which were first published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and which has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points — only 30 percent of respondents said they agreed with the ban on distributing food and drinks to people waiting in line to vote. Similarly, only 34 percent of those polled were in support of the part of the law that allows Georgia’s GOP-majority State Election Board to take over leadership of local county election boards on a whim.

This lines up with Democrats’ most grave concerns about the law, which Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is seemingly leveraging to win the support of hardcore Trump supporters before his next election.

[goldenvalley]

allowing the state legislature to seize a greater level of control from state and local election officials.

If you have to pick one provision that is the most dangerous to democracy, that is the one.  



Look at what the former president tried to do with the Michigan group of inspectors and the various phone calls made to the Georgia elections officials. Those folks didn't necessarily have the power to do what he wanted (especially the Georgia officials) but this bill gives the state legislature the power to change a result or perhaps force another election if they don't like the results.

[LFC]

Welcome to my state where we have a representative who continually pushed The Big Lie finally who has now admitted small-scale fraud almost all perpetrated by Republicans but still believes that's a justification for voter suppression. The Republican election official from Philadelphia who represented the face of sanity during the vote counting had something to say about that and it wasn't agreement. These people are a combination of stupid, nuts, and corrupt.

"Well it's certainly frustrating from the standpoint of an election administrator in one of the biggest cities in the country, here in Philadelphia, to hear people say they're so concerned about restoring confidence in the elections but really the biggest thing anyone could do to restore confidence in the election and election results is to obviously stop lying about them."

The rest is really worth a listen. This kind of Republican is a dying breed.

[LFC]

The fake, highly partisan, and likely wildly corrupt recount in Arizona is already a shit-show and it's just Day 1.

Well that didn’t take long.

The sketchy Arizona Senate GOP-ordered audit of the 2020 election began in earnest on Friday and almost immediately ran into trouble, in the form of a court order forcing it to temporarily pause its proceedings through the weekend.

The order by Maricopa County Superior Judge Christopher Coury was in a lawsuit brought Thursday by the state Democratic Party and a Democratic member of the county’s board supervisors. They alleged that the “Defendants’ planned Audit does not comply with” the election “safeguards and requirements” laid out in Arizona procedures, and that the “Defendants’ planned Audit undermines the integrity and security of Arizona’s elections and voter information.”

As part of the judge’s order, Democrats will need to put up $1 million in bond — to cover potential costs that the auditors could face when trying to make up for the lost time — in order for the halt on the audit’s activities to go into effect.

Ever since state Senate Republicans embarked on the audit of Maricopa County — Arizona’s largest county and one that helped President Joe Biden win the state in 2020 — the review effort has been a locus of controversy and incompetence.

They've already f***ed up one of the most basic procedures.

As the audit began on Friday, there were many questions about the protocols the auditors planned to follow. Press access has also been severely limited. Reporters have only been allowed to view the audit in-person if they play the role of citizen observer, which includes lengthy shifts and a ban on taking notes. One reporter who did make it in to the audit site as an observer tweeted Friday that she noticed auditors using blue-ink pens. That is a no-no in election administration because many ballot scanners are programed to read marks made in black or blue ink, so auditors are usually instructed to use red-ink pens instead.

[LFC]

Another corrupt fascist gets another job with the Republican Party where corrupt fascism is a required job skill. (Paywalled.)

Remember Cleta Mitchell?

If you’ve been following our voting rights, voter suppression, ‘vote fraud’ bamboozlement coverage over the last couple decades you likely do. But even if not, you don’t have to back that far. She was the President’s legal advisor on that notorious January 2nd call with Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the soon-to-be ex-President demanded Raffensperger “find” the votes he needed to change the result in Georgia. Mitchell’s participation in that call and the subsequent insurrection, which constituted the last gasp of the President’s efforts, led to what was presumably Mitchell’s forced resignation from the law firm Foley & Lardner. She also appears to be under scrutiny in the Fulton County DA’s investigation into the aforementioned call and potential solicitation of election fraud.

But things are looking up for Mitchell!

The Guardian reports that the far-right group FreedomWorks has hired Mitchell to oversee a $10 million campaign to limit voting in seven key swing states, including Georgia, Arizona and Michigan. She’s also tasked with whipping opposition to HR1, the Democrats pro-democracy bill in Congress. She’s also been tapped as a “fellow” by a pro-Trump group called the Conservative Partnership Institute to organize opposition to HR1.

This should in a way hardly surprise us. Mitchell has been a top GOP voter suppression operative for years. That’s how she ended up on the call with Trump, who she’s apparently still in regular touch with. But it shows how resilient the right-wing money apparatus has been in the aftermath of the insurrection and the President’s broader attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Mitchell is still under investigation by the local DA in Atlanta, where she could conceivably be indicted along with Trump. But the key right-wing groups have already signed her up in the current campaign to crack down on voting in swing states around the country.

[LFC]

Frum thinks that the nationwide Republican push for voter disenfranchisement might come back to bite them in the ass. First here's a brief statement on just how universal the attack is on voters.

It’s not only Georgia.

In every state where Republicans control a chamber of the legislature, bills to restrict voting are advancing fast. Arizona and Texas Republicans have acted especially aggressively to choke off unwanted voters in time for 2022.

Here's his analysis on why many of these bills might not work for them the way they hope.

Almost all the new laws raise new barriers to voting by mail. Republican officials dislike postal voting in 2021 because in 2020 Biden voters were much more likely than Trump voters to use a postal ballot.

But that pro-Biden tilt in postal voting looks like a once-in-a-lifetime event, driven more by divergent reactions to the threat of the coronavirus than by ordinary voting behavior. (Forty percent of Biden postal voters cited fear of the virus as a reason they voted by mail.)

In previous elections, constituencies that have generally supported Democrats in recent years, including younger voters and members of racial minority groups, have tended to use postal ballots less frequently than do Republican-leaning constituencies, including older, white, and military voters. And many of the particular restrictions Republicans have in mind will bear especially hard on their expected voters.

For example, the new Georgia law requires those voting by mail to include some form of proof of identity, such as a photocopy of a driver’s license or a utility bill. If you work in an office park in the increasingly Democratic suburbs of Atlanta, making a photocopy is easy. A machine is probably just down the hall. If you are tech savvy, you’ll scan the license on your smartphone and print a copy. But if you live on the edge of a conservative small town in rural Georgia, or if you are unfamiliar with computers, making a photocopy or scanning and printing can be complicated. Obtaining an affidavit may prove even more daunting.

You might assume that Georgia Republicans have absorbed such negative information, balanced it, and coldly calculated that the trade is worth it: They may lose some of their older, poorer, or sicker rural voters, but if they can thwart a larger number of Black or young voters, they will emerge ahead.

But in the Trump and post-Trump era, local Republican power holders have again and again demonstrated that they are not good risk assessors. They refuse to acknowledge awkward truths. They believe their own inflammatory propaganda. The result is that they make self-harming decisions based on inaccurate information.

[LFC]

The main characters in the bogus Arizona Republican "recount" are even more batshit nuts than I realized before. Remember that this has full state level Republican support and virtually zero Republican pushback at any real level. The utter nutters involved in this are not Republican fringe, they're Republican mainstream. In fact mainstream Republicans of a decade ago are quickly becoming the fringe or, if you prefer a less loaded term, niche.

The counting has just begun, but already the audit has become almost inextricable from the far-right internet. There, audit-watchers share tips and concerns about security offered by Ron Watkins, a man suspected of helping birth the QAnon craze.

The audit, it should be noted, is nonbinding. Arizona’s Republican governor, secretary of state, and state Supreme Court chief justice all previously certified Biden’s victory. Nevertheless, the recount has been embraced by a conspiratorial set seeking to cast doubt on the 2020 election, including former President Donald Trump himself.

Watkins is a former administrator of 8kun, the forum that hosted the QAnon conspiracy theory, which falsely accuses Trump’s foes of Satanic pedophilia and cannibalism. A new HBO documentary argues that Watkins is one of the authors behind the conspiracy theory. Watkins, who did not return a request for comment, denies that he is the anonymous “Q.”

That hasn’t stopped him from imbuing an outlandish process with an extra dose of paranoia.

Even before the audit kicked off, Watkins suggested that it might be attacked by rioters. “Will Maricopa county deploy police to protect the auditors from rioters?” he posted on his Telegram channel in mid-April. “Will the police end up standing down? You cannot have information security without physical security.”

He wasn’t the only QAnon-adjacent person stoking those fears. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn claimed, without evidence, that anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter activists would attack the audit. “I’m telling you now, I’ll say it today, because we have intel that they may be bringing people down from Portland and Seattle to disrupt,” Flynn said during a speech this month. “I mean to disrupt finding the truth, discovering the truth?“

Watkins has continued to imply the left was traveling to protest the audit—a process virtually no one outside of the far right has taken seriously. “If you have proof, chat logs, or information regarding BLM or antifa booking rooms in Arizona to protest the audits, please email me,” he wrote several days later.

So far, any threat has yet to materialize. Outside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the audit is being held, much of the ire appears reserved for Maricopa County’s Republican-majority board of supervisors, who previously certified the vote that gave Joe Biden the state’s electoral votes. “Board of supervisors are enemies of the nation,” read one flag, photographed by the Arizona Republic.

But after months of “Stop the Steal” memes about phantom voter fraud, the security theater has been steadily escalating—with some semi-official help.

The event is currently receiving security from the Arizona Rangers, a civilian law enforcement auxiliary that has raised more than $130,000 on GoFundMe since it began patrolling outside the audit. On Monday evening, the two most recent donations (each for $100) read, “Because I want the truth out once and for all, plus I want the right President back in Office, and that is Trump” and “THEY CANT STOP WHATS COMING! WWG1WGA!” (“WWG1WGA” is a QAnon slogan.)

Observers on the right aren’t satisfied. They want even more heightened security, with Trump calling on Gov. Doug Ducey to hire more guards. “The Republican Party is demanding that Gov. Ducey of Arizona immediately provide large-scale security for the brave American Patriots doing the Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote in one recent statement.

On Facebook, the Arizona Rangers shared an article about Trump’s comments, from the fringe site Gateway Pundit. The article concluded with the claim that, “The Coliseum is well guarded and there are contingencies if someone tried to bully their way in. But the Democrats are desperate and will do anything—even steal an election to gain power.” (The Rangers, a group of more than 400 officers, do not receive state funding and do not have the full powers of a police force. They did not return a request for comment.)

Watkins’ connections to the audit have previously drawn scrutiny. The recount is being steered by a Florida-based firm called Cyber Ninjas, whose CEO Doug Logan has promoted conspiracy theories about the election and tweeted multiple times at Watkins. Watkins’ Telegram posts about the audit are also shared frequently in groups dedicated to tracking the pointless process.

But in Arizona, these channels are more than just group chats. A spin-off of the largest channel claimed to host a live Q&A with a state Senate-appointed official in charge of monitoring the audit. (That official could not be reached for comment on Monday.)

Also on Monday, Logan, the Cyber Ninjas CEO, argued in court that his auditing methods should remain a secret and that a court hearing on the recount should be closed to the media and the public. That commitment to secrecy comes even as conservative outlets are promoting what they claim are the audit’s yet-to-be-announced findings.

Don't ya' just love it? A report will be issued that is completely at odds with other actually independent audits but the lead of the bullshit is demanding that he doesn't have to tell you how he got there. We should just trust him. Suuuuuurrree.

[jackd]

And those who want to believe will believe just like the January 6th insurrectionists.

[goldenvalley]

WWG1WGA  In my mind that reads "wiggie wigah!"  Such an inspiring acronym!

[LFC]

The Arizona election "audit" continues to be a farce. Who would have thought that a company called Cyber Ninjas which had no election experienced and lead by a promoter of The Big Lie would be screwing up on proper handling of ballots? Plus (as I posted earlier) demanding that nobody gets to see how the audit is being performed really provides validity to the process.

A judge hearing a challenge to voter privacy policies during the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate’s recount of 2.1 million 2020 election ballots in the county that includes metro Phoenix said Tuesday he is not convinced voter secrecy is being upheld.

The comment from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daniel Martin came at the end of a lengthy hearing where he also declined to extend a previous judge’s order that auditors hired by the Senate comply with state voter privacy laws — at least until he hears more at a hearing on Wednesday.

“I will share with you all, I am not yet persuaded that there has been a showing that the rights of the voters in Maricopa County are being protected,” Martin said. “And I think we will touch on this tomorrow when we address the policies and procedures and whether or not they can be withheld from public view.”

Cyber Ninjas is a Florida firm with no election experience run by Doug Logan, who has shared unfounded conspiracy theories claiming the official 2020 presidential election results are illegitimate. His attorney is seeking to have its policies and procedures for protecting voter privacy kept secret, arguing that they are trade secrets.

To make matters worse Arizona Republicans actually argued, in court, that they have no requirement to follow state election law during the recount. How fascist can you get?

He started Tuesday’s hearing by rejecting the Senate lawyers’ arguments that they are not required to follow state elections law outlining how voters’ constitutional rights are protected.

“The Arizona Senate has the constitutional authority to conduct the audit as part of its legislative function,” Martin said. “However, the manner in which that audit is conducted must be balanced against the constitutional rights of the voters in Maricopa County, including the rights to secrecy and confidentiality of information.”

[LFC]

Yesterday I said the Arizona "audit" was a farce. I was too kind. This is the crank they're pulling out to perform an analysis using "kinematic artifact detection." NOW we understand why they are demanding that their methods be kept secret. It's because it's simply one asshole's claim that he can do something he's never proven he can do. Oh, yeah. The crank inventor also tried to pull the same bullshit on Georgia's ballots.

Georgia's Secretary of State blasted lawmakers today for allowing a man to testify who claimed he broke into Georgia's voting system during early voting.

The state says he didn't, and that elevating his voice is sowing distrust in the electoral process.

“Fake news is hard enough to combat when mainstream media outlets push it out, but when a small cadre of Georgia legislators do it, it’s a whole different story,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in a press release. “These legislators need to stop calling their own reelections illegitimate and focus on getting out the vote for the January 5 elections.”

Jovan Hutton Pulitzer claimed during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections that he can audit ballots through a process called "kinematic artifact detection."

David Becker, Executive Director and Founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said in an email to Sinclair that such a method is 'totally made up’ and opposed the claims Pulitzer made about allegedly faulty ballots during the hearing.

“The election was 2 months ago, and Georgia has been using these paper ballots for several elections, including elections that the President and other Republicans have won,” Becker wrote. “These issues, if they were legitimate (they’re not) could have been brought up earlier, but they were not.”

At the end of the hearing, lawmakers passed a motion to allow Pulitzer to audit the ballots using the method he’d outlined.

In a scathing rebuke, the secretary of state's office issued a statement calling Pulitzer a “failed inventor” and “failed treasure hunter.”

His claim to fame was creating something called CueCat. PC World rated it as one of the 25 worst tech products of all time.

Appearing at the tail end of the dot com craze, the CueCat was supposed to make it easier for magazine and newspaper readers to find advertisers' Web sites (because apparently it was too challenging to type www.pepsi.com into your browser).

The company behind the device, DigitalConvergence, mailed hundreds of thousands of these cat-shaped bar-code scanners to subscribers of magazines and newspapers. Readers were supposed to connect the device to a computer, install some software, scan the barcodes inside the ads, and be whiskered away to advertisers' websites. Another "benefit": The company used the device to gather personally identifiable information about its users.

The CueCat's maker was permanently declawed in 2001, but not before it may have accidentally exposed its user database to hackers.