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Election Fraud, Gerrymandering, Voter Suppression, Voter Intimidation - Page 1
Story by Zoë Richards and Dareh Gregorian

A judge ruled this week that a top Georgia Republican Party official, who has promoted former President Donald Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, has repeatedly voted illegally.

Brian Pritchard, first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and conservative talk show host, was fined $5,000 for voting illegally and registering to vote while serving a sentence for a felony conviction. Pritchard was also ordered not to commit further violations, to face public reprimand for his conduct, and to pay the State Election Board's investigative costs.

Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs affirmed in a 25-page ruling on Wednesday the board's finding that Pritchard had voted illegally nine times in defiance of his extended probation in connection with a pair of felony convictions dating back nearly 30 years.

Pritchard was initially sentenced in 1996 to three years’ probation in connection with felony forgery charges in Pennsylvania, according to the ruling.

Pritchard's probation was revoked three times, including in 1999, when he moved to Georgia, and again in 2002 and 2004. A judge in 2004 imposed a new seven-year probationary sentence, which made Pritchard illegible to vote in the state until 2011.
Story by John Kruzel

By John Kruzel

(Reuters) - A federal court that previously threw out a Republican-drawn South Carolina electoral map for bias against Black voters decided on Thursday that it can be used in this year's congressional elections, a ruling that could undercut Democratic chances of winning control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The federal three-judge panel acknowledged the "unusual" nature of its decision to reinstate a map that it found to have moved 30,000 Black residents out of a congressional district based on their race in violation of their constitutional rights.

But the panel said the approaching election calendar and the U.S. Supreme Court's delay in ruling on an appeal by Republican state officials had left the judges little choice. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on Oct. 11 but has not issued a ruling. The parties in the case had asked the Supreme Court to decide the case by the end of last year.
By Melissa Quinn

Washington — A panel of federal district court judges in South Carolina said Thursday that the 2024 elections for a congressional district in the state can be conducted using a map it determined was racially gerrymandered.

The three judges overseeing the redistricting dispute granted a request from South Carolina Republican legislative leaders, who asked the court to reinstate the lines for Congressional District 1 that GOP state lawmakers drew following the 2020 Census.

The Republicans had asked the court to pause its own January 2023 decision invalidating the lines of the district, represented by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, while it awaits a ruling from the Supreme Court on whether to uphold the map. They argued that the 2024 election cycle in South Carolina is now underway — the candidate-filing period opened March 16 and closes April 1 — and last-minute changes to congressional district lines and the state's election calendar would confuse voters and lead to disorder.

At least five candidates have filed to run in the primaries and have begun campaigning in Mace's coastal district, as well as the neighboring district represented by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn.
Opinion by Shreeja Das

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Chris Hayes assessed the condition of the Republican Party on March 14, considering Trump's replacement of all members in the National Republican Congress with loyalists.

His assessment was bleak. Hayes elucidated that under Trump, the GOP prioritizes "preventing people from voting" over "directly winning more votes."

Chris Hayes analyzes Trump's stance on democracy and RNC control
"Donald Trump's relationship with democracy and self-government seems pretty straightforward," Hayes said as he began the commentary.

"He doesn't care about that. Because he doesn't like to lose, right? He lost the democratic elections. He's desperate for criminal immunity. So it's kind of instrumental to him. No democracy, no loss, no problem."

Hayes argued that this extends beyond mere self-interest for Trump. "Opposing democracy isn't just convenient for him. It's actually a deeply ingrained and steadfast ideological conviction," Hayes asserted.
Story by Elizabeth Beyer, USA TODAY NETWORK

Shawn Barksdale lost his right to vote before he was even old enough to cast a ballot. When he was 17 years old and living in South Boston, Virginia, Barksdale was convicted of a felony in 1994 for selling cocaine and sentenced to Barrett Juvenile Correction Center for one year. “I ran in the streets,” he said. “I turned 18 inside of that juvenile system.”

Barksdale, now 47, said that losing the right to vote at such a young age made him angry and without a voice. “My mindset was, ‘My vote doesn’t count anyway,’” he said. “I really didn’t understand the right, the power of voting.” That disenfranchisement, in part, led to another prison sentence, this time 15 years for armed robbery for Barksdale when he was in his early 20s.

At the time of Barksdale’s first felony conviction, restoring the right to vote for a formerly incarcerated person was a power only the governor had. That’s thanks to an article in the commonwealth’s constitution dating back to the beginning of the 19th century.
Story by Sam Levine in New York

He created an agency to crack down on voter fraud with troublesome results
Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, both in Florida and across the United States. But in 2022, DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature created a new agency, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, to crack down on it. The agency was one of the first of its kind in the country. DeSantis initially proposed funding it with $6m and filling it with 52 staffers. The proposal prompted outrage, with some noting it would have more manpower than some local law enforcement agencies have to investigate murder. The legislature eventually funded it with $1.1m in 2022 for 15 positions and increased the budget to $1.4m this year. Voting rights advocates saw the move as a thinly veiled effort to intimidate people into not voting.

He’s prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to vote
In August 2022, DeSantis held a press conference flanked by uniformed law enforcement officers announcing he was arresting 20 people and charging them with illegally registering and voting. They were the first charges filed under the Office of Election Crimes and Security and each charge carried a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Fourteen of those charged were Black, and at least two of the men were arrested by armed officers.

It quickly emerged that all of those charged were confused about whether they could vote, partly because of a new state law. All 20 had prior criminal convictions that made them ineligible to vote, but said they had not been told that. All of them had received voter registration cards in the mail. Voting advocates said the prosecutions were thinly veiled efforts to discourage people with felony convictions from trying to vote after Florida changed the rules around their eligibility with bipartisan support.
Story by Blair Bowie and Dawn Harrington

In Tennessee, Jim Crow is alive and well. The state’s felony disenfranchisement voter-suppression regime is living proof. Felony disenfranchisement has long been a stain on our democracy. The practice, a destructive backlash against Black voting power, strips the freedom to vote from Americans if they have a past felony conviction.

Felony disenfranchisement laws worked as designed, carrying racial discrimination in the criminal legal system into our democracy to silence Black voters. And these laws still serve that purpose today, stripping Black citizens of the freedom to vote at more than three times the rate of the general population nationwide.

Tennessee, with the most convoluted voting rights restoration process and, by extension, the highest rate of Black disenfranchisement of any state in the nation, has been the poster child for the ruinous consequences of these laws. Then, last month, the state Elections Division brought its voter suppression to another level.
Story by cdavis@insider.com (Charles R. Davis)

Calling it Florida's "latest assault on the right to vote," a federal judge on Monday put a temporary hold on a new election law that would have imposed more limits on voter registration efforts.

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 7050, a package of Republican-sponsored reforms to Florida's election system, including a ban on non-citizen immigrants helping register voters. Groups that retained certain voter registration information, such as for get-out-the-vote operations, could under the law also face felony prosecution.

In a blistering decision, US Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida, agreed with plaintiffs that such provisions are likely illegal.
Story by Thom Hartmann

The first rule of business and marketing is that if you make it easy for folks to buy your product or engage with you, more people will do so. If you don’t want people to buy or use your product or service, on the other hand, just make them jump through hoops to complete the transaction and many won’t bother.

Republicans know this and have been applying it to voting for the better part of 50 years; recently they’ve turned it into a science. Polling before the 2020 election in Texas, for example, showed that Joe Biden may beat Trump just as he did in so many other swing states across the country. From Trump failing there, the Republican elders in the state knew, it would be a short jump to flipping the entire state Blue, as happened with Michigan and Wisconsin.
'The cost too great': Florida GOP passes more restrictive voting laws
Story by Maya Boddie

Florida GOP lawmakers have officially passed legislation that will restrict voter registration groups from assisting voters, CNN reports.

Per CNN, the 96-page proposal mostly centers around prohibiting "third-party voter registration groups" from doing their jobs, which will disproportionately impact voters of color.

Earlier this month, Miami Herald reported the proposed legislation package would include:

・Preventing people who are not U.S. citizens from collecting or handling voter-registration applications for the third-party registration groups. Also barred would be people who have been convicted of certain felonies, such as violations of the state elections code.

・Shortening a time frame from 14 days to 10 days for voter-registration groups to deliver registration applications to supervisors of elections. Also, the bill would increase fines for missing the deadline or not turning in applications.

・Requiring that voter-registration groups provide receipts when they collect applications from people. Requiring voter-registration groups to re-register with the state after every general election.
Opinion by Suzanne Moore

Iwonder if, in all the deliberations about the results of the local elections on Friday, we will hear about the number of people who had turned up to vote without the right ID and were refused. Will these numbers be recorded? For this is the first time that the electorate has to use photo ID. Not just any photo ID, but only those specified. A passport, a driving licence, travel cards if you are over 60 but not for anyone younger.

It’s a year since the Elections Act was passed, which requires ID before ballot papers can be issued in polling stations for local, general election and referendums. When this bill was going through the House, the Lords tried to amend it with a large majority voting for more kinds of ID to be acceptable, such as student ID, library cards and bills. The amendment did not make it through, so we are now stuck with this expensive new system, which many believe is a form of voter suppression.
Story by cdavis@insider.com (Charles R. Davis)

The wife of an Iowa Republican who ran for Congress in 2020 was arrested Thursday and accused of casting 23 fraudulent votes on behalf of her husband. In an 11-page indictment, prosecutors allege that Kim Phuong Taylor "visited numerous households within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County," where she collected absentee ballots for people who were not present at the time. Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, then filled out and cast those ballots herself, the indictment alleges, "causing the casting of votes in the names of residents who had no knowledge of and had not consented to the casting of their ballots."

Taylor is also accused of signing voter registration forms on behalf of residents who were not present. In all, prosecutors allege, she engaged in 26 counts of providing false information and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration, and 23 counts of fraudulent voting. Each charge carries a maximum 5-year prison sentence. The aim, prosecutors allege, was to get her husband, Republican politician Jeremy Taylor, elected to public office.
Another Republican caught committing voter fraud. Republicans complain about voter fraud and blame democrats for voter fraud while they are the ones committing voter fraud.

Story by Sky Palma

According to publicly available voter records, Georgia GOP Rep. Drew Ferguson voted in a county where he no longer lives, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Ferguson, who has voiced concerns in the past about election fraud, voted in person in Troup County during early voting for this year's May primary, the November general election and this month's U.S. Senate runoff after selling his house in April. As AJC points out, it's illegal in Georgia for voters to cast a ballot in a county where they don't live. On his congressional website, Ferguson says that he lives with his wife in The Rock, which is 63 miles away from his former home in West Point. But voter registration records show that he never changed his address to his new home as required by law.
New York Times

Two right-wing political operatives have pleaded guilty in Ohio to a telecommunications fraud charge for arranging thousands of robocalls that falsely claimed that the information voters included with mail ballots could be used by law enforcement and debt collectors, prosecutors said. The operatives, Jacob Wohl, 24, of Los Angeles, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Va., entered their pleas on Monday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland, prosecutors said. The men were indicted in 2020 after they were accused of using the robocalls to intimidate residents in minority neighborhoods to refrain from voting by mail at a time when many voters were reluctant to cast ballots in person because of the coronavirus pandemic. The calls also claimed that the government could use mail-in voting information to track people for mandatory vaccination programs, prosecutors said.
Sam Levine in Atlanta

About a year ago, Lee McWhorter joined a group of people in the Atlanta suburbs who were concerned about the integrity of elections in Georgia. They prayed over what they should do, and eventually started scrutinizing the voter rolls in Gwinnett county, one of the most populous and most diverse in the US. The group started checking addresses, comparing voter information in different states, and perusing property records. They brought in data experts to help them compare voter information and began to collect affidavits to back up claims that ineligible voters were on the rolls.

In early September, the group, which has since grown to 80 people and does not have a formal name, challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of people. The challenges were filed with the backing of VoterGA, whose founder has questioned the raised questions about the 2020 election results. The group has received backing from The America Project, which was founded by Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, who have promoted serial misinformation about the 2020 election. A few weeks later, McWhorter, 68, showed up to speak at a routine election board meeting and urged officials to act. He was particularly disturbed about those who appeared to be registered at addresses that didn’t exist. “Who put these phantoms on the voter rolls?” he said.
By Matthew Chapman | Raw Story

On Monday, the Justice Department announced that former Rep. Michael "Ozzie" Myers (D-PA) has pleaded guilty to several election crimes, including "conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, and conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election." This comes after he was implicated in a criminal scheme to stuff primary ballot boxes for various Democratic candidates from 2014 to 2018 — and paid off a local elections judge to do it. "Specifically, Myers admitted in court to bribing the Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 36th Division in South Philadelphia, Domenick J. Demuro, in a fraudulent scheme over several years," said the DOJ's statement. "Demuro, who was charged separately and pleaded guilty in May 2020, was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws." "Myers admitted to bribing Demuro to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections," said the report. "Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as 'consulting fees,' and then use portions of these funds to pay Demuro and others to tamper with election results." These "fees" ranged from $300 to $5,000 a pop.
JONATHAN J. COOPER

An Arizona judge Monday declined a request by the state Republican Party to block most mail-in ballots for the 2022 election, preserving the voting method used by an overwhelming majority of the state's voters. Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen ruled that nothing in the Arizona Constitution prohibits the Legislature from allowing citizens to vote by mail. The case is the latest piece of a multi-pronged effort by the Arizona Republican Party and its firebrand chair, Kelli Ward, to roll back a system of no-excuse-needed absentee voting that the GOP-controlled Legislature has built since 1991. They’ve pushed to require nearly everyone to cast a ballot in person on election day as former President Trump repeats the lie that he lost the 2020 election because of fraud linked to mail ballots in Arizona and other battleground states. Arizona is among the states with the highest levels of mail voting, a system that has become extremely popular with voters from both parties as well as independents. Striking down those laws would have had major implications for the 2022 election in Arizona, which includes one of the handful of races that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Igor Derysh

Organizers of a Republican-backed Michigan petition to enact voter restrictions to combat would-be voter fraud missed the state's filing deadline on Wednesday after discovering tens of thousands of fraudulent signatures. Michigan Republicans are backing the citizen initiative petition known as Secure MI Vote​​​​, which would impose strict voter ID requirements, restrict absentee voting and ban private donations that help keep polling places open. The petition drive was launched after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, vetoed a slew of voting restrictions passed by the Republican-led legislature. Though the petition is ostensibly a citizen initiative, voters are not expected to see the measure appear on the ballot. Republicans have openly plotted all along to exploit a bizarre provision in the state constitution that allows the legislature to adopt a citizen initiative and pass it with a simple majority that the governor cannot veto.
Igor Derysh

After spending years pushing former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie," the Michigan Republican Party is defending its own candidates who were caught up in a massive fraud scheme. The Michigan Bureau of Elections released a report on Monday recommending that leading Republican gubernatorial candidates James Craig and Perry Johnson, as well as three others, be disqualified from the ballot after submitting too many fake petition signatures. The bureau said it had identified 36 petition circulators who submitted more than 68,000 fake signatures across 10 sets of nominating contests, including the governor's primary. The state Board of Canvassers on Thursday deadlocked on whether to accept or reject the recommendation, effectively leaving in place the bureau's decision to disqualify all five candidates, although Republicans have vowed to challenge the outcome in court. Republican election attorney John Pirich told Salon that the fraud scheme uncovered by the election officials is "the largest I've ever seen."
Matt Shuham

The Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidates who the state found submitted thousands of fraudulent signatures will be kept off of the Aug. 2 primary ballot for now, after the state board that decides candidate qualifications split along party lines. That includes the two frontrunners for the GOP’s nomination to run for governor, Perry Johnson and James Craig. Several are expected to go to court to get their names on the ballot. The state’s elections director said Thursday that, in order for elections to run on time, ballots would need to be finalized by June 3. The vote by the Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers — the same body that Donald Trump pressured to steal the election for him in 2020 — came after a parade of candidates and their lawyers cast themselves as victims of a ring of fraudulent signature-gatherers who took their money, but provided forged or otherwise invalid signatures in return.
By Matthew Chapman | Raw Story

On Thursday, Bloomberg Law reported that MyPillow CEO and pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell and his attorneys face sanctions for a "frivolous" lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The decision was handed down by federal judge Carl Nichols, an appointee of former President Donald Trump. "A federal judge in Washington on Thursday imposed sanctions on Lindell and his former lawyers as part of a decision throwing out the CEO’s defamation lawsuits against Dominion Voting Systems Inc. and Smartmatic Corp., which were falsely placed at the center of a vast conspiracy theory after the election," said the report. "Lindell, an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, filed his suit after the companies sued him for defamation over his election-fraud claims," said the report. "Nichols said the CEO failed to properly allege a conspiracy by the two companies or back up his claim that they defamed him. The judge also partially granted Smartmatic’s motion for sanctions and fees. The amount will be decided later."
Nicholas Reimann, Forbes Staff

AFlorida appeals court on Friday ruled the state can move forward with redistricting plans backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that dismantle a largely Black district in north Florida, reversing an injunction granted by a lower court in response to a Democratic-backed lawsuit challenging the legality of the map.

Key Facts
The Tallahassee-based First District Court of Appeal determined the lower court erred by blocking the map, noting "there is a high likelihood that the temporary injunction is unlawful." DeSantis-appointed Leon County Circuit Judge Layne Smith issued the injunction last week, contending the new map violates the Fair Districts Amendments in the state constitution by moving the 5th congressional district out of north Florida. The district, which straddles about 150 miles along the Georgia border, is majority-minority, with Black residents composing more than 40% of the population. DeSantis claims the district's location is unconstitutional because of how long it stretches.
Kelly Weill | The Daily Beast

Aconspiracy-peddling county clerk claimed sinister election malfeasance in her home district. But surveillance footage reveals it was her own staff bumbling with computers. Tina Peters, clerk of Mesa County, Colorado is currently facing 10 charges related to allegations that she and a colleague stole a local man’s identity and used it to break into voting equipment in the clerk’s office. Peters allegedly leaked voting data to conspiracy theorists, catapulting her to stardom in the Stop The Steal movement. Peters says the data reveals election tampering in the 2020 presidential election—claims that elections experts have repeatedly dismissed. In a Thursday hearing, Mesa County’s district attorney dismantled Peters’ core claims, with help from surveillance footage from inside her own office. The Thursday hearing came in response to a March report, prepared on behalf of Peters’ legal team. The report claims that several actions on Mesa County election machines could only have been performed by nefarious outside actors manipulating the county’s voting machines from afar. That’s not true, District Attorney Dan Rubinstein showed during the hearing. The report took issue with an election database logging 10 batches of ballots within 47 seconds (“physically impossible,” the document reads). The document claims that “Mesa County election clerks were unaware of these batch timestamps, or any issue that could explain them.” The supposed issue “demonstrates this manipulation of ballots,” by outside forces, the report alleges. But surveillance footage, revealed during the hearing, shows Mesa County staffers easily logging those same batches of ballots within 47 seconds. None appear to blink at what the report described as a physically impossible stunt of data-entry.
David Jackson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - Donald Trump-style Republicans in more than 30 states are pushing new laws that basically would make it easier for them to steal future elections, according to a new report provided to USA TODAY by a group of voting rights organizations. "This trend increases the risk of a crisis in which the outcome of an election could be decided contrary to the will of the people," said the report compiled by three organizations: States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy, and Law Forward. Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser with the States United Democracy Center and one of the authors of the report, described the efforts as "election subversion," and called the idea a "new and dangerous attack on democracy." With 50 proposals passed since the organizations started tracking them at the start of 2021, Bassetti said that "systematic election subversion like we have found is really new." The 2022 edition of an annual report – entitled "A Democracy Crisis In The Making" – said proponents are pursuing election subversion through five methods: Awarding state legislatures the power to award electoral votes; authorizing post-election "audits" that could be partisan in nature; giving partisan lawmakers and appointed officials more powers over election operations; placing "unworkable burdens" on election administrators; and intimidating election officials with the threat of criminal penalties for certain actions.
Fabiola Santiago, Miami Herald

Everyone familiar with basic Florida law knew that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to manhandle the redistricting process for political gain violated the Florida Constitution. But DeSantis went ahead anyway and used his office to draw congressional district map lines, blatantly favoring Republicans and disenfranchising the state’s Black voters. Two illegal moves in one act: Participation by a partisan governor in a function that’s supposed to be impartial. Gerrymandering districts to steal from minorities the right to choose who represents them, thus favoring the white, Republican majority. Did the governor, an Ivy League-educated lawyer, really think his crass usurpation of power would go unchallenged in a democracy? Not at all, I’m sure, since there’s recent legal precedent confirming that politically manipulated maps won’t stand a court challenge in the state. But DeSantis’ ego looms over Florida larger than the law — and his desire to feed his voter base red meat knows no boundaries.
Matt Shuham

Astate judge in Georgia laughed former U.S. senator and Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate David Perdue out of court, saying in essence that he had no idea what he was talking about when he filed suit late last year over the 2020 election results in Georgia. Just days after announcing his campaign to become Georgia’s next governor, Perdue sued Fulton County, alleging that through “acts and omissions,” the county “circumvented the majority of the people” in Georgia. Perdue, who lost a special Senate election that year to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), sought access to ballots in order to conduct a “forensic inspection.” “Clearly,” the suit alleged, “unlawful counterfeit absentee ballots were counted and certified in the General Election.” Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney didn’t buy it. Perdue’s claims, McBurney wrote, consisted of “speculation, conjecture and paranoia — sufficient fodder for talk shows, op-ed pieces and social media platforms, but far short of what would legally justify a court taking such action.” He said the plaintiffs had failed to state a proper claim for declaratory relief, and granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the case.
Igor Derysh

A Florida judge said Wednesday that he would block Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' congressional map because it unconstitutionally suppresses Black voters. Leon County Circuit Judge Layne Smith, who was appointed by DeSantis, said he would issue a formal order this week blocking the map approved by the governor from taking effect. "I am finding that the enacted map is unconstitutional under the Fair District amendment ... because it diminishes African Americans' ability to elect the representatives of their choice," Smith said during a hearing, according to CNN. The move came after an unprecedented intervention from DeSantis' office into the state's redistricting process. Republican state lawmakers were working on their own maps in January when DeSantis' office tried to hijack the process and proposed its own map so-called "race-neutral" map that would cut the number of predominantly Black districts in the state from four to two. Republican lawmakers passed their own maps instead but they were vetoed by DeSantis and the GOP ultimately caved and agreed to approve DeSantis' map. DeSantis' proposal would give the GOP an advantage in 20 of the state's 28 congressional districts. The map would eliminate the district represented by Rep. Al Lawson, D-Fla., one of the state's Black congressmen, and reduce the number of Black voters in the Orlando-area district represented by Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., who is running for Senate.
Tom Porter

The right-wing One America News Network admitted in a Monday legal statement that there was no widespread voter fraud by Georgia election officials in the 2020 presidential election after having extensively pushed the groundless claim. In a 30-second statement that aired Monday night, a voiceover stated: "Georgia officials have concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud by election workers who counted ballots at the State Farm Arena in November 2020." "The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea 'Shaye' Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct," the statement said, referring to two election workers for Fulton County, Georgia. "A legal matter with this network and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement." The statement was a response to a defamation lawsuit filed against the network by Freeman and Moss, who are mother and daughter.
Fabiola Cineas

For decades, Florida had a reputation as the state with the nation’s most outstandingly bad voting procedures and Election Day fiascos. This was the state, after all, whose chaotic recount dragged a presidential election on for five weeks in 2000, the one that lost nearly 60,000 ballots in 2004, and then destroyed a county’s physical ballots in 2016, and then had a 2018 midterms debacle that somehow led to yet another round of painfully slow statewide recounts. By the 2020 presidential election, however, Florida appeared to have worked out the kinks. Bipartisan progress on election reform in the Florida legislature over two decades rectified much of the chaos by expanding voting options and standardizing equipment across the state. More than 11 million Florida voters — or about 77 percent of those registered — cast a ballot in 2020, with millions voting early or by mail, and the state went on to smoothly and quickly tally votes as others looked on with envy. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) publicly bragged about the state’s successful tabulation — “The way Florida did it, I think inspired confidence. I think that’s how elections should be run,” he said at the time — which is why he sent voting rights and election security experts and activists reeling last week when he signed a bill creating an elections police force to curb alleged election crimes and irregularities.
Democrats' House majority was already slipping away, but Wednesday's court decision in New York was potentially devastating.
By Ally Mutnick, Sarah Ferris and Bill Mahoney

Democrats’ hold on the House majority had been growing more tenuous after a spring full of political setbacks. Then came the New York state Court of Appeals. The state’s highest court struck down Democrats’ most effective gerrymander in a shocking ruling Wednesday, scuttling a map that would have likely netted the party 22 of New York’s 26 seats in an election when they desperately needed every one of them. The decision has incensed Democrats across the country — particularly since it was delivered by judges appointed by their own party’s governors. Not only does it deprive Democrats of one of their best advantages in an ominous midterm cycle, it also takes the map-drawing process out of their hands entirely, perhaps for the next 10 years.
Rodney Overton

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — A Bladen County man who was the key player in a North Carolina absentee-ballot fraud case that led to a new congressional election, has died, his family announced. Leslie McCrae Dowless, of Bladenboro, who died Sunday, pleaded guilty to theft of government property and Social Security fraud last summer. Dowless was still facing state charges involving the 2016 and 2018 elections. He was accused of directing people to collect incomplete absentee ballots in a congressional race and making it appear that the voters had finished them. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who was working on the case against Dowless, expressed her “condolences” to his family Sunday afternoon. Below is her full statement:
Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times

ASHEVILLE, N.C. - Mark Meadows has been removed from North Carolina's voter rolls, a move made as the State Bureau of Investigation continues a probe into allegations the former White House chief of staff committed election fraud. Macon County Board of Elections Director Melanie Thibault confirmed April 12 that she had removed Meadows the prior day from the county's active voter list. Thibault said she consulted N.C. Board of Elections staff in Raleigh after finding records that Meadows was registered both in Virginia and North Carolina. "What I found was that he was also registered in the state of Virginia. And he voted in a 2021 election. The last election he voted in Macon County was in 2020," she said.
Vaughn Hillyard and Zoë Richards

A report issued Wednesday by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich found no evidence of widespread voter fraud or irregularities associated with the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County while raising concerns about some voting procedures. The interim report, six months into an investigation, was detailed in a 12-page letter to Senate President Karen Fann. Brnovich, a Republican, said his office “has left no stone unturned in the aftermath of the 2020 election.” Former President Donald Trump is pursuing a persistent pressure campaign to uncover any illegal activity that would support his false claims that he defeated President Joe Biden in Arizona 17 months ago. Trump lost Arizona by less than 10,500 votes, and a GOP-commissioned review in Maricopa County confirmed Biden’s victory.
Rachel Olding

A federal judge permanently blocked Florida’s new voter suppression laws from going into effect on Thursday, issuing a blistering ruling that said the bill unfairly and unconstitutionally violated minorities’ voting rights. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked three major components of the sweeping bill from going into effect because they suppressed Black voters:
By Sarah K. Burris

In a 288-page document, District Court Judge Mark Walker blocked the Florida voter suppression bill and specifically called out judges and the Supreme Court for undercutting the Voting Rights Act. Mark Joseph Stern, Slate's court and law writer, cited several excerpts in the judge's decision that make the decision groundbreaking. Until the case goes to the Supreme Court, Florida's suppression laws will be stopped. Republicans around the country have been pushing voter suppression laws after former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election after a record-setting voter turnout. In Texas, for example, Republicans confessed that the law they passed putting additional barriers on vote by mail wasn't due to an outbreak of voter fraud. Instead, it was to make people feel better. "This is a preventative measure for us," Republican state Rep. Travis Clardy said. "I think it is our job to make sure that doesn't blossom into a problem that disturbs the underlying and one of the underpinnings of our democracy, and that is confidence in our elections."
By JONATHAN J. COOPER

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Republican Party is asking the state Supreme Court to strike down the vote-by-mail system used by 90% of voters in a battleground state that will be crucial to determining which party controls the U.S. Senate after the 2022 election. The lawsuit filed Friday argues absentee voting is unconstitutional and asks the justices to get rid of it or at least eliminate the no-excuse absentee balloting system Arizona adopted in 1991 and has steadily expanded ever since. more...
John Wright

Republican Party canvassers tricked more than 100 South Florida voters — many of them elderly and/or immigrants — into switching their party affiliation to the GOP last year, according to a bombshell investigative report published Friday by the Miami Herald. The newspaper sent a team of reporters to eight low-income housing projects in Hialeah and Little Havana, where voter registration data showed unusually high numbers of switching from one party to another. "The reporters knocked on every door where someone’s party affiliation had changed," according to the Herald. "Four out of every five voters who spoke to the Herald — 141 in total — said that their party affiliation had been changed without their knowledge. In all but six cases, records show they were registered as Republicans by canvassers from the Republican Party of Florida." more...
Anderson Cooper 360

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo tells CNN's Erin Burnett that 40 percent of mail-in-ballots in Texas's largest county have been flagged as faulty thanks to the state's new voting laws. video...
In states where legislators drew the lines this decade, nearly 90 percent of congressional races were easy wins for one party or the other.
By SCOTT BLAND and ALLY MUTNICK

When most voters go to the polls to elect members of Congress next year, the general election will essentially be meaningless. That’s because winners are being determined right now, by a small number of party officials who are surgically ensuring preordained victories in the majority of the nation’s congressional districts. The current redistricting cycle is garnering more interest and scrutiny than ever because the power of the process has become so clear: When politicians control redistricting, they have the tools to render most or even all of the congressional districts in a state solid red or solid blue for years to come. more...
CBS News

There is a surge in gerrymandering as several states work to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. CBS News political reporter Aaron Navarro joins CBSN's Tanya Rivero with more. video...
The Republican Party is the party of the KKK they are using the same tactics the KKK used to prevent people of color from voting.

Benjamin Swasey

Months of partisan battles in Texas concluded late Thursday as Republican House members passed new voting restrictions, moving the legislation closer to the governor's desk. The vote in the Texas House on the nearly 50-page bill, SB1, was 79-37 (mostly on party lines) and follows historic efforts by Democrats to block it. more...
Alana Wise

Nine attorneys aligned with former President Donald Trump who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging Michigan's 2020 presidential election results will have to pay financial penalties and face other punitive actions for their legal effort, a district court judge ruled on Wednesday. "This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process," U.S. District Judge Linda Parker wrote in her scathing decision on the case. more...
Axios

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said the Justice Department always knew Trump's claims of election fraud were "bullsh*t," according to an excerpt from journalist Jonathan Karl's upcoming book published in the The Atlantic.

Why it matters: Barr's new comments come as Trump continues to propagate the lie that the 2020 election was "rigged." Republicans in swing states now are conducting "audits" of election ballots based on false conspiracies about the election.

Flashback: Last December, Barr told the AP: "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election." That comment infuriated then-President Trump, Barr told the Atlantic. “How the f*ck could you do this to me? Why did you say it?” Trump asked Barr. Barr responded that he said it because it was true. “You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump," Trump said, referring to himself in the 3rd person, according to Barr. more...
By Jeremy Herb, Clare Foran, Ryan Nobles and Daniella Diaz, CNN

(CNN) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday she will create a select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol after Republicans blocked the formation of an independent commission. The select committee will corral the various House Democratic investigations into the events surrounding the deadly insurrection into a single effort to examine what led to pro-Donald Trump supporters breaching the Capitol and disrupting the certification of President Joe Biden's November 2020 election win. Pelosi said that it had been four weeks since Senate Republicans blocked the commission, and it did not appear they would change their minds, so she was now moving forward with a select committee. "This morning, with great solemnity and sadness, I'm announcing that the House will be establishing a select committee on the January 6 insurrection," Pelosi said. "The select committee will investigate and report on the facts and the causes of the attack and it will report recommendations for the prevention of any future attack." more...
Craig Mauger | The Detroit News

Lansing — A long-awaited report on the 2020 election from a GOP-controlled Michigan Senate committee recommended that Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel consider investigating individuals who pushed false claims "to raise money or publicity for their own ends." The suggestion was among the most striking details of the Senate Oversight Committee's recap of a months-long examination of the presidential election. The report was released Wednesday with its main author, Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, saying he found "no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud," contradicting months of assertions from some members of his own party, including former President Donald Trump. "The committee finds those promoting Antrim County as the prime evidence of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election place all other statements and actions they make in a position of zero credibility," the report said. more...
Ryan Lucas

A New York state court has suspended Rudy Giuliani from practicing law after concluding that he made false statements alleging rampant fraud to try to overturn Donald Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election. In a 33-page decision released Thursday, a New York state appellate court said there was "uncontroverted evidence" that Giuliani "communicated demonstrably false and misleading statement to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump's failed effort at reelection in 2020." more...
Republicans are pushing hundreds of bills to limit voting access. Some measures may get in the way of their own voters
Joan E Greve

As the coronavirus wreaked havoc around the world, lawmakers in the US were faced with a monumental task: carrying out a presidential election in the middle of a once-in-century pandemic. Concerned about the possibility of virus spread at polling places, Democrats pushed the federal government to approve more funding for states to expand absentee and early-voting options. But Donald Trump was against the idea for a single reason: he thought it would make it harder for Republicans to win. Trump said in a Fox News interview in March of last year that, if early and absentee voting options were expanded as Democrats wanted, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Other Republicans have echoed Trump’s argument in recent months, as the party has pushed hundreds of bills to restrict voting access in dozens of states. more...
The way Republicans have pushed the myth marks a dangerous turn from generalized allegations of fraud to refusing to accept the legitimacy of elections, experts say
Sam Levine | guardian.org

Just a few days after the polls closed in Florida’s 2018 general election, Rick Scott, then the state’s governor, held a press conference outside the governor’s mansion and made a stunning accusation. Scott was running for a US Senate seat, and as more votes were counted, his lead was dwindling. Targeting two of the state’s most Democratic-leaning counties, Scott said there was “rampant fraud”. “Every person in Florida knows exactly what is happening. Their goal is to mysteriously keep finding more votes until the election turns out the way they want,” he said, directing the state’s law enforcement agency to investigate. “I will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election from the great people of Florida.” more...
Former president to give speech at North Carolina Republican convention as Arizona emails show how audit came to be set up
Martin Pengelly and Victoria Bekiempis

Donald Trump was forced to confront his drastically diminished online presence this week, as a two-year suspension from Facebook for inciting the Capitol attack followed the closure of his blog, an endeavour which failed to attract an audience. Nonetheless, the former president was poised to return to the public arena on Saturday night, with a speech to the North Carolina Republican convention in Greenville. Trump, who will be 75 on 14 June, was impeached for inciting the Capitol attack as part of his lie that his electoral defeat was the result of mass fraud. He was acquitted thanks to Republican supporters in Congress, who also blocked a bipartisan investigation of 6 January, and remains eligible to run for office again. The former president is reportedly due to hold rallies this summer in other keenly contested states, Florida and Georgia among them. In Arizona, meanwhile, emails were released on Friday in which the Republican president of the state senate said Trump called her after his defeat by Joe Biden in November, to thank her “for pushing to prove any fraud”. more...
"We truly are in uncharted waters," one expert said, calling the efforts more than six months after the 2020 election "unsustainable" for U.S. democracy.
By Allan Smith

Republican-led efforts to re-examine last fall's vote are spreading as experts and election officials warn that the proliferation amounts to a grave threat to U.S. democracy. At the center of the push is Arizona, where the private company hired by the Republican-controlled state Senate continues its review of more than 2 million Maricopa County ballots, despite prior audits finding no evidence of fraud. With former President Donald Trump and others on the right following that count closely — despite it having no legal ability to overturn the result — GOP officials and voters have pushed for similar probes in at least five other states. In Georgia, a judge last month awarded a group of plaintiffs, led by a known conspiracy theorist, a limited review of mail-in ballots in Fulton County. (That effort is still being litigated.) In Wisconsin, the Republican state House speaker recently hired a team of retired police officers and an attorney to probe the 2020 election. more...
Democratic campaigns can overcome some, but not all, of the Republican Party’s efforts to disenfranchise voters.
By Ian Millhiser

Democrats — and democracy — won what is likely to be a very temporary victory in Texas this past weekend. On Sunday evening, Texas Republicans expected to pass Senate Bill 7, which contains several provisions making it harder to cast a ballot in Texas. But Democrats took advantage of two procedural constraints to temporarily block the bill. The legislative session expired at midnight, placing a hard deadline on all bills that Texas lawmakers hoped to enact, and the state House must have two-thirds of its members present to conduct business. So Democrats ran out the clock by abandoning the House chamber before Republicans could call a vote on the bill. more...
By Cammy Pedroja

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday he would withhold pay from Texas lawmakers by vetoing the section of the state budget that funds their paychecks. His announcement comes just hours after Texas Democrats walked out of the House, breaking quorum, and blocking the possibility of a vote before a midnight deadline. "I will veto Article 10 of the budget passed by the legislature. Article 10 funds the legislative branch. No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities," Abbott tweeted Monday afternoon. "Stay tuned." more...
By Eric Bradner and Dianne Gallagher, CNN

Austin, Texas (CNN) Texas Republicans' push to enact a slew of new voting restrictions was stymied -- at least for now -- by Democrats who walked off the state House floor late Sunday night, leaving majority Republicans without the quorum they needed to approve the bill in the final hours before a midnight deadline. Their move effectively killed Senate Bill 7 for this year's legislative session. But it could soon be revived: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted Sunday night that he is adding "election integrity" to a list of topics lawmakers will address in a special session he plans to call. "Legislators will be expected to have worked out the details when they arrive at the Capitol for the special session," Abbott said. Democrats left the chamber at about 10:45 p.m., CT, leaving Republican Speaker Dade Phelan to concede that the House did not have the 100 members necessary for a quorum and to adjourn the House for the night. more...
Bill rushed to floor of state senate in middle of the night. Leading US House Democrat calls new law ‘shameful’. ‘Un-American and wrong’: Biden blasts Texas voting bill
Martin Pengelly

Republicans in the Texas Senate muscled one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US to the cusp of law on Sunday, after rushing the legislation to the floor in the middle of the night. The sweeping measure, Senate Bill 7 or SB7, passed on party lines around 6am, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who have virtually no path to stop it. The bill must still clear a final vote in the Texas House later on Sunday in order to reach Governor Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it. “I have grave concerns about a bill that was crafted in the shadows and passed late at night,” said one Democratic state senator, Beverly Powell. In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election and pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The 67-page measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year. more...
Republicans are trying to rig (steal) future elections.

Countrywide campaigns for secretaries of state underscore new Republican focus to take control of election administration
Sam Levine

Republicans who have embraced baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen are now running to serve as the chief elections officials in several states, a move that could give them significant power over election processes. The campaigns, first detailed by Politico last week, underscore a new focus to take control of election administration. Secretaries of state, who are elected to office in partisan contests that have long been overlooked, wield enormous power over election rules in their state, are responsible for overseeing election equipment, and are a key player in certifying – making official – election results. Winning secretary of state offices across the country would give conspiracy theorists enormous power to wreak havoc in the 2024 presidential election, including potentially blocking candidates who win the most votes from taking office. more...
Christopher Wilson

False claims, intraparty feuds and the need to potentially replace millions of dollars in equipment are among the issues that continue to plague a partisan election audit ordered by Arizona Republicans seeking to prove that the 2020 presidential race was stolen. After months of court battles, a review of the November election vote in Maricopa County — where the majority of Arizonans reside — was begun at the instruction of the GOP-controlled state Senate late last month. To conduct the audit, Arizona Senate Republicans brought in a private Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, whose founder and CEO, Doug Logan, has pushed false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Numerous Republicans nationwide have followed former President Donald Trump’s lead in recent months to insist that the election was somehow illegitimate — a claim unsupported by facts. more...
By Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) Voting rights activists are sounding alarms about Republican efforts in key states to empower partisan poll watchers and expand voter challenges -- arguing it could lead to voter intimidation that recalls dark chapters in US history. Bills in several states would grant new authority to poll watchers -- who work on behalf of candidates and political parties -- to observe voters and election workers. Critics say it could lead to conflict and chaos at polling places and an improper targeting of voters of color. In Texas, a measure under consideration by the Republican-controlled legislature would grant partisan poll watchers the right to videotape voters as they receive assistance casting their ballots. more...
In Houston, election officials found creative ways to help a struggling and diverse work force vote in a pandemic. Record turnout resulted. Now the G.O.P. is targeting those very measures.
By Nick Corasaniti

HOUSTON — Voting in the 2020 election presented Zoe Douglas with a difficult choice: As a therapist meeting with patients over Zoom late into the evening, she just wasn’t able to wrap up before polls closed during early voting. Then Harris County introduced 24-hour voting for a single day. At 11 p.m. on the Thursday before the election, Ms. Douglas joined fast-food workers, nurses, construction workers, night owls and other late-shift workers at NRG Arena, one of eight 24-hour voting sites in the county, where more than 10,000 people cast their ballots in a single night. “I can distinctly remember people still in their uniforms — you could tell they just got off of work, or maybe they’re going to work; a very diverse mix,” said Ms. Douglas, 27, a Houston native. more...
Peter Weber

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked Georgia voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams if she could list the specific things she objects to in Georgia's restrictive new voting law. She could. "It's a long list," the Senate Democrats' Twitter account said, helping the exchange go viral on Wednesday. more...
Tom McCarthy

Hundreds of bills nationwide target people of color whose full participation in future elections is seen by Republicans as a threat. At campaign rallies, Donald Trump specialized in crafting political slogans whose catchiness obscured the lack of actual policy behind them: lock her up, America First, build the wall, drain the swamp. But there was one Trump slogan that turned out to have a shocking amount of policy behind it – hundreds of pieces of legislation nationwide in just the last three months, in fact, constituting the most coordinated, organized and determined Republican push on any political issue in recent memory. The slogan was “stop the steal,” a tendentious reference to Trump’s big lie about the November election result. And the policy behind it was aggressive voter suppression, targeting people of color, urbanites, low-income communities and other groups whose full participation in future elections is seen by Republicans as a threat. more...
By Janie Boschma, Fredreka Schouten and Priya Krishnakumar, CNN

(CNN) Lawmakers in all but three states have introduced bills aimed at restricting ballot access, according to a new tally by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Their latest report finds 361 bills restricting voting have been introduced in 47 states as of March 24. The total, released Thursday morning, marks a 43% rise in the number of bills introduced since Brennan last released a count a little over a month ago. The Brennan Center's previous tally identified 253 restrictive bills in 43 states in February. more...
By Ed Kilgore

As controversy continues to swirl around Georgia’s new restrictive election law, attention should be paid to what Republicans are doing along the same lines in other states. Republican state legislators are sponsoring a blizzard of new voting restrictions, advancing 55 bills in 24 states. CBS News and FiveThirtyEight have published helpful state-by-state overviews, and the Brennan Center for Justice has all the details you’d want. But it’s important to look at the general patterns. There is a lot of noisy GOP voter-suppression activity in states where Democrats hold a gubernatorial veto, such as Michigan. And three not-terribly-competitive states — Iowa, Arkansas, and Utah — actually preceded Georgia in enacting restrictive new voting laws. But the real threat to voting rights has mostly emerged in states, like Georgia, that were highly competitive last November and are currently controlled by a GOP governing trifecta. more...
American Airlines and Dell Technologies publicly declared their opposition to Republican legislative proposals that would impose new restrictions on voting.
Alexa Ura

(THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – Multiple major corporations based in Texas spoke out Thursday in opposition to Republicans’ legislative proposals to further restrict voting in Texas. Corporate giants American Airlines, based in Fort Worth, and Dell Technologies, headquartered in Round Rock, were among the first to take a position. American Airlines took specific aim at Senate Bill 7, which would impose sweeping restrictions that take particular aim at local efforts meant to make it easier to vote — like extended early voting hours. Senate Republicans advanced that measure in a 2 a.m. vote Thursday. more...
By Elliot Hannon

Shortly after a group of Black business executives called on corporate America to do more in pushing back against restrictive voting bills making their way through state legislatures, a handful of Georgia’s highest-profile companies took stronger public stands against the state’s recently passed voting law. The state is home to a host of America’s biggest companies—including Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Home Depot, and Aflac—all of which are facing criticism for not being more vocal in opposition to the Georgia voting bill, which was signed into law last week after weeks of winding its way through the state Legislature. On Wednesday, two of the state’s biggest companies, Delta and Coca-Cola, issued more forceful denunciations of the new law. more...
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