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Election Fraud, Gerrymandering, Voter Suppression, Voter Intimidation - Page 2
The Justice Department is seeking the testimony of three GOP legislators in a suit alleging discrimination against minorities in the state's new congressional and legislative maps.
By Pete Williams

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to prevent Texas state legislators from answering questions in a lawsuit over the state’s plan for drawing new congressional and legislative district boundaries. Without explanation, as is its usual practice, the court turned away an emergency appeal from the state, which sought an order to block a federal judge from forcing three GOP members of the Texas House to appear for depositions. Their testimony is sought in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department and civil rights groups who say the Voting Rights Act requires the state to create more districts where a majority of voters are racial minorities.
by Dean Obeidallah

Donald Trump was right. I never thought I’d write those words, but he did warn us that there was a “giant scam” in Michigan involving the state’s election. Of course, Trump made that claim about the 2020 presidential election in the state, where he lost by over 150,000 votes. The bureau said the fraud was so widespread that after it struck the invalid signatures, five of the 10 candidates were lacking the requisite 15,000 valid signatures needed to remain on the ballot. While that assertion was false — per numerous audits, lawsuits and a 55-page report the Republican-led Michigan Senate released in 2021 debunking each of Trump’s election lies — there is actually a significant election scandal in the state. But it involves the 2022 election for governor and Republicans, including some who have peddled Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Ah, karma. To get on this year's ballot for governor in Michigan, state law required candidates to collect at least 15,000 signatures from registered voters and submit them by the April 19 deadline. Securing that many valid signatures in a state of over 8 million registered voters shouldn’t be that hard. That is, apparently unless you are one of the 10 Republican candidates running to take on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The state’s Bureau of Elections, which reviews the submitted petitions to ensure the signatures are valid, said after examining the petitions of the GOP gubernatorial candidates that it found a “volume of fraudulent petition sheets” that it had never seen before. The bureau said the fraud was so widespread that after it struck the invalid signatures, five of the 10 candidates were lacking the requisite 15,000 valid signatures needed to remain on the ballot. This included the two front-runners: former Detroit Police Chief James Craig and businessman Perry Johnson.
Trump and his allies push new Republican effort to restrict voting laws
Trump congratulated Georgia on its recent legislative move, which critics have slammed as a major blow to Black voters’ rights
Edward Helmore and agencies

Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer who advised Donald Trump on his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results, is now a key player in the Republican effort to tighten voting laws. A Republican lawyer who advised Donald Trump on his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results is now playing a central role coordinating the Republican effort to tighten voting laws around the country. The moves comes as Trump himself signaled his support for new Republican-pushed legislation in Georgia which critics have slammed as being a major blow to voting rights for communities of color, especially Black voters. Joe Biden called the Georgia laws “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity”. But Trump, whose grip on the Republican party remains strong, welcomed the Georgia developments. “Congratulations to Georgia and the Georgia state legislature on changing their voter rules and regulations,” Trump said in a statement through his Pac, Save America, which repeated his baseless allegation that fraud was a factor in his election loss to Biden. “They learned from the travesty of the 2020 presidential election, which can never be allowed to happen again. Too bad these changes could not have been done sooner!” more...
It's now illegal in Georgia to give food and water to voters in line
By Faith Karimi, CNN

(CNN) Georgia's new sweeping elections law has a number of controversial provisions that will restrict access to voting. But one in particular has some people shaking their heads. Under the bill, signed into law Thursday night by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, it's now illegal to hand out food or water to people standing in line to vote. "No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector," the new law states. The law applies within 150 feet of a polling place or within 25 feet of any voter at a polling place. Violators are guilty of a misdemeanor. But some observers see the provision as an attempt to curb voting by urban voters and people of color who lean Democratic and whose precincts often have long waits to cast ballots. more...

By Kate Sullivan and Maegan Vazquez, CNN

(CNN) President Joe Biden on Friday called a sweeping elections bill signed into law in Georgia "Jim Crow in the 21st Century" and "an atrocity" and called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation that would counter restrictions Republicans are trying to push through at the state level across the country. "Recount after recount and court case after court case upheld the integrity and outcome of a clearly free, fair, and secure democratic process," Biden said in a statement released by the White House, referring to the 2020 election, when he became the first Democratic presidential candidate in nearly three decades to win the state. Georgia is the first presidential battleground to impose new voting restrictions following Biden's victory in the state, but the bill, which Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law Thursday evening, is part of a national Republican effort to restrict access to the ballot after the 2020 election saw record turnout. "This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century. It must end," Biden said in the statement, noting how the restrictions disproportionately target Black voters. more...
CBS News

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on Thursday signed into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections that includes new restrictions on voting by mail and gives the legislature greater control over how elections are run. Among other things, the law requires a photo ID in order to vote absentee by mail, after more than 1.3 million Georgia voters used that option during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also cuts the time people have to request an absentee ballot and limits where ballot drop boxes can be placed and when they can be accessed. Democrats and voting rights groups say the law will disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color. It is part of a wave of GOP-backed election bills introduced in states around the nation after former President Trump stoked false claims that fraud led to his 2020 election defeat. more...
Democrats have described the law as the new Jim Crow. The Republican governor signed it under a painting of a place where Black people were once enslaved.
Tasneem Nashrulla BuzzFeed News Reporter

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed into law a series of controversial voting restrictions decried by Democrats as "Jim Crow 2.0" — and he did so alongside a group of white men and in front of a painting of a plantation where Black people were once enslaved. In a Twitter thread Friday, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch pointed out that Kemp signed the bill under the image "of a notorious slave plantation in Wilkes County, GA." The painting appears to depict a brick house on the Callaway Plantation in Washington, Georgia, which was once a 3,000-acre plantation owned by a family of enslavers and is now open for public tours. "In 2021, the irony of Kemp signing this bill — that makes it illegal to give water to voters waiting on the sometimes 10-hour lines that state policies create in mostly Black precincts — under the image of a brutal slave plantation is almost too much to bear," Bunch tweeted. more...
By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business

New York (CNN Business) Dominion Voting Systems, a voting technology company that was the target of baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the right-wing channel Fox News on Friday. The company alleged that the network "recklessly disregarded the truth" and participated in a disinformation campaign against it because "the lies were good for Fox's business." In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump falsely asserted that the election had been rigged against him. His allies promoted outlandish conspiracy theories about Dominion to support Trump's false claims. "Fox took a small flame" of disinformation and "turned it into a forest fire," Dominion said in its lawsuit. more...
Newsbreak

On an invitation-only call last week, Sen. Ted Cruz huddled with Republican state lawmakers to call them to battle on the issue of voting rights. Democrats are trying to expand voting rights to “illegal aliens” and “child molesters,” he claimed, and Republicans must do all they can to stop them. If they push through far-reaching election legislation now before the Senate, the GOP won’t win elections again for generations, he said. Asked if there was room to compromise, Cruz was blunt: “No.” more...
One bill would purge infrequent voters from an early voting list while others seek to add restrictions to mail ballots.
By Jane C. Timm

Arizona Republicans are proposing drastic changes to its mail voting systems, a move that echoes the flurry of election restrictions advanced in GOP-controlled legislatures in a number of states after former President Donald Trump's election loss.

Republican lawmakers in Arizona have introduced at least 22 restrictive bills, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. More than half the proposals address mail voting, with one particularly contentious bill seeking to kick infrequent voters off something called the Permanent Early Voting List, or PEVL. Arizona voters have been voting by mail for 30 years, while the GOP-led Legislature created the PEVL, which sends voters who have opted in ballots in the mail automatically, in 2007.

"We are seeing this as a full on assault on voting rights and democratic institutions in Arizona," Emily Kirkland, executive director of the advocacy group Progress Arizona, said, arguing that the same state lawmakers advancing voting restrictions had spread Trump's lie of a stolen election. "This is part of a pattern." more...
In statehouses around the country — most notably, in Georgia — lawmakers are rolling out legislation that would make it a lot harder to vote.
By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL

Former President Donald Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud and a stolen election galvanized his supporters who stormed the Capitol in January. Now, his rhetoric is turning into policies that are moving through GOP-dominated state legislatures: a rollback of voting access. In statehouses around the country — most notably, Georgia — lawmakers are rolling out legislation that would make it a lot harder to vote. They’re considering dozens of restrictive bills to purge voters from rolls, limit early and absentee voting, add voter ID requirements and eliminate automatic and same-day voter registration. In short, bills are being introduced to prevent something that didn’t happen in 2020 — widespread voter fraud — from recurring in 2022, 2024 and beyond. more...
Bill includes various measures including ending the right to vote by mail without having to provide an excuse
guardian.org

Stacey Abrams has described Republican efforts to restrict voting rights in Georgia as “racist” and “a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie”. Abrams, who helped Democrats win two key US Senate runoff elections in her home state in January that gave the party a narrow control of the chamber, is a leading critic of voter suppression efforts by Republicans. The bill in Georgia, SB241, includes various measures including ending the right to vote by mail without having to provide an excuse, and other new identification requirements. Republicans have held up what they say is a risk of voter fraud as justification for the legislation despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Abrams said the moves by lawmakers in Georgia would significantly curtail voting access after a record number of voters propelled Democratic victories in the 2020 race. “Well, first of all, I do absolutely agree that it’s racist. It is a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie. We know that the only thing that precipitated these changes, it’s not that there was the question of security. more...
By Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) Georgia Republicans have advanced a sweeping bill in the state Senate that further restricts voting -- keeping a state that was pivotal to the 2020 elections at the forefront of the GOP backlash against expanded voting. The expansive package, which passed by a narrow margin Monday, would repeal no-excuse absentee voting for many Georgians -- a method 1.3 million of the state's residents used to cast ballots in last November's general election. The measure now moves to the Georgia House, which has passed its own slate of proposed voting restrictions. The developments in Georgia come amid a flurry of activity around the country by Republican-controlled legislatures to make it harder to vote after the GOP lost the presidency and the US Senate majority in the 2020 elections. On Monday, Iowa became one of the first states to enact new restrictions as the Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new law that makes it harder to vote early. But Monday's vote in the Peach State -- which came on the final day that the Senate could send its voting package to the state House for consideration -- also underscored fresh tensions building among Republicans over how much to restrict paths to the franchise. Republican grassroots activists mounted a weekend campaign to ensure the bill's passage. In the end, the measure survived by only a one-vote majority of the Senate's 56 senators, once abstentions were taken into account. And the No. 2 GOP official in Georgia, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, opted to boycott Monday's debate. more...
By Nicquel Terry Ellis

Atlanta (CNN)Voting rights groups led bus tours, knocked on 1 million doors and gave out food at community events to achieve an unprecedented Black voter turnout in Georgia. The organizations have been credited with helping Democrats win both the White House and control of the US Senate in the last election cycle. Their efforts, however, could be reversed by Republican-backed bills advancing in the Georgia Legislature that activists say are reminiscent of tactics used to prevent Black people from voting in the South during the Jim Crow era. "We know that their targets are Black voters," said Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter. "These (legislation) notes are dripping in the blood of Jim Crow." Black Voters Matter, the Georgia NAACP, the New Georgia Project and other civil rights groups are now in a battle to protect Black voting power, launching a campaign this week to stop the voter restrictions from moving forward. They are also demanding that Congress pass federal voting rights legislation that would roll back the state-level laws. more...
By Eric Bradner and Dianne Gallagher, CNN

(CNN) Months after former President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress attempted to overturn Arizona's election results, Republicans in the state's legislature are trying to make it harder for some residents to vote, targeting different elements of the system with almost two dozen separate measures. A handful of the bills -- including two that would impose new restrictions on Arizona's popular vote-by-mail system and one that would limit its narrow voting window -- have gained momentum and could pass. They are part of a push by Republican-controlled legislatures in several states to advocate for strict new voting laws in response to Trump's false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. There are more than 250 bills in circulation nationwide, according to the most recent tally by the Brennan Center, an unprecedented nationwide effort to roll back voter access. The list of states includes Georgia and Texas, two other states with increasingly diverse electorates where Democrats have made recent gains, and Iowa, where Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new law that makes it harder to vote early. more...
By Paul LeBlanc, CNN

Washington (CNN)Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Monday signed into law a controversial bill aimed at limiting voting and making it harder for voters to return absentee ballots, her office announced Monday. The legislation, which passed both Republican-controlled chambers of the state legislature last month, will reduce the number of early voting days from 29 days to 20 days. It will also close polling places an hour earlier on Election Day (at 8 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.). The bill additionally places new restrictions on absentee voting including banning officials from sending applications without a voter first requesting one and requiring ballots be received by the county before polls close on Election Day.

"It's our duty and responsibility to protect the integrity of every election. This legislation strengthens uniformity by providing Iowa's election officials with consistent parameters for Election Day, absentee voting, database maintenance, as well as a clear appeals process for local county auditors," Reynolds said in a statement Monday. "All of these additional steps promote more transparency and accountability, giving Iowans even greater confidence to cast their ballot." The new law drew immediate backlash from Democrats in the state, including a tweet from the Iowa Democratic party stating, "We deserve better." "Rather than help Iowans keep food on the table and a roof over their family's heads, @IAGovernor and Iowa Republicans chose instead to fast-track legislation that stacks the deck in their favor and disenfranchises Iowans," the tweet said. more...
By Dianne Gallagher, CNN

(CNN) A Florida Senate panel on Wednesday voted to advance a revamped election bill that would ban drop boxes used for mail-in ballots, among other changes, despite bipartisan opposition from local election supervisors. Committee Substitute Senate Bill 90, approved 4-2 along party lines, would also prohibit anyone other than an immediate family member from picking up a voter's ballot and would require vote-by-mail ballots to be requested each election cycle, rather than every two cycles. It increases the identification requirements to request a ballot by mail over the phone and prevents elections supervisors from sending ballots to voters without a request. The decision also comes as state lawmakers across the country, including in Georgia, are pushing legislation to change election procedures and limit voter access in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last month announced voting proposals he wanted lawmakers to pass during the legislative session, including restricting access to ballot drop boxes and restricting mail-in ballots. more...
By Fredreka Schouten, Casey Tolan and Kelly Mena, CNN

(CNN) Black Georgians disproportionately cast their ballots on the weekend days that Republican lawmakers want to eliminate as options in future elections, according to a CNN analysis of voting data from last November's general election. A measure moving swiftly through the Georgia legislature would reduce the number of weekend days available for in-person early voting and ban casting ballots on the final Sunday of the early voting period. Voting rights activists say the move attacks the "Souls to the Polls" programs that help drive turnout among Black churchgoers, a key Democratic constituency. Only 26.9% of the voters who cast in-person early ballots in Georgia during the general election were Black, state voting records showed. But CNN's analysis shows Black voters made up 34.6% of the voters who cast early ballots on the three weekend voting days that could be eliminated under the proposal from Georgia lawmakers -- about 48,000 people, significantly more than President Joe Biden's victory over former President Donald Trump in the state. Biden won Georgia by just shy of 12,000 votes. more...
By Nicquel Terry Ellis

Atlanta (CNN) Voting rights groups led bus tours, knocked on 1 million doors and gave out food at community events to achieve an unprecedented Black voter turnout in Georgia. The organizations have been credited with helping Democrats win both the White House and control of the US Senate in the last election cycle. Their efforts, however, could be reversed by Republican-backed bills advancing in the Georgia Legislature that activists say are reminiscent of tactics used to prevent Black people from voting in the South during the Jim Crow era. "We know that their targets are Black voters," said Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter. "These (legislation) notes are dripping in the blood of Jim Crow." Black Voters Matter, the Georgia NAACP, the New Georgia Project and other civil rights groups are now in a battle to protect Black voting power, launching a campaign this week to stop the voter restrictions from moving forward. more...
The three Trump-appointed justices could provide key swing votes in the ruling.
By Sahil Kapur

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices asked skeptical questions Tuesday about Arizona election laws in a case that has emerged as an important test of the Voting Rights Act. The case is about whether two state laws violate Section 2 of the act: One blocks the counting of ballots cast in the wrong precinct, and another prohibits anyone other than a family member or caregiver from collecting and delivering a voter’s absentee ballot.

On one side is the state of Arizona and Republicans, who want to keep the strict laws on the books and argue they prevent fraud. And on the other side are Democrats, who want the laws stricken and argue the rules prevent voters, particularly minorities, from accessing the ballot. The voting restrictions are being fought in a state where Republicans have dominated local and national races for generations but where recently Democrats have gained traction and won both U.S. Senate seats and the presidential contest last year. The outcome of the case could have far-reaching implications for voting laws in other states, too. more...
*** How Republicans win elections by suppressing the votes of democrats. ***

By Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The fight over voting restrictions will permeate the Georgia Capitol this week, with protests and votes on bills creating obstacles to absentee and early voting. The House planned to vote on an overhaul of Georgia’s election laws Monday, requiring ID for absentee voting, curbing ballot drop boxes and limiting weekend early voting hours. Proposals to end no-excuse absentee voting and automatic voter registration could also receive votes within days. Democrats vowed to try to stop the bills, but they’re outnumbered by majority Republicans pushing to change election rules after losing presidential and U.S. Senate races in Georgia. more...
*** Republican cannot win elections fairly so they are trying to rig elections so they can win. ***

By Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena, CNN

(CNN) Republican legislators around the country are moving aggressively to strip governors and other officials of their power to change election rules -- after states made it easier to vote last year during the coronavirus pandemic and turnout surged to record levels. The measures have been introduced in at least eight states with Republican-controlled legislatures -- including the key battlegrounds of Georgia and Arizona. Some bills would give more authority to lawmakers to establish the ground rules for voting, in an escalation of the already bitter partisan fights that have erupted following the 2020 presidential contest. The fresh showdowns over who should run elections come as allies of former President Donald Trump continue to try to cast doubt on his loss -- by arguing that election officials and the courts usurped state laws when they relaxed voting rules to overcome challenges posed by the pandemic. And they represent the latest front in the ongoing political warfare over voting rules. As of this month, state legislators in 43 states had introduced 253 bills to restrict voting access, according to an updated tally by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. more...
Hours after the United States voted, the president declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.
By Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt

By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts. Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over. Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews. The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge. more...
By April Siese

A pro-Trump attorney who pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, including allegations of voter fraud, is reportedly under investigation for illegal voting. CBS Atlanta affiliate WGCL-TV cites a high-level source in the Georgia Secretary of State's office as saying that office is investigating whether Wood voted "out of state" — in Georgia even though he was actually a resident of South Carolina at the time of the November election. It's unclear if Wood was eligible to vote in Georgia and if he was considered a resident when he cast his ballot. In a statement sent to CBS News, Wood said he has "been a resident of the State of Georgia since 1955. I changed my residency to South Carolina yesterday [February 1, 2021]." more...
*** Republicans suppress the votes and will of the people because they cannot win without cheating. ***

Georgia is at the center of the effort, with state Republicans discussing voter ID changes and other new policies after Biden won the state.
By ZACH MONTELLARO

Republican legislators across the country are preparing a slew of new voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat. Georgia will be the focal point of the GOP push to change state election laws, after Democrats narrowly took both Senate seats there and President Joe Biden carried the state by an even smaller margin. But state Republicans in deep-red states and battlegrounds alike are citing Trump’s meritless claims of voter fraud in 2020 — and the declining trust in election integrity Trump helped drive — as an excuse to tighten access to the polls. Some Republican officials have been blunt about their motivations: They don’t believe they can win unless the rules change. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning,” Alice O’Lenick, a Republican on the Gwinnett County, Ga., board of elections in suburban Atlanta, told the Gwinnett Daily Post last week. She has since resisted calls to resign. more...
By Jesse Byrnes

Former Attorney General William Barr reportedly pushed back strongly on President Trump when discussing claims the president was circulating about the election being "stolen" from him. Barr, during a meeting with Trump at the White House in early December, told the president that such theories of a stolen election were "bullshit," Axios reported Monday. Other aides in the room, including White House counsel Pat Cipollone, were reportedly surprised that the attorney general had made the comment, though did not disagree with his remarks. The meeting came as Barr had publicly undercut the president's baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, telling The Associated Press that the Justice Department had not uncovered evidence to back up the claims. "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election," Barr had told the AP in the interview. Trump reportedly confronted Barr about his comments while in the private dining room next to the Oval Office. "Why would you say such a thing? You must hate Trump. There’s no other reason for it. You must hate Trump,” the president asserted, according to Axios. Barr responded that "these things aren't panning out" and "the stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true," Axios reported. The attorney general reportedly emphasized that the DOJ had reviewed the major claims put forward by the president's lawyers. more...
Kelsey Vlamis

A top Georgia election official said Rudy Giuliani "lied" over election-fraud claims by presenting a deceptively edited video as evidence, despite having access to the full footage. Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for Georgia's secretary of state, made the comments in a "60 Minutes" interview that aired Sunday, during which he described President Donald Trump's claims of voter fraud as "fantastical, unreasonable," and "lacking in any factual reality." Sterling, a Republican who voted for Trump, told the interviewer Scott Pelley that Giuliani presented a selectively edited video to Georgia state senators as evidence of election fraud. In a clip shown on "60 Minutes" of Giuliani presenting the video, he calls it a "powerful smoking gun." Giuliani's video, which also aired in national Trump campaign ads, claims to show cases of ballots removed from under a table and "added in secret." more...
By Erik Larson

Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell was sued for defamation by the voting-machine company she repeatedly placed at the center of a vast and unfounded election conspiracy that she claimed switched votes to favor President-elect Joe Biden.

The complaint filed Friday by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. seeks $1.3 billion from Powell, who filed numerous unsuccessful court cases seeking to overturn the election results. She was dumped by the Trump campaign not long after a Nov. 19 press conference in which she claimed that agents from Iran and China infiltrated Dominion’s voting machines to help Biden, and that the software had ties to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013.

“Powell’s wild accusations are demonstrably false,” the company, based in Toronto and Denver, said in the complaint. “Acting in concert with allies and media outlets that were determined to promote a false preconceived narrative about the 2020 election, Powell launched a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion that reached millions of people and caused enormous harm to Dominion.” more...
*** If you want to stop the steal, tell Donald J. Trump to stop trying to steal the election. ***

Jay Busbee

ATLANTA — Just two days before the Georgia runoffs that will determine the leadership of the Senate and one day before a rally on behalf of the Republican candidates, President Trump has continued to unload on the GOP officials leading the state. In an extraordinary development, Trump attempted to cajole Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, according to the Washington Post, which published audio of their call on Sunday. “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump told Raffensperger, laying bare his overriding goal of overturning the November election results.

President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia on Nov. 3, the first time the state had gone for a Democratic candidate since 1992. Despite three vote recounts, Trump has continued to insist that the voting was tainted, casting a wide range of allegations without any credible evidence to back up his assertions. Trump continued to attack Raffensperger while addressing their call hours before the Post published the audio. “I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia,” Trump tweeted. “He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters,’ dead voters, and more. He has no clue!” “Respectfully, President Trump,” Raffensperger replied on Twitter, “What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out.” On Sunday afternoon, the truth did come out in the form of the Post publishing audio of the conversation. In the course of the call, Trump attempted on multiple occasions to induce Raffensperger to change the results of the election, one way or another. more...

To the editor: Let’s call this what it is — voter suppression. (“Mike Pence: Your loyalty should be to the Constitution, not Trump,” editorial, Dec. 31) The foundation for contesting the 2020 electoral college results, pure and simple, is voter suppression under the guise of voter fraud. And, whose votes are being suppressed? Can there be any doubt that it is those of the marginalized residents of large cities who have been impeded by racism and poverty in exercising the right to vote?

The entire compendium of challenges is directed at disenfranchising citizens more at risk, suffering greater income loss, and less able to reach polling places due to a pandemic. The disingenuous claim by far-right Republicans in Congress that they will object the electoral vote on Jan. 6 because of constitutional concerns is an insult to anyone who actually believes in the right of every citizen to have their vote count. As the announcement by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) so clearly displays, we have moved to where political theater “trumps” any concept of justice. more...
By Jeffery Martin

In a video posted to YouTube on Thursday, Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger addressed the prevalence of conspiracy theories in U.S. politics while debunking some President Donald Trump's allegations of voter fraud. Trump has refused to concede the November election to President-elect Joe Biden, baselessly claiming that widespread voter fraud perpetrated by Democrats handed Biden the victory. Trump and members of his legal team have alleged that voting machines distributed by Dominion Voting Systems were programmed to flip votes from Trump to Biden.

While a majority of Trump's legal efforts to have the election results overturned have failed, some House Republicans have stated they plan on objecting to the results of the Electoral College during the official Congressional count of the votes on Wednesday. Kinzinger said in the video that the challenges were based on misinformation. "The president doesn't want to admit defeat and nobody would, but he's currently trying to discredit the election results through falsehoods and conspiracies," Kinzinger said. "As someone entrusted to lead, I have a choice. I can be quiet and I can survive by taking the easy path or I can speak up and lead without concern for the consequences. I choose to lead without fear."

"As public servants, we have a responsibility to serve in good faith," Kinzinger added. "Purporting falsehoods is dangerously irresponsible—and it's just plain wrong." One of the claims made by Trump's legal teams was that Dominion voting machines in Michigan were counting votes for Trump as votes for Biden. Kinzinger said those claims were false. "There was an error but it was a human error, not a Dominion issue, and it was corrected," Kinzinger said. more...
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

(CNN) Boy, I did not see this one coming! On Monday, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert sued Vice President Mike Pence in federal court in a, um, wacky attempt to transform the vice president's purely ceremonial role in presiding over the announcement of the Electoral College results in Congress into a power broker position in which the VP could effectively hand the election to President Donald Trump. "We continue to hold out hope that there is a federal judge who understands that the fraud that stole this election will mean the end of our republic, and this suit would insure that the Vice-President will only accept electors legitimately and legally elected," Gohmert said in a statement on Monday. "There must be an opportunity for a day in court when fraud was this prevalent."

It's probably worth noting here that there has yet to be any proof of the widespread fraud that Gohmert, Trump and the President's most ardent backers continue to allege. In fact, as The New York Times noted over the weekend, the Trump forces have lost all but one of the 60 (!) lawsuits they have brought attempting to prove voter fraud. There have been zero documented instances of widespread malfeasance -- be it dead people voting or non-citizens casting votes. There's just no "there" there. Like, none. Unbowed by that absence, Gohmert has plowed onward. And while the legal case is a joke -- and that is putting it nicely -- it's worth examining what would happen if Gohmert's fantasy actually came true, and how distinctly un-conservative it would all be. more...
For years, Republicans have used the specter of cheating as a reason to impose barriers to ballot access. A definitive debunking of claims of wrongdoing in 2020 has not changed that message.
By Jim Rutenberg, Nick Corasaniti and Alan Feuer

President Trump’s baseless and desperate claims of a stolen election over the last seven weeks — the most aggressive promotion of “voter fraud” in American history — failed to get any traction in courts across seven states, or come anywhere close to reversing the loss he suffered to Joseph R. Biden Jr. But the effort has led to at least one unexpected and profoundly different result: A thorough debunking of the sorts of voter fraud claims that Republicans have used to roll back voting rights for the better part of the young century.

In making their case in real courts and the court of public opinion, Mr. Trump and his allies have trotted out a series of tropes and canards similar to those Republicans have pushed to justify laws that in many cases made voting disproportionately harder for Blacks and Hispanics, who largely support Democrats. Their allegations that thousands of people “double voted” by assuming other identities at polling booths echoed those that have previously been cited as a reason to impose strict new voter identification laws.

Their assertion that large numbers of noncitizens cast illegal votes for Mr. Biden matched claims Republicans have made to argue for harsh new “proof of citizenship” requirements for voter registration. And their tales about large numbers of cheaters casting ballots in the name of “dead voters” were akin to those several states have used to conduct aggressive “purges” of voting lists that wrongfully slated tens of thousands of registrations for termination.

After bringing some 60 lawsuits, and even offering financial incentive for information about fraud, Mr. Trump and his allies have failed to prove definitively any case of illegal voting on behalf of their opponent in court — not a single case of an undocumented immigrant casting a ballot, a citizen double voting, nor any credible evidence that legions of the voting dead gave Mr. Biden a victory that wasn’t his. more...
by Dana Milbank

Finally, significant fraud has been identified in the 2020 election. It is being perpetrated by Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin. President Trump lost the election. He lost the recounts. He lost the vote certifications, by Republican and Democratic officials alike. He lost 59 of 60 court cases. He lost the electoral college vote. His own attorney general said “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome.”

But Johnson forges ahead with his fraudulent attempt to undermine the election — and the credibility of elections in the United States generally. Though passively admitting “the conclusion has collectively been reached” that any fraud was too small to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s win, Johnson then spent nearly four hours in a hearing Wednesday trying to suggest otherwise.

“There was fraud in this election,” Johnson said. “I don’t have any doubt about that.” He went on at length about alleged “irregularities,” including “violations of election laws,” “fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing,” and “corruption of voting machines and software.” He insisted that “many of these irregularities raise legitimate concerns.”

Johnson, you may recall, used his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee last month to promote the long-discredited quackery that hydroxychloroquine cures the coronavirus. He used Wednesday’s hearing, mercifully his last as chairman, to mention “the Russian collusion hoax,” “censorship” of conservatives, “financial entanglements of the Biden family,” Hillary Clinton and the Steele dossier. Other Republicans on the panel echoed the election-fraud alarm. more...
by Jennifer Rubin

When “sensible” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) responded to the electoral college vote on Monday by arguing that there was fraud in the election, but not enough to change the outcome, I knew where this was headed. If someone on the sane side of the bell curve in the Senate’s Republican caucus could float without a shred of evidence that there were “instances” of fraud, certainly more egregiously dishonest Republicans would advance that line. Sadly, I was not wrong.

On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, presided over a kangaroo court that set out to show the election was somehow tainted. The event was as fact-free and dishonest as Johnson’s claims about Ukraine during the campaign. It was also just as likely to serve Russian interests by undermining the American democracy. Johnson called election lawyers for the Trump campaign, who failed to prove fraud in a single case. As CNN reported: more...
Nearly half of voters cast absentee ballots in the election, a huge increase. If Republicans have their way, that might not last.
By Michael Wines

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s barrage of losses in court cases trying to undermine the election has not stopped Republicans from turning to battles they might be able to win — attempts to limit or undermine the future use of the vote-by-mail ballots that so infuriated Mr. Trump.

Absentee ballots constituted nearly half the votes cast in the 2020 election, and the experiment in mass voting by mail has been viewed by election experts as a remarkable success, one that was less prone to errors than expected and had almost no documented fraud. But that has not stopped Republican critics eager to follow the president’s lead.

This week in Georgia, as the president rages against the election he lost and the members of his party who oversaw it there, Republican state senators promised to make getting and casting mail ballots far more difficult.

The Georgia state senators pledged on Tuesday to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, require a photo ID to obtain a ballot, outlaw drop boxes and scrap a court agreement to quickly tell voters about signature problems on ballots so that they could be fixed. more...
By Jordan Williams

George Conway said Tuesday that the ‘biggest election fraud of 2020’ is the lie President Trump won. Conway, the husband of former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, co-founded the Lincoln Project, an ant-Trump GOP group that worked to defeat the president in the 2020 election. He made the remarks during an appearance on CNN. “The biggest election fraud of the 2020 cycle —- it didn't happen in any voting booth or in any mail-in drop box,” Conway said on CNN.  “It’s happening now with these people peddling the lie that he won the election.” more...
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) The only questions now are how many more times President Donald Trump wants to lose the election to President-elect Joe Biden and whether his Republican acolytes on Capitol Hill will wake up and recognize reality. Trump's dangerous delusions about a stolen election represent the most overt attempt in modern history by a President to overthrow the will of the voters. But they have reached the point of no return after the conservative-majority Supreme Court largely crushed what remaining hallucinatory hopes Trump harbored of reversing his defeat.

The Court's devastating first response to the post-election fray sent a clear signal that the top bench disdains frivolous and long-shot cases already witheringly rejected by lower courts. The denial of Pennsylvania Republicans' request to block the certification of their state's results, for which there were no noted dissents, was a humiliating repudiation of Trump's fundamental misunderstanding that three justices that he installed on the Court would swing him a disputed election. It also showed that evidence-free conspiracy theories might thrill the President's base and his media propagandists, but they don't cut it in court. "The jig is up. The President of the United States has no other recourse," said Laura Coates, a former federal prosecutor and CNN's senior legal analyst. Biden's spokesman Mike Gwin said: "This election is over. Joe Biden won and he will be sworn in as President in January." more...
With Georgia’s crucial runoff election less than a month away, Republicans seem to be targeting Black and brown voters as part of the plan to secure wins for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
By Tarisai Ngangura

With Georgia’s pivotal Senate runoffs less than a month away, Republican officials are stepping up voter suppression tactics in the region with unprecedented speed. In Cobb County, the third most populous county in the state, less than half of early-voting locations are scheduled to be open for the January election; while there had previously been 11 locations for the county’s more than 537,000 voters, now there will only be five. “We lost several of our advance voting managers and assistant managers due to the holidays, the workload and the pandemic,” Janine Eveler, the Cobb County director of elections, wrote in a letter to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and several other advocacy groups that voiced outrage. “The remaining team members who agreed to work would do so only if the hours were less onerous.”

As the New York Times reported, Cobb County has historically leaned blue, with president-elect Joe Biden “winning it by 14 percentage points.” Among Democrats, there’s suspicion that Georgia officials’ verdicts in the weeks before the runoff might not be entirely aboveboard. (Georgia’s election apparatus is controlled by Republicans.) “There is the stated reason that we’ve been given…but then there’s also the perceived action of having 10 polling locations open to early voting in an area that didn’t fare well for the current majority parity,” Erick Allen, a Democratic state representative, told the Times. “The perception is that there is a fear that doing the same thing would have the same result or contribute to the same result that would be unfavorable to the majority party.” more...
Donald Trump’s brutal day in court
Several of the most devastating opinions, both Friday and in recent weeks, have come from conservative judges and, in some federal cases, Trump appointees.
By KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN

President Donald Trump and his legal allies earned a platinum sombrero Friday, striking out five times in a matter of hours in states pivotal to the president’s push to overturn the election results — and losing a sixth in Minnesota for good measure. It was another harsh milestone in a monthlong run of legal futility, accompanied by sharp rebukes from county, state and federal judges who continue to express shock at the Trump team’s effort to simply scrap the results of an election he lost. Several of the most devastating opinions, both Friday and in recent weeks, have come from conservative judges and, in some federal cases, Trump appointees.

The losses included a rejection in Wisconsin from the state Supreme Court, where the majority was gobsmacked at the effort by a conservative group to invalidate the entire election without any compelling evidence of voter fraud or misconduct. “The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen,” said Brian Hagedorn, a conservative elected justice, in a concurring opinion. “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. Once the door is opened to judicial invalidation of presidential election results, it will be awfully hard to close that door again. This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”

An Arizona county judge, similarly, tossed a suit brought by state GOP chair Kelli Ward. "The court finds no misconduct, no fraud and no effect on the outcome of the election." Ward has vowed to appeal that ruling. A Nevada judge issued a point-by-point rejection of every claim lodged by the Trump team, emphasizing that the facts they presented were sparse and unpersuasive. Carson City District Judge James Russell’s opinion repeatedly emphasized their case would not have succeeded “under any standard of proof.” more...
By Brendan Cole

For the second time in a matter of days, Fox News' anchor Eric Shawn has debunked claims of election fraud made by President Donald Trump. As some hosts at Fox News help the president amplify claims of election fraud, Shawn is among members of the network pushing against the unsubstantiated assertions.

On Sunday, Shawn responded to claims the election was rigged that Trump had made on the network only hours earlier during an interview with Maria Bartiromo. Shawn told viewers on America's News Headquarters that many GOP officials and other experts say that the president's claims of a rigged ballot were "false and unsubstantiated."

On Wednesday, Shawn returned to the theme during a segment captioned "Investigating Trump's Voter Fraud claims," on that day that Trump gave a 46-minute video address and repeated claims of corruption, machine tampering and mysterious votes appearing. During an on-air factcheck and citing election officials, Shawn rejected the claims made by Trump and his allies of a "massive dump of votes" which boosted numbers for President-elect Joe Biden. more...
*** Voter suppression in Georgia. ***

By Jenni Fink

Headlines about Georgia's election are focused on President Donald Trump's legal battle to turn the state in his favor but plaintiffs in a new lawsuit say the real focus should be on the people who were removed from voter rolls ahead of Election Day. "We haven't seen massive scale voter fraud, but we've definitely seen massive scale voter suppression," LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund and a plaintiff in the suit, said. "Those folks should not be denied their right to participate in this election."

A lawsuit that was filed on Wednesday alleges the state incorrectly canceled 198,000 voters' registrations because they were incorrectly believed to have moved. With the Senate runoff elections only weeks away, those filing the suit say resolving this voter issue in a timely fashion is vital, as it could affect who takes control of the Senate in January.

News about wrongful purge first came out in September when the ACLU issued a report. Greg Palast, of the Palast Investigative Fund, led the investigation and hired firms to cross-reference a list of 313,243 citizens who would be removed from Georgia's voter rolls with Postal Service records and the Advanced Address List Hygiene, an "industry standard for residential address verification." Ultimately, they found 198,351 voters had their registration canceled but had not moved. more...
Dan Mangan, Kevin Breuninger

The U.S. Department of Justice has not found evidence of large-scale ballot fraud that would reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s projected win over President Donald Trump in the election, Attorney General William Barr said in a new interview Tuesday. Barr’s statement to the Associated Press undercuts claims by Trump, his lawyers and many of his political allies that he was the victim of a massive voting fraud that swindled him out of a win.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP. Barr, who is head of the DOJ, told the news wire service that federal prosecutors and FBI agents have looked into complaints they have received about possible fraud, but found no evidence that would reverse Biden’s victory, the AP reported. “Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations and. And those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.” more...
By Chandelis Duster, CNN

Washington (CNN) Georgia's Republican lieutenant governor on Tuesday joined a growing list of GOP officials in the state who are publicly rejecting President Donald Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud, saying the misinformation spread by the President and his allies is "alarming" and could jeopardize the party in upcoming Senate runoff elections. Asked by CNN's Alisyn Camerota on "New Day" about a falsehood spread by Trump that election officials in Georgia were "making deals," Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan flatly replied, "certainly not."

"What is alarming is the amount of misinformation that continues to flow. It's alarming to me," Duncan continued. "It's certainly disheartening to watch folks willing to kind of put their character and their morals out there just so they can spread a half truth or a lie in the efforts to maybe to flip an election. ... That's not what democracy is all about." Duncan, along with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, are among the highest-ranking Republican officials who are disputing Trump's claims of voter fraud despite the President's continuing grip on much of the party. The comments by Georgia officials are particularly notable, as the January runoff election could determine the balance of power in the US Senate. more...
By Brian Stelter, CNN Business

Trump is Trump. There's nothing new to say about the man. But there is still lots to learn about his enablers. So many people, from GOP functionaries to Fox News hosts, are helping him to undermine democracy by denying the election and attacking reality. So many people are complicit. People like Maria Bartiromo. Formerly an acclaimed journalist, known around the world for making CEOs tell the truth, now she tees up Trump to recite lie after lie. Her Sunday morning call with Trump on Fox News was his first "interview" since he lost the election, but it wasn't a real interview at all. He wasn't ready to acknowledge that he lost, and neither was she. He displayed delusional weakness. She was complicit. And she's far from the only one.

GOP leaders stay silent
Ron Brownstein on CNN Sunday night: As Trump's conspiracy theory about the "rigged" election "gets more and more fantastical and far-reaching, implicating the DOJ, the FBI, and Republican governors, the silence of Republicans in Congress — Mitch McConnell in particular, Kevin McCarthy in particular, who are allowing this poison to spread in the American political system — looks more and more like a modern analogue to the silence of Republican congressional leaders during the rampages of Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. I think history will have no trouble finding a parallel between Mitch McConnell's efforts to kind of look the other way and what so many Republican leaders did until Joseph Welch said, at long last, sir 'have you no decency?'"

Trump is backsliding
He lost the election nearly four weeks ago yet he refuses to admit it. Judging by his tweets, he's spiraling even deeper into denial. The Bartiromo interview was a sign that he's prepared to do battle in public -- a disturbing display of weakness that some people interpret as strength. His Thanksgiving evening Q&A with reporters was another sign of the same thing. After holding a call with members of the military, he fielded questions for the first time in three weeks — the "longest gap" of his presidency — mostly by deflecting and deceiving. When he walked out, one reporter asked "Is this the language of a dictator?" and another said, "Mr. President, some people say you're denying reality." more...
By Emily Czachor

Fox News anchor Eric Shawn responded to Donald Trump's election fraud allegations on Sunday afternoon, highlighting the lack of existing evidence to support claims that unlawful conduct distorted results in his Democratic opponent's favor. Intertwining additional commentary into an interview with Axios political reporter Hans Nichols, which focused on Trump's conversation with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo hours earlier, Shawn noted that the president's efforts to challenge election results have earned widespread backlash.

"It seems that we have a president who, he can't wrap his brain or mind around the fact that, he can't process the fact that someone who he thinks is so inferior to him won the election," the Fox anchor said, after initially referencing comments from critics who "say [Trump's] claims are unsupported, reckless and incendiary."

Speaking to Bartiromo Sunday morning, Trump reiterated unproven accusations that seek to undermine the race's outcome during his first televised interview since Election Day. While addressing his campaign's efforts to challenge election procedures in court, Trump rattled off a number claims that echoed those frequently shared by his legal team as well as himself on social media. Trump suggested that ballots cast by Republican voters were discarded in parts of the country where a majority of support went to Joe Biden, and "massive dumps of votes" were illegitimately tallied after November 3. Those are two of many unfounded theories he shared during the interview. more...
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Throws Out Last Active Legal Challenge to State’s Election Results
By Daniel Politi

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court threw out an order by a lower court that prevented the state from certifying dozens of contests that were part of the Nov. 3 election. The unanimous decision by the state’s highest court effectively ended the last active legal challenge to Pennsylvania’s presidential election results. The case had been brought by Rep. Mike Kelly and other Republicans that sought to disenfranchise around 2.6 million voters, arguing every ballot cast by mail should be thrown out. Alternative, Kelly and the other Republican plaintiffs also argued that the election results could be tossed out and the Republican-controlled Legislature would pick the state’s presidential electors.

The justices said that the lawsuit had been filed too late, months after the deadline to object to Pennsylvania’s absentee voting procedures and weeks after millions of Pennsylvanians had voted. The justices also appeared shocked that the lawsuit was calling for an entire election to be overturned when “they have failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted,” as Justice David Wecht wrote in a concurring opinion. If Kelly and other Republicans really objected to the procedures put in place for voting by mail they would have filed a legal challenge before it was used in a primary and general election rather than wait until after the results were revealed. “It is not our role to lend legitimacy to such transparent and untimely efforts to subvert the will of Pennsylvania voters,” Wecht wrote. “Courts should not decide elections when the will of the voters is clear.” more...
by Stephen Cohn, Abby Schinderle

MADISON, Wis. — The Dane County Board of Canvassers certified election results Sunday, concluding the county’s recount. President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner in Dane County. The final results of the recount found a 91-vote reduction for Biden, taking his vote count from 260,185 to 260,094. There also was a 46-vote reduction for President Donald Trump, changing his vote count from 78,800 to 78,754. In essence, in Dane County, Trump gained 45 votes on Biden, but still trails the state by more than 20,000 votes. The disqualified votes were those that were missing voter or witness signatures or addresses, according to the Dane County Clerk. more...
By Kathryn Watson

The Trump campaign lost another battle Friday in their attempt to prove mass fraud in the election, something thus far they've been unable to do. This time, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied the campaign's request for an injunction in Pennsylvania to undo the Keystone State's certification of its votes.

Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas, who wrote the opinion for the three-judge panel, said the campaign's arguments have no merit. Pennsylvania certified its election results last week, and the federal government's General Services Administration has allowed for the formal transition process to take place. "Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here," Bibas wrote in his opinion. more...
They refuted conspiracy theories, certified results, dismissed lawsuits and repudiated a president of their own party.
By Peter Baker and Kathleen Gray

The telephone call would have been laugh-out-loud ridiculous if it had not been so serious. When Tina Barton picked up, she found someone from President Trump’s campaign asking her to sign a letter raising doubts about the results of the election. The election that Ms. Barton as the Republican clerk of the small Michigan city of Rochester Hills had helped oversee. The election that she knew to be fair and accurate because she had helped make it so. The election that she had publicly defended amid threats that made her upgrade her home security system.

“Do you know who you’re talking to right now?” she asked the campaign official. Evidently not. If the president hoped Republicans across the country would fall in line behind his false and farcical claims that the election was somehow rigged on a mammoth scale by a nefarious multinational conspiracy, he was in for a surprise. Republicans in Washington may have indulged Mr. Trump’s fantastical assertions, but at the state and local level, Republicans played a critical role in resisting the mounting pressure from their own party to overturn the vote after Mr. Trump fell behind on Nov. 3.

The three weeks that followed tested American democracy and demonstrated that the two-century-old system is far more vulnerable to subversion than many had imagined even though the incumbent president lost by six million votes nationwide. But in the end, the system stood firm against the most intense assault from an aggrieved president in the nation’s history because of a Republican city clerk in Michigan, a Republican secretary of state in Georgia, a Republican county supervisor in Arizona and Republican-appointed judges in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. more...
“Calling an election unfair does not make it so,” the court wrote.
Tracy Connor

A federal appeals court has shot down the Trump campaign’s attempt to overturn the election result in Pennsylvania—with a judge appointed by the president writing the scathing decision. “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Stephanos Bibas wrote in a 21-page opinion issued Friday.

The three-judge panel noted that the campaign’s grievances amounted to “nothing more” than allegations that Pennsylvania restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. “The Campaign tries to repackage these state-law claims as unconstitutional discrimination. Yet its allegations are vague and conclusory,” the opinion says. “It never alleges that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes.”

The decision comes after Pennsylvania already certified that President-elect Joe Biden was the winner but makes clear that Trump does not have a legal leg to stand on in contesting the outcome. The court said it would not issue an injunction to undo the certification because “the Campaign’s claims have no merit.” “The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters,” the court found.

“Plus, tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised. So we deny the motion for an injunction pending appeal.” “Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide election.” — Judge Stephanos Bibas
By Kara Scannell, CNN

(CNN) A federal appeals court denied the Trump campaign's effort to revive a federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, ruling "the claims have no merit." A panel of three judges for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request by the Trump campaign, led by Rudy Giuliani, to amend its lawsuit, which had been previously rejected.

"The Campaign never alleges that any ballot was fraudulent or cast by an illegal voter," the judges wrote. "It never alleges that any defendant treated the Trump campaign or its votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or its votes. Calling something discrimination does not make it so. The Second Amended Complaint still suffers from these core defects, so granting leave to amend would have been futile." The President and some of his allies have been questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, saying without evidence that it was fraudulent and seeking to use legal battles to overturn results in key states.

The judges also rejected the President's motion to undo Pennsylvania's certification of votes. "The Campaign's claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters. Plus, tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised," the judges wrote.

The President's campaign appealed a scathing ruling last weekend when Judge Matthew Brann threw out the lawsuit ruling it could not be amended and refiled. Brann compared it to "Frankenstein's monster ... haphazardly stitched together," and slammed the request to disenfranchise nearly seven million voters in a complaint littered with "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations." The appeals court referenced the Trump campaign's multiple attempts to alter its lawsuit and praised Brann's handling of the matter. more...
NBC News

NBC News’ Pete Williams details the different cases filed by the Trump administration alleging election irregularities in the 2020 elections. The president’s cases are being dismissed by judges across the country as battleground states are already certifying their results. video...
Ian Timberlake, AFP USA

“President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it,” Sidney Powell, an attorney for the president, said in a clip posted November 19, 2020 on this pro-Trump Facebook page. It features her speaking that day at a press conference with two other attorneys, Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani, who said they were representing the president and his campaign.

Powell’s “landslide” claim was repeated on Facebook here in a post that called for people to “surround her with prayer” in her efforts to alter the election’s outcome. The claim also featured in this article from the Falungong-linked Epoch Times, headlined this Daily Wire article, and captioned this YouTube clip of an interview with Powell on Newsmax, a channel that is seeking to attract viewers from Fox News. That November 18 clip was viewed almost 700,000 times.

“The election could not have been more rigged than it was... The math just doesn’t add up for anything,” Powell said in the Newsmax interview. “The will of the people in this country was that Donald Trump win in a landslide. If we can get to the bottom of it, and I am determined to do that, I think we’ll find he had at least 80 million votes.” more...
*** First Trump tried to rig the election by slowing down the mail, and then he tried to steal it before during and after the election using the courts and other methods. ***

By Philip Rucker, Amy Gardner and Josh Dawsey

President Trump is using the power of his office to try to reverse the results of the election, orchestrating a far-reaching pressure campaign to persuade Republican officials in Michigan, Georgia and elsewhere to overturn the will of voters in what critics decried Thursday as an unprecedented subversion of democracy.

After courts rejected the Trump campaign’s baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, the president is now trying to remain in power with a wholesale assault on the integrity of the vote by spreading misinformation and trying to persuade loyal Republicans to manipulate the electoral system on his behalf.

In an extraordinary news conference Thursday at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Trump’s attorneys claimed without evidence there was a centralized conspiracy with roots in Venezuela to rig the U.S. presidential election. They alleged voter fraud in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and other cities whose municipal governments are controlled by Democrats and where President-elect Joe Biden won by large margins. more...
By Matthew Impelli

Pennsylvania's attorney general and lieutenant governor blasted President Donald Trump's GOP election hearing on Wednesday, saying that it was "sad and tragic" as well as "devoid of reality." In a tweet, Pennsylvania's Attorney General Josh Shapiro wrote, "The sitting president's remarks today were devoid of reality. The election is over. Pennsylvania has certified results & declared Joe Biden the winner of our Commonwealth." Shapiro added, "Lying through a cell phone at a fake hearing changes nothing." more...
By Alexandra Garrett

Wisconsin election officials called out President Donald Trump's ballot tabulation observers for hindering the recount, following his requests in Milwaukee and Dane County. Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said in a report by the Associated Press on Saturday that in some cases, the observers were objecting to almost every ballot pulled for the count.

Christenson continued to note that the complaints were putting the recount behind schedule, and multiple observers were breaking rules by interrupting vote counters with questions and objections. He called the behavior "unacceptable." "It's not our job to train their observers on what they're observing," Christenson said during a media briefing on Saturday, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "They clearly don't know what they're doing and so they keep asking questions. more...
By Kevin Liptak and Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) A staunch ally of Donald Trump said Sunday it was time for the President to end his futile gambit to overturn the results of the election. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Trump has failed to provide any evidence of fraud, that his legal team was in shambles and that it's time to put the country first. "If you have got the evidence of fraud, present it," Christie said on ABC, where he is a contributor. He decried efforts by the President's lawyers to smear Republican governors who have not gone along with the President's false claims of voter malfeasance.

"Quite frankly, the conduct of the President's legal team has been a national embarrassment," he said, singling out Trump attorney Sidney Powell's accusations against Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. Georgia will conduct another recount of its presidential ballots following a Trump campaign request Saturday, but the recount is extremely unlikely to change his loss in the state. President-elect Joe Biden, who was declared the winner Friday as the state certified the results, has a 12,670 vote or .2% lead over Trump in Georgia. "This is outrageous conduct by any lawyer," Christie said Sunday, noting Trump's attorneys have levied wild accusations in public but have not, so far, raised them in court, where there are consequences for providing false information.

"They allege fraud outside the courtroom, but when they go inside the courtroom, they don't plead fraud and they don't argue fraud," he said. "Listen," Christie concluded, "I have been a supporter of the President's. I voted for him twice, but elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn't happen." "If you are unwilling to come forward and present the evidence, it must mean the evidence doesn't exist," he went on. "The country is what has to matter the most. As much as I'm a strong Republican and I love my party, it's the country that has to come first." more...
By MARYCLAIRE DALE

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — As they frantically searched for ways to salvage President Donald Trump’s failed reelection bid, his campaign pursued a dizzying game of legal hopscotch across six states that centered on the biggest prize of all: Pennsylvania. The strategy may have played well in front of television cameras and on talk radio. But it has proved a disaster in court, where judges uniformly rejected their claims of vote fraud and found the campaign’s legal work amateurish.

In a ruling late Saturday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann — a Republican and Federalist Society member in central Pennsylvania — compared the campaign’s legal arguments to “Frankenstein’s Monster,” concluding that Trump’s team offered only “speculative accusations,” not proof of rampant corruption. Now, as the legal doors close on Trump’s attempts to have courts do what voters would not do on Election Day and deliver him a second term, his efforts in Pennsylvania show how far he is willing to push baseless theories of widespread voter fraud. more...
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