"Where you can find almost anything with A Click A Pick!"
Go to content
Election Interference Page 5

Tracking interference into our elections
In 2016, we had to worry about the Russians interfering in our elections. In 2020 we worried that the Russians would interfere again never did we think that the President of the Untied States would be the one inferring in our elections and attempting to steal the election. Some Republicans are now helping Donald J. Trump interfere with, subvert the law and the will of the people, and steal the election depriving 80,000,000 of their votes. Trump will fail in his attempt to steal the election however, the damage that he and his enablers have done to our democracy will be long lasting.
Jill Filipovic

This is extraordinary: a group of Republicans are asking the court to disenfranchise millions of Americans, just so their guy can stay put. That’s what we’re seeing play out, as 106 Republicans in Congress signed a lawsuit, backed by more than a dozen Republican state attorneys general, asking the US supreme court to overturn the results of a free and fair American election, because a Democrat won. It’s an egregious and unconscionable move, and suggests that the corrosive effects of President Donald Trump will remain even after he leaves the White House.

Trump lost fair and square. But the state of Texas has asked the supreme court to intervene in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan; those four states, in turn, have asked the supreme court not to intervene, and to respect the results of the election and the will of their citizens. This is an extraordinary situation: a group of Republicans, still loyal to a president with waning power, are asking the supreme court to disenfranchise millions of Americans, just so their guy can stay put.

The fact that so many Republicans are going along with this authoritarian and undemocratic charade is clarifying, if depressing. Through four years of Trump, there were two main theories of Republican acquiescence: either Republicans really were supportive of the president, in all of his cruelty and incompetence and authoritarianism, or Republicans were simply scared of him and his hold over the Republican base, but secretly loathed the man and were anxious for a return to normal. Now, we’re seeing which theory was correct. more...
"The Supreme Court has decisively and speedily rejected the latest of Donald Trump and his allies’ attacks on the democratic process," said Biden campaign spokesman Mike Gwin.
By Pete Williams and Dartunorro Clark

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday brushed aside the lawsuit filed by Texas that sought to overturn Joe Biden's election victory in four battleground states. President Donald Trump called the case "the big one," and 126 of the 196 Republicans in the House urged the court to take it. But the justices acted quickly to turn it down. "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections," the court said in a brief unsigned opinion.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said the court had no authority to refuse a case filed on its original docket, where one state files to sue another. But they said they would not have granted Texas any other relief and expressed no view on any of the issues raised in the lawsuit. So the ruling was essentially a unanimous rejection of the Texas claims. Supporters of the Trump campaign saw the Texas suit as their best hope for derailing a victory for Joe Biden before the actual presidential vote is cast by the Electoral College on Monday.

President-elect Joe Biden's team welcomed the news, calling it an end to the president's baseless legal battle. "The Supreme Court has decisively and speedily rejected the latest of Donald Trump and his allies’ attacks on the democratic process," said campaign spokesman Mike Gwin in a statement. "This is no surprise — dozens of judges, election officials from both parties, and Trump's own Attorney General have dismissed his baseless attempts to deny that he lost the election," he said. "President-elect Biden's clear and commanding victory will be ratified by the Electoral College on Monday, and he will be sworn in on January 20th."

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said in a statement following the ruling that "it’s time to move forward." “Today’s Supreme Court decision is an important reminder that we are a nation of laws, and though some may bend to the desire of a single individual, the courts will not," she said. "Now it’s time to move forward — not as separate states, red or blue — but as united states in the continuing pursuit of a more perfect union.” Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who has clashed with Trump, said in a statement the Supreme Court has finally "closed the book on the nonsense." more...
Texas wants the Supreme Court to throw out Biden’s victory. Don’t cancel the inauguration
By Scott MartelleEditorial Writer

Let’s start off with the obvious: The presidential election is over, Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost. No matter how many Trumpsters howl, or feverishly embrace conspiracy theories about missing ballots and dead voters, the American people have had their say, and they said, “Joe.” Enter Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is suing Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin because, he says, pandemic-inspired rule changes in conducting the November election in those states somehow led to massive voter fraud that has harmed … wait for it … Texas. This sounds like a football team that’s down by 25 points with 15 seconds to go and deciding to launch a Hail Mary pass — after most of its players have already headed off to the locker room. more...
*** The election is over Trump lost by 7 million votes get over it. Trump and his republican enablers need to stop trying to steal the election. If you want to stop the steal, tell Donald J. Trump and his republican enablers to stop trying to steal the election. ***

By Daniel Villarreal

The attorneys general of Alabama and Louisiana have expressed interest in possibly joining a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to have the Supreme Court invalidate election results in four key battleground states—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The suit seeks to have each state's lawmakers decide their electors, rather than having the electors reflect the will of their voting citizens.

"The unconstitutional actions and fraudulent votes in other states not only affect the citizens of those states, they affect the citizens of all states—of the entire United States," Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement published Tuesday on Twitter. He pledged to join Paxton's case if the Supreme Court takes it up.

In a separate statement, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry wrote, "Some states appear to have conducted their elections with a disregard to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, many Louisianans have become more frustrated as some in media and the political class try to sidestep legitimate issues for the sake of expediency."

Landry claims that because the Constitution leaves the power of deciding the time, place and manner of holding elections to state legislatures, the four aforementioned battleground states made changes to their elections to prevent further spread of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic without passing these changes through the legislature. Thus, Paxton's suit claims, the changes were unconstitutional and the states' election results should be invalidated. more...
*** The Trump coup. Donald J. trump is Trying to steal the election he lost by 7 million votes. Trump tried to rig the mail in votes when that did not work he tried the courts, that did not work now he is interfering to get republicans to give him the election. ***

GILLIAN McGOLDRICK

President Donald Trump spoke with Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler twice in the past week, asking one of the state’s highest ranking Republicans to help him reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the state, The Washington Post reported Monday night. Cutler’s office confirmed the calls from the president, The Post reported, but Cutler told Trump the legislature can’t overturn the certified election results. The calls came as Cutler called for the state’s congressional delegation to consider unresolved legal challenges to the state’s presidential election results when the Electoral College vote is tallied early next month. more...
By Joseph Choi

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Tuesday rebuked President Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the election, calling it an “attempted coup.” “This is an attempt to overthrow our government. You may not call it a coup, but this is an attempted coup,” said Clyburn while appearing on CNN’s "New Day." “Now some people said he's trying to steal the election; he's not trying to steal the election. That denotes some kind of unknown activity, when you're stealing. No, that's not what he's doing. He is in your face, trying to overthrow the will of the people.”

As CNN host John Berman noted, Trump has called GOP officials in several states to try to change election results. On Tuesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) warned state legislators that they cannot appoint pro-Trump presidential electors. Kemp made this statement less than a week after Trump reportedly called him and asked him to persuade state legislators to overturn the results of the election. In Pennsylvania, Trump asked state House Speaker Bryan Cutler (R) on Monday to “fix” a law that prevented lawmakers from replacing electors. Clyburn pointed out in his interview that he had previously predicted Trump would not leave the White House easily. more...
By Harper Neidig

Texas announced on Tuesday that it would be filing a lawsuit in the Supreme Court against four battleground states in an effort to halt presidential electors from finalizing President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Texas argued that electors from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin should not be allowed to cast their votes in part because those states unconstitutionally changed their voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic to allow for increased mail-in ballots. Biden won all four states.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) alleges that the new voting processes in the battleground states skewed the 2020 election results and asked the Supreme Court to delay next Monday's deadline for the Electoral College to make Biden's victory official. "Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election," Paxton said in a statement. "We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.” Paxton's 154-page complaint echoes the legal arguments made by President Trump and his allies in courts across the country seeking to overturn election results in Biden's key states. That legal effort, which has failed to notch any meaningful victories so far, has pushed dubious claims of widespread voter fraud and manipulation by elections officials. more...
By Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb, CNN

(CNN) President Donald Trump's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill are urging him not to concede even after President-elect Joe Biden wins the Electoral College vote next week, calling on their party's leader to battle it out all the way to the House floor in January as he makes unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. The view of Trump's defenders is at odds with that of many top congressional Republicans, including leaders of the Senate, who believe the election will be over next Monday when electors cast their votes and make Biden's win official -- even though the Democrat's victory in the presidential race has been clear for weeks.

But conservative House Republicans argue that next week doesn't mark the end of Trump's desperate efforts to overturn the election results, which he has failed to do through scores of fruitless lawsuits and brazen efforts to pressure state and local leaders to subvert the will of voters and appoint new slates of electors to the Electoral College. They said that Congress should engage in a full-throated debate over the results in key states because of their allegations of fraud, which have yet to be borne out in court. Asked if Trump should concede next Monday, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said bluntly: "No. No way, no way, no way."

"We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said that includes, I think, debates on the House floor -- potentially on January 6," Jordan, a trusted Trump confidant, told CNN. It is not unusual for a losing candidate's most fervent supporters to take their case to the House floor -- something that occurred after the 2016, 2004 and 2000 presidential races. But it is unusual for the losing candidate to mount a weeks-long public campaign aimed at sowing discord and distrust over a pillar of democracy, something that Trump has done relentlessly since losing the race. Even if Trump loses a bevy of GOP support for his unprecedented quest after next week, the backing of his staunchest supporters is likely to only encourage the mercurial President to continue his barrage of attacks against the integrity of the elections. more...
By Greg Bluestein - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, James Salzer - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mark Niesse - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results have met a wall of opposition from an unlikely source: Republican state officials and GOP-appointed judges who have loudly rejected his calls to undo Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state. As two more of the president’s legal challenges were quashed in court on Monday, Trump’s pleas to top state officials to interfere in the election have been soundly rejected by Republican politicians he once endorsed. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recertified Biden’s win after a third tally, adding that the president’s “debunked claims of stolen elections is hurting our state.” One of his top aides, Gabriel Sterling, lamented he had to embark on a “disinformation Monday” campaign to correct pro-Trump falsehoods. more...
By Joseph Choi

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said Sunday that calling a special legislative session to overturn the results of the presidential election would amount to “nullifying the will of the people.” “At the end of the day, what they're really trying to say is if they did, if — they would be then nullifying the will of the people. If you look at how the election turned out here in Georgia, President Trump got 10 percent less votes in Cherokee County, which is a rich red county in this election cycle. Whitfield County in northwest Georgia, less than 4.5 percent,” Raffensperger told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week."

“The people of Georgia spoke in this election, and, obviously, I’m a conservative Republican disappointed in the results,” Raffensperger also said. “But I said we'll count every legal vote and work hard to make sure that no illegal votes were counted, and that's what we’ve been doing." He added, “I don't believe that there's the will in the General Assembly for a special session.” Reports emerged Saturday that President Trump had called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and asked him to persuade state legislators to overturn the state’s election to favor the president. Kemp reportedly denied Trump’s requests. more...
STATE JOURNAL, ASSOCIATED PRESS

In a pair of stinging rebukes, one from a conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and the other from a federal judge President Donald Trump appointed, two courts Friday balked at efforts by Trump and his supporters to toss out the results of the presidential election in the state and have the Legislature decide the winner. Joined by the state Supreme Court’s three liberal-backed justices, conservative-backed Justice Brian Hagedorn called a request to have the court invalidate the November election “unprecedented in American history” and “the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen.”

The court rejected the request 4-3. “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election,” Hagedorn wrote for the majority. “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. The loss of public trust in our constitutional order resulting from the exercise of this kind of judicial power would be incalculable.” more...
By Natalie Colarossi

During an appearance on Fox News Friday night, President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani said the campaign doesn't need courts to change the outcome of the election, and accused one Nevada judge of creating "a fantasy out of the law." Giuliani, a key voice in the election fraud fight, went on Sean Hannity's show after several states – including Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan – rejected cases that day.

In Nevada, Judge James Todd Russell said that he saw no clear or convincing proof to nullify the results of the election or to change the outcome in Trump's favor. "Contestants did not prove ... that illegal votes were cast and counted that should have been rejected during the signature verification process, or legal votes were not counted that should have been accepted" in numbers that would have swayed the outcome of the election, the judge said. In response, Giuliani accused the judge of unfairly changing the law. "The reality is, the judge has completely changed the law, he's created a fantasy out of the law," he said. " more...
*** First Lindsey Graham did it now; Donald J. Trump is actively interfering in an election that has already been determined. Lindsey Graham and Donald J. Trump are guilty of crimes and should go to jail. ***

William Cummings and Sarah Elbeshbishi, USA TODAY

President Donald Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp Saturday morning, urging him to convince the state legislature to overturn the election results, according to multiple media reports. Trump also pushed Kemp to order an audit of absentee ballot signatures, something he has pushed the governor to do on Twitter. Kemp's spokesman Cody Hall confirmed that the president and Kemp spoke. The call, first reported by The Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, happened just hours before Trump was supposed to appear at a rally for the state’s two Republican senators.

Kemp said that he told the president that he’s “publicly called for a signature audit three times (11/20, 11/24, 12/3) to restore confidence in our election process and to ensure that only legal votes are counted in Georgia,” in a tweet, responding to the president. Earlier Saturday, Trump claimed, without evidence, that he would "quickly and easily win Georgia if Governor @BrianKempGA or the Secretary of State permit a simple signature verification."

President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes, according to the state's certified results. A second recount was recently completed and an announcement recertifying Biden's win is expected from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. A Morning Consult poll found that Trump’s attacks on the Georgia governor are affecting his approval ratings. Kemp’s job approval among Georgia Republicans has dropped 9 percentage points since Election Day, going to 86% to 77%, according to the poll. more...
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 Mark Joseph Stern

A former U.S. attorney has asked Georgia to open an investigation into Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s potentially criminal interference in the state’s election. Michael J. Moore, who served as U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia from 2010 to 2015, sent his request to the Georgia State Board of Elections on Thursday. Moore cited multiple public interviews given by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, in which Raffensperger said that Graham pressured him to throw out valid mail ballots. According to the secretary of state, Graham asked whether he could toss all mail ballots from any county with a high rate of “signature mismatch”—signatures that don’t match those on a voter’s registration form. (Under a federal court order, Georgia is required to let voters cure a mismatched signature.) Signature mismatch disproportionately affects racial minorities, who lean Democratic overall. Graham requested that even ballots with matching signatures be rejected in precincts with large populations of Black voters. It thus appears that Graham wanted Raffensberger to throw enough Democratic ballots to swing the state toward Donald Trump. more...
Matthew Brown, Nicholas Wu - USA TODAY

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., says he will challenge the tally of Electoral College votes when Congress officially certifies the results of the presidential election on Jan. 6. The move, while unlikely to succeed, has generated praise from the president. In an interview with Politico, Brooks said he'd challenge the election results, calling the process "badly flawed" without evidence and echoed false claims from President Donald Trump that mail-in voting is "unconstitutional." The congressman said he would pursue the effort if a member of the Senate also joined him in challenging the certification, though he noted none have so far come forward. Brooks said he has had "indirect" conversations with Republican senators about the matter. more...
Dan Mangan

A Republican congressman from Pennsylvania on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to issue an emergency order that would block his state from taking further action to certify its election results showing a win for President-elect Joe Biden over President Donald Trump. Rep. Mike Kelly’s request comes after Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf certified that the Democratic former vice president won the state and its 20 Electoral College votes.

Given that, Kelly asked the Supreme Court to “nullify” Wolf’s certification and all other actions that would legally confirm Biden’s victory. His filing Tuesday also asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of his challenge to a change in mail-in ballot rules in the state. The request is related to an earlier case filed in state courts, where Kelly claimed that the Pennsylvania legislature violated the state’s constitution when it allowed no-excuse absentee voting in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected that claim earlier this week. Biden is currently projected to win 306 votes in the Electoral College, 36 more than he needs to clinch a victory in the White House race. more...
Governor says secretary of state 'cannot be overridden by executive order'
By Brooke Singman | Fox News

President Trump on Tuesday told Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to "do something" to overrule state election officials, claiming he would find a "gold mine" of fraud, as the governor's office maintained that Georgia law "prohibits" him from "interfering in elections." "You allowed your state to be scammed," Trump tweeted to Kemp Tuesday. "We must check signatures and count signed envelopes against ballots. Then call off election. It won’t be needed. We will all WIN!"

"Why won't Governor @BrianKempGA, the hapless Governor of Georgia, use his emergency powers, which can be easily done, to overrule his obstinate Secretary of State, and do a match of signatures on envelopes," Trump tweeted Monday. "It will be a 'goldmine' of fraud, and we will easily WIN the state." The president added that Kemp should “quickly check the number of envelopes versus the number of ballots.” “You may just find that there are many more ballots than there are envelopes,” Trump continued. “So simple, and so easy to do. Georgia Republicans are angry, all Republicans are angry.” He added: “Get it done!” 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 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 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 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...
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...
Language diversity within the AAPI community means misinformation is difficult to track.
By Terry Nguyen Nov 27, 2020, 11:00am EST

Less than a week after Election Day, a spreadsheet titled “Battling Asian American Misinformation” began circulating in progressive Asian American social media circles, primarily among those of Vietnamese and Chinese descent.

The most popular YouTube channels flagged on the spreadsheet accumulated hundreds of thousands of subscribers, in which pundits discussed misleading claims about election fraud, Hunter Biden’s relationship with China (a conspiracy disseminated by pro-Trump figures), and the Chinese Communist Party’s meddling in the presidential election. Below some of these clips, YouTube included a label informing viewers that the Associated Press had called the election for Joe Biden.

But beyond that small disclaimer, most channels were still monetized and still easily discoverable. Flagging it to YouTube, as some soon realized, amounted to doing nothing. The election might be over, but the uphill battle against online misinformation, notably within first-generation immigrant communities, wages on. more...
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...
“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 COLLEEN LONG, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and ZEKE MILLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Monday seemed like the end of President Donald Trump’s relentless challenges to the election, after the federal government acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden was the “apparent winner” and Trump cleared the way for cooperation on a transition of power. But his baseless claims have a way of coming back. And back. And back. By Wednesday, Trump was phoning into a local Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers’ meeting that had been orchestrated by his campaign to assert falsely, again, that the election was tainted.

“This election was rigged and we can’t let that happen,” Trump said by phone, offering no specific evidence. The 2020 presidential race is turning into the zombie election that Trump just won’t let die. Despite dozens of legal and procedural setbacks, his campaign keeps filing new challenges that have little hope of succeeding and making fresh, unfounded claims of fraud. But that’s the point. Trump’s strategy, his allies concede in private, wasn’t to change the outcome, but to create a host of phantom claims about the 2020 presidential race that would infect the nation with doubt and keep his base loyal, even though the winner was clear and there has been no evidence of mass voter fraud.

“Zombies are dead people walking among the living — this litigation is the same thing,” said Franita Tolson, a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. “In terms of litigation that could change the election, all these cases are basically dead men walking.” It’s a strategy tolerated by many Republicans, most notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who are clinging to Trump as they face a test of retaining their own power in the form of two runoff elections in Georgia in January. “This really is our version of a polite coup d’etat,” said Thomas Mann, senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. “It could end quickly if the Republican Party acknowledged what was going on. But they cower in the face of Trump’s connection with the base.” more...
Experts say pro-Trump lawmakers could try to overturn voters’ will and send an alternate set of electors, but the Democratic governor could block the effort
By Anya van Wagtendonk, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

This article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. When Wisconsin voters took to the polls on Nov. 3, they were not actually choosing among Joe Biden, Donald Trump and third-party candidates. Rather, they were voting for a slate of 10 partisan electors who would pledge their support for the winner of the popular vote at the Electoral College.

The indirect process by which Americans elect a president has been seized upon by some Trump allies hoping to leverage unsubstantiated allegations of fraud in certain key states — including Wisconsin — to push forward a slate of electors who would support President Trump instead of President-elect Biden. The move would be in defiance of the outcome of the popular vote, which Biden won in Wisconsin by about 20,600 votes.

In an emergency petition filed Tuesday with the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a group of voters is asking for just that. The group claims that more than 144,000 votes were illegally cast in the Nov. 3 election. That includes an estimated 96,000 from voters who listed themselves as “indefinitely confined” — and therefore not required to present a photo ID — but whom the petitioners claim were not. The petition also alleges that more than 12,000 votes cast for Republicans were not counted.

The Wisconsin Voters Alliance also claims that election officials violated state law by accepting more than $6 million from a nonprofit financed by billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The Center for Tech and Civic Life funded activities including boosting absentee voting and poll worker training in Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee and Racine. The group has an ongoing lawsuit against the cities making the same claim.

Days after the election, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos ordered an investigation into Wisconsin’s election results, alleging “mail-in ballot dumps and voter fraud.” Republican state Rep. Joe Sanfelippo said the results of that investigation could — and perhaps should — lead the state to nullify its outcome. 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...
Regardless of how you define the word, now is not the time for academic debates.
By Dean Obeidallah, host of "The Dean Obeidallah Show"

President Donald Trump is not trying to simply undermine President-elect Joe Biden's presidency, nor is he primarily trying to position himself for a 2024 presidential run, as many have suggested. No, Trump's No. 1 goal is to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It's time for Biden and other Democratic leaders to describe his actions in the most forceful and universally understandable language possible. And that means, in this case, calling them part of an attempted coup to illegally overthrow the Biden presidency.

In the past few days, several experts have noted that Trump's actions do not technically constitute a "coup" in the academic sense. According to Michael Albertus, an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, for example, a coup "typically connotes a violent takeover of government." Yet these same experts warn that Trump's actions are a threat to our democracy.

New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of the new book "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present," explained to me that Trump's actions are more aptly described as an "auto-coup" — in which a leader remains in power through undemocratic means. Importantly, Ben-Ghiat notes that this auto-coup should be taken very, very seriously.

Regardless of how you define the word, now is not the time for academic debates. Trump's wildly effective communications strategy proves that sometimes simpler is better. Biden's response, in contrast, has been far too careful and far too polite. On Thursday, Biden called Trump's efforts to undermine the election results "totally irresponsible," adding that his message to immigrants worried about Trump's electoral attacks was "Hang on. I'm on my way." Other leading Democrats have, for the most part, followed Biden's lead.

This message is not surprising given Biden's campaign strategy, which emphasized unity. Such sentiment was also at the heart of Biden's victory speech Nov. 7. But it is nevertheless a very bad strategy. Italy's Benito Mussolini and Russia's Vladimir Putin amassed power through bullying. These types of leaders treat silence or muted responses as a sign of weakness, emboldening them to push further with their authoritarian goals. more...
Back to content