Trump Proved Rigged Elections Are Winnable. Now It’s Time To Un-Rig Them
The institutions that make elections less free and fair, from the corporate press to corrupt election offices, are weakened but not reformed.The institutions that make elections less free and fair, from the corporate press to corrupt election offices, are weakened but not reformed.
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Courts squash Democrats’ ‘most secure election’ lie: Swing states didn’t follow their own election laws in 2020
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin violated their own election laws and procedures in the 2020, emphasizing the necessity of the rule of law in elections.Democrats lose at Wisconsin Supreme Court, which rules absentee drop boxes illegal
Wisconsin's Supreme Court on Friday ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes are illegal under state law, delivering a win for conservatives challenging the Wisconsin Elections Commission and a blow to state Democrats.
"An absentee ballot must be returned by mail or the voter must personally deliver it to the municipal clerk at the clerks' office or a designated alternate site," the court said in Friday's opinion. The court did not address whether an absentee voter must personally mail the ballot or whether a third party can do so on the voter's behalf.
The court's 4-3 decision is a win for Republicans and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a legal group that had challenged guidance the elections commission issued in 2020 instructing election clerks to encourage the use of absentee ballot drop boxes for the presidential election.
The decision means that absentee drop boxes cannot be used for the Aug. 9 primary election and this November's midterm election. It also has important consequences for the 2024 presidential election. President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by fewer than 21,000 votes in the 2020 election, and Wisconsin will be a critical battleground state in a potential rematch.
Absentee and mail-in voting were widespread during the 2020 presidential election because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Battleground states like Wisconsin controversially rushed to adopt new election rules to accommodate pandemic restrictions, including the use of drop boxes for voters to return mail ballots.
In 2020, the Wisconsin Elections Commission issued memos to election clerks in March and August, instructing them that absentee ballots did not need to be mailed or delivered in person by a voter to the municipal clerk but could instead be placed in a drop box. The commission said those drop boxes could be unstaffed, temporary, or permanent.
Democrats, who historically have held an advantage among voters who mail in ballots, welcomed the rule changes, while Republicans objected that widespread mail-in voting could make it easier to commit fraud.
There were at least 500 drop boxes set up in Wisconsin for the 2020 election, including more than a dozen each in the Democratic strongholds of Madison and Milwaukee Counties, according to the Associated Press.
But the Supreme Court said Friday that only the state legislature has the power to change election laws and permit absentee drop boxes — not the unelected bureaucrats on the commission. Since Wisconsin election laws "require that to return an absentee ballot in person, voters must personally deliver their ballot to the clerk or the clerk's authorized representative," drop boxes are impermissible.
Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said the court's decision "provides substantial clarity on the legal status of absentee ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting."
"While the question of whether an agent may mail an absentee ballot remains open, Wisconsin voters can have confidence that state law, not guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has the final word on how Wisconsin elections are conducted,” he said.
Arizona Republicans advance election bill to end mail-in voting — but it's likely dead on arrival
Republican lawmakers in Arizona are attempting to resurrect a controversial election bill that would eliminate nearly all forms of early voting and require ballots to be counted by hand.
State Rep. John Fillmore, who sponsored the legislation, has said he wants to "get back to 1958-style voting." His bill would end early or absentee voting except for voters who have a disability or expect to be out of state on Election Day. It would require voters to show up at a local precinct polling place to vote, and each location would be restricted to serve a maximum of 1,500 registered voters. The proposal requires votes to be counted by hand and the results reported within 24 hours.
This bill and others like it are supported by Republicans and activists who claim that 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. Democrats say the measure would suppress the minority vote and are accusing Republicans carrying that intention.
The state Senate Government Committee advanced the bill in a party-line vote of 4-3 Monday, but according to the Associated Press, the bill is expected to fail if brought before the full Senate or in the state House. An identical bill was defeated earlier this year when state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) assigned it to every House committee, ensuring that it would never reach the floor for a vote.
Even supporters of the bill acknowledge there is an uphill battle to end mail-in voting in Arizona, a state where more than 80% of voters cast their ballots by mail.
State Sen. J.D. Mesnard (R), who supports returning to near-universal in-person voting, told the Associated Press that a bill passed by the Legislature can become a ballot referendum if supporters or critics collect enough signatures.
“If that were to happen here, it would go to the ballot and you have 85% of folks casting a mail in ballot on whether they get to continue casting mail-in ballot,” Mesnard said. “We have our work cut out for us.”
Still, Arizona Republican efforts to revisit the results of the 2020 election continue. State Sen. Kelly Townsend (R) said she intends to issue a new subpoena to Maricopa County for records related to the presidential election. She asserts the county has not sufficiently cooperated with requests for records from Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
Brnovich is a candidate for U.S. Senate running in the GOP primary to challenge Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).
In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, Republicans subpoenaed Maricopa County for ballots, voting machines, and data. Those materials were cited in a "forensic audit" of the election conducted by supporters of former President Donald Trump on behalf of Senate GOP leaders that failed to show Trump's loss was illegitimate.
Government Committee Republicans also voted to advance a bill that would require drop boxes to be monitored by an election worker or a security camera, the Associated Press reports.
Ohio elections board identifies nearly 50,000 incorrect absentee ballots
An Ohio county board of elections found that nearly 50,000 voters received incorrect absentee ballots this week, accounting for nearly 21% of the ballots mailed out.
"We can now confirm that 49,669 voters received an incorrect ballot," the Franklin County Board of Elections said Friday. According to a press release statement from the board, the incorrect ballots were mailed as part of 237,498 ballots mailed through the U.S. postal service.
The election board has begun printing and mailing replacement ballots to every voter who received an erroneous ballot. They expect the ballots to be sent to the postal service within 72 hours for delivery.
There is also a plan to mail informational postcards to all impacted voters alerting them of the problem and instructing them on how to submit a corrected ballot.
We can now confirm that 49,669 voters received an incorrect ballot.Those voters will be contacted directly by the… https://t.co/tRyhsslxud— Franklin Co. Boe (@Franklin Co. Boe)1602263067.0
"We want to make clear that every voter who received an inaccurate ballot will receive a corrected ballot," the board said. "Stringent tracking measures are in place to guarantee that a voter can only cast one vote.
Steps taken to ensure that each voter only votes once include "sorting systems" that will "drop out and not accept any replacement ballots that are submitted if a voter has already voted in person." Additionally, voters who have an active absentee ballot but show up to vote in person on Election Day "MUST vote provisionally." Provisional ballots are not counted until the eligibility of a voter to cast that ballot is verified.
On Tuesday, as early voting began in Ohio, several residents of Franklin County began reporting that their envelopes and ballots contained incorrect information, such as the wrong precinct or congressional race, WOSU reports.
Election officials say a malfunction with one of their high-speed scanners used to process ballots caused the error.
"On October 3 at 2:24 p.m., a function of one of those scanners was disabled," election board director Ed Leonard said Thursday. "This was determined to be the root cause of the system error that led to voters receiving an incorrect ballot."
The board now says the scanner is repaired and an investigation has been started into BlueCrest, the vendor of the scanners.
WOSU reports that Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has instructed the state elections board to hold onto incorrect ballots received until a correct replacement ballot is submitted. If a replacement ballot is never submitted, the original must be "processed, remade, and scanned on or after the 11th day after the election."
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