Houston Public Media:

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a decades-old precedent that allows different racial and ethnic groups to form coalitions to seek legal remedies under the Voting Rights Act. The ruling will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2021, the Republican-majority government of Galveston County, Texas redrew its political boundaries to eliminate the one district in which non-white voters represented a majority. A group of current and former officeholders sued, charging that violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans racial gerrymandering. They were joined by multiple civil rights groups and the Biden administration, in a case that was consolidated as Petteway v. Galveston County.

The county argued that neither Blacks nor Latinos alone constituted an outright majority anywhere in its boundaries and that Section 2 does not protect the rights of different racial or ethnic groups to form coalitions.

On Thursday, the U.S. 5th Circuit ruled 12-5 in favor of Galveston County, throwing out a precedent its own judges had set in 1988, Campos v. City of Baytown.

CNN:

Police officers in Texas, senior citizens at a nursing home in Pennsylvania and people who had registered to vote at a Marine base in California.

They are among the thousands of voters whose right to cast a ballot has been needlessly challenged ahead of this November’s election by activists — many of whom have been inspired by conspiracy theories — seeking to prevent voter fraud. . . .

Election officials across the country have been inundated with dubious complaints about inaccurate voter rolls, which have wasted government resources and sapped taxpayer money spent reviewing lists of registered voters that officials say are already carefully maintained, a CNN investigation has found.

One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.

AP:

The Kremlin is turning to unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the U.S. presidential race, top intelligence officials said Monday, detailing the latest efforts by America’s adversaries to shape public opinion ahead of the 2024 election.

The warning comes after a tumultuous few weeks in U.S. politics that have forced Russia, Iran and China to revise some of the details of their propaganda playbook. What hasn’t changed, intelligence officials said, is the determination of these nations to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims about American democracy to undermine faith in the election.

USA Today:

In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s liesabout a stolen election in 2020, many state legislatures implemented new laws restricting voter accessibility in key parts of the voting process.

Passed in more than half of U.S. states, the laws are often part of sweeping bills that targeted multiple parts of the process, including absentee voting, early voting, and Election Day voting. They mostly come from Republican-led legislatures.

Supporters of the laws say they help improve the integrity of elections, sometimes by standardizing elections and often using a common tagline, “hard to cheat.” Opponents have accused lawmakers all over the country of disenfranchising voters − especially Democratic-leaning groups such as voters of color and low-income voters − and they often sue to try to block new laws from going into effect, with mixed success.

Washington Post:

Patrick Byrne, who has funded efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, said in an online forum Thursday that law enforcement would face “a piano wire and a blowtorch” if they did not drop a case against an ally.

Byrne, a former CEO of online retailer Overstock, used the phrase half a dozen times Thursday as he participated in a nearly three-hour-long event on X Spaces. His remarks came amid heightened worries about political violence, and he acknowledged during the event that his references to strangling or blowtorching officials were threatening and could be considered felonies. On Friday, he downplayed his comments, saying he had been speaking metaphorically and is committed to peace.

NYT:

LaVon Bracy has been registering Florida voters ever since Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because she wanted, she said, to give others the voice she was denied as a Black student in a largely white high school. In an average year, she said, the nonprofit Faith in Florida, where she serves as democracy director, used to add 12,000 new voters to the state’s rolls.

That ended last year, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that imposed tough new rules on voter registration drives in the name of stopping fraud — and made voter registration groups that break the rules liable for fines as high as $250,000. . . .

As Democrats prepare for a sprint to capitalize on the excitement of a new presidential ticket by signing up new voters, they are finding entirely new barriers in Florida and some other states to the sorts of voter registration drives that have been a campaign staple for both parties.

From the Washington Post:

Despite the brimming confidence of Trump supporters, the campaign is preparing them to question the results if things don’t go their way. Trump has preemptively questioned the outcome of the election, sowing doubt in the results long before votes have been cast. In his convention speech on Thursday, he falsely said Democrats “used covid to cheat” in the 2020 presidential election.

The Guardian: “At the convention, there was little doubt that the next election could be rigged. The struggle of the Biden campaign andTrump’s strong standing in the polls only increased the belief that any Democratic victory would be illegitimate.”

Votebeat explains:

Arizona residents who try to register to vote with the widely used state form will have their registration rejected unless they provide proof of U.S. citizenship, under a temporary ruling Thursday from a federal appeals court.

Previously, residents without citizenship documents would have been allowed to use the state form, which almost all Arizonans use, to get registered, but they could vote only in federal elections — for U.S. House, Senate and president. That’s because Arizona law requires voters to provide proof of citizenship to register, whereas federal law requires only an attestation that a voter is a citizen, but not documentation proving it.

Under a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling [Arizona v. ITCA], the state must permit voters who registered without citizenship proof to cast ballots in federal elections, so Arizona has maintained separate rolls of so-called federal-only voters.

Thursday’s decision, by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a partial stay of a lower-court ruling that struck down newer Arizona laws on federal-only voters. As long as the stay is in place, those voters can register to vote and cast ballots in federal elections only if they use a federal voter registration form, something few people currently do.

The Ninth Circuit’s order partially granting a stay in Mi Familia Vota v. Fontes is here. Democracy Docket has more on the case.

NPR:

… GOP Arizona state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, as well as Nancy Cottle [all Arizona delegates], are among the 18 people indicted by an Arizona grand jury for their roles in an alleged scheme to upend the 2020 presidential election by throwing their state’s 11 Electoral College votes to former President Trump.

Hoffman, Kern and Cottle aren’t the only people in this situation who are at the convention in Milwaukee. Three delegates from Georgia, five from Nevada and two from Michigan also face charges for similar “fake elector” schemes in their respective states, according to an NPR review of delegate rosters and news reports.

Election deniers from Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wisconsin are also present as delegates at the RNC.

Colorado Politics:

A federal judge on Thursday concluded three civic organizations failed to provide evidence that the leaders of an “election integrity” effort illegally intimidated Colorado voters through a door-to-door canvassing project to search for election fraud in the wake of the 2020 presidential race.

After three days of testimony, U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney granted the motion to end the case after noting both sides seemingly wanted to litigate matters beyond the narrow question she had to decide….

The plaintiff groups — the Colorado Montana Wyoming State Area Conference of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters of Colorado, and Mi Familia Vota — sued the founders of U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), which was an organized effort following the 2020 election to visit voters at more than 9,400 homes to inquire about their registrations and past voting behavior.

Francis Wilkinson in Bloomberg: “[A]rguably the most pervasive evidence of the GOP assault on democracy remains the party’s multi-front war on the franchise. The House of Representatives passed a bill last week that makes noncitizen voting illegal and requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. Since noncitizen voting is already illegal, and the Senate is well aware of that fact, the legislation will not go far. It’s what’s known as a messaging bill. The message: Do not trust democracy.“

From WFAE in Charlotte: “With Election Day approaching, North Carolina has a problem. The state is rapidly losing county elections directors. In the past five years, the state says North Carolina’s 100 counties have seen 61 election director changes. That turnover could have an impact on voters when they go to cast their ballots.” The great resignation of election officials isn’t limited to North Carolina, but has been happening across the country.

Renee DiResta NYT oped:

This brings us to the present, when another election looms. The 2024 rerun is already being viciously fought. Since 2020, the technological landscape has shifted. There are new social media platforms in the mix, such as Bluesky, Threads and Truth Social. Election integrity policies and enforcement priorities are in flux at some of the biggest platforms. What used to be Twitter is under new ownership and most of the team that focused on trust and safety was let go.

Fake audio generated by artificial intelligence has already been deployed in a European election, and A.I.-powered chatbots are posting on social-media platforms. Overseas players continue to run influence operations to interfere in American politics; in recent weeks, OpenAI has confirmed that Russia, China and others have begun to use generative text tools to improve the quality and quantity of their efforts.

Offline, trust in institutions, government, media and fellow citizens is at or near record lows and polarization continues to increase. Election officials are concerned about the safety of poll workers and election administrators — perhaps the most terrible illustration of the cost of lies on our politics.

As we enter the final stretch of the 2024 campaign, it will not be other countries that are likely to have the greatest impact. Rather, it will once again be the domestic rumor mill. The networks spreading misleading notions remain stronger than ever, while the networks of researchers and observers who worked to counter them are being dismantled….

osts, both financial and psychological, have mounted. Stanford is refocusing the work of the Observatory and has ended the Election Integrity Partnership’s rapid-response election observation work. Employees including me did not have their contracts renewed.

This is disappointing, though not entirely surprising. The investigations have led to threats and sustained harassment for researchers who find themselves the focus of congressional attention. Misleading media claims have put students in the position of facing retribution for an academic research project. Even technology companies no longer appear to be acting together to disrupt election influence operations by foreign countries on their platforms.

Republican members of the House Judiciary subcommittee reacted to the Stanford news by saying their “robust oversight” over the center had resulted in a “big win” for free speech. This is an alarming statement for government officials to make about a private research institution with First Amendment rights.

The work of studying election delegitimization and supporting election officials is more important than ever. It is crucial that we not only stand resolute but speak out forcefully against intimidation tactics intended to silence us and discredit academic research. We cannot allow fear to undermine our commitment to safeguarding the democratic process.

NBC News:

The Republican National Committee has hired a prominent supporter of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement, who has since fueled conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, to help craft its 2024 party platform.

Ed Martin, a former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, was a major proponent of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He gave a speech to Trump supporters in Washington on the eve of the Capitol attack, calling on “die-hard true Americans” to work until their “last breath” to “stop the steal,” according to video posted on social media.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Martin attended Trump’s speech near the White House before joining the crowd in marching to the Capitol and posting about it on social media. Capitol video surveillance footage published by House Republicans shows him arriving on the grounds at around 2:20 p.m. By that time, Trump’s backers had already broken through police lines and stormed the building itself in an attempt to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory.

There’s no evidence Martin was on restricted grounds of the Capitol, entered the building or broke the law that day. But the new RNC hire’s outspoken advocacy for reversing the 2020 election results and his defense of those actions in the years after highlights the extent to which the “Stop the Steal” movement has become institutionalized in the GOP. Trump is anchoring his 2024 bid on the false claim that the election was stolen from him, dangling pardons for Jan. 6 rioters and vowing retribution against his political foes — even floating imprisoning them — if elected.

Martin was tapped by the RNC on May 15 to serve as deputy policy director of the platform committee, which drafts the policies the party will run on in November. The RNC noted that he’s the president of the conservative Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, as well as the author of the 2016 book “The Conservative Case for Trump.”

WaPo:

Two former law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection were jeered by state GOP lawmakers as they visited Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives on Wednesday, according to several Democratic lawmakers present.

Former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and former sergeant Aquilino Gonell were introduced on the floor Wednesday as “heroes” by House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D) for having “bravely defended democracy in the United States Capitol against rioters and insurrection on January 6.”

As the two men — both of whom were injured by rioters on Jan. 6 — were introduced, the House floor descended into chaos. According to Democratic lawmakers, several GOP lawmakers hissed and booed, with a number of Republicans walking out of the chamber in protest.

WSJ:

Donald Trump and Elon Musk have discussed a possible advisory role for the Tesla leader should the presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House, the latest sign that the once-frosty relationship between the two men has thawed.

The role hasn’t been fully hammered out and might not happen, people familiar with the talks said, but the two men discussed ways to give Musk formal input and influence over policies related to border security and the economy, both issues on which Musk has grown more vocal.

Musk, along with the billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, has also briefed Trump on a plan they’ve developed to invest in a data-driven project to prevent voter fraud, according to some of the people. Peltz and Musk also told Trump of an influence campaign in elite circles that is already under way, in which Musk and his political allies host gatherings of powerful business leaders across the country and try to convince them not to support President Biden’s re-election campaign….

Musk and Peltz have told acquaintances they are working on a massive data-driven project to ensure votes are fairly counted, echoing Trump’s accusations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, has rejected those claims about the 2020 election. Trump’s campaign and its allies lost dozens of lawsuits challenging the results. 

Musk and Peltz described the initiative to Trump in the March meeting, according to a person familiar with that discussion. More details about the antifraud effort couldn’t be learned.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has signed three election-related bills that proponents say are designed to increase election security. The bills restrict the number of voting machines available on election days, mandate more frequent audits of elections procedures, and require digital ballot images to be published online for the public to review, among other reforms. The ACLU of Georgia has indicated that it plans to challenge these laws in court.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The new laws solidify the ability of conservative activists to challenge the eligibility of voters who appear to have moved, a priority among Republicans who say outdated registrations could be used for fraud unless they’re more quickly removed. Few cases of illegal voting have been confirmed by State Election Board inquiries, and voting rights advocates say legitimate voters have been targeted by challenges.

Activists have contested more than 100,000 voter registrations since Georgia’s 2021 election law allowed any resident to challenge unlimited registrations within their counties. County election boards have rejected most of those challenges, often because they lack enough evidence to prove that a voter is no longer eligible to vote in Georgia.

The laws also satisfy conservative demands for more access for partisan election observers, visible watermarks printed on ballots and an eventual move to stop counting ballots based on computer QR codes, which are unreadable by the human eye.

In addition, digital ballot images will be available online for public review, fewer voting machines will be required in election day polling places, and third-party presidential candidates will automatically appear on Georgia ballots if they also are on the ballot in at least 20 other states and territories.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has signed three election-related bills that proponents say are designed to increase election security. The bills restrict the number of voting machines available on election days, mandate more frequent audits of elections procedures, and require digital ballot images to be published online for the public to review, among other reforms. The ACLU of Georgia has indicated that it plans to challenge these laws in court.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The new laws solidify the ability of conservative activists to challenge the eligibility of voters who appear to have moved, a priority among Republicans who say outdated registrations could be used for fraud unless they’re more quickly removed. Few cases of illegal voting have been confirmed by State Election Board inquiries, and voting rights advocates say legitimate voters have been targeted by challenges.

Activists have contested more than 100,000 voter registrations since Georgia’s 2021 election law allowed any resident to challenge unlimited registrations within their counties. County election boards have rejected most of those challenges, often because they lack enough evidence to prove that a voter is no longer eligible to vote in Georgia.

The laws also satisfy conservative demands for more access for partisan election observers, visible watermarks printed on ballots and an eventual move to stop counting ballots based on computer QR codes, which are unreadable by the human eye.

In addition, digital ballot images will be available online for public review, fewer voting machines will be required in election day polling places, and third-party presidential candidates will automatically appear on Georgia ballots if they also are on the ballot in at least 20 other states and territories.

Washington Post:

Top Republicans, led by former president Donald Trump, are refusing to commit to accept November’s election results with six months until voters head to the polls, raising concerns that the country could see a repeat of the violent aftermath of Trump’s loss four years ago.

The question has become something of a litmus test, particularly among the long list of possible running mates for Trump, whose relationship with his first vice president, Mike Pence, ruptured because Pence resisted Trump’s pressure to overturn the 2020 election.

In a vivid recent example, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was pressed at least six times in a TV interview Sunday on whether he would accept this November’s results. He repeatedly declined to do so, only saying he was looking forward to Trump being president again. . . .

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, in a TV interview Sunday, dodged a question about Trump’s comments on political violence. Burgum, like Scott, declined to contemplate a scenario in which the former president loses and said he was “looking forward to next January, when Vice President Harris certifies the election for Donald Trump.” . . .

Another potential Trump vice-presidential candidate, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), declined in March to say whether he would certify the 2028 election results if he were vice president.

CNN:

Two prominent 2020 election deniers in Michigan were charged Wednesday with allegedly tampering with election equipment and sharing voter data with an unauthorized third-party.

The defendants are former Adams Township clerk Stephanie Scott and pro-Trump attorney Stefanie Lambert, who is already facing charges in a separate election-tampering case in Michigan. Lambert also recently made news for publicly leaking emails from Dominion Voting Systems as part of her ongoing efforts to discredit the 2020 presidential election results.

Scott was charged with six crimes, and Lambert was charged with three. Both women are accused of felonies, including conspiracy, and giving unauthorized access to a computer.

Detroit News on Democrats’ arguments that recent Republican lawsuits in Michigan have the political aim of sowing doubts about election integrity.

On Monday, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, which is working to reelect President Joe Biden, said two suits filed by the Republican National Committee in Michigan in March were part of “extensive” and “wide-ranging” efforts to make people believe the upcoming election will be unfair. . . .

The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit on March 13 in Michigan’s Western District federal court, saying Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had failed to maintain “clean and accurate” voter registration records and allowed dozens of counties to have more active registered voters than adult residents.

Then, on March 28, the Republican committee submitted a separate suit in the Michigan Court of Claims, asserting Benson, who is a Democrat, had improperly issued guidance telling clerks to presume signatures submitted for absentee voting were valid. . . .

As for the voting registration records suit, Democrats said in their brief, the court had “recently disposed of a similar case involving the same basic allegations” and there “is nothing unlawful about Michigan’s voter-roll maintenance program.”

“Contrary to the RNC’s rhetoric, the true threat to our electoral system comes not from voter-roll maintenance like Michigan’s, but from baseless lawsuits like this one,” the Democratic lawyers wrote in their Monday brief.

Amy Gardner and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez in the Washington Post:

“When conservative lawyer and media personality Christina Bobb became the latest member of Donald Trump’s inner circle to be charged for her alleged role in the effort to reverse the 2020 presidential election results, it became immediately clear she would not have to give up her day job: senior counsel to the Republican National Committee’s election integrity team.

“For some, there is a certain irony — if not outright conflict — that a leading purveyor of false claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud is a major player in the national GOP’s efforts to protect the integrity of the 2024 vote.

“But not for Bobb, and not for her closest allies — including Trump himself, who through a spokesman defended only Bobb by name among all the 18 individuals indicted Wednesday in Arizona. If anything, Bobb’s indictment solidifies her identity as a dedicated Trump loyalist who fiercely fought to reverse his loss in the politically competitive state and potentially elevates her role within the RNC to help him win in November.”

The article then details the role that Bobb played in the Arizona “fake electors” scheme, based on the allegations in the indictment and evidence from the House January 6 Committee.

The article then continues to discuss the potential role that Bobb might play in this fall’s election:

“Some who have left said they fear that the party’s new election-integrity operation, particularly with Bobb in its midst, will veer toward embracing unfounded conspiracy theories that alienate more moderate Republicans.

““That was a bad hire,” Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, said in a televised interview about Bobb’s new job. “Christina Bobb is part of the fringe element that I don’t think helps to build credibility, not only in our party but in the entire country.”

“Stephen K. Bannon, the former senior Trump adviser, said in an interview Thursday that he recommended to the Trump team that people like Bobb and others who have strong connections to the election integrity movement be hired into the RNC because “we need that kind of will to fight — someone who is going to contest elections everywhere.”

“With direct access to Trump by phone, Bobb can also serve as a direct link between the RNC and the former president, taking his input and sharing internal strategy with him, Bannon said. But that can cut two ways if Bobb pushes the party’s election integrity operation toward activity that draws legal scrutiny, several GOP operatives said, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity.

There’s more in the piece. The whole article is very much worth a read.

WaPo:

When Donald Trump installed a new chairman of the Republican Party this month, he explained privately and publicly what he wanted from the GOP: a bigger focus on election-related lawsuits, a more aggressive operation to monitor voting and a vow to make “election integrity” the party’s No. 1 priority.

The party is now striking a more aggressive tone as it recruits poll observers to keep an eye on in-person voting and boasts of positioning thousands of lawyers to challenge ballots and bring lawsuits. The strategy — an outgrowth of the one it used both before the 2020 election and after, when Trump sought to overturn the result — is meant to please Trump, electrify the base and persuade judges to tighten voting rules.

“It’s an extremely high priority for the president,” said the new Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Whatley, referring to Trump.

Public Source:

Clara Osburg has lived in Allegheny County since 2011 and is a regular voter — including in last fall’s municipal election. So it came as a surprise when she received a letter in late January from the county: “Your Allegheny County, Pennsylvania voter registration has been challenged on the basis of residence.”

The letter did not say who challenged her registration, why they did it or what would happen as a consequence.

“At first, I thought perhaps I had done something wrong, like misfiled my taxes or something really concerning like that,” Osburg said. She hadn’t. 

Osburg didn’t know it, but she was caught up in a push by local Republicans to “clean” the voter rolls of people they think may have moved out of the county. 

An informal group of dozens of activists has filed more than 16,000 challenges since the 2022 election, with plans to file another 10,000 by year’s end, even as county officials from both parties say it’s misguided.

“What I’m doing right now is trying to make these public employees do what they’re required to do by their job description under state statute,” said Anthony Golembiewski, a retired PennDOT employee turned GOP committeeman who has led the effort to challenge voters.

The effort won’t remove any names from the rolls ahead of this year’s presidential election because state law requires that several years pass before inactive voters are removed from the rolls without their consent. But some observers say it could fuel bad-faith election fraud claims during a General Election that’s expected to be rife with misinformation. 

“It’s just feeding into this false narrative that there’s something wrong, that Pennsylvania’s not running its elections well,” said Marian Schneider, the senior voting rights policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Pennsylvania. “I think it’s a much greater risk that voters are illegally removed than they are left on.”…

Houston Chronicle:

The Court of Criminal Appeals upsets are much more clearly attributable to Paxton and his political allies, Jones said.

At a campaign event for Marc LaHood in San Antonio in January, Paxton asked for a show of hands of anyone in the room who could name all nine justices. Sure enough, none could.

But he explained why he was making it his mission to make sure they knew about their 2021 opinion that stopped him from unilaterally prosecuting election fraud and the names of their opponents.

Former Dallas appellate judge David Schenck and lawyers Gina Parker and Lee Finley won their races over Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller and Judges Barbara Parker Hervey and Michelle Slaughter, respectively.

“Activist judges have no place on our courts, and tonight’s results reflect the will of the people,” Paxton said in a statement late Tuesday night.

The judges had defended their decision by saying they were following the state Constitution, which they said was clear about the limits of Paxton’s authority.

The upsets translate to a loss of about 60 years of experience from the bench: Keller was first elected in 1994, Hervey in 2000 and Slaughter in 2018.

Politico:

The Supreme Court said Monday it was avoiding “chaos” by squashing state-level efforts to throw Donald Trump off the ballot.

Instead, the high court may have just shifted that chaos to Congress.

The decision ignited an intense debate among election experts and constitutional scholars about whether the court has opened a path to another Jan. 6 crisis four years after the attack on the Capitol.

That’s because the justices explicitly ruled that the power to determine whether Trump is eligible for another term as president — or is disqualified as an “oathbreaking insurrectionist” — lies with the House and Senate.

The five justices who fully endorsed the court’s lead opinion envisioned Congress passing “enforcement legislation” to make this call. But scholars say the 13-page opinion left room for Trump’s detractors to pursue another path if he receives a majority of electoral votes this November: They could try to throw out his electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2025, when Congress will meet to certify the winner of the 2024 election.

Such a scenario would be an extraordinary turnabout. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump promoted bogus claims of voter fraud to lobby congressional Republicans to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory — a push that inspired a mob to storm the Capitol and lash out violently when the effort failed. His allies relied on fringe interpretations of the 12th Amendment to push their last-ditch gambit….

“They were trying to avoid all of this. They were trying to foreclose an effort to disqualify Trump after he wins,” said Ned Foley, a constitutional law expert from Ohio State University. “But they didn’t do it clearly enough.”

The lack of clarity, he continued, has sparked a debate: “Is there power in Congress to consider the [disqualification] issue in January?”

The court’s opinion did not explicitly address that scenario. The opinion did stress that, for federal lawmakers to enforce the insurrection clause, they would have to set out criteria for who is disqualified. Congress, the court added, has not passed any legislation enforcing the provision since 1870.

Some experts say formal legislation is crucial. It would strain credulity, they said, for Trump’s opponents in Congress to attempt to unravel an Electoral College victory by the ex-president, at least without forcing them to embrace some untested theories of their own.

“I think today’s opinion will at least close the door on some of that discourse,” said Derek Muller, a constitutional scholar at the University of Notre Dame….

So far, Democrats in Congress — including two who served on the Jan. 6 select committee and concluded that Trump indeed joined an insurrection in 2021 — have expressed caution and restraint.

“It does not at first read appear that the Court indicated a viable path to implement Section 3 of the 14th Amendment absent enactment of a law outlining procedures to do so,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) in a statement on the court’s ruling. But she added that she is continuing to review the ruling and hopes to hear from legal experts on Congress’ role.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) echoed that sentiment, telling POLITICO “my initial reading of it suggests that they are saying that Congress must act … to pass a statute, but I am not certain of that and we want to explore it. So I don’t want to pronounce on that.”

AP:

Sen. Tim Scott, a potential running mate if Donald Trump becomes the Republican presidential nominee, is treading carefully on questions about whether he would have certified the 2020 election had he been vice president at that time.

On Jan. 6, 2021, about two months after Trump lost the White House, then-Vice President Mike Pence defied his boss and refused to use his largely ceremonial role in overseeing the election certification process to block Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Pence went forward with ratification of the Electoral College even after a violent mob of Trump supporters, some of whom chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” swarmed the U.S. Capitol, interrupting the congressional proceedings and forcing Pence, his family and staff into hiding in the complex.

Scott, a Trump rival in the 2024 race who dropped out and later endorsed the former president, declined to say in two Sunday news show interviews whether he would have acted differently as vice president.

“I’m not going to answer hypothetical questions, No. 1,” said Scott, R-S.C. He added: “You’re asking a hypothetical question that you know can never happen again.”

Scott voted in favor of certifying the 2020 results when the Senate got back to work after the siege. He also said during a presidential debate last year that Pence did the right thing when he certified the election…

Scott sidestepped questions Sunday about how he saw the vice president’s role in the certification process.

“The one thing we know about the future is that the former president, fortunately, he’ll be successful in 2024, he won’t be facing that situation again,” Scott said. “So what we should focus on is what will cause the former president, President Trump, to be the next president of the United States.”

New report from the Brennan Center:

Among the report’s findings:

• 43% of state legislators have experienced threats within the past three years. 18% of local officeholders have experienced threats within the past year and a half. (p. 4)
• Because of abuse, 39% of local officeholders and 21% of state legislators are less willing to legislate on contentious issues. Officeholders interviewed gave examples like reproductive rights and gun regulation. (p. 16)
• Among local officeholders, more women and people of color than men or white people have been the subject of abusive language about their children and families. (statistics on p. 8)
• Local and state officeholders said that abuse has made them reluctant to engage with their constituents online or hold public events. (statistics on p. 19)
• 39% of local officeholders said at the time of the survey that the abuse lessened their desire to run for reelection. For women in local office, 48% said at the time of the survey that they were less willing to run for reelection compared to 34% of men. 12% of state legislators said at the time of the survey that the abuse lessened their desire to run for higher office. (p. 16)
• More Republicans than Democrats have experienced an increase in the volume of abuseover the past few years. (p. 8)
• Many attributed this to backlash within their party and for not supporting extreme policy positions.
• In interviews, many local and state officeholders pointed to the viral nature of social media as a primary contributor to the high levels of abuse they experience. (p. 15)
• According to many of the local and state officeholders interviewed, the deregulation of guns has made the abuse they’re experiencing more dangerous for them and their families. (p. 14)

NYT:

In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.

“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.

This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.

This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.

Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.

Now, his early election-year attacks on a tried-and-true voting method are raising alarms among civil rights lawyers, election administrators and Democrats. They worry that his control over the large social media platform gives him an outsize ability to reignite the doubts about the American election system that were so prevalent in the lead-up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

As Mr. Trump’s victory in New Hampshire moved the race closer to general election grounds, the Biden campaign for the first time criticized Mr. Musk directly for his handling of election content on X: “It is profoundly irresponsible to spread false information and sow distrust about how our elections operate,” the Biden campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, said this week in a statement to The New York Times.

“It’s even more dangerous coming from the owner of a social media platform,” she added.

What is angering the Biden campaign is delighting pro-Trump Republicans and others who depict the old Twitter as part of a government-controlled censorship regime that aided Mr. Biden in 2020. Under a system now in dispute at the Supreme Court, government officials alerted platforms to posts they deemed dangerous, though it was up to the companies to act or not.

“Oh, boo hoo,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, a lawyer whose firm represents Mr. Trump, said of the Democrats’ complaints. Ms. Dhillon has sued the company for suspending an election-denying client’s account after receiving a notice from the California election officials — the sort of government interplay Mr. Musk has repudiated. She noted the platform was now “a much better place for conservatives,” and said of Mr. Musk, “he’s great.”…

AP:

For months, Trump has been alleging that he could be the victim of fraud in November, making the same sort of explosive, groundless allegations that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and have continued to spark a wave of threats against election workers nationwide. Trump made similar allegations before the 2020 election, predicting for months there would be widespread fraud that November and contending he could only lose if the election was stolen from him.

“He’s doing it out in full view,” said David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and coauthor of “The Big Truth,” about Trump’s 2020 election lies. “If he is the Republican nominee, he has made clear that he’ll lie about an election that he’s lost.”

His continued false claims about the 2020 election have resonated with Republican voters, a majority of whom believe Biden was not legitimately elected despite all evidence to the contrary. Trump lost dozens of court challenges, his own attorney general found no evidence of widespread fraud, and reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states where he contested his loss all affirmed Biden’s victory.

Rachel Orey of the Bipartisan Policy Center said Trump’s preemptive allegations of fraud have become built into the nation’s political culture.

“It’s been normalized. I think what in 2020 was seen as somewhat outlandish is now an anticipated part of the process,” Orey said. “And, we see more and more candidates adopting the election denial tactics that Donald Trump is using, either as a way to thrust themselves into the national spotlight or as a way to fundraise.”

Setting the stage to blame an election loss on fraud has clear consequences, Orey said, pointing to the fact that threats and harassment against election officials after 2020 were especially severe in battleground states that Trump narrowly lost.

Kimberly Wehle in Politico:

There’s been a lot of attention paid to the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for actions taken while president, a judgment that will have big implications for the 2024 presidential campaign and special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the former president on charges related to Jan. 6. But there’s a sleeping giant of a case also percolating in the Supreme Court that’s even more likely than the immunity issue to impact Smith’s prosecution of Trump.

The case is Joseph W. Fischer v. United States, which the court agreed to hear in December, and which doesn’t explicitly mention Trump. At issue is whether prosecutors and the Department of Justice have been improperly using a 2002 law originally aimed at curbing financial crimes to prosecute a Jan. 6 defendant named Joseph Fischer. Should the court side with Fischer, it would also call into question the use of the law against other Jan. 6 defendants — including Trump.

AJC:

A Republican-sponsored bill introduced Friday would empower the State Election Board to investigate Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a response to the board’s decision last month not to open an inquiry.

The measure would also remove Raffensperger, a Republican, as a non-voting member of the State Election Board and require him to cooperate with investigations.

The legislation, Senate Bill 358, comes after the board deadlocked on whether to pursue complaints by conservative activists who blame Raffensperger for human errors in Fulton County’s manual audit of the 2020 election. The problems, including over 3,000 double-counted and misallocated votes, didn’t change the overall outcome of the statewide audit, which confirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win over Republican Donald Trump.

CNN:

A member of Maryland’s Board of Elections has resigned after being charged with taking part in the mob during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and jabbing an officer during the melee with a flagpole.

Carlos Ayala, a 52-year-old from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, was charged with a felony and several misdemeanors this week. He’s among more than 450 Capitol riot defendants accused of resisting or obstructing police during the attack, and a handful of elections and other public officials who have faced charges for allegedly taking part.

The Maryland Board of Elections chair Michael Summers said in a statement Thursday he “accepted the immediate resignation of Carlos Ayala. The Board is committed to maintaining the security and integrity of our elections in Maryland in a non-partisan manner.”

Ayala was one of five members appointed by the governor. He had served on the board since July 2023 following unanimous approval by Maryland’s Senate, and was set to serve a four-year term, according to state records.

The Hill:

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is raising concerns about how the technology could impact next year’s election as the start of 2024 primary voting nears.

AI — advanced tech that can generate text, images and audio, and even build deepfake videos — could fuel misinformation in an already polarized political landscape and further erode voter confidence in the country’s election system.

Jen Fifield at Votebeat:

Some Republican-led states are struggling to develop new ways to adequately update their voter rolls after withdrawing from a popular cross-state voter roll cleaning program that came under attack by far-right election activists, according to new documents and internal emails reviewed by Votebeat.

Virginia paid $29,000 in September to regain access to just a sliver of the data they used to obtain via the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. Alabama and Missouri officials took months to come up with new plans for cleaning voter rolls, landing on plans that are less rigorous than ERIC. And a new system some states are considering to help with voter roll cleanup had its server attacked and temporarily brought down, according to documents obtained by left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight and exclusively shared with Votebeat.

The documents also show that senior advisors to secretaries of state in Missouri and Texas recognized that lies were being spread about ERIC, and tried to stop their states from withdrawing from what they saw as a valuable program. In addition, officials in some states such as Ohio had pushed unsuccessfully for changes to ERIC that could have kept their states from withdrawing.

“As you know, I really worked as hard as I possibly could to avoid this,” Amanda Grandjean, then the senior advisor to the Ohio secretary of state, wrote in an email to ERIC executive director Shane Hamlin after Ohio withdrew from the program in March.

(I blogged some of my reaction to the ERIC withdrawals in March here.)

WRAL:

A panel of judges on Thursday granted Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s request to block a new elections law before voters head to the polls in 2024.

The ruling from the three judges — two Republicans and one Democrat — was unanimous. They ruled that the law, passed by the Republican-controlled legislature last month, is likely an unconstitutional power grab. It’s just a temporary ruling pending a full trial, likely to be held in early 2024….

In addition to changing who has the power to appoint election board members, the law would also make the board have an even number of seats for both parties, instead of giving a majority to whichever party holds the governor’s office.

Republicans have said that’s needed to improve election integrity. But critics, who include Democrats as well as professional election workers and experts, say it would lead to chaos in elections administration — and possibly even spell the end of early voting and other political issues that would presumably result in tie votes and inaction….

On Cooper’s challenge to SB 749, Republican lawmakers have acknowledged that the previous law it’s based on was ruled unconstitutional.

A similar change to the elections board was also later shot down by voters when proposed as a constitutional amendment in 2018, after every living governor — Democratic and Republican — publicly campaigned against it, as well as another similar amendment proposal, as overreaching power grabs.

A lawyer for the state government agreed with Cooper in court Thursday. Senior Deputy Attorney General Amar Majmundar said blocking it from taking effect would be “not just appropriate, but necessary.”

But legislative leaders have said that since the GOP flipped control of the North Carolina Supreme Court in last year’s elections, they believe they have a better chance of winning in court this time and getting the past precedent overturned.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Voting Laws Roundup: October 2023, published by the Brennan Center, offers an overview of the trends in election law around the country. There is good news, including:

1. “Nearly half of all states enacted at least one expansive voting law this year.”
2. “At least four of those states — Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and New Mexico — enacted multiple expansive voting laws or an omnibus pro-voter law in 2023.”

And there is bad news, including:

1. 14 states have adopted restrictive laws.
2. North Carolina legislature has passed a law restricting voting access and another “undermin[ing] election administration.”

NPR: Misinformation about a bipartisan, cross-state partnership known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, pushed several Republican legislatures to back out of it in recent months. But now, these same legislatures are scrambling to create systems to serve the same function. ERIC, however, took years to develop and relies on confidential DMV information, which is much the most accurate way to confirm that individuals with the same names in different jurisdictions are in fact the same individuals.

“These states are recreating a portion of ERIC, just with less data and less reliable information.”

Axios:

The Republican National Committee plans to recruit and train tens of thousands of poll workers and watchers in battleground states for the 2024 election, according to plans shared first with Axios.

Why it matters: It’s part of the RNC’s ongoing push to scrutinize suspected voter fraud and mobilize on-the-ground “election integrity directors” in crucial states ahead of the 2024 election.

• Repeated audits and reviews, including from GOP-led groups, failed to find evidence of voter fraud despite former President Trump’s claims that it was widespread during the 2020 election.

Zoom in: The RNC is continuing its expansion from a “pop-up-shop style election operation” to a year-round election integrity department this year.

Republicans in Wisconsin are threatening to impeach a recently elected state Supreme Court justice and raised the possibility of doing the same to the state’s election director.

A Georgia Republican called for impeaching the Fulton County prosecutor who brought racketeering charges against former President Donald Trump. Republicans in the Pennsylvania House have already impeached the top prosecutor in Philadelphia.

None of the targets met the bar traditionally set for impeachment — credible allegations of committing a crime while in office. Their offense: staking out positions legislative Republicans didn’t like.

As Republicans in Congress begin their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, the process is calling attention to the increasing use of impeachment in the states as a partisan political weapon rather than as a step of last resort for officeholders believed to have committed a serious offense.

It’s not just impeachment. Over the past two years, Republicans also have sought to pry Democrats and nonpartisan executives from office through recalls, legislative maneuvers and forced removals, even when no allegations of wrongdoing have surfaced.

To some, the moves appear anti-democratic — actions that could have major implications if they become routine and supplant the ballot box as the final arbiter of an election.

AP:

The Colorado judge overseeing the first significant lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 presidential ballot on Friday issued a protective order prohibiting threats and intimidation in the case, saying the safety of those involved — including herself and her staff — was necessary as the groundbreaking litigation moves forward.

“I 100% understand everybody’s concerns for the parties, the lawyers, and frankly myself and my staff based on what we’ve seen in other cases,” District Judge Sarah B. Wallace said as she agreed to the protective order.

The order prohibits parties in the case from making threatening or intimidating statements. Scott Gessler, a former Colorado secretary of state representing Trump in the case, opposed it. He said a protective order was unnecessary because threats and intimidation already are prohibited by law.

Jen Fifield for Votebeat:

They started searching for her in late January.

“Where’s CELIA NABOR?” one member of the angry online mob wrote. “Find her,” another wrote. Track her phone, credit cards, social security number, and social media, others suggested. It was time for her to “face the music.” “COULD SHE BE AT HOME????” someone wrote, posting her address. 

And then, that same night, after 2 a.m., someone started banging on Celia Nabor’s door. 

She lay frozen in bed in her suburban Phoenix neighborhood, terrified, wondering if one of her online harassers had come to follow through on the threats. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the pounding stopped. 

Nabor never found out who knocked on her door that night. What she did know was that the trouble had started earlier that week. On Jan. 30, GOP activists began spreading false information about her, based partly on documents acquired through records requests searching for fraud in Maricopa County’s elections, where Nabor helped oversee early voting.

They said Nabor was dodging a request to answer questions, prompting others to claim she had helped the county steal the election for Democrats. But that wasn’t true.

We The People AZ Alliance — a Phoenix-based political action committee funded primarily by Patrick Byrne and his organization The America Project — employed what’s become a familiar playbook among allies of former President Donald Trump: Barrage local election offices with public records requests, then twist real records to make routine actions seem suspicious. 

The organization dug into Nabor’s work, asking for copies of all of her texts and her emails. They asked for information on how she and the employees under her performed their jobs and whether they were disciplined. They wanted protocols and contractor names and contracts and more. 

Extensive requests such as these are a complex piece of the ballooning number of public records requests to election offices across the country, according to Votebeat’s review of hundreds of public records requests and logs. 

CNN:

The election administrator’s office in Texas’ most populous county – Harris County, which is home to Houston – has been dismantled to comply with a new state law passed by Republican legislators that officially takes effect Friday.

The law, known as SB 1750, shifts responsibility for elections and voter registration to the county clerk and the county tax assessor-collector. Critics have cast the measure, along with a second newly enacted law, as a power grab by Texas’ GOP-led legislature to disrupt how elections are run in an increasingly blue bastion of this traditionally red state.

The elimination of the election administrator’s position comes just weeks before the start of early voting in the race for Houston mayor and other local offices, and it marks one of several efforts by Republicans around the country to exert more control over election administration ahead of 2024’s consequential presidential and congressional contests.

A separate state law – known as SB 1933 and also passed this year – authorizes the Texas secretary of state, who is appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to order “administrative oversight” of a county elections office, if complaints are filed and there’s reason to believe there’s a recurring pattern of problems with election administration.

SB 1750 and SB 1933 apply to counties with a population of more than 3.5 million and 4 million people, respectively – criteria met only by Harris County.

AP:

In the most inflammatory exchange, Trump seemed to indulge a suggestion from Carlson that Trump’s political opponents might try to end his life.

“They’re savage animals. They are people that are sick. Really sick. You have great people in the Democrat Party, you have great people that are Democrats,” Trump said. “But I’ve seen what they do, I’ve seen the lengths that they go to.”

The incendiary comment comes as Trump has venerated those charged with crimes for the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol and downplayed the violence that day. He repeated his praise in the interview.

“People in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they’ve ever experienced. There was love in that crowd. There was love and unity,” Trump said of the supporters he addressed on the morning of Jan. 6, before they marched to the Capitol.

“I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love. And I’ve also never seen, simultaneously, and from the same people, such hatred of what they’ve done to our country.”

The night before the interview was posted, Trump spoke at a fundraiser hosted at his New Jersey golf club for the Patriot Freedom Project, which supports the defendants charged for their roles in the insurrection.

NYT:

Ron DeSantis says the military is more interested in global warming and “gender ideology” initiatives than in national security.

Tim Scott says the Justice Department “continues to hunt Republicans.”

Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to “shut down the deep state,” borrowing former President Donald J. Trump’s conspiratorial shorthand for a federal bureaucracy he views as hostile.

As Mr. Trump escalates his attacks on American institutions, focusing his fire on the Justice Department as he faces new criminal charges, his competitors for the Republican nomination have followed his lead.

Several have adopted much of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric sowing broad suspicion about the courts, the F.B.I., the military and schools. As they vie for support in a primary dominated by Mr. Trump, they routinely blast these targets in ways that might have been considered extraordinary, not to mention unthinkably bad politics, just a few years ago.

Yet there is little doubt about the political incentives behind the statements. Polls show that Americans’ trust in their institutions has fallen to historical lows, with Republicans exhibiting more doubt across a broad swath of public life.

The proliferation of attacks has alarmed both Republicans and Democrats who worry about the long-term impact on American democracy. Public confidence in core institutions — from the justice system to voting systems — is fundamental to a durable democracy, particularly at a time of sharp political division.

Bolts:

Robert Sutherland and Doug Basler have a lot in common.

The two Republicans have spent the better part of the past three years sowing doubt about Washington state’s election system, filing frivolous lawsuits that questioned the mail ballot system, and running (and losing) races for office.

And now, they’re both running against avowedly nonpartisan, experienced election administrators in an attempt to take control of two of their state’s largest county election offices.

AJC:

The South Georgia election director who allowed tech experts to copy the state’s voting software in the wake of the 2020 presidential race was hired to run a special election in another rural county soon afterward, leading investigators to confiscate its election server this spring.

The decision to hire Misty Hampton in Treutlen County has drawn scrutiny from county commissioners who question why their county manager, a Republican candidate for secretary of state last year, would employ Hampton after she was forced out from Coffee County.

Security camera video showed that Hampton permitted confidential election data to be copied by computer analysts hired by Sidney Powell, who was an attorney for Donald Trump, in January 2021. The data was later distributed through a file-sharing website to conspiracy theorists who denied the results of the presidential election, which Trump lost.

AP:

A North Dakota county election official is suing the state’s election director to block the counting of mail-in ballots received after Election Day in a lawsuit filed by a conservative group that also brought lawsuits amid former President Donald Trump‘s false claims of election fraud in 2020.

An election law expert says the Public Interest Legal Foundation appeared to be “court-shopping” for a conservative circuit with its case, which seeks an injunction against the election director for enforcing the state’s laws.

Burleigh County Auditor Mark Splonskowski, who was elected last fall, alleges he “is harmed by instructions to accept and cast ballots received after Election Day,” and that “because federal and state law conflict on the day the ballots must be turned in, he faces an impossibility in enforcing the law,” according to a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court.

“Despite federal law assigning one day as Election Day, North Dakota law allows ballots to arrive and be counted up to 13 days after Election Day,” the complaint states….

University of California Los Angeles law professor and election law expert Rick Hasen in an interview said the lawsuit is “kind of a roundabout way of attacking not having full results on Election Day, so it very much ties into Trump’s unsupported claims about the (2020) election.”

Yup, there it is (via Hansi Lo Wang):

[The Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision in] SFFA has considerably altered the landscape of cases, such as this one, that involve state action requiring racial classifications. 2023 WL 4239254, at *12 (“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”). Indeed, the SFFA Court made clear that as statutes requiring race-based classification achieve their intended ends, they will necessarily become obsolete. See id. at *14–21 (explaining that Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003), “made clear that race-based admissions programs eventually had to end” and that the instant facts demonstrated that the time had come). And we have seen similarly once-permissible racial classifications be held unconstitutional when the facts justifying their existence were no more—specifically in the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) context. See Shelby Cnty. v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529, 557 (2013) (holding part of the VRA unconstitutional because “[o]ur country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions”). Consequently, the district court should be permitted to address, in the first instance, whether the facts on the ground here similarly warrant a rejection of Section 2 of the VRA, as applied, because it is no longer necessary. See id. at 536 (“[C]urrent burdens . . . must be justified by current needs.” (quoting Nw. Austin Mun. Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193, 203 (2009))).

Notably, this temporal argument was acknowledged by members of the Milligan Court but, because it was not properly raised, the Court did not consider it. 143 S. Ct. at 1519 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“Justice Thomas notes, however, that even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting under §2 for some period of time, the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future. See post, at 1543–1544 (dissenting opinion). But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.”). Indeed, eight Justices in Milligan appeared to conclude that the first Gingles precondition cannot be satisfied where race is the predominant factor in the creation of an illustrative comparator. See 143 S. Ct. at 1510–12; id. at 1527 (Thomas, J., dissenting). That predominance test is essential to mitigate the problem of race-based classifications identified in SFFA, and the district court should address the interplay of these decisions, as applied to this case, in the first instance on remand.

As I wrote recently at Slate:

The first attack is a separate constitutional one from the one that failed in Milligan. In Roberts’ Milligan majority opinion, the court upheld Section 2’s constitutionality against Alabama’s claim that Congress only has the power to ban intentional discrimination, not just those voting laws with discriminatory effects. Citing earlier precedents, the court concluded that Congress had the power through the 15^th Amendment to dismantle laws with racially discriminatory effects as well.

Despite that holding, Justice Kavanaugh, writing separately, left the door open for a future constitutional challenge. Kavanaugh described that argument, raised by Justice Clarence Thomas in his dissent, that “even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting under §2 for some period of time, the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.” Kavanaugh wouldn’t reach the question in his separate opinion, but left it open: “Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.”

This argument that a law once constitutional is no longer so because of the passage of time echoes the court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, authored by Chief Justice Roberts, reaching the same conclusion about a different part of the Voting Rights Act, Section 5. As voting rights expert Ellen Katz opined on my site, the Election Law Blog, “Justice Kavanaugh said he was declining to consider this argument ‘at this time’ because Alabama had failed to press it. But the invitation was, of course, clear: bring this claim and the Allen dissenters might just have a majority in the next case. In other words, stay tuned.”

Would Kavanaugh (or even Roberts) switch back again and pull a Shelby County in a few years? It is hard to say, but Roberts at least offered a surprisingly full-throated endorsement of current Section 2 jurisprudence, and having pronounced Section 2 constitutional without alluding to or even citing the argument in Shelby County that the passage of time could render the law now unconstitutional, it seems hard to imagine him reversing course so soon. What Kavanaugh might do should such an opportunity arise is a separate question, of course.

NC Newsline (via Electionline). “The Southern Coalition for Social Justice and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional on Fourteenth Amendment grounds.” The suit cites the specific history of law, dating back to 1877 as a part of the racially discriminatory rollback of voting rights granted during Reconstruction.

NPR on the exodus of red states from ERIC.

And a deeper look at the red-state exodus that followed — eight states and counting have now pulled out of ERIC — shows a policy blueprint for an election denial movement, spearheaded by a key Trump ally, eager to change virtually every aspect of how Americans vote. . . .

Axios:

In a reversal of its election integrity policy, YouTube will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections, the company confirmed to Axios Friday.

Why it matters: YouTube established the policy in December 2020, after enough states had certified the 2020 election results. Now, the company said in a statement, leaving the policy in place may have the effect of “curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.”

• “Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape,” YouTube said in a statement.
• “With that in mind, and with 2024 campaigns well underway, we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.”

Yes, but: Asked how YouTube was specifically able to make that determination, a spokesperson pointed Axios to their statement.

• YouTube said that it “carefully deliberated this change,” but didn’t provide further examples of what factors or instances it considered when weighing its decision.
• The platform said it will provide more details about its approach to the 2024 election in the months to come.

From Newsweek:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said former President Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton’s office.

“If we’d lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them,” Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter’s War Room podcast on Friday.

A sad story that exemplifies what’s been happening with election administrators in several areas around the country. From the WP:

After facing an onslaught of harassment and violent threats for certifying the results of the 2020 election, a Republican on the governing board of Arizona’s largest county will not seek reelection during the 2024 cycle.

Bill Gates, a longtime conservative and Harvard-educated attorney, told The Washington Post that he intends to serve his term through the end of 2024 and carry out the election-related duties that come with it. In an interview and prepared statement, he said he was proud of his time in office and thanked county workers….

Gates’s decision also adds a high-profile name to the exodus of local election officers across the nation who have left their posts or have passed on reelection campaigns amid attacks….

As he helps the county prepare for another election, Gates wants stronger protections for election officials and more federal funding to help them recruit and train poll workers, bolster cybersecurity measures, install security cameras and more. He is joining a bipartisan group of election workers in D.C. next week to urge the White House, members of Congress, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to advocate for the funding and protections as part of an effort by Issue One, an organization that advocates for issues of democracy and more regulation of money in politics.

AP reports.

WaPo with a profile of Maricopa Supervisor Bill Gates, and the extraordinary pressures on local officials when grifters drive the fever dream of conspiracy viral.

News from the States:

Republicans at a recent congressional hearing accused Michigan’s chief election official of deliberately leaving tens of thousands of dead voters on the rolls in order to encourage illegal voting.

Even at a time of intense partisan conflict over election policies, it was a strikingly direct charge against a sitting official — and one made not by a Twitter activist or even on the campaign trail, but before Congress. And it comes at a time when election officials are already facing a wave of harassment and threats stemming from false claims about voting.

But a closer look at the facts makes clear the allegation that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson knowingly kept dead people on the rolls to allow for fraud deserves extreme skepticism.

And yet, there’s a lot more to be done.  NCSL has more on a disturbing trend that should be of concern to every single one of its members.

And good for Kansas SOS Scott Schwab for speaking up here (and about drop boxes, and about grace periods for mail, etc.).

New Brennan Center report with recommendations for 2024. Among them:

Priority: Combat election disinformation

• State lawmakers should prohibit the spread of false information about the time, place, and manner of voting when it is shared with the intent to prevent voters from voting.
• The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency should work with federal and state partners to migrate local election offices’ websites to .gov domains, which are only given to U.S.-based government entities and signal credibility to voters trying to find accurate information.

Priority: Protect election workers

• The Department of Homeland Security should continue to require states to spend a portion of homeland security grants on election security, as it did in fiscal year 2023.
• State lawmakers should prohibit intimidating conduct at the polls and anywhere else election officials are working. They should allow election workers to shield their personally identifiable information from the public.

Priority: Defend against insider threats

• Local election officials should develop training, regulations, and protocols that help prevent, identify, and respond to insider threats (when rogue election workers themselves put election security at risk).
• The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency should develop best practices to guard against insider threats.

Priority: Ensure technological resilience

• Local election officials should create backup systems and plans so that voting can continue in the event of a cyberattack or technical issue.
• State lawmakers should mandate post-election audits.

Votebeat:

Cochise County is close to hiring an elections director who has repeatedly shared false claims about widespread election fraud on Facebook, including claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former President Donald Trump.

Bob Bartelsmeyer, currently the elections director in La Paz County, was chosen by Cochise County Recorder David Stevens for the spot. The county supervisors are set to appoint him at their Tuesday meeting, according to a meeting agenda posted on the county website.

“Please join me by posting ‘Trump legally won by landslide’” one post shared by Bartelsmeyer in December 2020 said. “REVEALED: ‘Simple Math’ Shows Biden Claims 13 MILLION More Votes Than There Were Eligible Voters Who Voted in 2020,” read another.

In Cochise, Bartelsmeyer would be working for a southern Arizona county where the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors is considering GOP-backed changes to the county’s elections. Proposals include pursuing a potential plan to get rid of the county’s vote-counting machines because of false claims of vote switching that are similar to those shared by Bartelsmeyer in 2020.

Supervisor Ann English, the lone Democrat on the board, told Votebeat she was concerned that hiring Bartelsmeyer would mean no one would stand in the supervisors’ or Stevens’ way if they attempted to move forward with concerning changes to elections.

“It certainly is scary for me to think about someone coming in to take over an elections system that hasn’t had any problems, with an attitude that elections in the past haven’t been fair,” English said.

AP:

The Colorado Republican Party on Saturday selected a combative former state representative who promised to be a “wartime” leader as its new chairman, joining several other state GOPs this year that have elected far-right figures and election conspiracy theorists to their top posts.

The move in Colorado comes as the party totters on the brink of political irrelevance in a state moving swiftly to the left.

Former State Rep. Dave Williams, who unsuccessfully tried to insert the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” into his name on the party’s primary ballot last year and insists — incorrectly — that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, was selected by the party’s executive committee out of a seven-person field.

Williams crossed the required 50% threshold on the third ballot after being endorsed by one of his competitors, indicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who had failed to surpass 10%. Peters faces seven felony charges for her alleged role in illegally accessing voting machines in her county. She has denied the allegations while becoming a prominent national figure in the election conspiracy movement.

LAT:

Swept up in unproven voter fraud claims, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors has upended the county’s election process, canceling its contract with Dominion Voting Systems and opting this week to pursue, among other options, the possibility of counting votes by hand.

Supervisor Kevin Crye, part of a newly empowered hard-right majority on the board, also announced at Tuesday’s board meeting that he had been in touch with MyPillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a prominent pro-Donald Trump election conspiracy theorist, about supporting a pilot voting system in the rural Northern California county.

On the same day, in another Republican-controlled county 400 miles south, Kern County supervisors narrowly voted to keep Dominion as the county’s voting system, but not before listening to hours of testimony from residents who were convinced the system was rigged.

Dominion is one of the largest suppliers of voting machines and software in the U.S., and currently runs voting machines in 41 of California’s 58 counties. After President Trump lost the election in 2020, his supporters spent months propagating baseless conspiracy theories about Dominion, including false accusations that the company’s machines were used to throw votes from Trump to Joe Biden and that Dominion — a company based in Colorado — was a corrupt tool with ties to the Venezuelan government. Those allegations were given heavy airing in right-wing media, including on Fox News.

I had Secretary Frank LaRose of Ohio speak to my 2020 conference on election integrity along with Secretary Jocelyn Benson of Michigan. One Democrat, one Republican, each from a midwestern state, each fighting against the crazy and for fair election administration.

There have been much more troubling signs from LaRose in recent years.

And now this:

Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as he weighs a run for U.S. Senate, is planning a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. ahead of a scheduled Saturday appearance at a national conservative political conference to appear as the lone election official on a panel called “They Stole it From Us Legally.”

All 10 of Ohio’s Republican members of Congress are listed on the event host committee for the Wednesday afternoon fundraiser near Capitol Hill. Tickets run up to $5,000, with proceeds going to LaRose’s state candidate fund, which can’t directly be used for any federal campaign….

LaRose also has another stop on his Washington, D.C., itinerary this week. He’s a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a major annual event for Republican candidates and right-wing activists.

He’s scheduled to speak on Saturday in a panel discussion alongside Hogan Gidley, a former campaign aide to ex-President Donald Trump who has advanced Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election and now works for an elections-policy center; Abe Hamadeh, who unsuccessfully has sought to overturn the 2022 election results for his race for Arizona attorney general, which he lost; and Lee Zeldin, who lost last year’s race for governor of New York.

The event is titled “They Stole it From Us Legally.” Asked about the event’s title, a spokesman for LaRose said that’s not how the event organizers initially described it to LaRose.

The event’s initial title, according to a document obtained by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, was “Easy to Vote, Hard to Cheat,” a catchphrase long used by LaRose and other Ohio Republicans.

The LaRose spokesman, Rob Nichols, said LaRose does not hold the position that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Rather, he will talk about the accuracy of Ohio’s elections.

AP reports.

Zachary Roth:

Many of the election deniers who ran last year for positions that would have given them control over state elections systems lost their races. But several have found a new path to exert influence: as chair of their state Republican Party. 

On Saturday, Kristina Karamo, an activist who rose to prominence for her efforts to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential results, was elected chair of the Michigan GOP at the party’s convention. 

A week earlier, Mike Brown, a former county commissioner who has stoked fears that the 2020 election was stolen, won the same job at Kansas’ convention. 

And in July, Idaho Republicans chose Dorothy Moon, a former state legislator who has said there was a “big problem” with the 2020 vote and made unfounded claims about illegal voting, as their leader. 

Meanwhile, Tina Peters announced last week that she’s running for state GOP chair in Colorado. A former county election clerk, Peters is facing felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to breach secure voting equipment in order to show that her state’s 2020 vote was rigged.

All four Republicans ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, which would have made them their state’s chief election official. Karamo won the Republican nomination, then was defeated in the general election by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. Brown, Moon, and Peters all lost in the GOP primaries.

WaPo:

For two days, Kari Lake traversed this state with a clear message. She falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. She baselessly insisted that votes were rigged against her in her run for Arizona governor last year.And she warned without evidence that future races will be compromised.

“If you lose, lose with dignity. You shake the other person’s hand and walk away,” she told a crowd of approximately 200 at a reception hall on Friday, describing advice from her father on how to gracefully accept defeat. “I didn’t lose, so I’m not doing that.”

Lake, who lost in November by more than 17,000 votes to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), is waging a new campaign without conceding the last one. The former television news anchor is traveling the country as one of the most vocal standard-bearers of an animated if wounded election denialism movement as she weighs a run for U.S. Senate and hears encouragement from some to set her sights on national office.

That movement has persisted in some quarters of the Republican Party despite candidates such as Lake experiencing pivotal losses in last year’s midterms after running openly on denying the results of the 2020 election. 

“Trump VP,” Lake said, speaking of the former president, who in his third run for the White House has continued to make false claims about his 2020 election defeat. “I love President Trump. I will do everything in my power to get that man elected.”

Houston Chronicle:

More than two years after Steven Hotze bankrolled a private voter fraud investigation that led to an armed confrontation with an innocent repairman, the Houston doctor was back in court earlier this month reiterating claims that Harris County Democrats are engaged in a massive election conspiracy.

Hotze, a Republican megadonor and fierce supporter of the debunked theory that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, faces felony charges related to the episode and separately is being sued by the repairman. His lawyers this month accused the Democrat-led District Attorney’s office of retaliating against him for exposing the election-rigging, even though no substantive evidence of such a scheme has ever emerged. 

The criminal case against Hotze, who runs a lucrative health clinic in Katy and a vitamin retail business, isn’t likely to go to trial anytime soon in the county’s overburdened court system; Hotze faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful restraint, as does Mark Aguirre, the investigator Hotze hired.

But a Houston Chronicle examination of documents in the civil proceeding reveals new details about the bizarre October 2020 attack – one that became a nationally known example of how an election fraud theory could put an unsuspecting civilian in danger.

The documents include extensive comments from that civilian, a Mexican immigrant named David Lopez who has worked fixing air conditioning systems in Houston for more than five years. He said he continues to fear for his life ever since Aguirre allegedly crashed his SUV into his box truck and pointed a gun at him, all under the false pretense that Lopez’s truck contained hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots. 

“I am afraid because the people who did this to me are very powerful. I have no power,” Lopez said. “I do not know why they attacked me. These people did not find what they were looking for so I am afraid they will attack me again. I don’t know what they are looking for.”

The documents also show that Hotze and his attorneys continue to insist that Lopez could have been a main perpetrator of voter fraud and that he received payments from Harris County Democratic officials. “We’ve got the goods,” Hotze said in a 2022 deposition. “It’s so complicated I can’t – I can’t comment on it right now, but we do.”

AP:

Alabama’s new secretary of state announced the state’s withdrawal Tuesday from a 32-state voter registration partnership, a data-sharing effort that was designed to maintain accurate voter rolls but has sometimes become the target of conservative ire and conspiracy theories.

A day after being sworn in, Allen sent a letter to the Electronic Registration Information Center, a non-profit linking 32 states and the District of Columbia, saying the state will no longer participate in the sharing of voter registration data.

“I made a promise to the people of Alabama that ending our state’s relationship with the ERIC organization would be my first official act as Secretary of State,” Allen said in a statement. The letter said that Alabama would immediately cease transmitting data.

The Republican, who had pledged during his campaign to withdraw from ERIC, cited privacy concerns Tuesday for the decision.

“Providing the private information of Alabama citizens, including underage minors, to an out of state organization is troubling to me and to people that I heard from as I traveled the state for the last 20 months,” Allen said.

The database was created as a tool to maintain accurate voter rolls and combat fraud by allowing states to know when someone moves, dies or registers elsewhere, but has sometimes been targeted by critics.

In November, former Secretary of State John Merrill criticized Allen’s intent to withdraw. He said then that ERIC provides information that Alabama couldn’t otherwise access — such as other states’ voter registration and motorist driver’s license records — and has been a crucial tool for maintaining voting rolls.

“I trust he has evaluated this situation and is making the decision based on what he believes to be in the best interest of the state of Alabama,” Merrill said on Tuesday.

Tierney Sneed for CNN:

A case that could further shrink the scope of the Voting Rights Act is before a federal appeals court Wednesday, with the appellate panel considering whether private entities – and not just the US Justice Department – can bring lawsuits under a key provision of the law.

If those seeking a narrowing of the VRA are successful, it would significantly diminish the use of the law to challenge ballot regulations and redistricting maps that are said to be racially discriminatory.

A vast majority of the cases that are brought under the Voting Rights Act – which prohibits election rules that have the intent or effect of discriminating on the basis of race – are brought by private plaintiffs, with the Justice Department facing strained resources and other considerations that limit the number of VRA cases it files to, at most, a few each year.

Last year, however, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Arkansas – running counter to decades of legal practice – said that private parties do not have the ability to sue under the relevant VRA provision, known as Section 2.

The US 8th Circuit Court of Appeals – with a three-judge panel made up of all GOP-appointees – will be considering whether to uphold that finding, setting up the potential for another Supreme Court showdown on voting rights.

“DOJ, no matter how staffed up it is, no matter how many resources they apply to this particular endeavor, is simply not going to be able to do the same amount as it could do with the partnership of private plaintiffs here,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, a top American Civil Liberties Union voting rights attorney who is arguing in favor of a private cause of action in the 8th Circuit case.

From Colorado Public Radio:

Lawful votes are unconstitutionally discarded in Colorado, often because a voter’s signature doesn’t match what’s on file, according to a lawsuit filed in Denver District Court late last week.

The signature match requirement is meant to prevent voter fraud, since mail or at-home voting takes place away from a polling site. But, the lawsuit said, fraud is extremely rare, and ballot rejections disproportionately impact diverse communities, disabled people and the youngest and oldest voters.

“For the vast majority of Colorado voters who vote by mail this fundamental right is contingent on an arbitrary, deeply flawed signature matching process,” read the lawsuit. “While ostensibly deployed to verify voter identity, signature matching is election integrity theater: it disenfranchises qualified voters by the tens of thousands, all for the appearance — but not the reality — of election integrity.”

The lawsuit notes that actual voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

A similar lawsuit was filed last month in Washington. Both were filed in state court, on state law grounds (to avoid federal questions that may tee up review in the United States Supreme Court). I’ll be watching these in the months ahead.

CNN:

The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency this summer turned down a multimillion-dollar proposal to protect election officials from harassment ahead of the midterm elections, multiple people familiar with the matter told CNN.

The plan’s rejection comes as some DHS and cyber officials have expressed concern about their work to stem disinformation being cast as “partisan,” according to multiple people familiar with DHS policy discussions. Last month, DHS shut down its high-profile Disinformation Governance Board after Republicans criticized the expert chosen to lead the board as being overly partisan.

“DHS got very spooked after the failed rollout of the Disinformation Governance Board, even though the message [from administration officials] was clear that we can’t back down, we can’t be bullied by the right,” a senior US official told CNN.

The proposal, which was made by a federally funded nonprofit, also included plans to track foreign influence activity and modestly increase resources for reporting domestic mis- and disinformation related to voting.

DHS officials had legal concerns about the plan’s scope and whether it could be in place for November, the people said. But the decision not to adopt the anti-harassment part of the proposal has drawn frustration from at least two election officials as their colleagues nationwide continue to face an unprecedented wave of violent threats often inspired by online misinformation.

Bolts:

Ever since allies of Donald Trump in Michigan failed to stall the certification of Joe Biden’s win in 2020, they have pursued a methodical purge of election officials who affirmed the results, replacing them with new canvassers who wanted to overturn the election—and who could thwart the will of voters in the future.

Conservatives put their cards on the table sooner than expected. With Trump’s possible comeback bid still two years away, Republican members of Michigan’s State Board of Canvassers last week blocked two proposed constitutional amendments regarding abortion rights and voting rights. They flouted the usually-decisive recommendation of the state’s Bureau of Elections, which had determined that both measures received more than enough signatures to appear on the November ballot. 

The state Supreme Court intervened on Thursday in a pair of 5-2 decisions that will put both amendments on the Nov. 8 ballot, meaning Michiganders will decide whether to codify the right to access abortion in the state constitution and whether to expand ballot access by strengthening a slate of voting procedures like mail-in voting.

But this also marks a failure for Michigan Republicans’ trial balloon for subverting future elections, whether the 2024 presidential race or the midterms. Once again, GOP canvassers weaponized their role in the long chain of custody over election processes, and this time they stayed unified long enough to halt routine procedures. But a majority on the high court did not blink, signaling that they are willing to act as a backstop—and could again in the future.
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“It was dangerous for democracy when Canvassers in Michigan said they would refuse to certify the election results in 2020,” Josh Douglas, a University of Kentucky professor specialized in election law, told Bolts. “The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision on both of these initiatives show that refusing to put these issues on the ballot was the same kind of overreach.”

For Leah Litman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, the sequence of events at least establishes a precedent for how the state’s high court could intervene after the 2022 or 2024 elections if GOP canvassers similarly attempt to block results. 

But that road map would only work “if the court stays the same,” she added. 

Two justices on the Michigan Supreme Court are running for re-election in November—Democrat Richard Bernstein, who voted with the majority on Thursday, and Republican Brian Zahra, one of the dissenters. The GOP would flip the seven-member court if it sweeps both seats. On the one hand, that would not have been enough to change Thursday’s rulings since Republican Elizabeth Clement voted with the four Democrats. Four of the justices who voted to restore the amendments on Thursday—enough for a majority—have terms that are meant to last through the end of 2026.

Still, the two rulings were handed down almost along party lines and Clement did not write an opinion in either, leaving some uncertainty over how a higher-profile partisan confrontation over a presidential election would unfold. The next two years could also bring an unforeseen vacancy on the court, which would be filled by whomever wins November’s governor’s race between Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer and Republican Tudor Dixon, who is endorsed by Trump and has falsely said the 2020 election was stolen.