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Tag: republican tricks
‘Election Integrity’ House Candidate Voted Twice In 2016 Primary

‘Election Integrity’ House Candidate Voted Twice In 2016 Primary

Matt Mowers, a former Trump administration official who is now running for a House seat in New Hampshire, voted twice in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, once in New Hampshire and one in New Jersey, the Associated Press reported. Some election experts say Mowers' double voting could be a violation of federal law.

Mowers was the New Hampshire director of then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's failed presidential campaign when he voted in the 2016 New Hampshire primary.

After Christie dropped out of the race, Mowers voted in the primary in New Jersey, using his parents' address for his voter registration there, the AP reported.

Federal law explicitly prohibits people from "voting more than once" in "any general, special, or primary election" for president.

"What he has done is cast a vote in two different states for the election of a president, which on the face of it looks like he’s violated federal law," University of Minnesota Law School professor David Schultz told the AP. "You get one bite at the voting apple."

Not all experts agree that Mowers violated the law, however. Steven Huefner of The Ohio State University law school told the AP, "With the right set of facts, it could be construed as a violation, but it's just not at all obvious to me that it is. It is a pretty murky question." The AP noted as well that the statute of limitations on Mowers' actions has run out.

Mowers, for his part, has made "election integrity" one of the pillars of his campaign.

According to his campaign website: "Nothing is more important or sacred than each American’s right to vote. To protect that right, we need to ensure that elections are secure, and the integrity of our electoral systems is strong. Just like President Trump, Matt supports establishing effective voter ID laws, regular audits of elections to verify vote totals and provide every American citizen with the certainty that their vote counts."

Mowers is not the first former Trump aide to be accused of voter fraud.

Former Rep. Mark Meadows, who served as Trump's chief of staff, is under investigation after he registered to vote in North Carolina in September 2020 claiming that his home address was a mobile home that he had neither lived in nor owned. In March 2020, Meadows had sold his North Carolina home when he left his House seat to work in the White House in March 2020.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, razzed Republicans after the latest allegation of a Trump official committing voter fraud emerged.

"Someone alert @GOPLeader, because the voter fraud has been found," the DCCC tweeted.

Despite ongoing Republican charges that voter fraud was responsible for Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election, it is actually exceedingly rare.

A Brennan Center for Justice report released in 2007 found that "most alleg­a­tions of fraud turn out to be base­less and that most of the few remain­ing alleg­a­tions reveal irreg­u­lar­it­ies and other forms of elec­tion miscon­duct," according to the center's website.

The few reports of voter fraud following the 2020 election have been about Trump voters.

Mowers, who worked as a senior adviser at the State Department during Trump's tenure, is running for the seat in New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District against incumbent Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas.

He ran against Pappas in 2020 and lost by 5 points.

Mowers faces a crowded GOP primary against at least six other Republicans, including GOP state Rep. Tim Baxter, former Trump White House aide Karoline Leavitt, and Gail Huff Brown, the wife of former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown.

Reprinted with permission from Ameican Independent

How Republican Attorneys General May Rig The 2024 Election

How Republican Attorneys General May Rig The 2024 Election

As their states' top law enforcement officials, Republican attorneys general could use their broad powers to undermine the results of the 2024 presidential election with false claims of voter fraud, legal experts told the American Independent Foundation.

A Republican attorney general who is determined to undermine election results in their state would have broad authority to open investigations into claims of voter fraud, issue opinions on election law, and could even indict elections officials and poll workers, legal experts said.

Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University, said that while the state officials are not directly involved in the elections process, they could wield the legal authority granted to them by their office to interfere in the electoral process.

Attorneys general "have the broadest lanes of options and the most independence, I would argue, out of any official in state government," Nolette told the American Independent Foundation.

"I don't want to give the impression they can do whatever they want," Nolette said. "But just because they're not election officials doesn't mean that they won't have an impact on the election. And, in fact, I think they could have a substantial impact on election rules, and certainly the morass of litigation which, unfortunately, probably seems inevitable at this point in future election cycles."

Seth Masket, a University of Denver political scientist, said in a hypothetical 2024 presidential contest, a rogue attorney general could target voters and election officials with criminal charges: "If you have a state which votes narrowly Democratic but the state government is largely Republican, and the attorney general is Republican, we could see situations where the attorney general supports challenges to the way the vote was conducted, that they echo and bring forward some local concerns about the security of the vote, that they try and prosecute people for voting illegally, that they go after county clerks."

One example comes from Texas, where, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, state Attorney General Ken Paxton attempted to indict two election officials, both Democrats, on criminal charges. Grand juries in both cases declined to charge the officials, but the two cases show the powers a right-wing attorney general could exercise in pursuit of voter fraud.

"Just the attorney general's involvement in this sort of thing could have the effect of intimidating some potential voters," Masket said.

Republicans running for attorney general in states which were close in the 2020 election appear ready to take a harder line against election crimes; many have begun to stoke fears around alleged voter fraud and undermine the legitimacy of state and national elections.

Kalamazoo attorney Matthew DePerno, who is running to be Michigan's next attorney general, spread a conspiracy theory in the aftermath of the 2020 election that voting machines in northern Michigan undercounted Republican votes. Trump has endorsed DePerno in the race.

Michigan Republicans don't hold an electoral primary for the attorney general nomination and instead will meet at their state convention in April to choose a candidate for the position. While another candidate, former Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard, currently leads in campaign contributions, DePerno could close the gap thanks to Trump's fundraising efforts on his behalf.

Republicans in Arizona and Wisconsin — where President Joe Biden won by 0.5 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively — have made the attorney general's power to prosecute election crimes a central part of their campaigns.

The front-runner for the Republican nomination in Arizona is Rodney Glassman, an attorney and former Democrat who has made conservative fears around voter fraud a key part of his campaign pitch. "Our elections need real oversight," Glassman said in his campaign announcement video. "If you cheat or commit fraud, you will be prosecuted."

Glassman has promised that, if elected, he will direct Arizona's recently formed Elections Integrity Unit to "investigate and prosecute election fraud." In the last 12 years, the Arizona attorney general's office has prosecuted and obtained convictions in just 34 cases of voter fraud.

These cases have backfired on Republicans in the past. Last September, an audit of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County that conservative activists had pushed for ended up awarding Biden 360 more votes. The Maricopa County Board voted last August to sue Republicans in the Arizona Senate for $2.8 million in damages to replace hundreds of voting machines and other voting equipment that was damaged in the audit.

Abraham Hamadeh, who is also running for attorney general in Arizona, was recently endorsed by the Koch-affiliated group FreedomWorks. Hamadeh has claimed that the 2020 election was rigged and promises to "prioritize the Election Integrity Unit and increase the number of prosecutors and investigators in order to be prepared and protect the 2024 election."

In Wisconsin, the front-runner in the Republican primary, Eric Toney, hasn't deployed the big lie explicitly. But he has gestured toward conservative anxieties about election security, saying on his campaign website that he "strongly supports improving and defending Wisconsin election laws."

Only one Nevada Republican has launched a campaign to challenge Democratic incumbent Attorney General Aaron Ford. Sigal Chattah, a Las Vegas attorney who became known for her legal opposition to the state's COVID-19 restrictions, hasn't made election integrity a major part of her campaign so far.

In 2020, Chattah donated $250 to Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, who was alleging that Democrats were prepared to steal the presidential election. In an interview with ABC News, Chattah said that Ford hadn't investigated voter fraud extensively enough. The Chattah campaign did not return a request for comment.

Many Republican attorneys general played an important role in trying to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election. In December 2020, Texas' Paxton filed a lawsuit petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the presidential vote totals in four states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In all, 17 out of 25 Republican attorneys general signed on to the lawsuit.

Ten GOP attorneys general have thrown their support behind lawsuits filed by the Pennsylvania Republican Party to prevent the state from counting mail-in ballots that arrived within three days after Election Day. Those late ballots would not have swung the election in Trump's favor.

While the Supreme Court quickly rejected the Texas lawsuit, its conservative majority could potentially have the power to decide the results of the next presidential election.

Were a Republican state legislature to overturn its state's elections by recalling electors and appointing an alternative slate — as Trump and his political allies across the country pushed legislatures in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania to do in 2020 — the determination of such a ploy's constitutionality could fall to the Supreme Court. Nolette noted that attorneys general, many of whom have experience litigating before the court, "could play an important if not decisive role."

Professor James A. Gardner, a constitutional and election law professor at the University of Buffalo, said he's not confident that other state officials could constrain the power of a rogue attorney general.

"In states where there is a Democratic governor, that will make a difference," Gardner told the American Independent Foundation. "Where there is unified Republican control, my confidence is zero."

He added, "What the Republicans have repeatedly shown by their behavior is that law doesn't matter to them at all."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

'Scam’: Thousands Of Florida Voters Switched To Republican Without Their Consent

'Scam’: Thousands Of Florida Voters Switched To Republican Without Their Consent

Thousands of Democratic voters in Miami-Dade County, Fla., have reportedly had their party affiliations switched to Republican without their authorization, according to the county election department's records.

According to Local 10 Miami, a total of 5,488 voters had been switched from Democrat to Republican, and 1,698 had been switched to Democrat. Last year, Republicans boasted that the number of Republican voters had surpassed Democratic voters in Florida.

While they attributed the accelerated growth to an "aggressive voter registration campaign," new records suggest that isn't the case. The vast majority of those who had been switched to Republican had not voluntarily made the change. Per the report, all of the recent victims were over the age of 65. The unauthorized changes they face follow similar reports from independent voters whose party affiliations were also mysteriously changed to the Republican Party.

Speaking to The Miami Herald, multiple voters expressed their concerns and frustrations about the change. Juan A. Salazar, a 77-year-old Dominican living in Little Havana, recalled the day he was approached by Republican canvassers. He explained how canvassers attempted to convince him to fill out an application to obtain a new voter ID card. At the time, he declined because he knew he'd receive one by mail.

However, the canvasser reportedly insisted that Salazar would "get it faster” if he filled out the application. Without signing any document or filling out an application, Salazar provided his name and they were able to look up his address. Weeks later, he received a new voter ID card that claimed he was now a member of the Republican Party of Florida.

During the interview with The Herald, Salazar expressed concern about the deceptive practice and how it will impact the upcoming primary election.

“This is a system to eliminate voters so that voters can’t participate in the primary,” Salazar said in an interview. “It concerns me about what’s going to happen in these next elections ... This is a scam.”

Back in December, the Republican Party of Florida issued a statement after an 84-year-old Democratic voter's registration was changed without her authorization.

“RPOF conducts its voter registration operation in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations. At no time was this voter registration changed without the registrant’s permission.”

However, local residents and lawmakers aren't buying it. “People are being taken advantage of,” Sen. Annette Taddeo (D-Fla.) recently said. “Lots of these people don’t speak English or are elderly.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Republican gerrymandering

Trial Reveals GOP 'Lies' And 'Secret Maps' In North Carolina Redistricting Process

In North Carolina, a civil trial has found Republicans and Democrats at odds over 2021’s redistricting process for congressional districts in the state. Democrats, in a lawsuit, have accused North Carolina Republicans of partisan gerrymandering, while Republicans are insisting that their new congressional maps are quite fair. And this week, the Raleigh News & Observer’s Will Doran reported that State Rep. Destin C. Hall — a Republican who oversaw GOP redistricting in North Carolina in 2021— testified that he had used secret maps in the process.

Doran reports, “A political trial that has mostly been dominated by math and academic research erupted in drama late Wednesday, when a top Republican redistricting leader said on the witness stand that he had used secret maps, drawn by someone else, to guide his work. That statement, made under oath, appears to directly contradict what he told Democratic lawmakers at the legislature in November, shortly before the Republican-led legislature passed those maps into law over Democrats’ objections.”

The 34-year-old Hall, who was first elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 2016 and is now serving his third term, described the maps as “non-consequential.”

“In the 2021 redistricting process,” Doran reports, “GOP lawmakers drew new maps of the political districts for North Carolina’s state legislature and U.S. House of Representatives seats, which will be used in every election from 2022 through 2030 — unless they are overturned in court, which is what this week’s trial has been about.”

Doran adds, “Republicans have defended their work as the most transparent redistricting process in history, and devoid of any political data that could have helped them tweak the maps to make them as favorable as possible to GOP candidates in the future. But on Wednesday, Hall — a Lenoir Republican who leads the House redistricting committee — said that he would sometimes refer to ‘concept maps’ that his top aide, Dylan Reel, had brought to him…. The liberal challengers in the lawsuit asked if they could see those concept maps — to analyze them, potentially for signs that they used a process that violated the rules the legislature was supposed to be following. But the legislature says those maps no longer exist.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, according to Doran, “accused North Carolina Republicans” of “withholding evidence,” implying that they knew the “concept maps” would be destroyed and should have saved them.

According to Doran, “Democratic Rep. Zack Hawkins, a member of the House redistricting committee, testified after Hall did on Wednesday and said he feels lied to. Hawkins also said he thought Hall, as the leader of the committee, could and should have done more at the time to ensure that outside materials with political data didn’t make their way into the process.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet