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      Supreme Court Won’t Hear Pennsylvania Election Case on Mailed Ballots

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySupreme Court Won’t Hear Pennsylvania Election Case on Mailed BallotsIn dissent, three justices said the court should have used the case to provide guidance in future elections.Election workers counting ballots in Philadelphia after the presidential election last year.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021Updated 7:58 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not hear an appeal from Pennsylvania Republicans who sought to disqualify mailed ballots in the 2020 presidential election that arrived after Election Day.The court’s brief order gave no reasons for turning down the case, which as a practical matter marked the end of Supreme Court litigation over the election. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented, saying the court should have used it to provide guidance in future elections.The dissenting justices acknowledged that the number of ballots at issue in the case was too small to affect President Biden’s victory in the state. But the legal question the case presented — about the power of state courts to revise election laws — was, they said, a significant one that should be resolved without the pressure of an impending election.The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in September that ballots sent before Election Day could be counted if they arrived up to three days after. On two occasions before the election, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case, though several justices expressed doubts about the state court’s power to override the State Legislature, which had set an Election Day deadline for receiving mailed ballots.On Monday, Justice Thomas wrote that the time was now right to take up the case.“At first blush,” he wrote, “it may seem reasonable to address this question when it next arises. After all, the 2020 election is now over, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision was not outcome determinative for any federal election. But whatever force that argument has in other contexts, it fails in the context of elections.”“Because the judicial system is not well suited to address these kinds of questions in the short time period available immediately after an election,” Justice Thomas wrote, “we ought to use available cases outside that truncated context to address these admittedly important questions.”In a separate dissent, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, agreed that “our review at this time would be greatly beneficial.”“A decision in these cases would not have any implications regarding the 2020 election,” Justice Alito wrote. “But a decision would provide invaluable guidance for future elections.”On Oct. 19, before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, the justices deadlocked, 4 to 4, on an emergency application in the case. Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said they would have granted a stay blocking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision. On the other side were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three-member liberal wing: Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.Later that month, the justices refused a plea from Republicans in the state to fast-track a decision on whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had acted lawfully.In a statement issued at the time, Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, criticized the court’s treatment of the matter, which he said had “needlessly created conditions that could lead to serious postelection problems.”“The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has issued a decree that squarely alters an important statutory provision enacted by the Pennsylvania Legislature pursuant to its authority under the Constitution of the United States to make rules governing the conduct of elections for federal office,” Justice Alito wrote, adding that he regretted that the election would be “conducted under a cloud.”“It would be highly desirable to issue a ruling on the constitutionality of the State Supreme Court’s decision before the election,” Justice Alito wrote. “That question has national importance, and there is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the federal Constitution.”But there was not enough time, he wrote. Still, Justice Alito left little doubt about where he stood on the question in the case.“The provisions of the federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless,” he wrote, “if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”Even after the election, Pennsylvania Republicans continued to seek Supreme Court review in the case, Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, No. 20-542, saying the justices should address the issue it presented in an orderly way.“By resolving the important and recurring questions now, the court can provide desperately needed guidance to state legislatures and courts across the country outside the context of a hotly disputed election and before the next election,” their brief said. “The alternative is for the court to leave legislatures and courts with a lack of advance guidance and clarity regarding the controlling law — only to be drawn into answering these questions in future after-the-fact litigation over a contested election, with the accompanying time pressures and perceptions of partisan interest.”On Monday, Justice Thomas wrote that the court had missed an opportunity.“One wonders what this court waits for,” he wrote. “We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.”“The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling,” Justice Thomas wrote. “By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fact-Checking Trump's Lawyers on Day 4 of Impeachment Trial

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentFriday’s HighlightsDay 4: Key TakeawaysWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFact CheckTrump’s Lawyers Repeated Inaccurate Claims in Impeachment TrialThe three members of the former president’s legal team made a number of misleading or false claims about the events of Jan. 6, antifa, the impeachment process and voter fraud.Former President Donald J. Trump’s defense lawyers Bruce L. Castor Jr. and Michael van der Veen arriving at the Capitol on Friday.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 7:52 p.m. ETAs they mounted their defense of the former president on Friday, Donald J. Trump’s lawyers made a number of inaccurate or misleading claims about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s remarks, the impeachment process and 2020 election. Many claims were echoes of right-wing talking points popularized on social media or ones that were spread by Mr. Trump himself.Here’s a fact check.Mr. Trump’s lawyers were misleading about what happened on Jan. 6.What Was Said“Instead of expressing a desire that the joint session be prevented from conducting its business, the entire premise of his remarks was that the democratic process would and should play out according to the letter of the law.” — Michael van der Veen, lawyer for Mr. TrumpFalse. In his speech on Jan. 6 and before, Mr. Trump repeatedly urged former Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification of the Electoral College votes, saying Mr. Pence should “send it back to the States to recertify.” Mr. Trump continued his speech on Jan. 6 saying he was “challenging the certification of the election.”What Was Said“Far from promoting insurrection of the United States, the president’s remarks explicitly encouraged those in attendance to exercise their rights peacefully and patriotically.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is exaggerated. Mr. Trump used the phrase “peacefully and patriotically” once in his speech, compared with 20 uses of the word “fight.”What Was Said“As everyone knows, the president had spoken at hundreds of large rallies across the country over the past five years. There had never been any moblike or riotous behaviors.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is misleading. While no other Trump rally has led to a siege of the Capitol, there have been episodes of violence, sometimes encouraged by the president. Less than two months before the riot on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump waved to supporters who had gathered in Washington to protest his election loss and who later violently clashed with counterprotesters. Previously, other supporters had attacked counterprotesters, and in one case a BBC cameraman, at several Trump rallies. Mr. Trump called one victim “disgusting” and offered to pay the legal fees of a supporter who had punched a protester.What Was Said“Given the timeline of events, the criminals at the Capitol weren’t there at the Ellipse to even hear the president’s words. They were more than a mile away engaged in their preplanned assault on this very building.” — Bruce L. Castor Jr., another lawyer for Mr. TrumpThis is misleading. It is true that the Capitol was first breached before Mr. Trump had concluded his remarks, but this does not rule out the possibility that some rioters were inspired by his speech. In fact, several have said that they were.For example, Robert L. Bauer, who had attended Mr. Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 and entered the Capitol, told law enforcement that when Mr. Trump told the crowd to march to the Capitol (about 16 minutes into his speech), many heeded those words. Mr. Bauer “reiterated that he marched to the U.S. Capitol because President Trump said to do so,” according to a criminal complaint.Mr. Castor’s reasoning that Mr. Trump could not have incited the crowd to riot because the siege was preplanned also ignores an argument that House managers had made this week: Mr. Trump had spent months trying to invalidate the results of the election and encouraging his supporters to act.What Was Said“At no point was the president informed the vice president was in any danger.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is disputed. Comments by Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, suggest otherwise. This week, Mr. Tuberville recounted that he and Mr. Trump had spoken just as the Capitol was breached before the phone call was cut short.“I said ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,’” Mr. Tuberville said.They made inaccurate references to antifa, left-wing protests and the 2016 election.What Was Said“One of the first people arrested was the leader of antifa.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is misleading. Mr. van der Veen was most likely referring to John E. Sullivan, a Utah man who was charged on Jan. 14 with violent entry and disorderly conduct. Mr. Sullivan, an activist, said he was there to film the siege. He had previously referred to antifa — a loosely affiliated group of antifascist activists that has no leader — on social media, but he has repeatedly denied being a member of the movement.The F.B.I. has said there is no evidence that supporters of the antifa movement had participated in the Capitol siege.What Was Said“As many will recall, last summer the White House was faced with violent rioters night after night. They repeatedly attacked Secret Service officers, and at one point pierced a security wall, culminating in the clearing of Lafayette Square.” — Mr. van der VeenFalse. This timeline is wrong. Law enforcement officials began clearing Lafayette Square after 6 p.m. on June 1 to allow Mr. Trump to pose with a Bible in front of a church, not because of a breach. Additional security barriers were installed after those events, according to local news reports and the National Park Service.What Was Said“The entire Democratic Party and national news media spent the last four years repeating without any evidence that the 2016 election had been hacked.” — Mr. van der VeenFalse. United States intelligence agencies concluded years ago that Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 election. The Republican-led Senate agreed last year that Russia had disrupted that election to help Mr. Trump.They mischaracterized the impeachment process.What Was Said“The House waited to deliver the articles to the Senate for almost two weeks, only after Democrats had secured control over the Senate. In fact, contrary to their claim that the only reason they held it was because Senator McConnell wouldn’t accept the article, Representative Clyburn made clear they had considered holding the articles for over 100 days to provide President Biden with a clear pathway to implement his agenda.” — David I. Schoen, another lawyer for Mr. TrumpThis is misleading. Democrats had considered delivering the article of impeachment earlier, but Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the majority leader, precluded the possibility. In a letter on Jan. 8, he informed Republican lawmakers that the Senate was in recess and “may conduct no business until Jan. 19.”Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, suggested withholding the articles longer after Mr. McConnell made his timeline known. In an interview with CNN, Mr. Clyburn suggested Mr. McConnell was “doing what he thinks he needs to do to be disruptive of President Biden,” but Democrats might respond to that tactical delay with one of their own to “give President-elect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running.”What Was Said“Our Constitution and any basic sense of fairness require that every legal process with significant consequences for a person’s life, including impeachment, requires due process under the law, which includes fact-finding and the establishment of a legitimate, evidentiary record. Even last year, it required investigation by the House. Here, President Trump and his counsel were given no opportunity to review evidence or question its propriety.” — Mr. SchoenThis is misleading. The point about lack of “due process” is one that Mr. Trump’s lawyers and supporters had argued during his first impeachment and one that law scholars have dismissed.There are no “enforceable rights” to due process in a House inquiry, and while those rights exist in the Senate trial, they are limited, said Frank O. Bowman III, a law professor at the University of Missouri and an expert on impeachment.“One justice suggested something like that if it were found that the Senate was deciding cases on a coin flip, that might violate due process,” Mr. Bowman said. “Anything short of that, basically court’s not going to get involved.”Moreover, a senior aide on the House impeachment team said that the Trump legal team was given the trial material, including all video and audio footage, before the start of the proceedings.They repeated Mr. Trump’s false claims about voter fraud.What Was Said“Based on an analysis of publicly available voter data that the ballot rejection rate in Georgia in 2016 was approximately 6.42 percent, and even though a tremendous amount of new, first-time mail-in ballots were included in the 2020 count, the Georgia rejection rate in 2020 was a mere 0.4 of 1 percent, a drop-off from 6.42 percent to 0.4 percent.” — Mr. CastorThis is misleading. Georgia elections officials have repeatedly debunked this claim, which conflates the overall rejection rate for mail-in ballots in 2016 to the rejection rate specifically for signature mismatch in 2020. (Ballots can also be rejected for arriving late or not having a signature, among other reasons.)In 2016, Georgia rejected about 6.4 percent of all returned mail-in ballots and 0.24 percent of those ballots because of signature-matching issues. It is unclear what the 0.4 percent refers to, but in both 2018 and 2020, Georgia rejected 0.15 percent of mail-in ballots because of signature-matching issues.What Was Said“President Trump wanted the signature verification to be done in public. How can a request for signature verifications to be done in public be a basis for a charge for inciting a riot?” — Mr. CastorThis is misleading. Contrary to Mr. Trump’s belief and Mr. Castor’s repetition of it, Georgia does verify signatures. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state noted that the state trained officials on signature matching and created a portal that checked and confirmed voters’ driver’s licenses. In a news conference last month debunking Mr. Trump’s claims, Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, explained that the secretary of state’s office also brought in signature experts to check over 15,000 ballots. They discovered issues with two, and after further examination, concluded that they were legitimate.“Shockingly, the disinformation continues,” Mr. Sterling tweeted during the trial.Nicholas Fandos More

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      After Record Turnout, Republicans Are Trying to Make It Harder to Vote

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter Record Turnout, Republicans Are Trying to Make It Harder to VoteThe presidential election results are settled. But the battle over new voting rules, especially for mail-in ballots, has just begun.Hundreds of people waited in line in Marietta, Ga., during early voting for last year’s presidential election.Credit…Ron Harris/Associated PressJan. 30, 2021, 2:18 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — In Georgia, Arizona and other states won by President Biden, some leading Republicans stood up in November to make what, in any other year, would be an unremarkable statement: The race is over. And we lost, fair and square.But that was then. Now, in statehouses nationwide, Republicans who echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of rampant fraud are proposing to make it harder to vote next time — ostensibly to convince the very voters who believed them that elections can be trusted again. And even some colleagues who defended the legitimacy of the November vote are joining them.According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, state legislators have filed 106 bills to tighten election rules, generally making it harder to cast a ballot — triple the number at this time last year. In short, Republicans who for more than a decade have used wildly inflated allegations of voter fraud to justify making it harder to vote, are now doing so again, this time seizing on Mr. Trump’s thoroughly debunked charges of a stolen election to push back at Democratic-leaning voters who flocked to mail-in ballots last year.In Georgia, where the State House of Representatives has set up a special committee on election integrity, legislators are pushing to roll back no-excuse absentee voting. Republicans in Pennsylvania plan 14 hearings to revisit complaints they raised last year about the election and to propose limitations on voting.Arizona Republicans have subpoenaed November’s ballots and vote tabulation equipment in Maricopa County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Phoenix. Legislators are taking aim at an election system in which four in five ballots are mailed or delivered to drop boxes.Those and other proposals underscore the continuing power of Mr. Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the November election, even as some of his administration’s top election experts call the vote the most secure in history. And they reflect longstanding Republican efforts to push back against efforts to expand the ability to vote.Proposals to toughen voting laws underscore the continuing power of Donald J. Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the election. Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesDemocrats have their own agenda: 406 bills in 35 states, according to the Brennan Center, that run the gamut from giving former felons the vote to automatically registering visitors to motor vehicle bureaus and other state offices. And Democrats in the Senate will soon unveil a large proposal to undergird much of the election process with what they call pro-democracy reforms, with lowering barriers to voting as the centerpiece. Near-identical legislation has been filed in the House.“There’s going to be a rush in the next year to legislate certain types of election reforms,” said Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor and co-director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project. “The jury is still out on whether the lesson from this election will be that we need to make voting as convenient as possible, or whether there will be a serious retrenchment that makes voting less accessible.”In truth, who controls a given legislature will largely decide what chances a bill has.In the 23 states wholly run by Republicans, Democratic bills expanding ballot access are largely dead on arrival. The same is true of Republican proposals to restrict ballot access in the 15 states completely controlled by Democrats.But in some states where legislators’ control and interests align, the changes could be consequential.In Arizona, where Democrats captured a second Senate seat and Mr. Biden eked out a 10,500-vote victory, lawmakers are taking aim at an election system in which absentee ballots have long been dominant.One bill would repeal the state’s no-excuse absentee ballot law. Others would pare back automatic mailings of absentee ballots to the 3.2 million voters who have signed up for the service. One ardent advocate of the stolen-election conspiracy theory, State Representative Kevin Payne of Maricopa County, would require that signatures on all mail ballots be notarized, creating an impossibly high bar for most voters. Yet another bill, paradoxically, would require early ballots that are mailed to voters to be delivered by hand.Legislators in Arizona are taking aim at an election system in which four in five ballots are mailed or delivered to drop boxes.Credit…Pool photo by Ross D. FranklinIn Georgia, where Mr. Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, both Republicans, have repeatedly defended the election results. The two are nevertheless supporting stricter voting requirements.A proposal by Republicans in the State Senate to eliminate no-excuse absentee ballots — a quarter of the five million votes cast in November — has drawn opposition even before it has been filed. But Republicans broadly support a bill to require submitting a photocopied identification card such as a driver’s license with both applications for absentee ballots and the ballots themselves. Mr. Raffensperger has said he supports that measure and another to make it easier to challenge a voter’s legitimacy at the polls.Brian Robinson, a Republican political consultant in Atlanta, said, “The overall purpose of these reforms is to restore faith in our election systems.” He added, “That’s not to say that it was a giant failure; that’s to say that faith has been diminished.”He allowed that Mr. Trump’s false charges of fraud “drives a lot of the loss of faith among Republicans,” but he also took aim at Democrats, noting that the Democrat who lost the 2018 governor’s race, Stacey Abrams, also had refused to concede, saying voter suppression had caused an “erosion of our democracy.”“Both sides have dipped their toes in those waters,” he said.But it’s clear that Republicans are now dipping much more than their toes. Democrats and some voting-rights advocates say the Republican agenda on voting is less about lost trust than lost elections. A Republican election official in suburban Atlanta said as much this month, arguing for tougher voting laws that reduce turnout after Democratic candidates won both of the state’s Senate seats in runoffs.“They don’t have to change all of them,” said Alice O’Lenick, who heads the Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections, “but they have got to change the major parts of them so we at least have a shot at winning.”Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who led legal battles against restrictive voting rules last year, said the reason for the state’s voting-law crackdown was transparent. “These were elections that withstood the scrutiny of two recounts, an audit and a whole lot of attention in the political arena and the courts,” he said. “The only reason they’re doing this is to make voting harder because they didn’t like the results. And that’s shameful.”A Republican election official in Georgia argued for voting laws that reduce turnout after the Democratic candidates won both of the state’s Senate seats in runoffs.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesIndeed, a handful of bills seem to make no bones about their partisan goals. One Arizona proposal would give the Legislature the power to decide presidential elections by overriding the secretary of state’s certification of electoral votes.Bills in Arizona, Mississippi and Wisconsin would end the practice of awarding all electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the statewide vote. Instead, they would be allotted according to votes in congressional districts — which in Republican states are generally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. In Arizona, the Legislature also would choose two electors.In the last election, the moves would have reduced Mr. Biden’s electoral vote total by 11 votes.Nebraska, on the other hand, would do the reverse with a similar partisan outcome: The state now awards presidential electors by congressional district, but legislation would move the state to the winner-take-all system. One of Nebraska’s three House districts voted for Mr. Biden in November.Even Republicans in states where the November election was not close are proposing to tighten voting laws. In Texas, a state with perhaps the nation’s strictest voting rules and one of the lowest levels of turnout, the state party has declared “election integrity” the top legislative priority. Among other proposals, legislators want to cut the time allotted for early voting, limit outsiders’ ability to help voters fill out ballots and require new voters to prove they are citizens.Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Legislature have mounted one of the most aggressive campaigns, even though any laws they enact probably would have to weather a veto by the state’s Democratic governor.A handful of Republican state lawmakers want to abolish no-excuse absentee voting only 15 months after the Legislature approved it in an election-law package backed by all but two of its 134 G.O.P. members who cast votes. The main supporter of the bill, State Senator Doug Mastriano, has claimed that Mr. Biden’s victory in the state is illegitimate, and spent thousands of dollars to bus protesters to the Jan. 6 demonstration that ended in the assault on the Capitol.Rolling back the law appears a long shot. But there seems to be strong Republican support for other measures, including eliminating drop boxes for absentee ballots, discarding mail-in ballots with technical errors and ending a grace period for receiving ballots mailed by Election Day.State Representative Seth Grove, the Republican chair of the committee holding 14 hearings into election practices, said at the initial gathering on Jan. 21 that he was not interested in dwelling on the 2020 election. “We want a better process going forward, and we’re committed to that,’’ Mr. Grove said.But at that hearing, legislators grilled Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, for three hours on her emailed guidance to county election officials before the Nov. 3 vote. In an interview, Ms. Boockvar said the purpose of the hearings was to further undermine voters’ confidence in democracy and to “lay the groundwork for disenfranchisement.’’“We are at a watershed, and we have a choice to make right now,” she said. “Acknowledge the truth — have public, vocal, strong support for the strength and resilience of our democracy. Or we can continue to perpetuate the lies.”Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvnia’s secretary of state, said Republicans were intent on undermining confidence in democracy.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn Washington, a Democratic agenda can be seen in the latest version of a far-ranging elections and voting bill that passed the House last year but died in the Republican-controlled Senate.This time, the Democrat-controlled Senate will file its own version, with committee hearings expected in February.Its voting provisions include allowing automatic and same-day voter registration, 15 days of early voting, no-excuse voting by mail, and online voter registration, as well as the restoration of voting rights nationwide to felons who complete their sentences. In one fell swoop, it would set minimum standards for American federal elections that would erase a host of procedural barriers to casting a ballot.It also would require the states to appoint independent and nonpartisan commissions to draw political boundaries, eliminating the profusion of gerrymanders that the Supreme Court said in 2019 were beyond its authority to control.Few expect much chance of passage in a deeply divided Senate, but the Democratic leaders in both houses have made it the first bill of the new congressional session, a statement that — symbolically, at least — it is the first priority of the new Democratic majority.Whether any of it goes beyond symbolism remains to be seen.Trip Gabriel More

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      Watch out for this misinformation when Congress meets to certify the election.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationWatch out for this misinformation when Congress meets to certify the election.Jan. 6, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETJan. 6, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETDavey Alba and An audit of election ballots in Atlanta in mid-November.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressAs Congress meets on Wednesday to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the November election, President Trump and his supporters continue to spread rumors, conspiracy theories and misinformation about the vote.Here are six false voter fraud claims that may be repeated during the proceedings on Wednesday.No, ‘glitches’ in Dominion Voting Machines did not change vote tallies.Claim: Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, deleted votes for President Trump.Fact: There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, including the machines with Dominion software, according to the federal agency that oversees election security.Background: In the weeks after the election, President Trump and his supporters spread baseless claims about Dominion. The claims included theories that “software glitches” changed vote tallies in several states, including Michigan and Georgia. No such changes were ever found.Mr. Trump and his supporters subsequently claimed that Dominion had hidden evidence of voter fraud, both by destroying machines or removing parts within the machines. Mr. Trump repeated those claims during a call with Georgia’s secretary of state last weekend. Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, said Monday of the claims of election fraud in the state, “This is all easily, provably false.”No, politicians in Georgia did not prevent an analysis of absentee ballots.Claim: President Trump and his supporters have claimed that absentee ballots in Georgia were rife with fraud and that state officials have not fully investigated.Fact: Election officials have audited absentee ballots and found “no fraudulent absentee ballots.”Background: The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, ordered law enforcement and election investigators to conduct an audit of more than 15,000 absentee ballot envelopes in Cobb County, based on a complaint that signatures were not adequately checked there. The audit found no fraud. Mr. Raffensperger has said that he also plans a statewide audit of each county’s signature-match policies and procedures.Georgia has already conducted two recounts, both by hand and machine, of all five million ballots cast in the state. No voting fraud was found.No, thousands of votes in Arizona were not changed to favor Biden.Claim: In an interview on the conservative cable channel Newsmax in December, the Arizona Republican chairwoman, Kelli Ward, said 200,000 ballots were digitally changed to give the victory to Mr. Biden, and Representative Paul Gosar amplified the falsehood on Twitter.Fact: Audits in Arizona have found no evidence of voter fraud, or changed vote tallies.Background: While early results in Arizona showed a close race, the final count revealed that Mr. Biden had won the state by more than 10,000 votes.Audits in Arizona’s four largest counties, which make up 86 percent of all votes in the state, turned up no evidence of systematic voter fraud.No, election workers didn’t stuff fraudulent ballots into suitcases.Claim: President Trump’s supporters have pointed to a video as proof that ballots were pulled from a “suitcase” at a vote-counting center in Atlanta.Fact: Election officials have said the surveillance video shows normal ballot processing. It is not unusual practice for poll workers to store ballots that still need to be counted on-site at the polling center.Background: As reported by The New York Times, late on Nov. 3, election workers in Fulton County, Ga., heard that they would be allowed to stop the vote-counting and retire for the evening. So they packed uncounted ballots into suitcases and prepared to lock up. When word came that they couldn’t leave yet, they dragged the suitcases back out and began counting the ballots again.But that scene of election workers taking out suitcases of ballots was selectively edited and pushed by allies of President Trump as one of the many false theories purportedly proving widespread election fraud. The conspiracists also named the election worker Ruby Freeman as a specific player in this false conspiracy event.No, there isn’t evidence that Pennsylvania election officials violated state law.Claim: President Trump’s campaign has claimed that Pennsylvania election officials improperly handled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots in violation of state election law.Fact: The Trump campaign’s legal efforts to disqualify votes in Pennsylvania have been unsupported by evidence.Background: The Trump campaign filed several claims in court seeking to invalidate Pennsylvania’s election results, and one ally of Mr. Trump, Senator Josh Hawley, has said he would challenge the results because he believed “some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws.”But the Trump campaign has included no evidence that any vote had been cast illegally.In a hearing on Nov. 17, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, acknowledged he had no proof to back up his claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. “This is not a fraud case,” Mr. Giuliani said.Four days later, the judge overseeing the case dismissed the lawsuit. It was also shot down last month by Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who said in a ruling, “Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”No, Pence does not have the power to change the election result.Claim: Vice President Mike Pence can reject state electors in the Electoral College.Fact: Federal law stipulates that the vice president’s role is to count Electoral College votes, not decide whether they are valid.Background: President Trump on Tuesday falsely claimed on Twitter that Mr. Pence has the power to reject electors when the Electoral College vote is certified.As president of the Senate, Mr. Pence is expected to preside over the pro forma certification of the Electoral College vote count in front of a joint session of Congress. The only electoral certifications available for Vice President Pence to preside over are the ones approved by each state.Ben Decker and Jacob Silver contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Can Only Republicans Legitimately Win Elections?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyCan Only Republicans Legitimately Win Elections?Trump and many of the G.O.P.’s leaders seem to think so, with ominous consequences for the future.Opinion ColumnistJan. 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETTwilight at a Trump rally in Georgia on Jan. 4.Credit…Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockOf the many stories to tell about American politics since the end of the Cold War, one of growing significance is how the Republican Party came to believe in its singular legitimacy as a political actor. Whether it’s a hangover from the heady days of the Reagan revolution (when conservatives could claim ideological hegemony) or something downstream of America’s reactionary traditions, it’s a belief that now dominates conservative politics and has placed much of the Republican Party in opposition to republican government itself.It’s a story of escalation, from the relentless obstruction of the Gingrich era to the effort to impeach Bill Clinton to the attempt to nullify the presidency of Barack Obama and on to the struggle, however doomed, to keep Joe Biden from ever sitting in the White House as president. It also goes beyond national politics. In 2016, after a Democrat, Roy Cooper, defeated the Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship of North Carolina, the state’s Republican legislature promptly stripped the office of power and authority. Wisconsin Republicans did the same in 2018 after Tony Evers unseated Scott Walker in his bid for a third term. And Michigan Republicans took similar steps against another Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer, after her successful race for the governor’s mansion.Considered in the context of a 30-year assault on the legitimacy of Democratic leaders and Democratic constituencies (of which Republican-led voter suppression is an important part), the present attempt to disrupt and derail the certification of electoral votes is but the next step, in which Republicans say, outright, that a Democrat has no right to hold power and try to make that reality. The next Democrat to win the White House — whether it’s Biden getting re-elected or someone else winning for the first time — will almost certainly face the same flood of accusations, challenges and lawsuits, on the same false grounds of “fraud.”It’s worth emphasizing the bad faith and dishonesty on display here. At least 140 House Republicans say that they will vote against counting certain electoral votes on Wednesday. Among them are newly seated lawmakers in Georgia and Pennsylvania, two states whose votes are in contention. But the logic of their objection applies to them as well as Biden. If his state victories are potentially illegitimate, then so are theirs. Or take the charge, from Ted Cruz and 10 other Senate Republicans, that multiple key swing states changed (or even violated) their election laws in contravention of the Constitution. If it’s true for those cases, then it’s also true of Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, unilaterally expanded voting, however meagerly. And yet there’s no drive to cancel those results.The issue for Republicans is not election integrity, it’s the fact that Democratic votes count at all.That said, not every Republican has joined the president’s crusade against self-government. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas shares the presidential ambitions of Cruz and Josh Hawley and others who want to disrupt the electoral vote count. But where they see opportunity, he sees blowback. Here he is in a statement released by his office:If Congress purported to overturn the results of the Electoral College, it would not only exceed that power, but also establish unwise precedents. First, Congress would take away the power to choose the president from the people, which would essentially end presidential elections and place that power in the hands of whichever party controls Congress. Second, Congress would imperil the Electoral College, which gives small states like Arkansas a voice in presidential elections. Democrats could achieve their longstanding goal of eliminating the Electoral College in effect by refusing to count electoral votes in the future for a Republican president-elect.So do seven of his Republican colleagues in the House, who similarly argue that this stunt will undermine the Republican Party’s ability to win presidential elections:From a purely partisan perspective, Republican presidential candidates have won the national popular vote only once in the last 32 years. They have therefore depended on the Electoral College for nearly all presidential victories in the last generation. If we perpetuate the notion that Congress may disregard certified electoral votes — based solely on its own assessment that one or more states mishandled the presidential election — we will be delegitimizing the very system that led Donald Trump to victory in 2016, and that could provide the only path to victory in 2024.But even as they stand against the effort to challenge the results, these Republicans affirm the baseless idea that there was fraud and abuse in the election. Cotton says he “shares the concerns of many Arkansans about irregularities in the presidential election,” while the House lawmakers say that they “are outraged at the significant abuses in our election system resulting from the reckless adoption of mail-in ballots and the lack of safeguards maintained to guarantee that only legitimate votes are cast and counted.” Even as they criticize an attempted power grab, they echo the idea that one side has legitimate voters and the other does not.It’s hard to say how anyone can shatter this belief in the Republican Party’s singular right to govern. The most we can do, in this moment, is rebuke the attempt to overturn the election in as strong a manner as possible. If President Trump broke the law with his phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia — in which he pressured Raffensperger to “find” votes on his behalf — then Trump should be pursued like any other citizen who attempted to subvert an election. He should be impeached as well, even if there’s only two weeks left in his term, and the lawmakers who support him should be censured and condemned.There’s no guarantee that all this will hurt the Republican Party at the ballot box. But I think we’re past that. The question now is whether the events of the past two months will stand as precedent, a guide for those who might emulate Trump.The door to overturning a presidential election is open. The rules — or at least a tortured, politically motivated reading of the rules — make it possible. Moreover, it is a simple reality of political systems that what can happen eventually will happen. It may not be in four years, it may not be in eight, but if the Republican Party continues along this path, it will run this play again. And there’s nothing to say it can’t work.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      It Took Mitch McConnell Six Weeks

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyIt Took Mitch McConnell Six WeeksWith its surreal defiance, the Republican Party has established a new normal for anti-democratic behavior.Opinion ColumnistDec. 16, 2020Electors in Georgia turning in their official ballots on Monday.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesEarly this week, electors in 50 states and Washington, D.C., formally chose Joe Biden as the next president of the United States.And after weeks (and weeks) of waiting, Republicans in the Senate began to acknowledge the president-elect’s victory.“We’ve now gone through the constitutional process and the electors have voted, so there’s a president-elect,” Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who is the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said.“The Electoral College has cast their votes and selected Joe Biden,” said a notably enthusiastic Senator Mike Braun of Indiana. “Legislatures and courts have not found evidence of voter fraud to overturn the results.”“At some point you have to face the music,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota said. “And I think once the Electoral College settles the issue today, it’s time for everybody to move on.” Similarly, Senator John Cornyn of Texas let us know that he thinks Biden is “president-elect subject to whatever additional litigation is ongoing. I’m not aware of any.”It is refreshing to see Republican lawmakers finally yield to reality. Still, there’s something concerning about each of these statements. That something was also there in Senator Lamar Alexander’s interview with Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Asked whether he had “any doubt who won the election,” the outgoing Tennessee senator answered, “Shouldn’t be after Monday. The states have counted, certified their votes. The courts have resolved the disputes. It looks very much like the electors will vote for Joe Biden.”The “something” is the idea that this past month of litigation (and angry outbursts and demanding phone calls with election officials) was somehow normal, that the “constitutional process” for presidential elections includes potential judicial override, that the Supreme Court weighs in on challenges to the outcome, and that everything is provisional until the Electoral College cast its votes, as if that process is anything more than a formality.To affirm Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the winners of the election more than a month after the end of voting — as Mitch McConnell did, on Tuesday morning, when he announced that “our country officially has a president-elect and vice-president elect” — is to treat the outcome as unofficial pending an attempt to overturn the result.In short, Republicans are establishing a new normal for the conduct of elections, one in which a Democratic victory is suspect until proven otherwise, and where Republicans have a “constitutional right” to challenge the vote in hopes of having it thrown out.Senator Mitch McConnell congratulated President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on his victory six weeks after Election Day.Credit…Pool photo by Nicholas KammWe’ve already seen this spread to down-ballot races. Sean Parnell, a Republican House candidate, refused to concede his race against the Democratic incumbent, Conor Lamb, citing voter fraud and signed onto a lawsuit, since dismissed, to throw out mail-in ballots. “I will continue to fight and follow the constitutional process until every legal vote is counted and all legal proceedings are resolved,” he said, more than a week after Lamb declared victory.John James, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Michigan, took a similar stance. “While Senator Peters is currently ahead, I have deep concerns that millions of Michiganders may have been disenfranchised by a dishonest few who cheat,” James said, days after voting ended with the incumbent Democrat, Gary Peters ahead. James did not concede until the end of the month.One rejoinder is that Democrats have played this game too. In 2018, Stacey Abrams took 12 days to end her campaign for Georgia governor. Her opponent, Brian Kemp, had also administered the election as secretary of state. In the years before, his office had improperly purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls and closed polling stations in predominantly Black areas throughout the state. His was a slim victory, and Abrams held out on a concession to call attention to Kemp’s clear conflict of interest.You see, despite a record high population in Georgia, more than a million citizens found their names stripped from the rolls by the Secretary of State, including a 92 year-old civil rights activist who had cast her ballot in the same neighborhood since 1968. Tens of thousands hung in limbo, rejected due to human error and a system of suppression that had already proven its bias. The remedy, they were told, was simply to show up — only they, like thousands of others, found polling places shut down, understaffed, ill-equipped or simply unable to serve its basic function for lack of a power cord.Abrams did not dismiss the election as “rigged” because there were more voters than she would have preferred. She did not call on judges to subvert the outcome or throw out Republican votes. She admitted defeat, but refused to concede that hers was a free and fair election. Contrast that with President Trump, whose complaint is that he had to compete in a free and fair election, and whose definition of “fraud” is a level electoral playing field.Following the president’s lead, some Republicans, under the guise of so-called election integrity, are even retreating from popular government itself. After Kemp’s successor as secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, refused to bend to demands to subvert the vote for the president, the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, David Ralston, announced that he would seek a state constitutional amendment to take the office away from voters and put it in the hands of the Georgia Legislature. His counterpart in Michigan, another swing state, has even floated his support for doing the same with presidential electors.Ongoing debates over coups and fascism and despotism, all keyed to foreign examples, miss the extent to which American history itself offers many examples of democratic backsliding — not into outright autocracy but into forms of competitive authoritarianism or herrenvolk democracy, in which only those designated as the rightful “people” have a legitimate say in government. Perhaps we should be looking less at whether the United States is on the path to authoritarianism and more at whether it’s moving away from the broad-based democratic aspirations of the postwar period back toward the narrow, restrictive democracy of the years between the end of Reconstruction and the crisis of the 1930s.Greater attention to anti-democratic moments in our history — like the spectacularly violent “redemption” of South Carolina in the 1870s or the Wilmington massacre and coup of 1898 — might leave us less surprised when one of our two major political parties recapitulates the arguments, the claims and even the methods of those in our past who sought liberty for themselves above liberty for others.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      He Wanted to Count Every Vote in Philadelphia. His Party Had Other Ideas.

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      Biden Transition Updates

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