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      Could the Vote Be Contested Again? 5 Threats to a Smooth Election

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      Litigation, disinformation and battles over certifying the vote all have the potential to complicate the process.For the past four years, Donald J. Trump has been proclaiming the American electoral process “rigged,” decrying events that displease him as “election interference” and laying the groundwork to contest another loss at the polls.It follows the playbook from his loss in 2020, when the former president weaponized disinformation and exploited perceived weak points or vagueness in election law in an attempt to overturn results.At the same time, lawmakers and election officials have been trying to shore up the electoral system against another potential attempt to subvert a presidential election. Federal laws regarding the Electoral College were changed. There is stronger case law to knock down specious legal claims, and Mr. Trump is no longer sitting in the Oval Office with the levers of government in his grasp.But even with a national effort to reinforce the country’s democratic institutions, a smooth path to picking the next president still requires the good faith buy-in of its citizens, candidates and political parties. Absent that, there are a number of ways that the next few weeks — both before and after the polls close — could be rocky.Here is a look at some possibilities:Elizabeth Young, an assistant state attorney general representing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, argued an election-related case before members of Georgia’s Supreme Court last month.Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressA flood of litigationAlready, more than 187 election-related lawsuits have been filed, including at least 116 seeking some restrictions to voting and 68 filed by those seeking to expand or protect voting, according to data from Democracy Docket, a Democratic-aligned group that tracks election cases. The cases represent an extraordinary inundation of litigation before the election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Secret Files in Election Case Show How Judges Limited Trump’s Privilege

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      The partly unsealed rulings, orders and transcripts open a window on a momentous battle over grand jury testimony that played out in secret, creating important precedents about executive privilege.Court documents unsealed on Monday shed new light on a legal battle over which of former President Donald J. Trump’s White House aides had to testify before a grand jury in Washington that charged him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, showing how judges carved out limits on executive privilege.The trove — including motions, judicial orders and transcripts of hearings in Federal District Court in Washington — did not reveal significant new details about Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power. But it did open a window on important questions of presidential power and revealed how judges grew frustrated with Mr. Trump’s longstanding strategy of seeking to delay accountability for his attempts to overturn his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr.The documents also created important — if not binding — precedents about the scope of executive privilege that could influence criminal investigations in which a current or former president instructs subordinates not to testify before a grand jury based on his constitutional authority to keep certain internal executive branch communications secret.Starting in the summer of 2022, and continuing with the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel later that year, the Justice Department undertook a wide-ranging and extraordinary effort to compel grand jury testimony from several close aides to Mr. Trump. Prosecutors believed the aides had critical information about the former president’s attempts to overturn the results of the election.The effort, which ended in the spring of the following year, was largely intended to obtain firsthand accounts from key figures who had used claims of executive privilege and other legal protections to avoid testifying to investigators on the House committee that examined the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tommy Robinson, U.K. Anti-immigrant Agitator, Jailed for Contempt of Court

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      The founder of the English Defence League was sentenced to 18 months for ignoring a court order to stop making false claims about a teenage Syrian refugee.Tommy Robinson, Britain’s best-known far-right and anti-immigrant agitator, was sentenced on Monday to 18 months in prison for defying a court order by repeating false claims about a teenage Syrian refugee who had successfully sued him for libel.Mr. Robinson appeared in court and admitted to breaching a High Court order in 2021 that barred him from repeating the libelous allegationsIn announcing the sentence, Justice Jeremy Johnson said that no one was above the law.“The breaches were not accidental or negligent or merely reckless,” he said, according to Reuters. “Each breach of the injunction was a considered and planned and deliberate and direct and flagrant breach of the court’s order.”Mr. Robinson, 41, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was the founder of the English Defence League, a nationalist, anti-Muslim group known for its violent street protests in the late 2000s and 2010s.He had returned to Britain last week after several months abroad and turned himself in on Friday at a police station in Kent ahead of his court hearing in Woolwich, a town in southeastern London.The sentencing came two days after thousands of his supporters took to the streets of London for a rally that prompted a large counter demonstration. Both events were mostly peaceful, with a heavy police presence and just a handful of arrests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Musk Wins Appeal Over Tweet He Had to Delete About Union Push

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      The Fifth Circuit court ruled that the 2018 post was protected speech. It also vacated an order to reinstate a pro-union Tesla worker who was fired.A federal appeals court handed Elon Musk a victory in a freedom-of-speech case on Friday by overturning an earlier ruling in a dispute between the billionaire and the National Labor Relations Board.In March last year, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans affirmed the board’s finding that Tesla illegally fired an employee involved in union organizing, and that Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, had illegally threatened workers’ stock options in a post on Twitter if they chose to unionize. The opinion allowed the labor board to enforce its 2021 order requiring Tesla to reinstate, with back pay, the employee, Richard Ortiz, and Mr. Musk to delete the 2018 post.Mr. Musk challenged the panel’s ruling, and on Friday the full court ruled, 9 to 8, that the labor board had improperly ordered him to delete the social media post. “The agency exceeded its authority,” the 11-page ruling said. “We hold that Musk’s tweets are constitutionally protected speech.”“Deleting the speech of private citizens on topics of public concern is not a remedy traditionally countenanced by American law,” the ruling added.The court sent the matter of Mr. Ortiz’s firing back to the labor board to review, saying the board had failed “to consider the fact that the actual decision maker in Ortiz’s firing harbored no anti-union animus.”The judges did not rule on whether Mr. Musk’s online comment constituted a National Labor Relations Act violation for illegally threatening workers. (The board has held that it did.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republican Legal Challenges to Voting Rules Hit a Rough Patch

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      The legal wars over election rules are raging even as voters around the country cast ballots. And several recent efforts by groups aligned with former President Donald J. Trump to challenge voting rules have been coming up short in federal and state courts.Judges in a number of political battlegrounds and other states have rejected legal challenges this month to voter rolls and procedures by Republicans and their allies.The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled that election officials cannot bar people with felony convictions from voting after their sentences are served.A Michigan state judge rejected a Republican attempt to prevent certain citizens living abroad, including military members, from being eligible to cast an absentee ballot in that swing state.And a federal judge in Arizona rejected a last-minute push by a conservative group to run citizenship checks on tens of thousands of voters.“They are hitting quite a losing streak,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who advises both Democratic and Republican election officials on rules and procedures and has been tracking election-related litigation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pennsylvania Supreme Court Allows Provisional Votes After Mail Ballot Rejections

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      The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, a pivotal 2024 swing state.The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that voters who submit mail-in ballots that are rejected for not following procedural directions can still cast provisional ballots.The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, the swing state that holds the most electoral votes and is set to be the most consequential in the presidential election.The court ruled 4 to 3 that the Butler County board of elections must count provisional ballots cast by several voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for lacking mandatory secrecy envelopes.Secrecy envelopes are commonly used to protect the privacy of a person’s vote. In Pennsylvania, voters must accurately sign and date this outer envelope before sending in their ballots.Under the new ruling, voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for being “naked ballots,” lacking the secrecy envelope, or for bearing inaccurate or missing information on the envelope will be given the chance to cast a provisional vote at their polling place. The ruling makes the practice available statewide.Provisional ballots are counted only when the voter’s registration is confirmed after voting — and the rejected ballot will not count. Many counties in the state will notify voters if their mail-in ballots are rejected for not following technical procedures and will give them the opportunity for a provisional vote.The court’s majority argued that allowing people a provisional vote helps ensure voter access while preventing double voting.The Republican litigants argued that the Butler County elections board had initially correctly voided the provisional ballots cast by the voters whose mail-in ballots had been rejected on procedural grounds. The ruling is a blow to the Republican National Committee and the state G.O.P., which brought the appeal to the state’s highest court.A spokeswoman for the R.N.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Pennsylvania Democratic Party, which had participated in appealing the case, considered the ruling a victory.“While Republicans try to block your vote, Democrats are protecting it and standing up for the principle that every eligible voter has a right to make their voice heard, no matter how they vote,” Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, and Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a joint statement. “This ruling reaffirms that principle.” More

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      José Rubén Zamora Will Leave Prison After Nearly Two Years

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      The case against José Rubén Zamora became a sign of crumbling democracy in Guatemala and a symbol of threats against press freedom across Latin America.After spending more than 810 days in a cramped cell with little more than his books to keep him company, one of Guatemala’s most renowned journalists will be released to house detention this weekend as he waits to find out whether he will be granted a new trial.The decision comes after a judge ruled Friday that José Rubén Zamora, the founder and publisher of elPeriódico, a leading newspaper in Guatemala that aggressively investigated government corruption, had spent too much time in prison without a trial and that he was not likely to flee. “I have never wanted to flee Guatemala, which is also my country, not just the country of the authorities in power,” Mr. Zamora, 68, told the judge. “If you place your trust in me, I will honor it.”Mr. Zamora was convicted last year of money laundering, sentenced to as many as six years in prison and fined about $40,000. He called the charges politically motivated and said they were retaliation for his newspaper’s focus on public corruption.As part of his detention outside jail, he will be required to report periodically to the authorities and remain confined in his home.His trial was plagued with irregularities and was broadly seen as fundamentally unfair — another move to undermine democracy and target critical press coverage during the administration of former President Alejandro Giammattei.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nebraska Supreme Court Upholds Voting Rights for Felons

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      The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the secretary of state on Wednesday to allow people with felony convictions to vote after finishing their sentences, resolving confusion about who can participate in this year’s election and rejecting an argument by the state attorney general that lawmakers overstepped in extending voting rights to those with convictions.The ruling, issued with early balloting in the state already underway and voter registration deadlines approaching quickly, will help shape the state’s electorate, which can carry special importance in presidential races because of the way Nebraska splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than using the winner-takes-all approach of most states. Nebraska also has a competitive U.S. Senate race this year, as well as a tightly contested U.S. House race in the Omaha area. The ruling on Wednesday was expected to affect thousands of potential voters.Nebraska, which usually votes Republican in statewide races, was part of a national trend in loosening voting rules for people with criminal records. In 2005, lawmakers in the state abolished a lifetime voting ban for people convicted of felonies, but continued to require people to wait two years to vote after finishing their sentences. This year, in a bipartisan vote, lawmakers got rid of that waiting period, clearing the way for people to cast ballots immediately after finishing prison and parole terms.Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature, but the measure attracted skepticism from Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans.Just before the new measure was set to take effect this summer, Mr. Hilgers released a written opinion saying that both the new law and the 2005 law were improper. He argued that under the Nebraska Constitution, only the state’s Board of Pardons could restore voting rights to someone with a felony conviction. Mr. Evnen then instructed county election officials to stop registering voters with felony convictions. The Board of Pardons is made up of Mr. Pillen, Mr. Hilgers and Mr. Evnen.Reached on Wednesday morning, Cindi Allen, a deputy secretary of state, said Mr. Evnen’s office planned to comment on the ruling on Wednesday afternoon. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hilgers said they were reviewing the ruling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More