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      The Gerrymander Battles Loom, as G.O.P. Looks to Press Its Advantage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Gerrymander Battles Loom, as G.O.P. Looks to Press Its Advantage With new census results coming, Republicans control redistricting in key states, while Democrats prepare for legal challenges and look to redraw some maps of their own. Demonstrators at a rally protesting gerrymandering outside the Supreme Court building in Washington in 2019.Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersReid J. Epstein and Jan. 31, 2021Updated 6:37 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — With the election over and Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, officials in both parties are bracing for a bruising new battle with a different balance of power: the redrawing of congressional maps, where Republicans hold the advantage in many state legislatures across the country, including in key battleground states.Republicans hold total control of redistricting in 18 states, including Florida, North Carolina and Texas, which are growing in population and expected to gain seats after the 2020 census is tabulated. Some election experts believe the G.O.P. could retake the House in 2022 based solely on gains from newly drawn districts.Already, Republicans are discussing redrawing two suburban Atlanta districts held by Democrats to make one of them more Republican; slicing Democratic sections out of a Houston district that Republicans lost in 2018; and carving up a northeastern Ohio district held by Democrats since 1985.“I would say that the national vote could be the same as this year two years from now, and redistricting by itself would easily be enough to alter who controls the chamber,” said Samuel S. Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. He estimated that reapportionment alone could net the Republicans three seats, and gerrymandering in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida another five seats.With Democrats holding a 222-211 edge, Republicans would probably need to flip just six seats to win back the majority. But Dr. Wang and other good-government experts cautioned that other factors could determine the majority.Democrats will try to redraw districts in their favor in states like New York, Illinois and Maryland, they said. Some battleground states have adopted nonpartisan independent redistricting commissions. And President Biden did not create a wave of downballot victories for Democrats in the November elections, so there are fewer surprise winners who could easily lose their seats in 2022.While partisan warfare on Capitol Hill draws most of the national attention, the battles over redistricting are among the fiercest and most consequential in American government. Reapportionment and redistricting occurs every 10 years after the census, with states with the fastest-growing populations gaining seats in Congress at the expense of those with slower-growing or shrinking populations. The balance of power established by gerrymandering can give either party an edge that lasts through several election cycles; court challenges — even if successful — can take years to unwind those advantages.Outside of the State Capitol in Austin. Texas is expected to pick up House seats after the 2020 census results are tabulated.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThis year, Texas (with potentially three new seats) and Florida (two) are expected to be the biggest winners, while Illinois, New York and, for the first time, California will each lose seats once the Census Bureau makes the reapportionment figures official. That could give Republicans an inherent advantage in the midterm elections in November 2022 — regardless of Mr. Biden’s popularity then.The bureau is not expected to deliver its data until late July, several months behind schedule, giving state lawmakers and redistricting commissions far less time than usual to draw the maps and deal with inevitable court challenges before the 2022 primaries begin.Democrats have been fighting on slanted terrain with redistricting ever since Republicans ran the table during the 2010 midterm elections and drew themselves favorable gerrymandered maps in 2011 and 2012. Though courts invalidated them in states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina, many still remain.Even though Democrats won control of the House in 2018, “the lingering effects of partisan gerrymandering, disproportionately by Republican controlled legislatures, make it harder for the Democrats to hold onto control or win control,” said Bernard Grofman, a professor of politics at the University of California, Irvine, “because they have to win probably closer to 52 percent of the national vote, or definitely more than 51 percent.”A host of states have adopted independent commissions to draw maps, arguing that people without a vested interest would be more likely to draw fairer maps. Some good-government groups and political scientists have lobbied for more changes, such as the use of algorithms to determine district boundaries, though there is broad debate about what would be effective in erasing the partisan tilt of the process.Adam Kincaid, director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, is preparing for legal challenges to redistricting.Credit…T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesRepublicans have, for the most part, adopted an elections-have-consequences attitude toward the mapping process. Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party’s main mapmaking organization, said his energy will be directed toward the inevitable legal battles that will follow this year’s partisan map-drawing.“If it wasn’t for lawsuits that were brought in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Florida, Republicans would be in the majority today,” Mr. Kincaid said. The things to focus on, he said, were “defending maps drawn by Republican legislatures and also being more aggressive about going after Democrat gerrymanders in the blue states.”As they look to reframe the electoral maps, Republicans are debating how aggressive they should be. They can push the boundaries and try to win the most seats possible in 2022, which puts them at risk of losing more seats in future years in the growing suburbs that are attracting waves of Democrats. Or they can aim for a smaller number of Republican districts that can create a more durable majority, with the potential to last the decade.The central redistricting battlegrounds will be in Texas and Florida. Though both states are controlled by Republicans, the population growth has come largely from people of color and suburbanites — demographics that have trended toward Democrats during the Trump era.“Their ability to manipulate the map to the tune of 30 seats like they did last time is no longer on the table,” said Kelly Ward Burton, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “If the map plays out fairly, we will end up with more competitive seats than we have now.’’Kelly Ward Burton, the executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, at her Santa Barbara home.Credit…Damon Casarez for The New York TimesStill, the combination of sophisticated mapmaking software and the abbreviated map-drawing period will give Republican lawmakers a far freer hand to put into effect favorable districts in the next year. And Republicans in states like Texas and Georgia will benefit from the Supreme Court decision in 2013 on the Voting Rights Act, which lifted the requirement that they get federal approval for redistricting.“I’m very concerned,” said Manny Diaz, the former Miami mayor who this month became the new chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. He is spending his first weeks as chairman devising a plan to challenge and offset Republican efforts.A decade ago, Mr. Diaz led the Fair Districts Now effort, which proposed a constitutional amendment offering guidelines for redistricting in Florida. Voters approved the measure in 2010, in time for the 2011 redistricting. But Republicans in the legislature ignored many of the principles, installing a highly gerrymandered map that helped Republicans win 17 of the 27 House seats in 2012 while President Barack Obama won re-election.Although there were near immediate legal challenges, it was not until 2015 that the State Supreme Court struck down the redrawn map, saying eight districts had been aggressively gerrymandered to favor Republicans.In Texas, a similar concern is rippling through the electorate. On Thursday, the State Senate’s redistricting committee held a virtual hearing, welcoming public commentary. For over two hours, pleas came in from across the state: please draw fair maps.“I believe that gerrymandering is an existential threat to the nation,” said Rick Kennedy, who lives in Austin and ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2018 and 2020.Though the data for reapportionment is still outstanding, Phil King, the Republican who leads the redistricting committee in the Texas State House, said almost all of the population growth had come from the triangle between Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. He noted that the committee was probably going to have to extend some rural districts into urban areas to keep the population at roughly 850,000 per district.“If you’re in West Texas where most of the counties are 10 to 20,000 people, you’ve got to reach into those urban areas to pick up some population,” Mr. King said.Yet those slivers into urban areas are what Democrats and good-government groups denounce as a contorted form of gerrymandering, weakening one area’s political voice by spreading it among other districts — and one that disproportionately affects people of color.“We’ll continue to see racial gerrymandering and partisan gerrymandering in terms of packing in the urban areas,” said Allison Riggs, the interim executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, referring to a gerrymandering tactic of creating a heavily partisan district by “packing” it with supporters. Ms. Riggs argued gerrymandering lawsuits against the 2010 Republican-drawn maps in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.Members listening as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, delivers an address in the House Chambers on the opening day of the 117th Congress in the Capitol Building.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesDemocrats will draw lines for far fewer congressional seats. The biggest Democratic state, California, outsources redistricting to a commission, as do Colorado, Virginia and Washington. And Mr. Kincaid said Republicans were preparing to challenge Democratic maps in states like Illinois, Maryland and New Mexico.In New York, where Democrats control redistricting for the first time since 1991, half of the Republican congressional delegation — either seven or eight members, depending on the outcome of one undecided race — could see their districts disappear if Democrats pursue the most aggressive gerrymandering available.“It’s reasonable to expect that when the voters of New York have given Democrats a supermajority control of both houses of the legislature, that might create an opportunity that didn’t exist in the past,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.Some election experts argued that Republicans were so successful at drawing gerrymandered maps 10 years ago that it would be difficult for them to add to their advantage now.“The Democrats were able to win the House in 2018 despite the fact that there were some very gerrymandered states,” said Jonathan Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University who studies gerrymandering.Democrats are also in stronger position nationally then they were in 2011. Key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have divided government with Democratic governors who could veto maps, setting up likely court battles. In Virginia, Democrats won control of the state government in 2019 and in 2020 voters approved a nonpartisan redistricting commission, eliminating the ability of either party to dominate the redrawing of districts.Other battleground states like Michigan and Arizona have established independent commissions, rather than partisan legislatures, that will draw the new maps.Ben Diamond, a Florida state representative who leads the Democratic redistricting efforts there, is calling on his colleagues in the legislature to commit “to transparency and public engagement” and “a meaningful scheduled way of doing this.”He added: “The sooner we can lay out how this work is going to be done, from a public engagement and a transparency perspective, the better,”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than Ever

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than EverPennsylvania G.O.P. leaders have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, and would-be candidates are jockeying to prove they fought the hardest for him.Representative Scott Perry in December with members of the House Freedom Caucus who were asking that Bill Barr, the attorney general, release findings of investigation into allegations of 2020 election fraud.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesJan. 28, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAs a second impeachment trial for Donald J. Trump approaches next month, Republicans in states across the country are lining up behind the former president with unwavering support.Perhaps no state has demonstrated its fealty as tenaciously as Pennsylvania, where Republican officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Trumpism at the center of their message as they bolster the president’s false claims of a “stolen” election.Eight of nine Republicans in Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation voted to throw out their state’s own electoral votes for President Biden on Jan. 6, just hours after a mob had stormed the Capitol.A majority of Republicans in the state legislature had endorsed that effort.And one House member from the state, Scott Perry, was instrumental in promoting a plan in which Mr. Trump would fire the acting attorney general in an effort to stay in office.In the weeks since the Nov. 3 election, Republicans in Pennsylvania have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, the latest chapter in a rightward populist march repeated across other states. As elsewhere, the Pennsylvania G.O.P. was once led by mainstream conservatives, but it is now defined almost exclusively by Trumpism. It faces major statewide races in 2022, for offices including governor and the Senate, with an electorate that just rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Mr. Biden.Far from engaging in self-examination, Pennsylvania Republicans are already jockeying ahead of the 2022 primaries to prove that they fought the hardest for Mr. Trump, who, in spite of the losses by his party in the White House, the Senate and the House, still exerts a strong grip over elected Republicans and grass-roots voters.As the Republican base has shifted — suburbanites leaning more Democratic, and rural white voters lining up behind Republicans over culture-war issues — G.O.P. leaders recognize the extent to which the former president unleashed waves of support for their party. In Pennsylvania, just as in some Midwestern states, a surge of new Republican voters with grievances about a changing America was triggered by Mr. Trump, and only Mr. Trump.Supporters of President Trump marched outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in December as state electors met to cast their Electoral College votes.Credit…Mark Makela for The New York Times“Donald Trump’s presidency and his popularity has been a big win for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania,” said Rob Gleason, a former chair of the state G.O.P. Even though numerous state and federal courts rejected the Trump campaign’s baseless claims of voter fraud, Mr. Gleason said the belief that the voting was rigged “lingers in the minds of a lot of people.”He predicted it would drive Republican turnout in upcoming races. He said he had met this week with a prosecutor who “feels the election was stolen” and was pondering a run for a statewide judgeship this year.Other Republicans are more skeptical that lock-step support of the former president is the best path forward in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that is likely to be up for grabs in the next several election cycles.“We have become, over four years, the party of Trump, and it has been one test after the other,” said Ryan Costello, a former G.O.P. House member from the Philadelphia suburbs who has been critical of Mr. Trump and is exploring a run for Senate. “It is not a sustainable growth strategy to double and triple and quadruple down on Trump when he gets divisive.”Despite Mr. Costello’s apprehension, most Republicans thought to be mulling runs for Senate or governor have made it clear that they are prepared to pass a Trump loyalty test.They include members of the Republican congressional delegation, hard-line members of the legislature, and even Donald Trump Jr. The president’s oldest son is the subject of persistent rumors that he will run for high office in the state — mostly because of his ties to Pennsylvania, where he went to prep school and college. The Trump family spent an enormous amount of time campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2020, and as it seeks its next political stage, the state remains a big one.The transformation of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania has been stark. Less than two decades ago, it was led by political centrists such as former Senator Arlen Specter and former Gov. Tom Ridge, who became the first secretary of homeland security.Now it is embodied by Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus who won a fifth term in November for his Harrisburg-area seat. His Democratic opponent, Eugene DePasquale, said he lost the race “fair and square.” But he called the Republican congressman’s efforts on behalf of Mr. Trump in a scheme involving the Justice Department “a radical attempt to overthrow the election.”Demonstrators with a cut-out replica of former Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol this moth.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Perry, a purveyor of misinformation about the presidential election, acknowledged on Monday his role in introducing Mr. Trump to an official in the Justice Department. That official, Jeffrey Clark, was willing to abet Mr. Trump in pressing Georgia to invalidate its electoral votes for Mr. Biden.The plan never unfolded. But Mr. Perry, a retired National Guard general who dodged the new metal detectors in the Capitol, rejected calls by Democrats to resign.Just as resolute in their defense of Mr. Trump were the other Pennsylvania House Republicans who voted to reject the state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. Representative Conor Lamb, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania, said on the House floor that his Republican colleagues should be “ashamed of themselves” for spreading lies that led to the breach of the Capitol. His impassioned speech nearly precipitated a fistfight.“The Trump people were putting out a message: ‘We better see you publicly fighting for us,’” Mr. Lamb said in an interview this week. “The 2022 midterm is shaping up to be choosing the candidate who loves Trump the most,” he said of G.O.P. primary contests.But he called that an opportunity for Democrats to talk about issues affecting people’s lives, such as the economy and the pandemic, while Republicans remain fixated on the 2020 election. “They’re making their main political argument at this point based on a fraud; they’re not making it based on real-world conditions,” he said. “The election was not stolen. Biden really beat Trump.”Mr. Lamb, who has won three races in districts that voted for Mr. Trump, has been mentioned as a contender for the open Senate seat. “I would say I will be thinking about it,” he said.Apart from the House delegation, much of the Trumpist takeover in Pennsylvania has occurred in the legislature, where Republicans held their majorities in both chambers in November (a result that the party fails to mention in its vehement claims of election fraud in the presidential race).In contrast to states such as Georgia and Arizona, where top Republican officials debunked disinformation from Mr. Trump and his allies, in Pennsylvania no senior Republicans in Harrisburg pushed back on false claims about election results, some of them created by lawmakers themselves or by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.A majority of Republicans in the General Assembly urged the state’s congressional delegation in December to reject the state’s 20 electoral votes for Mr. Biden after the results were legally certified. Such was the pressure from grass-roots Trump supporters that the majority leader of the State Senate, Kim Ward, said in an interview last month that if she refused to sign on to such an effort, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”The full embrace of Mr. Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election followed months of Republican lawmakers’ echoing his dismissals of the coronavirus threat. Lawmakers who appeared at “ReOpen PA” rallies in Harrisburg in May, flouting masks and limits on crowd sizes, morphed into leading purveyors of disinformation about election fraud after Nov. 3.One state senator, Doug Mastriano, who is widely believed to be considering a run for governor, paid for buses and offered rides to the “Save America” protests in Washington on Jan. 6 that preceded the breach of the Capitol. Mr. Mastriano has said he left before events turned violent.State Senator Doug Mastriano with supporters of Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in November.Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressAs the legislature convened its 2021 session, Republicans recommitted to a hard-line agenda. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, was removed by the Republican majority as president of the State Senate at a legislative session on Jan. 5. Mr. Fetterman had strenuously objected to Republicans’ refusal to seat a Democratic lawmaker whose narrow victory had been officially certified.Republicans in the State House are seeking to change how judges are elected to ensure a Republican majority on the State Supreme Court, after the current court, with a Democratic lean, ruled against claims in election fraud cases last year.Republican lawmakers have also plunged into a lengthy examination of the November election, even though no evidence of more than trivial fraud has surfaced, and courts rejected claims that election officials overstepped their legal mandates.Republicans announced 14 hearings in the House. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, was grilled in the first one last week. Dismissing the series of hearings as a “charade,” she called on Republicans not to sow further distrust in the integrity of the state’s election, which drew a record 71 percent turnout despite a pandemic.“We need to stand together as Americans,” Ms. Boockvar said in an interview, “and tell the voters these were lies, that your votes counted, they were checked, they were audited, they were recounted many places, and the numbers added up and they were certified.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Gerrymandering Will Protect Republicans Who Challenged the Election

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storypolitical memoHow Gerrymandering Will Protect Republicans Who Challenged the ElectionTaking a position as inflammatory as refusing to certify a fair election would be riskier for G.O.P. lawmakers if they needed to appeal to an electorate beyond their next set of primary voters.Representative Jim Jordan and other Republican members on the House floor last week during the vote on impeaching President Trump.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesReid J. Epstein and Jan. 19, 2021, 7:17 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio comes from a duck-shaped district that stretches across parts of 14 counties and five media markets and would take nearly three hours to drive end to end.Designed after the 2010 census by Ohio Republicans intent on keeping Mr. Jordan, then a three-term congressman, safely in office, the district has produced the desired result. He has won each of his last five elections by at least 22 percentage points.The outlines of Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District have left Mr. Jordan, like scores of other congressional and state lawmakers, accountable only to his party’s electorate in Republican primaries. That phenomenon encouraged the Republican Party’s fealty to President Trump as he pushed his baseless claims of election fraud.That unwavering loyalty was evident on Jan. 6, when Mr. Jordan and 138 other House Republicans voted against certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential election. Their decision, just hours after a violent mob had stormed the Capitol, has repelled many of the party’s corporate benefactors, exposed a fissure with the Senate Republican leadership and tarred an element of the party as insurrectionists.But while Mr. Trump faces an impeachment trial and potential criminal charges for his role in inciting the rioting, it is unlikely that Mr. Jordan and his compatriots will face any reckoning at the ballot box.Almost all of them are guaranteed to win re-election.Of the 139 House Republicans who voted to object to Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, 85 come from states in which Republicans will control all levers of the redistricting process this year. An additional 28 represent districts drawn by Republicans in 2011 without Democratic input in states where the G.O.P. still holds majorities in state legislative chambers.Taking a position as inflammatory as refusing to certify a free and fair election would be much riskier for lawmakers in Congress and in statehouses if they needed to appeal to electorates beyond their next sets of primary voters — a group that itself remains loyal to the outgoing president.“With redistricting coming up this year, many members clearly made the decision that the bigger risks they faced were in the primary, and whatever risk they faced in the general election, the next round of gerrymandering would take care of that,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel for the Democracy Center at the Brennan Center for Justice.Not all of the House members who declined to certify the election results were from Republican-controlled states. Representative Mike Garcia of California, from a competitive district north of Los Angeles, voted against certification, as did Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, where the redistricting authority is independent.Representative Mike Garcia, a Republican from a competitive California district, voted against certifying Mr. Biden’s victory.Credit…Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesAnd some political scientists maintain that grass-roots movements and the whims of big donors can be more influential than gerrymandering as a cause for incumbents to drift to more extreme positions.Democrats, too, have been guilty of gerrymandering, particularly in states like Maryland and Illinois, and lawmakers in New Jersey drew a rebuke from national Democrats for their efforts to write a form of gerrymandering into their state Constitution in 2018 (they ultimately withdrew it). But Republicans have weaponized gerrymandering far more frequently, and to greater effect, across the country than have Democrats.With Republicans running strong in November’s down-ballot contests, the party is poised to draw favorable district lines for the next decade, cementing control of state governments and congressional districts in the large battleground states of Georgia, Florida, Ohio and Texas.Republicans control state legislative chambers and governor’s mansions in 23 states; in seven others, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Republicans control the legislatures, but the governors are Democrats who would most likely veto new district maps, setting up court battles later this year.Mr. Jordan’s district, which snakes from the western Cleveland suburbs south to the Columbus exurbs and then west, nearly touching the Indiana state line, has made him invulnerable to Democratic opponents. It has also made the task of a Republican primary challenge virtually impossible, given the logistical hurdles of building an appeal across an array of otherwise disconnected communities.“It takes two and a half hours to drive from where I live in Oberlin to the farthest point in the district,” said Janet Garrett, a retired kindergarten teacher and a Democrat who ran against Mr. Jordan three times. “The district is shaped like a duck, and I live up in the bill of the duck.”The Republican-drawn maps in Ohio haven’t just insulated Trump allies like Mr. Jordan. They have also resulted in an emboldened state Legislature that has aggressively pushed back against efforts by the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, to combat the coronavirus. Republican lawmakers pushed out Mr. DeWine’s public health director, sought to have Mr. DeWine criminally charged over his imposition of statewide public health restrictions and late last year filed articles of impeachment against Mr. DeWine.The political atmosphere in Ohio has left Republicans striving hard to stress their Trump loyalties while leaving Democrats demoralized.“It’s very hard to recruit candidates — they basically know that they can’t win,” said David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “Even if they were running in 2020, the outcome of their race was determined in 2011 when the map was finalized.”Though both parties have gerrymandered some congressional districts in states across the country, the current maps favor Republicans; as a result, they have to win a smaller share of votes nationally in order to maintain control of the House, and therefore the speakership.“There’s a substantial bias favoring Republicans in the House,” said Nick Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard Law School. “When Democrats win the popular vote by three or four points, like they did in the last election, they barely, barely win control of the House. If Republicans were to win the national vote by three or four points, they would have a very large majority in the House, as they did in 2014.”He continued, “Absolutely, at the moment, gerrymandering is artificially suppressing the numbers of Democratic votes in the House.”The protections afforded by partisan gerrymandering extend even further in state legislative races, where the lack of national attention has allowed some Republican-controlled legislatures to build significant advantages into the maps, even though a statewide party breakdown might favor Democrats.Take Michigan. It has often been a reliably Democratic state when it comes to statewide federal elections, having elected only Democratic U.S. senators since 2001 and having voted for Democrats for president every election since 1988, except for 2016.But Republicans have controlled the State House since 2008 and the State Senate since 1990. While there can often be a discrepancy between federal and state elections, the advantage Michigan Republicans hold in the State House often extends even beyond the normal variances in state elections.In 2020, for instance, the vote share for State House races in Michigan was essentially a 50-50 split between the two parties, according to data from The Associated Press, with Republicans holding a slim 14,000-vote lead. But Republicans retained a 58-52 advantage in the House, or a split of roughly a 53 percent to 47 percent.A State Senate Republican committee hearing in Gettysburg, Pa., in November on efforts to overturn presidential election results.r Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressSimilar advantages were evident in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, in ways that proved favorable to Mr. Trump. Republican-controlled legislatures in both of those states, as well as Michigan, held hearings into the election following pressure from Mr. Trump and his allies, with Democrats and election experts condemning the evidence-free sessions as feckless attempts to please the president.“If you didn’t have the gerrymandering in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, you might well have Democratic control of those legislatures,” said Mr. Stephanopoulos, the Harvard professor, “and with Democratic control of the legislatures, they never would have tried to suppress voting or delayed the processing of the ballots or considered any of Trump’s various schemes to overturn the election.”As for Mr. Jordan, he received a coveted shout-out from Mr. Trump during the Jan. 6 rally that precipitated the Capitol riot.“For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans,” Mr. Trump said. “And that’s what they are. There’s so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they’re out there fighting. The House guys are fighting.”Five days later, Mr. Trump awarded Mr. Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom.Annie Daniel More

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      State Capitols ‘on High Alert,’ Fearing More Violence

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutliveLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeInauguration SecurityNotable ArrestsIncitement to Riot?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyState Capitols ‘on High Alert,’ Fearing More ViolenceOfficials around the country are bracing for any spillover from last week’s violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. State legislatures already have become targets for protesters in recent days.A member of the Georgia State Patrol SWAT team looked on outside the Georgia State Capitol after the opening day of the legislative session on Monday in Atlanta.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressNeil MacFarquhar and Jan. 11, 2021Updated 8:22 p.m. ETIt was opening day of the 2021 legislative session, and the perimeter of the Georgia State Capitol on Monday was bristling with state police officers in full camouflage gear, most of them carrying tactical rifles.On the other side of the country, in Olympia, Wash., dozens of National Guard troops in riot gear and shields formed a phalanx behind a temporary fence. Facing them in the pouring rain was a small group of demonstrators, some also wearing military fatigues and carrying weapons. “Honor your oath!” they shouted. “Fight for freedom every day!”And in Idaho, Ammon Bundy, an antigovernment activist who once led his supporters in the occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, showed up outside the statehouse in Boise with members of his organization carrying “wanted” posters for Gov. Brad Little and others on charges of “treason” and “sedition.”“At a time of uncertainty, we need our neighbors to stand next to and continue the war that is raging within this country,” Mr. Bundy’s group declared in a message to followers.State capitals across the country are bracing for a spillover from last week’s violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, with state legislatures already becoming targets for protesters in the tense days around the inauguration of the incoming president, Joseph R. Biden Jr.Gone is a large measure of the bonhomie that usually accompanies the annual start of the legislative season, replaced by marked unease over the possibility of armed attacks and gaps in security around statehouses that have long prided themselves on being open to constituents.“Between Covid and the idea that there are people who are armed and making threats and are serious, it was definitely not your normal beginning of session,” said Senator Jennifer A. Jordan, a Democratic legislator in Georgia who watched the police officers assembled outside the State Capitol in Atlanta on Monday from her office window. “Usually folks are happy, talking to each other, and it did not have that feel.”Dozens of state capitals will be on alert in the coming days, following calls among a mix of antigovernment organizations for actions in all 50 states on Jan. 17. Some of them come from far-right organizations that harbor a broad antigovernment agenda and have already been protesting state Covid-19 lockdowns since last spring. The F.B.I. this week sent a warning to local law enforcement agencies about the potential for armed protests in all 50 state capitals.In a video news conference on Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said that “everybody is on high alert” for protests in Sacramento in the days ahead.The National Guard would be deployed as needed, he said, and the California Highway Patrol, responsible for protecting the Capitol, was also on the lookout for any budding violence. “I can assure you we have a heightened, heightened level of security,” he said.In Michigan, the state police said they had beefed up their presence around the State Capitol in Lansing and would continue that way for weeks. The commission that oversees the Statehouse voted on Monday to ban the open carry of firearms inside the building, a move Democratic lawmakers had been demanding since last year, when armed protesters challenging government Covid-19 lockdowns stormed the building.Two of those involved in the protests were later arrested in what the authorities said was a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and put her on trial.Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, took to Twitter to warn the public away from the Statehouse, saying it was not safe.Images from the Wisconsin state legislature in Madison showed large sheets of plywood being readied to cover the ground-floor windows. In St. Paul, Minn., the Statehouse has been surrounded by a chicken-wire fence since early last summer, when social justice protests erupted over the killing of George Floyd in neighboring Minneapolis.Workers boarded up the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison on Monday.Credit…Todd Richmond/Associated PressPatricia Torres Ray, a Democratic state senator, said the barrier had served to protect the building and the legislators, but concerns remained about possible gaps, such as the system of underground tunnels that link many public buildings in Minnesota to allow people to avoid walking outdoors in the winter.Gov. Jay Inslee in Washington ordered extra security after an armed crowd of Trump supporters breached the fence at the governor’s mansion last week while he was at home. State troopers intervened to disperse the crowd.In Texas, Representative Briscoe Cain, a conservative Republican from the Houston suburb of Deer Park, said that the legislature in Austin was likely protected by the fact that so many lawmakers carry firearms.“I have a pistol on my hip as we speak,” Mr. Cain said in a telephone interview on Monday. “I hope they’re never necessary, but I think it’s why they will never be necessary.”The Texas Legislature, dominated by Republicans, meets every two years and was scheduled to begin its 140-day session at noon on Tuesday.There may be efforts to reduce the presence of guns in the Capitol, Mr. Cain said, but he predicted that they would be doomed to failure given widespread support for the Second Amendment.In Missouri, Dave Schatz, the Republican president of the State Senate, said hundreds of lawmakers had gathered on Monday on the Statehouse lawn in Jefferson City for the swearing-in of Gov. Mike Parson and other top officials. Although security was tight, with the roads around the building closed, the presence of police and other security officers was normal for the day, Mr. Schatz said, and no fellow legislators had buttonholed him so far about increased security.“We are far removed from the events that occurred in D.C.,” he said.In Nevada, a Republican leader in Nye County posted a letter on Friday that likened recent protests of the election results across the country to the American Revolution, declaring: “The next 12 days will be something to tell the grandchildren! It’s 1776 all over again!”The letter — written by Chris Zimmerman, the chairman of the Nye County Republican Central Committee — prompted a rebuke over the weekend from Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat who represents the county.Gov. Mike Parson of Missouri and his wife, Teresa Parson, waved outside the State Capitol in Jefferson City, escorted by members of the Missouri Highway Patrol during the governor’s inauguration celebration.Credit…Jeff Roberson/Associated PressNext door in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, Democratic officials sent out a public safety alert on Sunday about potential violence across the state, warning, “Over the past 48 hours, the online activity on social media has escalated to the point that we must take these threats seriously.”While most of the protests announced so far are expected to focus on state capitals, law enforcement and other officials in various cities have said they believe that other government buildings could also be targeted.Federal authorities said on Monday that they had arrested and charged one man, Cody Melby, with shooting several bullets into the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., on Friday night. Mr. Melby had also been arrested a couple of days earlier when, the police said, he tried to enter the State Capitol in Salem with a firearm.Some of those protesting in Oregon and Washington said they were opposed to state lockdown rules that prevent the public from being present when government decisions are being made.James Harris, 22, who lives in eastern Washington State, said he went to the Capitol in Olympia on Monday to push for residents to be full participants in their state’s response to Covid-19. He said he was against being forced to wear masks and to social distance; the lockdowns are “hurting people,” he said.Mr. Harris is a truck driver, but he said the virus control measures had prevented him from being able to work since March.Georgia already has seen trouble in recent days. At the same time that protesters were swarming into the U.S. Capitol in Washington last week, armed Trump supporters appeared outside the statehouse in Georgia. Law enforcement officers escorted to safety the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who had refused President Trump’s attempts to depict the presidential election as fraudulent.Senator Jordan noted that many of the security measures being put in place, including the construction of a tall iron fence around the Capitol building, were actually decided on during last summer’s social justice demonstrations, when protesters surrounded many government buildings.Now, she said, the threat is coming from the other end of the political spectrum.“These people are clearly serious, they are armed, they are dangerous,” Ms. Jordan said, “and from what we saw last week, they really don’t care who they are trying to take out.”Contributing reporting were More

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      Thank the Supreme Court, for Now

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThank the Supreme Court, for NowThe justices did the right thing by declining to hear the case brought by red states to overturn the election results. But let’s see what happens down the road.Contributing Opinion WriterDec. 17, 2020Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesThe Supreme Court was never going to hear, let alone grant, the request by red-state attorneys general and the White House to overturn the election results in four battleground states that went for Joe Biden. We knew that, we privileged few who could have offered an inventory of the lawsuit’s flaws while standing on one foot. We had not the slightest doubt that the case was a non-starter.Or did we?I spent much of last week, nearly up to the moment on Friday night when the court tossed the Texas case into history’s garbage bin, assuring friends and strangers alike that Texas v. Pennsylvania had no merit whatsoever. Texas had no business invoking the court’s original jurisdiction — seeking to come directly to the Supreme Court and bypassing the lower courts — in order to complain directly to the justices about other states’ election processes. The justices, I added, would never permit themselves to be drawn into such a sorry charade.Many people who emailed me with their questions knew little about the Supreme Court and its jurisdictional quirks, but some were lawyers or avid court-followers who know a lot. Their anxiety was a measure of how much of what we once took for granted has been upended during these past four years. I confess that by the end of the week, the tiniest shadow of doubt had invaded my own mind. And no wonder: The usual inference that even young children are able to draw from experience — “This has never happened before so it’s very unlikely to be happening now” — has proved of dubious utility. We can know all the facts and all the rules, but still, we can’t be sure.In the aftermath, with the electoral votes counted and the justices off on their four-week winter recess, what more is there to say about the justices’ refusal to grant the Trump team and its statehouse enablers their day in court? It’s easy to understand why the response offered by Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, became the go-to quote in many accounts of the week’s denouement. The court, she said, delivered “an important reminder that we are a nation of laws, and though some may bend to the desire of a single individual, the courts may not.”It’s a comforting thought, one that we needed to hear and yearn to believe. But I think it gives the court too much credit. Texas v. Pennsylvania had the form of a Supreme Court case. But it was a Potemkin village of a case, with the proper Gothic typeface on the front cover but nothing inside that resembled sound legal argument. It’s as if someone filed a case asking the court to exercise its original jurisdiction and declare the moon to be made of green cheese. We would hardly pat the justices on the back for tossing out such a case. More likely, we would shrug and say, “There goes another nut case.”The court receives its share of those among the 6,000 petitions that it whittles down every year to the 65 or so accepted for decision. Of course, those cases don’t arrive, as this one did, with the support of 126 of the 196 Republican members of the House of Representatives. The fact that members of Congress are sometimes called “lawmakers” does not, evidently, bestow on them an actual regard for law.And celebrating the court for its restraint in the election cases may be premature. The 2020-21 term, nearly three months in, is still unfolding. We have yet to learn either the fate of the Affordable Care Act or how much further the court will go to elevate religion over the principle of nondiscrimination, the question presented in a case from Philadelphia. Both cases were argued last month, during the court’s first argument sitting since the arrival of the newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett.The country has learned a bit recently about the court’s original jurisdiction — its power to decide without appellate review certain disputes, including between states — something most lawyers never learn much about, let alone encounter. The last time a so-called original case received this much public notice was probably in 1998, when the court gave New Jersey administrative jurisdiction over nearly all of Ellis Island, the immigrant gateway in New York Harbor that New York had long claimed as its own.The one or two such cases the court decides in a typical year have a certain charm despite their obscurity. This week, for example, the justices decided an original case between New Mexico and Texas. The case, decided in New Mexico’s favor, involved the latest chapter in a long-running dispute over rights to water from the Pecos River. As in most original cases, the court had appointed a special master to look into the problem and recommend how to solve it. Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in his majority opinion that the special master — the “river master” in this instance — was appointed in 1988 “and he continues to serve in that position” 32 years later. The wheels of the court’s original jurisdiction usually turn very slowly.A new original case on the court’s docket is not likely to remain obscure for long. It promises, if the court accepts it, to bring the justices into culture-war territory. Last February, Texas sued California directly in the Supreme Court over a law California passed in 2016 that prohibits state-paid travel to states with laws that permit discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. individuals.Texas has a law that permits child-welfare agencies to invoke religious reasons for not placing children with same-sex couples for foster care or adoption. Once Texas enacted that law in 2017, California added Texas to the list of states, now numbering 11, to which it will not subsidize travel by its employees. Texas claims that its sovereignty is violated by California’s policy. California argues in response that its own sovereign interest against subsidizing discrimination is at stake.In June, the justices took the somewhat surprising step of asking the Trump administration for the federal government’s view on the dispute. Early this month, the Office of the Solicitor General filed the government’s brief, urging the court to accept the case and noting that “resolving such conflicts among sovereigns falls within the core of this court’s original and exclusive jurisdiction.” The court will probably announce early in the new year whether it will assume jurisdiction.I’ll end this column with a shout-out to a federal judge who really did stand up for the rule of law in an opinion last week. The question concerns abortion, and whether, given the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration should relax its rule requiring women to visit their doctor’s office in order to get the medication that causes an early abortion. The F.D.A. has suspended the in-person rule for some other medications, but refused requests from medical organizations to do the same for the abortion drug mifepristone.In July, Federal District Judge Theodore Chuang, who sits in Greenbelt, Md., issued an injunction requiring the agency to permit doctors, for the duration of the pandemic, to mail or deliver the medication. In October, the Supreme Court responded to the Trump administration’s request for a stay of the injunction by sending the case back to Judge Chuang, telling him to permit the government to argue among other points, that improvements in the Covid-19 situation since the spring meant that visiting a doctor’s office was no longer a sufficient obstacle to merit relaxing the rule for mifepristone.After receiving the administration’s brief to that effect, Judge Chuang issued a 34-page opinion explaining that while conditions have indeed changed, they have changed for the worse. Noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration have warned about the increasing intensity of the pandemic, he observed that the administration “has offered no expert opinions from a scientist at one of these agencies or elsewhere in the federal government to contradict the facts and conclusions” about the rising danger.“The fact that individuals are permitted to venture out during a pandemic to restaurants or businesses does not establish that women should be mandated to risk exposure to Covid-19 in order to exercise a constitutional right,” the judge wrote. Of course, the Trump administration promptly returned to the court this week seeking a stay of Judge Chuang’s decision.So yes, let’s give credit where credit is due. Let’s thank the courts — plural — for upholding the rule of law. Let’s celebrate the judges who were there when we needed them. We still do.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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      Trump Has Never Believed in Democracy

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Has Never Believed in DemocracyHe wants to wield power without winning it legitimately.Opinion ColumnistDec. 13, 2020A supporter of President Trump during a rally near the Supreme Court on Saturday to protest the results of the 2020 election.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesDonald Trump’s continued effort to overturn the result of the election — an effort buttressed by the support of many Republicans in Congress, it should be noted — is nothing short of an attempt at a bloodless coup.The only way Trump could achieve his aim of denying Joe Biden his rightfully earned victory would be if some people or entities — state legislatures, judges or the Supreme Court — were to agree to throw out millions of legally cast and appropriate votes. (It is also worth noting that many of the jurisdictions being disputed are heavily Black.)But a stinging defeat in the Supreme Court, packed with three justices of Trump’s own choosing, seems to have slammed the door on any legal path Trump might have had in his outrageous endeavor. The members of the Electoral College will meet on Monday and choose the next president. Barring any extraordinary and unprecedented developments, they will select Joe Biden, as the people already have.And yet, on Saturday Trump continued to insist on Twitter that “I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE,” and that the Supreme Court ruling was incorrect: “This is a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice. The people of the United States were cheated, and our Country disgraced. Never even given our day in Court!”That same day, Trump flew over a “Stop the Steal” rally at Washington’s Freedom Plaza, where the Proud Boys were a prominent presence.He keeps lying to his supporters, telling them — partly out of pride, partly out of a craven quest for power — that he was cheated and that he actually won the election. Many of them believe him. Right-wing media have aided him in his deception, as have Republican officials, either through their public pronouncements or through their silence.On Sunday, the House minority whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and said:“If you want to restore trust by millions of people who are still very frustrated and angry about what happened, that’s why you got to have this whole system play out.”But of course this isn’t about restoring faith in our elections; rather, it is about allowing Trump to further degrade that faith. Scalise and many other Republicans are accomplices in this crime against our democracy. Trump is still trying to steal this election, and they are outside revving the engine of the getaway car.That a majority of all Republicans in the House of Representatives expressed support for the frivolous Texas lawsuit signals to me that the difference between liberals and conservatives is no longer about values; it is now about a fundamental belief in democracy. Republicans appear to be saying that not all votes matter or should be counted. This is voter suppression on the grandest of scales, because it is an attempt at voter erasure, at eliminating votes that have already been cast and counted.All the while, Trump has continued to use the division and deception he has created to raise money. He has now collected more than $200 million in donations in support of his bogus election recounts.But, as The New York Times reported earlier this month:“Mr. Trump’s campaign apparatus has continued to aggressively solicit donations under the guise of supporting his various legal challenges to the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr., but as of now 75 percent of donations goes to a new political action committee that Mr. Trump formed in mid-November, up to the PAC’s legal limit of $5,000. The other 25 percent goes to the Republican National Committee. Only if a donor gives more than $6,000 do any funds go to Mr. Trump’s formal ‘recount’ account.”Trump has realized that trying to steal the presidency is more lucrative than actually being president, so he won’t stop. We are witnessing one of the greatest grifts in the history of the presidency.The presidency gave Trump something he always craved but never possessed: constant attention and real, legitimate power. And, once tasted, power is craved forever.Trump has never believed in American democracy. He was never a student of history. He was never really a patriot.When he foreshadowed his current behavior in 2016 by refusing to say that he would accept the results of that election as legitimate if he didn’t win, we knew. When he cozied up to the world’s dictators and spurned our allies, we knew. When he winked at hate groups by refusing to immediately and fulsomely condemn them, we knew.Trump wants to operate a dictatorship behind a veil of democracy. He wants to wield power without winning it legitimately. He wants to manipulate his mob and prioritize it above the masses who oppose him.Yes, Trump is attempting a coup, whether or not you want to call it that. But, no matter what you choose to call something, it will still be what it is.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Meet the Electoral College’s Biggest Critics: Some of the Electors Themselves

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMeet the Electoral College’s Biggest Critics: Some of the Electors Themselves“Do we really want 538 Bob Nemanichs electing our president?” Bob Nemanich, a former elector, doesn’t. And he is hopeful that 2020 might put future electors out of a gig.Polly Baca serves as one of the Electoral College’s 538 electors, while all but calling for the group to be abolished.Credit…Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesDec. 12, 2020Updated 7:06 p.m. ETFew critics of the Electoral College are quite like Polly Baca.Ms. Baca believes the Electoral College, which has chosen American presidents since George Washington, “has absolutely no reason to be.” This year, she brought, and lost, a Supreme Court case challenging her state’s rules over how electors vote. Before electors cast their ballots for president in 2016, she invited several members to her home to plot a way — also unsuccessful — to circumvent the outcome.But unlike Donald J. Trump, whose raft of legal filings and maneuvers has failed to change the result of this year’s election, Ms. Baca is a Democrat. And she even serves as one of the body’s 538 electors while all but calling for the group to be abolished.“There’s absolutely no reason why the world’s strongest democracy doesn’t elect its C.E.O. with the popular vote,” said Ms. Baca, who will cast one of Colorado’s nine electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president-elect. “I’ve been on the outside, but I prefer to go on the inside to see what I can do.”It is the Electoral College, not the direct vote of the American people, that will decide the next president on Monday, when its 538 electors, chosen mostly during state party gatherings earlier this year, sign their ballots and send them to Washington.For generations, the body was viewed as a rubber stump to the will of the voters — but as with many things, scrutiny came only when things seemed to go wrong. The 2000 contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush showed that a mere 537 popular ballots could tip Florida’s Electoral College votes, and with it, the presidency. The 2016 election proved that a president could lose by millions of popular votes, yet be handed the White House anyway.“The head of the student council in your middle school was elected by a popular vote,” said Alexander Keyssar, a Harvard historian and the author of a book called “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?” “I know it’s an old-fashioned notion, but the most fundamental democratic value is that all votes should count equally.”(He is not a fan.)Yet it’s hard to think of a time before this year that dragged the Electoral College, and American democracy with it, into such dangerous territory.The election, where it was clear by evening on Election Day that Mr. Biden had won the popular vote, turned into a nail-biter that stretched on for days — largely because of the high volume of mail ballots in a few states rich in Electoral College votes. President Trump used the delay to make false claims from the White House that fraud was underway and that he had actually won.Mr. Trump then turned to the courts to swing the Electoral College his way, backing lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. The president’s lawyers appeared to hope that a friendly judge would overturn the results in one or more states that would allow him the 270 electors he needed to remain in office.As judges dismissed his suits, the president urged Republican state lawmakers to send delegations to the Electoral College who would vote for him anyway. He then brought White House influence to bear on a county election body in Michigan — one more last-ditch effort to stall the state from sending electors for Mr. Biden.That has left electors like Ronda Vuillemont-Smith, a conservative Oklahoma activist who will cast her vote for Mr. Trump on Monday, believing the president will stay in office.“I’m going to be quite honest with you, I think Donald Trump will be president for a second term,” she said, citing continued attempts to overturn the results.Yet for other electors, the frantic moves by a sitting president — indeed, most of the election itself — has led to soul-searching, not just on who should be president, but also on how the president should be chosen.“These tactics are tantamount to those in authoritarian governments,” said Alan Kennedy, a presidential elector in Denver. He said the election reminded him of a stint when he lived in Uganda and its president jailed his main opponent ahead of an election, something Mr. Trump also has repeatedly called for during his campaigns.Mr. Kennedy plans to dutifully cast his vote on Monday for Mr. Biden. But for Mr. Kennedy, a captain in the Colorado Army National Guard who served in the Middle East, a question still looms large behind the task ahead of him: Is such a system really in keeping with the nation’s ideals?“What’s terrifying is how close we came to another election of a president who won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote,” he said.Robert Nemanich is quick to point out that he had no professional qualifications for being an elector other than being a high school math teacher.Credit…Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesRobert Nemanich, a former elector from Colorado Springs, puts it another way.“Do we really want 538 Bob Nemanichs electing our president?” he asked.Mr. Nemanich is quick to point out his only professional qualification for the job was being a high school math teacher. After volunteering as a Bernie Sanders primary delegate in 2016, Mr. Nemanich landed the job after giving out credentials at a state Democratic convention where selecting the electors was one of the agenda items.“I was one of the few asking to be an elector, and I would say 90 percent of people didn’t know what that was,” he said.And while this year’s electors include respected party officials and well-known activists — Hillary Clinton said she would be an elector for New York State — there have also been some unexpected names recruited for the task.They include Terri Hodge, a former state representative in Dallas who was sentenced to a prison term after pleading guilty to corruption charges in 2010, whom Texas Democrats selected as an elector this year. (As Mr. Trump won Texas, Ms. Hodge will not cast a ballot.)Tracking Disinformation More