Voter Fraud (Election Fraud)

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      Texas Republicans Finalize One of the Nation’s Strictest Voting Bills

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      The bill, which would make already stringent voting rules in Texas even tougher, is likely to pass both chambers of the Legislature. Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign it.Texas lawmakers on Saturday finished drafting a bill that would impose a raft of new voting restrictions, setting up the likely passage of what would be among the most far-reaching laws in Republicans’ nationwide drive to overhaul elections systems and limit voting.The bill would tighten what are already some of the country’s strictest voting laws, and it would specifically target balloting methods that were employed for the first time last year by Harris County, home to Houston. In addition to banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used by nearly 140,000 voters in Harris County during the 2020 election, the bill would prohibit election officials from sending absentee ballots to all voters, regardless of whether they had requested them; ban using tents, garages, mobile units or any temporary structure as a polling location; further limit who could vote absentee; and add new identification requirements for voting by mail. Partisan poll watchers would also have more access and autonomy under the bill’s provisions, and election officials could be more harshly punished if they make mistakes or otherwise run afoul of election codes and laws. The bill, which was hashed out in a closed-door panel of lawmakers over the past week, was rushed to the State Senate floor late Saturday. In a legislative power play orchestrated by Republican lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate moved to suspend rules that required a bill to be public for 24 hours before a final vote. The maneuver came just hours after a 112-page report comparing the bill with its previous iterations was delivered to senators, and set debate for the bill to begin at 10 p.m. local time before voting on the bill would unfold. The Texas House did not move to suspend the rules, and is likely to vote on the bill on Sunday. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has said that an election overhaul is a priority, is widely expected to sign the bill. Texas is one of several Republican-led states — including Iowa, Georgia and Florida — that have moved since the 2020 presidential contest to pass new laws governing elections and restricting voting. The impetus is both Republicans’ desire to appease their base, much of which continues to believe former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, and the party’s worries about a changing electorate that could threaten the G.O.P.’s longtime grip on power in places like Texas, the second-biggest state in the country.In a statement on Saturday, President Biden called the proposed law, along with similar measures in Georgia and Florida, “an assault on democracy” that disproportionately targeted “Black and Brown Americans.” He called on lawmakers to address the issue by passing Democratic voting bills that are pending in Congress. “It’s wrong and un-American,” Mr. Biden said. “In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote.”Republican state lawmakers have often cited voters’ worries about election fraud — fears stoked by Mr. Trump, other Republicans and the conservative media — to justify new voting restrictions, despite the fact that there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in recent American elections.And in their election push, Republicans have powered past the objections of Democrats, voting rights groups and major corporations. Companies like American Airlines, Dell Technologies and Microsoft spoke out against the Texas Legislation soon after the bill was introduced, but the pressure has been largely ineffective so far.The final 67-page bill, known as S.B. 7, proved to be an amalgamation of two omnibus voting bills that had worked their way through the state’s Legislature. It included many of the provisions originally introduced by Republicans, but lawmakers dropped some of the most stringent ones, like a regulation on the allocation of voting machines that would have led to the closure of polling places in communities of color and a measure that would have permitted partisan poll watchers to record the voting process on video. Still, the bill includes a provision that could make overturning an election easier. Previously, Texas election law had stated that reversing the results of an election because of fraud accusations required proving that illicit votes had actually resulted in a wrongful victory. If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. Democrats and voting rights groups were quick to condemn the bill.“S.B. 7 is a ruthless piece of legislation,” said Sarah Labowitz, the policy and advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “It targets voters of color and voters with disabilities, in a state that’s already the most difficult place to vote in the country.”But Republicans celebrated the proposed law, and bristled at the criticism from Mr. Biden and others. “As the White House and national Democrats work together to minimize election integrity, the Texas Legislature continues to fight for accessible and secure elections,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement. “In Texas, we do not bend to headlines, corporate virtue signaling, or suppression of election integrity, even if it comes from the president of the United States.”The bill took its final form after a contentious monthslong debate that included a session that lasted until 4:30 a.m.; back-room negotiations; procedural errors by legislators; and extended, passionate debate by Democrats, who have tried to stall the bill’s passage through political and legislative maneuvers.Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has said that an election overhaul is a priority, is widely expected to sign the bill.Eric Gay/Associated PressVoting rights groups have long pointed to Texas as one of the hardest states in the country for voters to cast ballots. One recent study by Northern Illinois University ranked Texas last in an index measuring the difficulty of voting. The report cited a host of factors, including Texas’ in-person voter registration deadline 30 days before Election Day, a drastic reduction of polling stations in some parts of the state, strict voter identification laws, a limited and onerous absentee voting process, and a lack of early voting options.In the preamble to the new bill, the authors appear to pre-emptively defend the legislation from criticism by Democrats and voting rights groups, stating that “reforms to the election laws of this state made by this Act are not intended to impair the right of free suffrage guaranteed to the people of Texas by the United States and Texas Constitutions, but are enacted solely to prevent fraud in the electoral process and ensure that all legally cast ballots are counted.”In March, Keith Ingram, the director of elections in the Texas secretary of state’s office, testified that last year’s election in the state had been “smooth and secure.” He added, “Texans can be justifiably proud of the hard work and creativity shown by local county elections officials.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media 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a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}A day before the Texas bill emerged, a new report pointed to the vast sweep of Republicans’ nationwide effort to restrict voting.As of May 14, lawmakers had passed 22 new laws in 14 states to make the process of voting more difficult, according to the report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute.In last year’s election, while Republicans won Texas easily — Mr. Trump carried the state by more than 630,000 votes and the party maintained control of both chambers of the Legislature — turnout soared in cities and densely populated suburbs, which are growing increasingly Democratic. In Harris County, one of the biggest counties in the country, turnout jumped by nearly 10 percent.Republicans’ initial version of the bill put those densely populated counties squarely in the cross hairs, seeking to ban measures put in place during the 2020 election that helped turnout hit record numbers. The initial bill banned drive-through voting, a new method used by 127,000 voters in Harris County, as well as 24-hour voting, which was held for a single day in the county and was used by roughly 10,000 voters.While those provisions were left out of an earlier version of the bill as it made its way through the Legislature, they were reinstated in the final version of the bill, though the bill does allow for early voting to begin as early as 6 a.m. and stay open as late as 9 p.m. on weekdays. It also maintains at least two weekend days of early voting. More than any other state, Texas has also gone to great lengths to grant more autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers. The observers have been a cornerstone of American voting for years, viewed as a watchdog for election officials, but their role has grown increasingly contentious, especially in Texas. Republican poll watchers have been egged on in particular by Mr. Trump, who implored them to go to major cities across the country and hunt for nonexistent voter fraud.Across Texas during the 2020 election, there was an increase in anecdotal complaints of aggressive poll watchers, often on the Republican side, harassing both voters of color and election officials.The new bill would make it a crime to refuse to admit the observers to voting sites or to block their ability to fully watch the process. It says poll watchers must be able to “sit or stand [conveniently] near enough to see and hear the election officers.”It would also make it easier for partisan poll watchers to successfully pursue legal action if they argue that they were wrongfully refused or obstructed.In addition, the bill would limit who can vote absentee by mail in Texas, which does not have universal no-excuse absentee voting. The bill states that those with a disability may vote absentee, but a voter with “an illness, injury or disability that does not prevent the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day” may not vote absentee.Amid the new restrictions are multiple provisions that provide greater transparency into election administration. Counties must now provide video surveillance of ballot-counting facilities, and they must eventually make those videos available to the public. Discussions with voting equipment vendors must also be available to the public. More

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      He Fought Trump’s 2020 Lies. He Also Backs New Scrutiny of Ballots.

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      Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, told The Times that a new, disinformation-driven attempt to inspect 2020 ballots wouldn’t unearth wrongdoing, and would help restore voter confidence.Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, earned widespread praise for his staunch defense of the election results in his state last year in the face of growing threats and pressure from former President Donald J. Trump.As Mr. Trump spread falsehoods about the election, Mr. Raffensperger vocally debunked them, culminating in a 10-page letter addressed to Congress on Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol riot, in which he refuted, point by point, Mr. Trump’s false claims about election fraud in Georgia.But after a Georgia judge ruled late last week that a group of voters must be allowed to view copies of all 147,000 absentee ballots cast in the state’s largest county, in yet another disinformation-driven campaign, Mr. Raffensperger voiced his support for the effort, saying that inspecting the ballots would provide “another layer of transparency and citizen engagement.”As Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods continue to hold sway over many lawmakers and voters, with efforts to review ballots still underway in states across the country, we spoke with Mr. Raffensperger about why he supported the new review ordered by the judge and how he thinks about public trust, or mistrust, in the electoral process. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.At the risk of asking you to repeat yourself: Was there any widespread fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election?No, there was no widespread fraud. We had, and we still do have, several hundred investigations that we’ve opened up. Many of those are procedural, but none would be significant enough to overturn the election results.So why support this most recent order to inspect ballots?So from Day 1, I’ve encouraged Georgians who have concerns about the elections in their counties to pursue those claims through legal avenues. Frankly, Fulton County has a longstanding history of election mismanagement that has weakened voter faith in the system.And I’m very grateful that S.B. 202 [the state’s new voting law] strengthens the ability of the secretary of state’s office to hold counties accountable. I think that’s a good thing.But in a letter you wrote to Congress in January, you refuted the false allegations regarding absentee ballots in Fulton County, nearly the very same claims that are a part of this lawsuit that led to the judge’s order. So what has changed?Unfortunately, the No. 1 issue that we’re facing right now in elections nationwide is voter confidence. Now, in Georgia, it goes back to the 2018 governor’s race, when Stacey Abrams did not concede, and then in 2016, days after President Trump won, the other camp talks about Russian collusion. And so we had those aspersions cast on Trump’s victory.But what happens each time is that voter confidence takes a hit. So whenever we can restore, or have a process that will help restore, voter confidence, I think that’s a good thing — if you have an open and transparent process in which everyone can objectively agree that this is due process that they’re doing, that they’re making sure they’re following the law.At the end of the day, they’re going to get the same results we got after November. And then we can hopefully put this to bed.So even though you know that the allegations in this most recent lawsuit aren’t going to come to fruition, going through another public process will help build confidence?It’s really the process of civic engagement. Let the citizens have an open, transparent process in which other sets of eyeballs can verify what’s already been verified.We’ve already done a 100 percent hand recount of every single absentee ballot, every single early-vote ballot and every date-of-election ballot. So all three forms of voting have been counted in Georgia. Every single one of those paper ballots has been hand-counted.So I know the results aren’t going to change, but it just helps increase voter confidence and it helps our entire nation to move off this issue and really get back to a more stable society.Democrats and voting rights groups have said that these repeated recounts and relitigations of the 2020 presidential contest actually undermine confidence in the election. So I’m wondering how you weigh that.Well, at the end of the day, a Superior Court judge makes a ruling, and we follow the law in Georgia. Many Republican voters, and especially former President Donald Trump, have continued to reject the multiple audits and recounts already carried out in Georgia and demand new investigations. What makes you think this Fulton County inspection will satisfy those who claim that there was widespread fraud?Well, let’s follow this rabbit trail, and get the answers, and then we’ll get answers that will be very similar to what we had back when this election was carried out and we did the audit process. And we can put this to rest and we can move forward.Georgia’s new voting law gives more power over elections to state lawmakers. Do you have any worries that this new inspection of ballots could prompt the Legislature to exert even more control over election administration?All Georgians should take great comfort at the end of the day that we have a fair election process. We have 159 counties that are running these elections, we have 159 county election directors who have personal integrity. People need to understand that the people who are running these elections at the precinct level — those are your friends, those are your neighbors, those are your friends at church, those are your friends from Pilates, Rotary. Your kids could be on the same youth league baseball or soccer team.The glue that holds the process together is the individual personal integrity of local Georgians, plus our office, and what I will stand for is fair and honest elections.I wanted to ask you a little bit about your re-election bid next year. You’re running against Representative Jody Hice, a Republican congressman whom Mr. Trump has endorsed. Are you worried about Donald Trump attacking you and actively working to ensure your defeat?No. We’re going to run our campaign on issues. At the end of the day, we believe that integrity counts. And we’ve done an awful lot to improve the election process in Georgia.The first thing we did was pass House Bill 316, which allowed us to procure new voting machines that use verifiable paper ballots. For 18 years, people were talking about needing a system with paper ballots; I accomplished that.Also, we made progress toward joining the Electronic Registration Information Center [a nonpartisan, nonprofit multistate voter roll database]. So as we updated our voter rolls, we could do it objectively. We also outlawed ballot harvesting. So we’ve been working on election integrity for a long time.Congressman Hice, though, he’s been up in D.C. for over six years, and he has never introduced a single piece of electoral reform legislation. He’s never done anything on election integrity, ever. And now he thinks it’s somehow an interesting issue for him to run on? That’s the challenge sometimes with congressmen. Some of them don’t do much when they get up there.One of the things Mr. Hice did do was vote in Congress to overturn the election results. Do you have any concern that someone who had previously taken steps to overturn a free and fair election could one day run elections in Georgia?Well, if you’re honest with yourself, he’s a double-minded person. In Georgia, he accepted the results for his race, but he didn’t accept the results for President Trump’s race. How can you hold two opposing views at one time? So he’s going to have to live with his vote on Jan. 6.Echoing Mr. Trump’s election lies has almost become a litmus test in Republican primaries. How do you run in this environment?I’m going to run on integrity, and I’m going to run on the truth.When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Trump? Was it the call in January in which he urged you to “find” him votes that became public soon afterward?Yes.Have any of his allies contacted you or other Republicans in Georgia in the last few months to urge you to conduct a recount or review along the lines of Arizona’s?Not that I’m aware of.OK. Last question. We spent a lot of time earlier talking about how faith in elections is damaged. How do you think we restore bipartisan, national faith in elections?I think perhaps we need to have a national dialogue, or a bipartisan meeting of the minds. Because S. 1 and H.R. 1 [two versions of congressional Democrats’ major voting rights bill] are a top-down, federal takeover of elections, and of course you’re going to see pushback from the Republicans, and rightly so. And I’ve spoken out against those.We really need to look at what can we accomplish that makes sure that we restore the trust of all voters from both sides of the aisle, make sure that we have honest and fair elections, that results are accurate.Candidates need to understand their job is to turn out voters, and if they don’t turn out enough voters, they will lose the election, and they have to accept the will of the people. More

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      Florida Republican Byron Donalds on Election Integrity and Trump’s Fraud Claims

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      Byron Donalds, a newly elected congressman, says Republicans are trying to secure elections, not suppress votes. And he disputes Donald Trump’s influence on trust.In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Republicans have pushed sweeping changes to voting laws across the country, using false claims of voter fraud as their justification. Even in Florida, a state Donald J. Trump won easily, Republicans enacted a more targeted overhaul of elections law in lock step with Mr. Trump’s allegations. Several voting rights groups have sued the state, claiming that the new measures disenfranchise voters in the name of appeasing the former president.Representative Byron Donalds, a newly elected Florida Republican, believes the reaction to the new law is misguided and overblown. In an interview with The New York Times, he sought to explain Republican actions as distinct from Mr. Trump’s false claims, and in line with voter concerns. He argued that his state’s new law, and similar ones across the country, would inspire renewed confidence in the election process.Mr. Donalds won his House seat after serving in the Florida Legislature. He grew up in Brooklyn and worked in finance and banking before entering politics.The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.What did you think of how the 2020 election went in Florida? Did you think it was administered properly, with no evidence of fraud?It was administered very properly. We had the best election laws in the country. Our secretary of state or local officials follow the law, as you know, as it’s written, to a T, and we were pretty much done by 10 o’clock that night.Do you believe the false claims by former President Trump that the 2020 election was rigged?I think what happened is that in several key counties and key states, election law was not followed. That’s clear. It’s crystal clear. You have a federal judge in Michigan that said as much. You have two counties in Wisconsin where the local election officials chose not to follow election laws and cited Covid-19 as the reason. You have a State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that did not follow election law written by the state legislature there. You had the issues in Arizona, you had the consent decree in Georgia — that’s clear violations of the Constitution.Do you think, as former President Trump states, this amounts to widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election?When you violate election law, and you have other bodies or other positions in our governmental apparatus that do not follow the written law, that leads to problems.So I just want to make sure I have this straight. You think that those problems happened elsewhere in the country, but not in Florida?Because in Florida, we followed our law.The Florida Legislature, where you once served, just passed an election reform measure. Why was that necessary if there was no fraud?The right to vote is sacrosanct. We all believe that. And the security of that ballot is also sacrosanct.And there should not be some other party that comes in between the voter casting their ballot and the election officer receiving that ballot and counting it. So I think getting rid of ballot harvesting is a great thing that we did. The other thing was that we tightened up the process of our people getting mail-in ballots.You know, I think the process we have now going forward in our state is actually a good one. Everybody’s free to request their ballot. They prove who they are, that’s a good thing. They receive their ballot, they vote. It’s all about security.Ballot harvesting was already outlawed in parts of the state. And new lawsuits claim that the real impact of the identification measures will be another barrier suppressing Black and Latino voters. What’s your response to that?I don’t pay any attention to those claims. I think the state will win in court. Voter ID claims — about how it disenfranchises minority communities — have been widely debunked. It is actually quite simple to get an ID. You’re talking to somebody who’s had a photo ID since he was 13 years old, when I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. It’s not the issue that it’s always made up to be, you know, by my friends on the other side of the aisle.In Florida, Republicans have taken advantage of things like ballot harvesting. They’ve made inroads with Black and Latino voters to win elections. Is there any risk this new law hurts your own party?No, I haven’t heard that.It was Republicans who brought back ballot harvesting in Florida under former Governor Bush and embraced widespread mail-in voting. What changed from then to now?I mean, OK, but that doesn’t mean I have to support it.I understand. I’m interested in what you think changed in the party from then to now, for a whole community of Republicans to say that’s something that they don’t support?I think the premise of your question is wrong. It’s not about what changed in the party. Political parties are made up of people, individuals who vote and politicians and candidates who run for office. That’s the basis of a political party. There’s no monolithic line of thinking that shifts every two to four years. That’s not the case. I can’t speak to what happened when former people were elected. I can speak to myself and what I’ve done..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Do you think that those laws would have happened without the false claims from former President Trump about a rigged election? It does seem to stretch belief to say none of these new laws are related to politics and Trump. Is that what we’re saying?Looking at our election process is something, specifically in Florida, we continuously do. We passed an election law before 2020. We passed it in 2018 and 2019. We have reforms, I believe, in 2014 or 2015. So Florida, we’ve always been looking at our election laws, doing everything we can to make sure it’s a better law going forward.So as the supposition of your question, that we anticipated what Donald Trump might say, in the winter of 2020. And that’s why we made election law changes in 2019 and 2018. Come on, seriously?Have you followed any of the new election laws in other states?Yes, I think Georgia actually has a very good law. And frankly, it’s sad and, in my view, disgusting that the president referred to it as Jim Crow. It cheapens the history in our country with respect to actual Jim Crow, a disgusting relic of our past. And to try to equate that to what Georgia did, to me, is just completely illogical. It reeks of just the nastiest politics that you could ever want to bring up, to try to divide Americans and divide Georgians.How can you be so sure that these laws are strong enough to stop voter fraud but weak enough to not create new barriers for communities who have had it hard to vote?Those are not on the same playing field, they simply are not.When it comes to these extended lines that have happened in the past in Georgia — I’ve watched the news, too — you have to go look at the local official, what did they do and what did they not do to prepare for people wanting to cast ballots. The one thing we have to acknowledge, and you have to be honest about this, you have seen a rise in Black voting in our country in the last 15 years. And that is a great thing — as a Black man, I’m 100 percent behind that. But it is the responsibility of local officials to make sure that they have the additional polling places they need or that their equipment is sound. And I will tell you, Georgia’s law, or Florida’s law, provides so much access to the ballots, far more than in the state of New York, far more than the state of Delaware.You’re framing these new measures as a way to restore confidence in the democratic process and system. But what I don’t hear you saying — or any Republican, really — is that they think the former president impacted trust in that system. Do you think that his words have negatively impacted trust in the democratic system?No. No, I don’t. I think if you look at what the president has talked about, the president has talked about wanting to make sure that the elections are secure. That’s what he’s talked about more than anything else.I think we both know the former president has said a lot more than that.Four years ago, this time, what were we talking about? About how the Russians tamper with our elections, and that went on for two and a half years. I don’t have a problem with these political debates. Let’s have them. That’s great. But all I’m saying is, let’s — let’s understand the entire history.I was asking about Trump’s impact on trust.All that matters: Is it easier for white people or Black people, whether they are rich, middle income or poor, to cast ballots in the state of Georgia? And Florida? Yes or no? Is it easier? The answer is yes. Is it less easy for them to cast the same ballot in Delaware or New York? The answer is yes.Last question: Do you see the former president’s rhetoric as at least connected to the events that happened on January 6, even if you don’t see them affecting trust in the democratic system overall?No, I don’t. More

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      Voting Machines in Arizona Recount Should Be Replaced, Election Official Says

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      The Democratic secretary of state said she had “grave concerns regarding the security and integrity” of the machines that were examined to appease ardent backers of Donald J. Trump.Arizona’s top elections official on Thursday urged the state’s most populous county to replace hundreds of voting machines that have been examined as part of a Republican-backed review of the state’s November election.The request added fuel to charges by impartial election observers and voting rights advocates that the review, ordered in December by the Republicans who control the State Senate, had become a political sham.In a letter to officials of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, the elections official, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, said it was unclear whether companies hired to conduct the review had sufficiently safeguarded the equipment from tampering during their review of votes.Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat, recommended that the county replace its 385 voting machines and nine vote tabulators because “the lack of physical security and transparency means we cannot be certain who accessed the voting equipment and what might have been done to them.”The advisory, in a letter to the county’s board of supervisors, did not contend that the machines had been breached. But Ms. Hobbs wrote that she had “grave concerns regarding the security and integrity of these machines, given that the chain of custody, a critical security tenet, has been compromised.”She added that she had first consulted experts at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the national authority for election security issues.A spokeswoman for the county elections department said county officials “will not use any of the returned tabulation equipment unless the county, state and vendor are confident that there is no malicious hardware or software installed on the devices.”If the county decides to scrap the machines, it is unclear who would be responsible for paying to replace them. The State Senate agreed to indemnify the county against financial losses resulting from the audit.Republicans in the State Senate who ordered the review of the election said they wanted to reassure ardent backers of former President Donald J. Trump who refused to accept his narrow loss in Arizona. The review focused on Maricopa County, which produced two-thirds of the vote statewide.Mr. Trump has asserted that the audit would confirm his claims that his election loss was because of fraud, a charge that virtually every election expert rejects. With no formal electoral authority, the review could not change the results in Arizona.The audit was bombarded with charges of partisan bias after the State Senate hired a firm to manage the review whose top executive had spread baseless charges that Mr. Trump’s loss in the state was a result of fraud. The criticism has only mounted after nonpartisan election observers and journalists documented repeated lapses in the review’s process for recounting ballots. More

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      Arizona Senators Retract Claims of Deleted 2020 Presidential Election Files

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      A political firestorm erupted in Arizona this week after Republican-backed reviewers of the November election in Maricopa County, the state’s largest, suggested that someone had deleted a crucial data file from election equipment that had been subpoenaed as part of the inquiry.The county’s chief official, himself a Republican, called the charge outrageous. Former President Donald J. Trump, who has promoted the lie that the Arizona vote was rigged against him, boasted that the allegation was “devastating” evidence of irregularities.But on Tuesday, a contractor for the Republican-controlled State Senate, which is conducting the review, said the claim had become “a moot point.” The file had been found on a set of four computer drives in the election equipment, the contractor, Ben Cotton, said at a meeting on the review convened by Republican senators.Mr. Cotton’s effort to downplay the brouhaha fit the theme of the livestreamed meeting, in which the senators sought to cast the widely ridiculed review as a civics-lesson effort to improve election administration, not a bid to placate angry Trump supporters who refuse to accept his loss in the state.“I’ve said from the get-go that I’m relatively sure we are not going to find anything of any magnitude that would imply any intentional wrongdoing,” the president of the State Senate, Karen Fann, said at the session. Rather, she said, the review is expected to highlight that “we could do a little better job with the chain of custody” of voting material and other technical aspects of conducting an election.The review has nonetheless acquired a markedly partisan tilt, with senators employing a firm whose chief executive has spread conspiracy theories of an Arizona election stolen from Mr. Trump, and granting One America News and pro-Trump figures broad access to the process.Among the ardent set of believers that Mr. Trump actually won the November election, the notion that the Arizona review will demolish all evidence of President Biden’s victory has become an article of faith.Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, denounced the review on Monday as “a grift disguised as an audit.” Other Republicans in the county government have urged the State Senate to scrap the inquiry, saying it was an effort to undermine the November election and with it, Arizonans’ faith in democracy.In the meeting on Tuesday, Ms. Fann and another supporter of the review, State Senator Warren Petersen, largely ignored such criticisms, while expressing frustration that county officials had decided not to cooperate with their inquiry.The 70-minute session raised minor questions about the November election, such as a purported mismatch between some ballots that had been damaged at polling places and the duplicate ballots that were used to record those votes. But it made no broad claims of irregularities.Mr. Cotton, the founder of a data security firm in Ashburn, Va., called CyFIR, maintained that the data file at the center of the latest dispute over the audit had indeed been deleted from election equipment hard drives. But he later indicated that he had been unable to find the file because county election officials had not given him instructions to find it.Senator Petersen, seen by many as the prime supporter of the audit, called Mr. Cotton’s discovery of the supposedly deleted file “good news.” More

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      Michigan Judge Dismisses Suit Questioning 2020 Election Result

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      A Michigan state judge on Tuesday dismissed one of the last, high-profile court cases questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election, a case former President Donald J. Trump cited to claim fraud after unofficial results in one county initially assigned some votes for him to President Biden.The plaintiff, William Bailey, a local resident, and his lawyer, Matthew S. DePerno, had sought to use the case to cast doubt on the vote nationwide, suggesting that a flawed count by Dominion Voting System machines in Antrim County, Mich., meant that all such machines were open to manipulation and deliberate fraud. The suit was also an attempt to force another statewide audit.Although Mr. DePerno and the various experts he tapped to analyze the vote repeatedly said that various flaws with the voting machines left them open to hacking, they did not cite any specific evidence that it had occurred. A computer expert hired by the state also noted some security weaknesses, but said there was no indication that they had been exploited.Mr. Trump cited Antrim County in his speech on Jan. 6 in Washington claiming that the vote was corrupt and has continued to site the case as an example of “major” fraud. The critical mistake made by local election officials was readily evident right after the Nov. 3 vote. Unofficial results posted online by the county clerk indicated that Mr. Biden won the heavily Republican country with 7,769 votes versus 4,509 votes for Mr. Trump.A quick analysis by county and state election officials determined that the mistake was because of human error — a failure to update the software in some voting machines to account for new ballot lines for local issues had thrown the machine count off, with votes for Mr. Trump attributed to Mr. Biden.After several attempts at correcting the count using paper ballots, including a hand recount released last December, the numbers basically flipped, with Mr. Trump outpolling Mr. Biden by more than 3,000 votes in Antrim County. Mr. Trump lost Michigan by some 154,000 votes.Judge Kevin A. Elsenheimer of the 13th Circuit Court, a former Republican legislator in Michigan, granted the motion on Tuesday by the combined state and county legal team for a summary dismissal on fairly narrow technical grounds, saying the legal requirement for voters to request an audit had already been met.The statewide vote audit demanded by Mr. Bailey and his lawyer had already been completed by Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, earlier in the year, he said. The ruling did not address the issue of possible manipulation.Ms. Benson had said two audits confirmed the accuracy and integrity of the vote, with a random sample of ballots in the second one mirroring the machine count.In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Benson said that the dismissal of the “last of the lawsuits” seeking to further the “big lie” confirmed that the election was fair and secure.Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, said in a statement that she hoped the ruling would be a “nail in the coffin” for any remaining conspiracy theories surrounding the outcome of the presidential election.Mr. DePerno did not respond to a telephone call and an email seeking comment, but he is expected to appeal. The case continues to roil the waters in Antrim County, with public discussion of it taking up many hours of recent county commission meetings. Democrats have generally expressed support for the county’s explanation while Republicans demand the county clerk, a Republican, be dismissed.County officials have fretted aloud that they would have to replace all the voting machines because a significant number of voters had lost faith in them, and at their last meeting in early May decided to summon their lawyer for a briefing.“Is everybody OK with just a quick update and not 8,700 questions for four hours?” pleaded Terry VanAlstine, the chairman of the board of commissioners. More

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      ‘We Can’t Indulge These Insane Lies’: Arizona G.O.P. Split on Vote Audit

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      Top local Republicans are hitting back at Donald J. Trump and fellow party members in the State Senate over a review of Arizona ballots.For weeks, election professionals and Democrats have consistently called the Republican-backed review of November voting results in Arizona a fatally flawed exercise, marred by its partisan cast of characters and sometimes bizarre methodology.Now, after a week in which leaders of the review suggested they had found evidence of illegal behavior, top Republicans in the state’s largest county have escalated their own attacks on the effort, with the county’s top election official calling former President Donald J. Trump “unhinged” for his online comments falsely accusing the county of deleting an elections database.“We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer,” the official, Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder and a Republican, wrote on Twitter. “As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5.”Three times, the county has investigated and upheld the integrity of the November vote, which was supervised by Mr. Richer’s predecessor, a Democrat.It is not the first time Republicans in county government have been at odds with the Republicans in the Legislature over the review of the vote. But Mr. Richer is among various Republicans in Maricopa County sounding like they have run out of patience.The five elected supervisors, all but one of whom are Republicans, plan to meet on Monday afternoon to issue a broadside against what Republican sponsors in the State Senate have billed as an election audit, which targets the 2.1 million votes cast in November in metropolitan Phoenix and outlying areas. The planned meeting follows a weekend barrage of posts on Twitter, with the hashtag #RealAuditorsDont, in which the supervisors assailed the integrity of the review.Those posts followed a letter from the leader of the audit, State Senator Karen Fann, implying that the county had removed “the main database for all election-related data” from election equipment that had been subpoenaed for review. Mr. Trump later published the letter on his website, calling it “devastating” evidence of irregularities.The supervisors’ Twitter rebuke was scathing. Real auditors don’t “release false ‘conclusions’ without understanding what they are looking at,” one post said, ridiculing the allegation of a deleted database. Nor do real auditors “hire known conspiracy theorists,” a reference to the firm hired to manage the review, whose chief executive has promoted theories that rigged voting machines caused Mr. Trump’s loss in Arizona.The Arizona Senate president, Karen Fann, has defended the ballot review. Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressJack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the board of supervisors, issued a statement calling the suggestion that files were deleted “outrageous, completely baseless and beneath the dignity of the Arizona Senate,” which ordered the audit. In an interview, he said the meeting on Monday would refute claims in the letter from Ms. Fann, the Senate president.“Basically, every one of our five supervisors said, ‘Enough is enough,’” Mr. Sellers said in an interview on Sunday. “What they’re suggesting is not just criticism. They’re saying we broke the law. And we certainly did not.”The real target of the accusations, he said in the interview, “are the professionals who run the elections, people who followed the rules and who did an incredible job in the middle of a pandemic.“A lot of the questions being asked right now have been answered,” he said of those challenging the November results. “But the people asking them don’t like the answers, so they keep on asking.”At issue is the Maricopa County vote. But Ms. Fann’s letter raises the prospect that an exercise dismissed by serious observers as transparently partisan and flawed could become a potent weapon in the continuing effort by Mr. Trump and his followers to undermine the legitimacy of the vote in Arizona, and perhaps elsewhere.The review has no formal electoral authority and will not change the results of the election in Arizona, no matter what it finds.One poll by High Ground, a Phoenix firm well known for its political surveys, concluded this spring that 78 percent of Arizona Republicans believe Mr. Trump’s false claims that President Biden did not win the November election. A recent Monmouth University poll found that almost two-thirds of Republicans nationally believe that Mr. Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. More than six in 10 Americans overall believe that he did.Beyond the dispute over supposedly deleted files, Ms. Fann is also pressing the county and the manufacturer of its voting machines, Dominion Voting Systems, to release passwords for vote tabulating machines and county-operated internet routers.Dominion, which has been fighting a series of election-fraud conspiracy theories promoted by Trump supporters and pro-Trump news outlets, has said it will cooperate with federally certified election auditors. But it has spurned the firms hired to conduct the Arizona vote review, whose track record in election audits is scant at best.Maricopa County officials have refused to turn over router passwords, which the auditors say they need to determine whether voting machines were connected to the internet and subject to hacking. County officials say past audits have settled that question. The county sheriff, Paul Penzone, called the demand for passwords “mind-numbingly reckless,” saying it would compromise law enforcement operations unrelated to the election.The review has no formal electoral authority and will not change the results of the election in Arizona, no matter what it finds.Pool photo by Matt YorkThe election review was born in December as an effort by Republican senators to placate voters who had embraced Mr. Trump’s lie that Mr. Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in the state was a fraud. Maricopa County, where two-thirds of the state’s votes were cast, was chosen in part because Republicans refused to believe that Mr. Biden had scored a 45,000-vote victory in a county that once was solid G.O.P. territory.What once seemed an effort to mollify angry supporters of Mr. Trump, however, has become engulfed in acrimony as Ms. Fann and other senators have steered the review in a decidedly partisan direction, hiring as its manager a Florida company, Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive had previously suggested that rigged voting machines caused Mr. Trump’s Arizona loss.An accounting of the review’s finances remains cloudy, but far-right supporters, including the ardently pro-Trump cable news outlet One America News, have raised funds on its behalf. Nonpartisan election experts and the Justice Department have cited troubling indicators that the review is open to manipulation and ignores the most basic security guidelines.Most Arizona Republican officials who have spoken publicly have doggedly supported the review. But State Senator Paul Boyer, a Republican from a suburban Phoenix district evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, made headlines last week after saying that the conduct of the review made him embarrassed to serve in the State Senate.Senator T.J. Shope, another Republican from a Phoenix swing district, has been more circumspect, saying he believed Mr. Biden’s election was legitimate but that he had been too busy to follow the controversy. But in a Twitter post on Saturday, he wrote that Mr. Trump was “peddling in fantasy” by suggesting that the county’s election records had been nefariously deleted.The Maricopa County vote review has been forced to suspend operations this week while the Phoenix work site, a suburban coliseum, is cleared out to host high school graduations. Mr. Sellers, the chairman of the board of supervisors, said he hoped the supervisors’ effort to refute the review’s claims on Monday would be the end of the affair.“It’s clearer by the day: The people hired by the Senate are in way over their heads,” his statement said. “This is not funny; it’s dangerous.” More