 |
The voting wars
WASHINGTON POST DAILY 202
“In a series of rapid-fire announcements throughout the day, Trump campaign officials said they planned to ask courts to halt vote-counting until more access is granted for Republican observers in Michigan and Pennsylvania; seek to initiate a recount in Wisconsin; and intervene in litigation pending before the Supreme Court over Pennsylvania’s extended deadline for mail ballots. The campaign also said it would challenge guidance related to voter identification rules for some voters in Pennsylvania, one of a half-dozen legal efforts undertaken by Republicans in the state this week. And in Georgia, the campaign sued election officials in Chatham County, home of Savannah, alleging that ballots arriving after the 7 p.m. deadline may have been mixed in with eligible ballots and improperly counted,” Elise Viebeck, Robert Barnes, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman report. “Democrats said they were unfazed by what they said was legal posturing by the president’s campaign. They said they were well-prepared to fend off any lawsuits or appeals."
In keeping with his lifelong penchant for litigiousness, Trump said he wants the Supreme Court to determine which ballots should count: "Legal experts noted that Trump cannot simply seek the Supreme Court’s intervention in the election and stop the counting of ballots. There is no routine review of election results at the high court, and its most consequential election case — Bush v. Gore, which effectively determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential race — did not arrive there for about a month.”
Local leaders defended their elections as well-run and refused to halt vote counts: “In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf called the GOP effort an attempt ‘to subvert the democratic process.’ … In Wisconsin, Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe rejected the idea that there have been irregularities in the state’s count, telling reporters that the election ‘proceeded in a very normal fashion.’. … In Michigan, Democrats said the lawsuit the Trump campaign filed seeking to halt vote-counting was preposterous."
Nevada saw a slew of last-minute GOP lawsuits challenging its counting process: “The state Supreme Court on Tuesday night unanimously rejected a request from the Nevada Republican Party and the Trump campaign to halt the counting of some mail ballots in Clark County, a Democratic stronghold where votes for Biden would be key to his potential victory. As a result, Clark County will be able to continue counting most mail ballots under its current protocol. County officials must count any mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive by Nov. 10, and they must complete their canvass by Nov. 16. As of Wednesday evening, Biden held a narrow lead of fewer than 8,000 votes in Nevada, but there were many mail and provisional ballots left to count.”
Wisconsin law allows Trump to request a recount: “Under state rules, counties must complete a canvass of local results and turn those results over to the state between now and Nov. 17,” Helderman, Kim Bellware, Dan Simmons and Peter Kendall report. “A presidential candidate requesting a recount must do so no later than 5 p.m. on the first business day after the state has received its final results from the state’s 72 counties. The deadline for counties to turn over those results for this election under state rules is Nov. 17. … Given the current margin, state officials are allowed to require the Trump campaign to pay the estimated costs of a recount before it begins. Green Party candidate Jill Stein paid nearly $3.5 million to initiate a full state recount of the presidential vote four years ago."
Fox News calling Arizona for Biden (something The Post has not done) punctured the mood inside the Trump high command. Presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner was in touch with Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News owner, as the night wore on, the New York Times reports. "The president’s family was heavily involved in efforts to question the validity of the vote tallies … Kushner was making calls, looking for what he described as a ‘James Baker-like’ figure who could lead the legal effort to dispute the tabulations in different states, according to a person briefed on the discussions. (Mr. Baker led George W. Bush’s successful recount case in 2000.) The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was working out of the campaign headquarters in Virginia. … Eric Trump, whose wife, Lara, has been heavily involved in campaign activities, spoke at a news conference in Philadelphia, alongside Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor.”
Trump told his closest political and legal advisers that he wants to “go down fighting” and give Democrats a court fight that “they'll never forget,” the Daily Beast reports. "By Wednesday afternoon, some semblance of that approach began to materialize. In Detroit, pro-Trump protests showed up at a ballot counting site demanding access to the officials and insisting that the counting be ended. In Arizona, one of Trump’s closest congressional allies, Rep. Paul Gosar, put out a ‘call to action’ for ‘red blooded American patriots’ to attend a rally to ‘protect our president’ at the Maricopa County election center. In Nevada, a Trump supporter interrupted a registrar of voters press conference by declaring ‘the Biden crime family steals this election.’ And throughout the day, the Trump campaign peppered donors and supporters with text messages and emails asking for money to help fund—what it erroneously called—an attempt by Democrats to ‘steal’ the election.”
- Bill Barr's Justice Department told prosecutors that armed federal agents are allowed inside ballot-counting venues to investigate potential voter fraud. The DOJ email raised the specter of the Trump administration intimidating local election officials or otherwise intervening in vote tallying. (NYT)
- European election observers decried Trump’s “baseless allegations” of voter fraud. “Nobody — no politician, no elected official, nobody — should limit the people’s right to vote,” said Michael Georg Link, a member of the German parliament who led the lawmakers sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to observe a U.S. election for the ninth time. (Carol Morello)
Trump and his allies continue boosting bogus conspiracy theories.
“Trump’s son [Eric] and others, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, claimed falsely in tweets later hidden by warning labels that the president had won Pennsylvania — even though no such determination had been made. And the campaign’s spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, claimed without evidence that crowd control at a processing center in Detroit was an effort to thwart Trump’s chances of reelection," Isaac Stanley-Becker, Tony Romm, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Drew Harwell report. "Social media companies raced to apply labels to the misleading posts, with Facebook in most cases appending a notice that the count was still underway. Twitter applied more stringent standards, hiding some of the claims behind warning labels and restricting the reach of the tweets … Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the torrent of questionable tweets from Trump and his associates showed that the guardrails set up by Silicon Valley were insufficient."
- Arizona officials emphatically denied claims that Republican ballots marked with Sharpie pens were disqualified, but that didn't stop some on the right from amplifying claims that the problem was rampant. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and multiple county officials have said there is no merit to the Sharpie concerns. (Hannah Knowles, Emma Brown and Meryl Kornfield)
- YouTube refused to take down a video that falsely claims Trump won the election. The platform wouldn’t say why the video from One American News Network, which has more than 300,000 views, doesn’t violate its misinformation policies. (CNBC)
- Hundreds protesting Trump were arrested in Minneapolis as they blocked a freeway. (Star Tribune)