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Supreme Court may decide that state legislatures have control over congressional elections, not state law
On Steve Bannon’s right-wing podcast, Lake suggested McCain and George Soros “want a globalist agenda”
Yes, the Trump movement is nuts. But a deeper explanation invokes history, psychology, economic factors and more
Several former Trump advisers and officials who promoted baseless claims of widespread vote fraud and worked to overturn the 2020 election ahead of January 6 are now enmeshed in a new effort to challenge votes, voter eligibility, and election results in 2022 and beyond.
At the center of this effort is the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing nonprofit funded in part by Trump’s leadership PAC and home to several key former Trump aides. It is organizing a network of groups and individuals committed to taking more control of election administration in future contests.
The network has published materials and hosted summits across the country with the aim of coordinating a nationwide effort to staff election offices, recruit poll watchers and poll workers, and build teams of local citizens to challenge voter rolls, question postal workers, be “ever-present” in local election offices, and inundate election officials with document requests. The effort is an extraordinary investment in sustaining and bolstering the false narrative of widespread voter fraud.
In forming the network, the Conservative Partnership Institute has spun a smattering of grassroots organizations rooted in election denialism into a larger and more coordinated web of groups that includes establishment entities like Heritage Action for America, an affiliate of the Heritage Foundation. The Republican National Committee — spearheading its own unprecedented recruitment drive for poll watchers and workers — has participated in some of the network’s summits. Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer and public face of the effort, made the plan clear to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon: “We are arming the army of patriots, that’s our goal.” (Bannon has also weaponized election denialism to drive activists to serve as poll watchers and staff other offices in a concerted effort that he has dubbed the “precinct strategy.”)
The Conservative Partnership Institute reflects a spiderweb of connections to key figures involved in the January 6 insurrection or the wider effort to overturn the election results. Mitchell helped Trump challenge election results in court ahead of January 6, promoting flimsy legal claims that judges threw out. She participated in the infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on which Trump pressed him to “find 11,780 votes.” Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is a senior partner at the institute and was the keynote speaker at its Georgia summit. Dan Scavino — Trump’s former social media director who promoted the January 6 rally — is a digital fellow at the institute. Other members of the institute and its orbit also worked to overturn the 2020 election.
The network’s efforts are laced with dangerous falsehoods. Some groups in the network peddle the lie that the 2020 election could still be decertified. Several summit speakers have previously embraced false claims that the 2020 election was marred by widespread voter fraud. A speaker at an Arizona summit was part of a bogus slate of presidential electors and was recently issued a grand jury subpoena by the Justice Department.
An institute guide published and shared at summits and elsewhere encourages individuals to create their own local task forces in order to be “ever-present at the election office and board meetings, to hear and see and learn things that are only learned by being there.” The “Citizens Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure” also advises task force members to become election officials and workers but fails to describe critical differences between partisan monitoring efforts and official roles that must serve all voters. It instructs citizens to get exhaustive information to locate “bad addresses” and challenge voter eligibility, without explaining common missteps that other organized efforts to challenge voters have previously made, such as failing to account for the ways election officials record the addresses of student voters, unhoused voters, and military voters. And it encourages state-level activists to identify whether officials in attorney general offices are “friend or foe.”
In endorsing combative yet vague instructions and promoting the unjustified specter of widespread fraud, the unprecedented effort to organize an “army” of citizens could lead to voter interference and intimidation, improper mass voter challenges, election security breaches, and other forms of lawbreaking in November.
Groups in the network occasionally echo progressives’ rhetoric, such as messages stressing the importance of protecting vulnerable voters. When paired with false beliefs about widespread voter fraud, however, those messages can carry sinister undertones and could lead to interference with voters and those who lawfully assist them. The American Constitutional Rights Union, a group that has presented at the summits, promotes misinformation on its website concerning the legality of assistance to elderly voters, describing certain limitations on such assistance in a false or misleading way. The group also claims that it made over 1,000 phone calls and sent more than 3,000 letters to nursing homes and senior living facilities in the 2020 election “warning against fraud and providing important legal details.” A different Pennsylvania group inspired by the institute’s work urges activists to find out the political affiliation of every nursing home administrator in the state.
In the new landscape of elections in 2022, states, officials, civic groups, and the media can take action to protect against dangers to our democratic process. States should enact laws and institute practices to prevent election system breaches, taking quick action to cure breaches when they occur. Law enforcement should take seriously threats to election workers and respond appropriately. And election officials, tech companies, civic groups, and the media should preempt misinformation by sharing accurate and contextualized information about elections.
Republican election officials in at least three states have refused to certify primary votes, in a sign of things to come amid the party’s baseless election fraud crusade.
Numerous allies of former President Donald Trump have echoed his lies about voter fraud on the campaign trail. Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt both claimed evidence of “election stealing” before any votes were cast. Colorado secretary of state candidate Tina Peters has twice demanded recounts of her Republican primary race after losing by double digits. Nevada gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert filed a lawsuit alleging that his GOP primary loss was a “mathematical impossibility,” even after a recount he requested confirmed the results.
While candidates are free to challenge the results of their elections under various state guidelines, Trump-allied election officials pose a more insidious threat. Echoing the same false narratives as Trump and his endorsed candidates, county officials in New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania have tried to circumvent state laws and refused to sign off on primary results.
Republican commissioners in Otero County, New Mexico last month refused to certify primary results in their GOP-dominated jurisdiction, citing unspecified concerns about Dominion voting machines. These apparently stem from TrumpWorld’s crusade to stoke baseless allegations that the machines had “flipped” votes from Trump to Joe Biden. The Otero County commissioners ultimately relented and certified the votes amid concerns that they could go to jail after state officials took them to court.
Republican commissioners in rural Esmeralda County, Nevada, likewise refused to certify the 317 votes cast in the county last month, citing unspecified concerns about the election from residents. County officials ultimately relented after spending more than seven hours counting the 317 ballots by hand.
Three Republican-led counties in Pennsylvania — Berks, Fayette and Lancaster — have refused to count all valid votes from the May 17 primary election for Senate, Congress, governor and the state legislature for weeks over opposition to the state’s rules regarding undated mail-in ballots.
Officials in all three counties informed the state last month that they would not count mail-in votes that had not been properly dated, according to the Associated Press.
Pennsylvania mail ballots instruct voters to write a date next to their signature on the outside of mail-in return envelopes, although these dates do not determine whether voters are eligible or if votes were cast on time. A federal appeals court ruled in May that undated mail-in ballots must be counted, ruling that the dates are “immaterial.” The U.S. Supreme Court, even with three Trump-appointed justices, allowed the ruling to stand last month. A state court similarly ruled in the Republican Senate primary that undated ballots should be counted.
The Pennsylvania Department of State earlier this month sued the three counties, asking a state court to order them to include all valid ballots “even if the voter failed to write a date on the declaration printed on the ballot’s return envelope.”
The department said in the lawsuit that the handwritten date “is not necessary for any purpose, does not remedy any mischief and does not advance any other objective,” and that “allowing just three county boards to exclude votes that all other county boards have included in their returns creates impermissible discrepancies in the administration of Pennsylvania’s 2022 primary election.”
“Interpreting Pennsylvania law to allow a county board of election to exclude a ballot from its final certified results because of a minor and meaningless irregularity, such as a voter omitting a date from the declaration on a timely received ballot, would fail to fulfill the purpose of the Pennsylvania Election Code and would risk a conflict with both the Pennsylvania Constitution and federal law,” the lawsuit said.
“It is imperative that every legal vote cast by a qualified voter is counted,” Molly Stieber, a spokeswoman for state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, told The New York Times. “The 64 other counties in Pennsylvania have complied and accurately certified their election results. Counties cannot abuse their responsibility for running elections as an excuse to unlawfully disenfranchise voters.”
Berks County Commissioner Christian Leinbach said during an appearance in court on Thursday that he does not have “discretion to determine whether a date is material or immaterial.”
“I simply am obligated to look at the clear language of the law that says undated and/or unsigned ballots will not be counted,” he said during a hearing, claiming that rulings on the ballots have been “anything but clear.”
Leinbach said he “could not in good conscience vote to certify undated ballots,” adding that “this type of issue is what is causing a lack of trust in the system.”
Lancaster County officials told the Philadelphia Inquirer the county had “properly certified” its results in accordance with state law and court orders.
“The Commonwealth’s demand is contrary to the law or any existing court order,” the county said. “The County will vigorously defend its position to follow the law to ensure the integrity of elections in Lancaster County.”
Fayette County officials argued in a court filing that the state did not have the authority to force it to count the undated ballots, according to the AP, adding that the state had missed a deadline to appeal a county board decision. The county also cited ongoing litigation before the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the merits of the appellate court ruling.
It’s unclear which way the Supreme Court may rule. Only Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented in the earlier emergency order, arguing that the lower court ruling was “very likely wrong.”
The American Civil Liberties Union defended the appellate court ruling after Alito’s dissent.
“Every vote matters, and every valid vote should be counted. Voters may not be disenfranchised for a minor paperwork error like this one,” ACLU attorney Ari Savitzky said in a statement. “The Third Circuit was correct in unanimously reaching that conclusion. We are thrilled for these voters that their ballots can finally now be counted, consistent with the requirements of federal law.”
The dates on the absentee ballot envelopes neither help determine whether a voter is eligible nor whether the ballot was cast by the deadline, Matthew Weil, the director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said in a statement.
“Exploiting inconsequential errors or omissions to invalidate otherwise eligible ballots received by the deadline is poor policy and bad for democracy,” he said. “The fact that the state already accepts ballots with incorrect or invalid dates only demonstrates how inconsequential this requirement is to determine the voter’s and the ballot’s eligibility.”
Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias warned that the situation in Pennsylvania is “far more disturbing than those we have seen elsewhere.”
The three counties have a combined population of over 1 million people, he noted, and the issue causing the counties to contest the results has “been fully litigated in both federal and state courts.”
“Most importantly, these counties did not refuse to submit any election results at all. Worse, they submitted results that intentionally exclude lawful votes,” he said, adding that “this is how Republicans are planning to steal elections in the future.”
Nonpartisan election law experts agreed that the trend could cause chaos on a larger scale.
“Had this unfolded on this kind of timeline in 2020, it really could have created problems, because there would have been questions about whether the state could have actually named a slate of electors,” Robert Yablon, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, told the Times. “You could imagine there being disputed slates of electors that were sent to Congress, and it could have been a big mess.”
The rightwing group is planning a future more authoritarian, more extreme and more ruthless – with or without the former president
He spoke in lurid detail of cities overrun by violent crime. He railed against the media, deep state and liberal elites. And he touted his wall with a dire warning: “Millions of illegal aliens are stampeding across our wide open borders, pouring into our country. It’s an invasion.”
Donald Trump’s return to Washington this week was deja vu all over again. The former US president’s 90-minute speech at a luxury hotel was eerily reminiscent of the nativist-populist campaign that won him the White House in 2016. But while Trump himself never evolves, his audience this time around was different.
It’s not lack of school prayer causing people to abandon faith, it’s that Christianity has become a toxic religion
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Members of the Conservative Action Project, a far right-wing network that supported former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in office after his 2020 election defeat, are demanding that Congress reject legislation protecting the freedom to marry. So are the anti-equality Alliance Defending Freedom and leaders of dozens of other religious-right groups.
The Respect for Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives on July 19 with the support of about one-quarter of House Republicans, reflecting the reality that more than 70 percent of Americans—including a majority of Republicans—support the freedom of same-sex couples to get married. More than 90 percent of Americans support marriage rights for interracial couples, who are also protected under the legislation.
But religious-right leaders hostile to legal equality for LGBTQ people were angry that the bill received bipartisan support. They have refused to recognize the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling as legitimate, and they have been emboldened by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s call for the court to overturn rulings recognizing and protecting the rights of LGBTQ people and same-sex couples the way it overturned Roe v. Wade.
A group of anti-equality leaders signed a Conservative Action Project letter dated July 26, which claimed that the Respect For Marriage Act would “wrongly marginalize social conservatives” and further “a new era of oppression” that the letter claims was unleashed when the Supreme Court recognized the right of same-sex couples to get married.
In addition, dozens of religious-right leaders signed onto a similar letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also dated July 26, that was organized by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious-right legal powerhouse that seeks to overturn marriage equality as one of the “generational wins” it is pursuing. ADF’s letter charges that that Respect for Marriage Act is an “attack” on people who want their views that marriage should only be between a man and a woman “recognized in the law.”
The Conservative Action Project letter justifies its fearmongering rhetoric with a reference to Bob Jones University v. United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that the IRS could deny tax-exempt status to schools with racially discriminatory policies, even if those policies were grounded in religious belief. White evangelical leaders’ anger over IRS challenges to segregationist religious schools helped fuel the rise of the modern-day religious-right movement.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins signed both letters. When the Respect for Marriage Act passed the House, Perkins charged Republicans supporting marriage equality with “political cowardice.” FRC was knee-deep in efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
Also urging lawmakers to reject marriage equality is Ralph Drollinger, whose Capitol Ministries uses Bible studies for members of Congress and other public officials to tell Christian lawmakers it is their duty to evangelize their colleagues and enact policies that align with Drollinger’s very conservative interpretation of the Bible. Drollinger devotes this week’s Bible study and a column in the Western Journal to his argument that scripture “crushes the same-sex marriage debate.” Drollinger writes, “It is not the place of the state nor its populace to redefine what God has created”—and suggests that pro-LGBTQ Christian leaders are “Satan’s pawns.” During the Trump administration, Drollinger conducted Bible studies for members of the Cabinet and used Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to open doors for him to expand internationally.
The Conservative Action Project is affiliated with the Council for National Policy, a secretive and influential political network bringing together different strands of the right-wing movement. In December 2020, the Conservative Action Project distributed a letter falsely claiming, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect.” That December 2020 letter urged legislators in six battleground states to ignore the will of the voters and appoint pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College.
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