Elections

There are 41 posts filed in Elections (this is page 4 of 5).

VoteBeat: Texas Republicans want to hand count 2024 primary ballots. Experts say it’s “a recipe for disaster.” – Republicans in counties large and small are considering ditching tabulation machines to count their primary ballots by hand. Only one county — Gillespie in the Texas Hill Country — is moving forward with such plans for now.

Election Fraud in Bridgeport, Connecticut

NBC News: In Connecticut, a rare election do-over could oust a sitting mayor – The race is among three recent election redos across the country, raising eyebrows among experts who worry such contests may become more common.

NBC Connecticut: Judge orders new Bridgeport mayoral primary after surveillance videos show possible ballot stuffing

Election Law Blog: Coverage of this Bridgeport CT mayoral election

Connecticut Mirror: How the battle for absentee ballots defined the Bridgeport election – More than 22% of all votes cast in the Bridgeport Democratic primary were absentee ballots

Connecticut Mirror: How CT Mirror investigated Bridgeport’s absentee voting process – an excellent breakdown of how the CT Mirror used data journalism techniques to figure out what happened in this election

The Federalist: Judge Overturns Bridgeport Mayoral Election Due To Evidence Of Mail Ballot Fraud

Truthout: 2023 Saw a Growing Pro-Democracy Movement Win Voting Access Gains – State lawmakers have been pushed to make pro-democracy reforms in the absence of federal legislation to protect voters.

Politico: ‘The Opposite of Politics’: A Conservative Legal Scholar Says Kicking Trump Off the Ballot Is ‘Unassailable’ – J. Michael Luttig explains why he thinks the 14th Amendment should prevent Trump from running for president again.

The American Conservative: How Mass Mail-In Voting Changes Everything – A Republican-slanted article analyzing how mail-in voting affects Republican candidates. Quote: “Mass mail-in voting is not a voting rights matter. It is a matter of greatly expanding the power of leftist nonprofits and partisan election activists to manipulate elections and determine outcomes.”

Bolts Mag: Twelve Questions Shaping Democracy and Voting Rights in 2024 – A good overview of how local, county and state governments, state and federal courts, and legislatures could affect the 2024 elections.

The Atlantic: The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again – J. Michael Luttig and Laurence Tribe give an overview of how Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids holding office by former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion (see also this recent paper on this subject). Sounds good to me!

Wrapping up the January 6th Committee hearings

My wife and I watched the final hearing this week from the House January 6th Select Committee on the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 (also, see C-SPAN archive collection. It was a day that I remember well, having kept a liveblog of the day’s events (also see posts here and here). I think that the committee has done an excellent job of telling the story of what led up to this event and how Donald Trump was the central figure in trying to overturn the 2020 election. My fervent hope is that the Department of Justice is going to pursue Trump and hold him accountable for his crimes (i.e., indict, arrest, and convict him!). The site JustSecurity.org has a January 6 clearinghouse of information on this event, well worth checking out, as well as a citizen’s guide to the evidentiary record.

The most striking part of the hearing was the documentary video of the congressional leaders at Fort McNair filmed by Alexandra Pelosi (Nancy Pelosi’s daughter). CNN also carried more of this footage the evening of the hearing (also here). It was riveting. One question came up in my wife and I discussing the hearing – how was it that Alexandra Pelosi came to be there that day? And for myself, how is it that this is the first time this footage is coming to public view? Was she planning to make a documentary with this? Her Wikipedia page says she works for HBO, but she has not released any documentaries since 2020. I hope that some journalist will dig into this a little more.