Many Americans feel disaffected and disconnected from the system. But a single vote can make a big difference. In fact, there have been more than a dozen races decided by a single vote or ended in a tie over the last 20 years.
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A dropping out of the Green Party candidate, in Arizona could help Kyrsten Sinema, Dem candidate for Senate. These types of changes can have a big impact on the vote count.
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NYTimes: Brian Kemp’s Office, Without Citing Evidence, Investigates Georgia Democrats Over Alleged ‘Hack’
Now, in what Democrats said was a desperate attempt to deflect attention just two days before a crucial midterm election, Mr. Kemp used his official position Sunday to announce, with scant evidence, that the Democrats were under investigation for allegedly trying to hack the state’s voter registration files.
Democrats immediately denounced the claim as bogus and called it an abuse of power.
In perhaps the most outrageous example of election administration partisanship in the modern era, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is running for governor while simultaneously in charge of the state’s elections, has accused the Democratic Party without evidence of hacking into the state’s voter database. He plastered a headline about it on the Secretary of State’s website, which thousands of voters use to get information about voting on election day.
It’s just the latest in a series of partisan moves by Kemp, who has held up more than 50,000 voter registrations for inconsistencies as small as a missing hyphen, fought rules to give voters a chance to prove their identities when their absentee ballot applications are rejected for a lack of a signature match, and been aggressive in prosecuting those who have done nothing more than try to help those in need of assistance in casting ballots.
But the latest appalling move by Kemp to publicly accuse the Democrats of hacking without evidence is even worse than that: Kemp has been one of the few state election officials to refuse help from the federal Department of Homeland Security to deter foreign and domestic hacking of voter registration databases. After computer scientists demonstrated the insecurity of the state’s voting system, he was sued for having perhaps the most vulnerable election system in the country. His office has been plausibly accused of destroying evidence, which would have helped to prove the vulnerabilities of the state election system.
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T’s efforts to sway his base, may have cost some R’s their house seats.
Two days out from an expected Democratic takeover of the House, Republicans focused on the chamber are profoundly worried that Trump’s obsession with all things immigration will exacerbate their losses. Many of these same Republicans welcomed Trump’s initial talk about the migrant caravan and border security two weeks ago, hoping it would gin up the GOP base in some at-risk, Republican-held districts.
But they now fear Trump went overboard — and that it could cost them dearly in key suburban districts, from Illinois to Texas
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Pamela Aguirre is a superstar! It’s voters like her who will boot Trump out of office and bring our country back together.
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For anyone out there staying up into the wee hours (
), HuffPost has put together an excellent, continuously updated midterms returns page – the info-graphics can bring you up-to-speed at a glance:
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It is SO COMPLEX deciphering these races…The HuffPost one is very comprehensive, but I like the Guardian one…a bit less detailed but has enough to capture the big notes (wins/losses).
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With the House projected to go to Democratic control, first order of business is -
@natashabertrand
Democrats on the House Ways and Means committee plan to formally request Trump’s tax returns, per @AriMelber
Breaking: Dems now intend to request Trump’s tax returns – which they can do unilaterally under federal law: https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1060016560277016579
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The Georgia Governor’s race is hotly contested between Kemp and Stacy Abrams (D). The way Kemp was able to purge to voter roles, controlling who would vote, is something that the Democratic led House Judiary Subcommittee hope change immediately.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, said in a statement to HuffPost. “I expect the Judiciary Committee will want to hold early hearings. Voting rights are a cornerstone of our democracy and we can’t permit them to be eroded.”
Cohen is the likely next chairman of his subcommittee, which is the first layer of oversight in the House for federal voting and civil rights issues. If he takes that gavel, he will replace current chairman Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an outspoken white supremacist who used the committee to support voter suppression laws.
There are a number of potential lines of investigation into alleged voter suppression for Democrats when they take control of the House in January.
The election in Georgia will be at the top of the list, as Kemp used his official position to help his campaign by purging voter rolls and reducing voting access in African-American communities. There is no shortage of problems that emerged from this election. In a highly aggressive attempt to clean up the voter rolls, Kemp’s office removed 1.5 million registered voters’ names from those rolls. He also instituted an exact match system that canceled voter registrations that did not have the exact same spelling for names as they appear in other government databases. That system kept 53,000 voters, 70 percent of them African-American, from being able to register, according to the Associated Press. Kemp’s office closed over 200 polling places since 2012 and wanted to close more, especially ones in heavily African-American neighborhoods, but was prevented by a court order. Newly combined polling locations did not receive extra voting machines for Election Day, leading to waits of more than four hours at some sites.
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Florida’s election recount is chugging along as more irregularities are uncovered and a judge asked the warring sides to “ramp down the rhetoric,” saying it erodes public confidence in the election for Senate and governor.
One county revealed Monday that it had allowed some hurricane-displaced voters to cast their ballots by email — a violation of state law. Another had to restart its recount after getting about a quarter finished because someone forgot to push a button.
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It’s heartbreaking that Palm Beach County is not being allowed enough time to do a proper recount. There was a glimmer of hope today when a judge extended the Thursday deadline. However, the Republican Secretary of State almost immediately invalidated that ruling with a legal maneuver obviously designed to stall action for a couple days – just long enough so the Thursday deadline will kick in and any attempt to extend it becomes moot. If that happens, the first count will stand, favoring Republicans. There’s so much at stake.
A Palm Beach County legislative candidate on Tuesday won and then quickly lost the first round of his legal battle to extend the deadline for election recounts to be completed as growing political heat generated lawsuits in federal and state courts in Tallahassee.
Ruling on a lawsuit filed by Democratic Florida House District 89 candidate Jim Bonfiglio, who is trailing by 37 votes in his race against Republican Mike Caruso, a Leon County judge ordered that Palm Beach County elections officials be given until Nov. 27 to complete their recounts.
However, Judge Karen Gievers’ decision to lift Thursday’s 3 p.m. deadline in Palm Beach County was trumped when Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner petitioned to move the case to federal court.
“We’re now in federal court territory, said Marisol Samayoa, a spokeswoman for the campaign arm of the Florida Democratic Party. A federal judge in Tallahassee, who is hearing other challenges associated with the statewide recount, gave all sides until 5 p.m. Wednesday to explain why the county’s deadline should or shouldn’t be extended.
In addition to Detzner’s legal maneuvering, incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Democrat who is trailing by 12,100 votes in his battle against Republican Gov. Rick Scott, also entered the legal fray.
Nelson filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee asking that all elections supervisors in the state be given more time to recount ballots. The vote-counting will decide not only the U.S. Senate contest but the governor’s race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum…
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Great news on the state government front. Democrats made big gains – this is critical because the states that flipped to Blue will have the power to undo the grossly unfair gerrymandering that Republicans put in place while they were in power. To me, the best news is in the last line of the chart below: Before the elections, Democrats had a “trifecta”* in only 8 states – that number has now jumped to 14! At the same time, Republican trifectas dropped from 25 to 21. Go Blue!
National Conference of State Legislatures - Maps of 2018 Election Results
*“State Control” refers to the states where all three political power bases—both chambers of the legislature and the governorship—are held by the same party. This is sometimes called a “trifecta.”
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The midterms aren’t over yet!
Evidence is mounting that the Republican candidate’s campaign in the U.S. House race in the 9th District of North Carolina may have committed an egregious act of voter fraud. See the bolded text below.
What would make this an especially atrocious crime, if substantiated, is that the alleged fraud involved modifying the ballots of trusting, elderly voters.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in light of the fact that, at the same time the voter fraud investigation is being conducted, a power struggle for control of the Election Board is also playing out – the current board is being dissolved next week! - See the last paragraph.
North Carolina officials voted Friday to continue investigating fraud in the 9th Congressional District election, potentially delaying certification of the results for weeks and leaving open the possibility that a new election could be called.
The decision cast new uncertainty on the race between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready, who are separated by only 905 votes out of 283,317 ballots cast, according to unofficial returns. The Associated Press on Friday announced it was revoking its projection that Harris won the southeastern North Carolina seat. The inquiry further roiled a state already divided over issues of voting rights, voter suppression and fraud…
The State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has collected at least six sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen County, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested.
Among the allegations is that an individual who worked for the Harris [Republican] campaign coordinated an effort to collect and fill in, or discard, the ballots of Democratic voters who might have otherwise voted for McCready [Democrat]. Several of the affidavits come from elderly African American voters. It is illegal to take someone else’s ballot, whether to turn it in or discard it…
The nine-person state board, which includes four Democrats, four Republicans and one unaffiliated member, voted 7 to 2 in favor of holding a hearing by Dec. 21 “to assure that the election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption and without irregularities that may have changed the result.”…
Adding to the uncertainty is a political battle over control of the board itself. State judges have thrown out two laws enacted by the GOP-controlled General Assembly intended to wrest control of the board from Gov. Roy Cooper (D). As a result, the current board is scheduled to dissolve early next week. That throws into doubt not only the fate of the fraud investigation in the 9th District but the timing of certification of the Harris-McCready results.
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Republicans Brazenly Gut Voting Rights in Lame Duck Before They Lose Power – Mother Jones
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https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article222571645.html
Further developments in the voter fraud scandal that is unfolding in North Carolina (see above post).
Authorities have had suspicions about the handling of ballots in one N.C. county for some time. Their criminal investigation actually began early this year following the primaries – the existence of this investigation was just been made public. Allegations of additional voter fraud from the midterms are now being added to the case.
At stake is a U.S. House seat. The Republican candidate won by a very narrow margin. It is the Republican campaign that has been accused of voter fraud. If the charges are substantiated and it is shown that the number of votes involved in the fraud could have affected the outcome, then a re-do election may be held. The Republicans are fighting the investigation tooth and nail and want the results that show their candidate is the winner to be certified immediately. However, the state elections board has dug in and has twice refused to certify the current results.
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More on the N.C. voter fraud scandal (see above posts).
Wow. You’ve got to admire this dogged reporting by a Charlotte, N.C., TV station. These guys are out knocking on doors trying to track down the people who allegedly illegally collected absentee ballots. Kind of fun to watch, actually. They do find one woman who readily admits she was paid by the person at the center of the scandal, Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., to collect ballots and then, instead of mailing them in, turned them over to Dowless. He is hiding out and won’t come to the door. I wish these reporters the best of luck! 
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Republicans Finally Have an Election Fraud Scandal. And None of Them Want to Talk About It.
There’s evidence of fraud to benefit a Republican congressional candidate.“The conservative activists who have most vocally pushed a narrative of rampant voter fraud in recent years are ignoring the unfolding drama in North Carolina.”
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It gets worse…this stealing of absentee ballots was run by the lowest of the low.
BLADENBORO, North Carolina — The allegations that Republicans tampered with absentee ballots in a close North Carolina election represent the most serious federal election tampering case in years, one that allegedly stole votes from elderly black voters in the state’s rural south.
Now two women intimately involved with McCrae Dowless’s absentee ballot machine have revealed to BuzzFeed News its grim and chaotic workings, in which Dowless tracked votes on yellow paper and paid his workers, including family members, from stacks of cash, and that some were on opioids while they worked.
The accounts of the women, Jessica Karen Dowless and Lisa Britt, add significant new details to those that have come out from investigators and other news reports, as the state election board considers whether it should order a new election between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready. The women, both related to McCrae Dowless, paint a picture of American political chicanery at its lowest levels — though with sweeping consequences both for voters allegedly denied the franchise, and for the outcome of a pivotal national election, which Harris won by 905 votes.
Jessica Dowless described the scene in the small office at the intersection of two highways, where she worked on Harris’s behalf for the last two months as chaotic. One worker, she said, “was so fucking high the other day she passed out at the fucking computer.” One of the workers who collected absentee ballots from residents was a “pill head,” she said.
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