POLITIFACT - Trump: Democrats “are trying to ban voter ID”

"Trump says Democrats are trying to 'ban voter ID.' That’s misleading.'” by Amy Sherman, PolitiFact 1/11/2022

As Democrats renew their efforts to pass federal voting rights legislation, former President Donald Trump suggested that Democrats want to erase state laws that require identification in order to cast a ballot.

"They are trying to BAN voter ID and other basic measures that can ensure the sacred integrity of the vote," Trump said Jan. 7 in an email from his Save America PAC.

Trump accused Democrats of trying to "pass a radical federal takeover of state election law."

Trump didn’t name any specific bills, and a spokesperson Liz Harrington told us he was "not referring to any legislation."

But Harrington pointed to the House Democrats’ support for the HEROES Act in May 2020.  It was a $3 trillion proposal by House Democrats that focused on aid to governments and businesses and included stimulus checks.  Tucked into that legislation was a provision that said voters could meet a state’s voter ID requirement by signing a sworn written statement attesting to their identity.  The provision did not apply to certain first-time voters who registered by mail.

The voter ID proposal drew criticism from Republicans at the time, but the focus of discussions was about the main provisions of the bill, which aimed to help Americans get through the pandemic.  The legislation passed the Democratic-led House mostly along party lines but didn’t pass the Senate.

Democrats tried to pass a similar voter ID proposal within an expansive voting rights bill, H.R. 1, but the bill never made it into law.  The latest comprehensive bill that addresses voter ID is the Senate Democrats’ Freedom to Vote Act.  Senate Republicans blocked the bill last fall.

The Freedom to Vote Act also includes a requirement that states offer a workaround for voters who lack IDs, but it doesn’t broadly "ban" ID requirements.  Rather, it would set an expansive and uniform policy for what counts as an acceptable ID; it wouldn’t have to be one with a photo such as a driver’s license.  It does contain a provision, however, that would prohibit states from requiring voters present an ID in order to get an absentee ballot.

"I don’t know that ban is the right word, but it certainly makes it hard to put in place strict voter identification rules, especially those that make it harder for minority voters to vote," said Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law professor who specializes in election law.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he wants to create a path forward for federal voting rights legislation by Jan. 17.  To proceed on the Freedom to Vote Act or other voting rights legislation, Democrats would have to persuade Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to support changes to the filibuster, and would need every Democratic vote in the evenly split chamber.

Support for voter ID rules

Thirty-five states have laws asking voters to show some form of identification at the polls, while the remaining states use other identifying information when voters cast ballots, such as a signature, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

Polls show most people support a voter ID requirement, but voting rights advocates say that these polls may not grasp the issue’s nuances — such as safeguards that are already in place — and that the trend toward stricter ID rules could make it harder for a small group of voters to cast ballots.  This leaves Democrats seeking to stem the tide of increasingly strict rules, without proposing a total ban on voter ID requirements.

How voter ID requirements vary by state

What bothers some voting rights advocates is what’s in the mix of allowable options for acceptable IDs.  In Texas and Tennessee, for example, gun permits are considered valid voter IDs, but student IDs are not.  Critics say this makes it easy for gun owners, a heavily Republican group, to vote but harder for students, a predominantly Democratic group.

Also, voters who lack government-issued IDs tend to be nonwhite, and that includes in places where elections are settled by slim margins such as Georgia.

Republicans who want stricter voter ID rules argue that they are needed to prevent voter fraud.  But voter fraud is rare.  An AP investigation in December found fewer than 475 potential cases in six battleground states in the 2020 election, not nearly enough to affect the outcome.  "Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots," the AP reported.

AMERICAN POLITICS - Trump's Shakedown Attempt

"Donald Trump Should Be Prosecuted for His Shakedown of Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger" by Richard L.  Hasen, Slate 1/4/2021

President Donald Trump likely broke both federal and state law in a Saturday phone call during which he encouraged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election results.  The President certainly committed an impeachable offense that is grounds for removing him from the office he will be vacating in less than three weeks or disqualifying him from future elected office.  His tumultuous term will end as it began, with questions as to the legality of conduct connected to manipulating American elections, and a defense based squarely on the idea that Trump’s mind is so warped that he actually believes the nonsense he spews.  Trump may never be put on trial for what he did, but a failure to prosecute him may lead to a further deterioration of American democracy.

The Washington Post’s bombshell report and audio recording of a Saturday conversation among Trump; his chief of staff, Mark Meadows; Republican election attorney Cleta Mitchell; and Georgia election officials featured a litany of unproven and debunked claims of voter fraud in Georgia.  Trump claimed he had actually won the state by hundreds of thousands of votes and suggested Raffensperger could face criminal liability for not going after this phantom fraud.

In the course of describing such fraud, Trump attempted fraud of his own, asking Raffensperger to engage in belated ballot box–stuffing to benefit him.  (Never mind that Georgia certified its vote totals weeks ago and has submitted its Electoral College votes for counting by Congress on Wednesday.)  Among the most damning things Trump said was the following:

It is more illegal for you than it is for [election officials] because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it.  That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense.  And you can’t let that happen.  That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan [Germany], your lawyer.  And that’s a big risk.  But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I’ve heard.  And they are removing machinery, and they’re moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal finds.  And you can’t let it happen, and you are letting it happen.  You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen.  So look.  All I want to do is this.  I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.

Make no mistake: In that last sentence, Trump was asking Raffensperger to manufacture enough votes to overturn the results in Georgia based upon nothing but Trump’s false accusations of fraud and irregularities.  In the previous passage, it sounded very much as though he was threatening Raffensperger with some sort of criminal offense if he did not do as Trump commanded.  (No evidence has emerged that, in ensuring that Georgia’s election results were counted properly, Raffensperger has committed any crime.)  This request is easily the kind of corrupt conduct that could serve as a “high crime and misdemeanor” subjecting him to removal from office, though with his departure imminent it seems unlikely that Congress would take up the case.  The conduct, though, is much more egregious than the Ukraine threats that got Trump impeached one year ago, conduct that was also aimed at manipulating the election by pressuring Ukrainian officials to come up with fake dirt on Joe Biden.  Trump, of course, also entered office under a cloud of suspicion over his campaign’s links to Russia and Vladimir Putin’s successful efforts to manipulate the 2016 election on his behalf.  In the unlikely event that Congress were to make him the first President ever to be impeached twice—impeachments can happen even after elected officials leave office—then he could be disqualified from running for high office again in the future.  It has been reported that, when not attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Trump has been planning a possible third run for President in 2024.

Aside from being impeachable conduct, Trump’s actions likely violate federal and Georgia law.  A federal statute makes it a crime when one “knowingly and willfully … attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by … the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.”  A Georgia statute similarly provides that a “person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.”

For both statutes, the easy part for prosecutors would be proving that there was no basis in fact for Georgia election officials to flip the lead in Georgia to Trump by adding 11,780 votes to his totals, giving him one more vote than Biden’s margin of victory.  The ballots in that state have been counted, and recounted both by hand and by machine, and Biden’s victory is certain.  And as Raffensperger pointed out repeatedly on the call, every court that has investigated Trump’s fraud claims has found them to be completely spurious.  Adding 11,780 votes to Trump’s column—or removing legal Biden ballots—would defraud Georgia voters of the actual outcome they chose.  Counting fake ballots or removing lawful ones would deprive Georgia voters of a fair and impartially conducted election process.  That is the definition of election fraud.

The hard part for prosecutors would be proving Trump’s state of mind, because the statutes require proof of knowledge and intent.  Prosecutors would have to show that Trump knew that Biden fairly won the election, and Trump was asking for Georgia officials to commit election fraud.  And it’s not clear prosecutors could make that case.

As with so many things in this presidency and President, the question is whether Trump is drinking his own Kool-Aid.  Reading the entire one-hour, rambling call transcript, it is hard to know if Trump actually believes the fever swamp of debunked conspiracy theories about the election or whether he’s just using the false claims as a cover to get the political results he wants.  It’s not much different than Trump’s statements denying Russian election hacking in 2016, his professed ignorance of the aims of QAnon and the Proud Boys, and his speculation about whether ingesting bleach can protect against the coronavirus.  And during the Ukraine impeachment saga, of course, nearly every Republican senator voted to acquit the President on the implausible basis that Trump was merely asking Ukraine to legitimately investigate Joe Biden for possible criminal conduct rather than seeking to corruptly advance his own electoral interests.  In all of these cases, Trump’s conspiratorial rantings display either profound ignorance, deep cynicism, or both.

Trump is the rare potential criminal defendant to have plausible deniability about whether he accepts truths as clear as gravity, making any prosecution difficult.  Add onto that concerns of prosecutorial discretion for both the new Biden administration and Georgia officials, possible claims of legal immunity, a Presidential self-pardon that could relieve Trump of liability under federal law, and other political hurdles, and a prosecution of Trump is unlikely.

Despite the long odds, I would hope at least Georgia prosecutors will consider going after Trump, or that the House of Representatives might impeach him again with the goal of disqualifying him from running in 2024.  Lack of prosecution or investigation demonstrates that there’s little to deter the next would-be authoritarian—perhaps a more competent one—from trying to steal an election.  Trump came a lot closer than he should have this time, and next time we may not be so lucky.

AMERICAN POLITICS - Election 2020 Coup Attempt

"The Senate’s coup-staging ‘Dirty Dozen’ shouldn’t be allowed to hold office" by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post 1/4/2021

In a world in which lawmakers honored their oaths, Republicans would have voted to impeach President Trump for his conduct detailed in the Mueller report or for attempting to extort Ukraine to help his reelection.  They would have forced him to resign or induced him not to run in 2020.  In the real world, Republicans — in rationalizing his unacceptable behavior before the election and supporting his efforts to overturn the election results based on no evidence afterward — remind us they have irrevocably forfeited their moral authority to lead.  (Yes, I laughed putting “Republicans” and “moral” in the same sentence.)

The “Dirty Dozen” or the “Sedition Caucus,” as the senators who declared their plan to challenge the electoral college votes have been tagged on social media, has been attempting an anti-democratic putsch.  Remember the names of the Republican senators who seek to violate the results of an election and install their preferred candidate: Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Cynthia M. Lummis of Wyoming, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Steve Daines of Montana, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Mike Braun of Indiana, and Roger Marshall of Kansas.  It may become a baker’s dozen with Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) telling Fox News on Sunday, “I’ve said from the start, everything is on the table here, and I’m seriously looking at that.”

It makes no difference if they pledge as Hawley did to challenge the results or, as the rest of the Sedition Caucus, challenge the results unless Congress gives way to their demand to set up a commission to investigate (nonexistent) fraud.  The votes have been certified, the electoral votes cast and a new President has been elected.

There is no basis for overturning the presidential results in an election in which, mind you, a third of the Senate (including many of the Dirty Dozen) and every House member were elected or reelected.  The argument to justify such seditious activity — that there are lots of “complaints” or “people don’t believe the results” — is circular and ludicrous.  People may believe something crazy because Republicans raised entirely crazy and baseless allegations of fraud.  In about 60 cases brought to contest the election, not one produced evidence of fraud.  In many instances, Trump’s lawyers did not bother to raise the allegation of fraud since they could not point to any.

In any event, it makes a mockery of our legal system to think that four of the Dirty Dozen — Cruz, Kennedy, Hawley and Blackburn — sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  These four have shown themselves to be incapable of fairly deciding whether to confirm judicial nominees or considering legislation to protect the integrity of the courts and the rule of law.

The Dirty Dozen and reportedly 140 or so House members who also plan to challenge the results are attempting to obtain the same results Trump did by threatening Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a phone call on Saturday.  These spurious challenges to an election should remind us that the GOP has become an authoritarian, unprincipled party whose only purpose is to retain power by whatever means possible.  It should permanently disqualify these Republicans from holding office.

Those who are lawyers — such as Cruz and Hawley, who both clerked for Supreme Court chief justices — should know better.  Their actions should result in serious professional sanctions up to and including disbarment.  Section 8.04 of Texas bar’s ethics rules says a lawyer shall not “engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”  Deceiving the public about the outcome of an election and attempting to overthrow the duly elected President surely would qualify.  Likewise, in Missouri, the ethics rules state, “A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous, which includes a good faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law.”  That perfectly describes the utterly unmeritorious challenge to the electoral college.

In casting their ballots in the Senate runoff, Georgia voters should take care not to elect any more Republican senators whose victories would protect their majority.  They have shown themselves as unfit to hold office as Trump.  While we cannot remove them until they come up for reelection, Georgia voters at the very least can deprive them of the majority and control of the committees.