It's A Participation Kinda Thing

de·moc·ra·cy

/dəˈmäkrəsē/

Learn to pronounce

(noun) a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Run For Something:

Throw everything you know about politics out the window.
You’re qualified to run for local office – we’re here to help.

What kind of candidate are we looking for? Run for Something works exclusively with progressive Millennials and Gen-Zers running for local office for the first or second time.

Progressive

We help people who are pro-choice, pro-universal health care, pro-LGBTQ equality, pro-criminal justice reform; pro-working families and organized labor, pro-voting rights, pro-campaign finance reform, who focus on inequality, fair wages, and job creation; who acknowledge that climate change is real, man-made, and our responsibility to fight; and who will fight to reduce gun violence in their community. That being said: We are NOT the purity police. A progressive in Louisiana is different than a progressive in California. We help candidates run for the places they’re in.

Diverse

From 2017 to 2021, we endorsed over 1,800 candidates and helped elect 637 all-stars. Of our elected candidates: 56% identify as women, 21% identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and 58% are people of color.

We work with candidates from all backgrounds — teachers, nurses, scientists, activists, artists, musicians, chiefs, and rodeo stars. If you are passionate about making a difference, we will support you.

Connected

We’re looking for candidates with deep ties to their community. Folks who are already in their district — volunteering, organizing, mentoring, and doing the work. We don’t want to convince someone to move home to run — we want someone who calls a place home to step up and run.

That “X” factor

The past few election cycles have taught us that who the candidate is matters. How well they communicate online and in person, how comfortable they are in their skin, and how “authentic” they can be are all important factors.

We’re willing to invest in good talent wherever it is.

Jan6 Stuff

Coupla things just got a little clearer for me:

1. The apparent involvement of several Poodles at DumFux News, and the heat they may be about to feel, could remove a lot of the wonder as to why Chris Wallace suddenly bolted.
2. Devin Nunes has also made an abrupt career change - saying he'll leave Congress before the end of this year, in order to take the top job at Trump's new "media company". I'm thinking that's because Nunes is about to be implicated (again - this time officially, and this time without cover), and his only shot is to try to propagandize his way out of this mess.

18 U.S. Code § 1505 - Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees

Whoever, with intent to avoid, evade, prevent, or obstruct compliance, in whole or in part, with any civil investigative demand duly and properly made under the Antitrust Civil Process Act, willfully withholds, misrepresents, removes from any place, conceals, covers up, destroys, mutilates, alters, or by other means falsifies any documentary material, answers to written interrogatories, or oral testimony, which is the subject of such demand; or attempts to do so or solicits another to do so; or

Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—

Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.

Ed Note: You don't really think Herschel Walker or David Perdue are in any way a match for Raphael Warnock, do ya?

Say What?

So I'm coming out of Lowe's, and I see a guy asking a lady to sign his petition, in support of strict Voter ID laws.

Her: Do you need to see my ID for this?

Him: Nope.

Her: So how do you know I'm a real voter?

Him: We verify it with the voter registration rolls down at the county building.

Her: You just explained why Voter ID is totally unnecessary.

How Great I Art

Yeah, there's a bit of self-congratulating to be done here, but I think the real point is that I tweeted about wanting to take down Brett Kavanaugh, and the thing kinda blew up.

First of course - I know the response is not exactly monumental, but it's pretty damned great for a putzy little nobody like me.

Second though, it's not just the number of people who jumped on it - they retweeted it and they liked the fuck out of it - which is, in itself, gratifying and all - but the thing I've noticed is that most of the people doing the liking and the retweeting are women - like a huge percentage of them are women.

So maybe I don't get to draw big conclusions just from that, but I can't help but think there's a boatload of women out there in Voterland who're still very much engaged, and still pretty fucking mad about what's been happening.

And maybe they're willing to save our dumb asses one more time.

What Oath?

Let's say you run into an old acquaintance at the grocery store - a woman you haven't seen in a while. You chat, and she tells you about her three beautiful kids who're almost grown, and how she's gotten her career back on track - and then she mentions she's pregnant with a surprise baby. There was an unguarded moment under the piano after hubby's birthday party, and oops, here we go again.

And she's obviously not at all thrilled with the idea.

Months later, you see her again. You ask about the new baby and she tells you about her miscarriage, and oh well, shit happens. She seems pretty glad, and you wonder if she's done something that the God-Knobbers made illegal last time they won the majority in your state legislature.

As a responsible law-abiding citizen, do you not have a duty to inform the proper authorities of her suspicious behavior?

And you could sure use an extra $10,000, right?

Jennifer Rubin - WaPo: (pay wall)

Republicans, once upon a time, fancied themselves as defenders of “law and order.” The essence of the hackneyed phrase was that the law should be dependable, apply impartially and act as a restraint on those in power. Courts were to respect precedent so individuals and civil society could rely on predictable laws. Unlike dictatorships, where “law” is a flimsy facade that autocrats use to further their interests and to intimidate and confuse opponents, Western democracies, conservatives once boasted, delinked the power of the ruler from the operation of the law, making the latter supreme.

No more. Since the disgraced former president took office, Republicans have adopted a different notion of the law. They seek to render it unpredictable, increase the discretion of the state (when their side is in control), and attempt to accomplish what would otherwise be politically untenable through misdirection and harassment.

Take the latest attempt to undermine women’s autonomy. The New York Times reports on the Texas law banning abortions after six weeks, when many women do not yet know they are pregnant:

Ordinarily, enforcement would be up to government officials, and if clinics wanted to challenge the law’s constitutionality, they would sue those officials in making their case. But the law in Texas prohibits officials from enforcing it. Instead, it takes the opposite approach, effectively deputizing ordinary citizens — including from outside Texas — to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It awards them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful. ...

The result is a law that is extremely difficult to challenge before it takes effect on Sept. 1 because it is hard to know whom to sue to block it, and lawyers for clinics are now wrestling with what to do about it. Six-week bans in other states have all been blocked as they make their way through the court system.

Consider the potential for harassment, spying, extortion and other vengeful behavior directed toward women. The law depends on what a woman’s neighbors, associates and friends know about her reproductive health and are willing to tell the authorities to grab a $10,000 bounty. The possibility of frivolous litigation is hard to quantify.

Texas Republicans lack the nerve to uniformly enforce the law or to defend its constitutionality. Professor Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas tells me, “It’s a deeply cynical effort to both (1) chill conduct that ought to be constitutionally protected; and (2) provide cover for judges to find creative ways to dodge the merits of the constitutional challenge.” This is a law designed not to “protect life” (a farce, given that protecting innocent life has taken a back seat when covid-19 restrictions were at issue), but rather to create fear and uncertainty for women and health-care providers. Will miscarriages lead to a lawsuit from a nosy office worker seeking to cash in on the reward? Will abortion bounties become a weapon in divorce and custody cases? No one knows — and that is the point. The law seeks not to protect the fetus in any systematic way but rather to intimidate women, making them into cash cows for spiteful anti-choice busybodies.

Republicans’ election law shenanigans are more of the same. They torment, annoy and harass voters — especially the poor, hourly workers, the elderly and voters with disabilities — by taking away conveniences such as drop boxes, forcing voters to stand in long lines and imposing needless burdens on voting by mail.

The Times reports that voting restrictions proposed by Texas Republicans would “ban 24-hour voting and drive-through voting; add new voter identification requirements for voting by mail; limit third-party ballot collection; increase the criminal penalties for election workers who run afoul of regulations; and greatly expand the authority and autonomy of partisan poll watchers.”

In Georgia, both voting rights groups and the Justice Department are challenging Republicans’ effort to make voting more arduous. The Justice Department summarized its challenge in a recent statement:

The United States’ complaint challenges several provisions of [Georgia’s voting law], including a provision banning government entities from distributing unsolicited absentee ballot applications; the imposition of costly and onerous fines on civic organizations, churches and advocacy groups that distribute follow-up absentee ballot applications; the shortening of the deadline to request absentee ballots to 11 days before Election Day; the requirement that voters who do not have identification issued by the Georgia Department of Driver Services photocopy another form of identification in order to request an absentee ballot without allowing for use of the last four digits of a social security number for such applications; significant limitations on counties’ use of absentee ballot drop boxes; the prohibition on efforts by churches and civic groups to provide food or water to persons waiting in long lines to vote; and the prohibition on counting out-of-precinct provisional ballots cast before 5 p.m. on Election Day.

None of these policies have much to do with election security (or fraud, which we know was virtually nonexistent in 2020). They have everything to do with making democracy as arduous as possible for those with the fewest resources. They seek to devise as many hoops as possible, hoping certain groups of voters will lack the wherewithal to jump through them.

The Supreme Court recently encouraged such tactics by inventing a rule in the Brnovich case that so long as voting is accessible by other means, any single hardship imposed by the state can pass muster. In other words, the court must decide when protected groups have too much difficulty maneuvering around these new edicts. Death of democracy by a thousand cuts seems to be the objective.

But throwing up needless barriers and increasing the risk that the unwary will not have their votes counted is the least of voters’ troubles. The greatest amount of uncertainty in the operation of elections comes from Republican efforts to devise rules designed to render the outcome of elections uncertain or even reversible by right-wing legislatures.

Democracy Docket reports on a new study from three pro-democracy organizations, States United Democracy Center, Law Forward and Protect Democracy: “Over 145 bills proposed by Republican state legislatures would reassign various powers of election officials and the executive branch to highly-partisan legislatures. This ‘legislative seizure’ of election powers could have sweeping consequences — including allowing elected lawmakers to overturn the will of voters and determine their own preferred winners of elections.”

This has dire consequences for our democracy:

Legislatures want to condense power from sources at all levels of the election process — from the governor to local officials. Nonpartisan, local election authorities are key to the voting process: they have expert, detailed knowledge of the jurisdictions in which they facilitate elections, and they ensure that the thousands of yearly elections held in a country as large as the United States run smoothly. Now, Republican state legislatures want to “micromanage,” or insert themselves into local administration processes in an attempt to further their political goals — but these bodies are not structurally capable of implementing the day-to-day requirements of election minutiae as they lack both the staff capacity and expertise that local election administrators have.

Again, this effort contributes to the partisan politicization of election administration: in Arizona, state lawmakers proposed two bills (HB 2722 and HB 2799) that would transfer control over details like voter roll maintenance, equipment checks and vote counting to the legislature in an attempt to overturn the election results through an unconstitutional and disconcerting audit of Maricopa County. If they’re successful, we can expect to see similar efforts from Republican legislatures across the country.

In short, Republicans are taking refuge in Kafkaesque rule-making that empowers individuals and state authorities to harass, intimidate and confuse Americans attempting to exercise their fundamental rights. The law becomes a partisan tool to wage against opponents and to further otherwise unpopular social objectives (e.g., criminalizing abortion). It is a recipe for partisan legal administration and election nullification. If they cannot win elections and defend their policy objectives, Republicans appear willing to burn down democratic elections and “equal justice under the law.”

BTW, we've seen this "Fertility Police" shit before - in Ceaușescu's Romania.

We Can Call It Progress

In a "democracy", it seems like voting should be a priority.

And it is.

For the dog-ass radical right rat-fuckers of the GOP, voting is something they need to restrict, while Dems are usually more like " Fuck that - everybody gets to play".

So here's what seems like pretty good news via PBS News Hour (starting at 12:05, thru about 13:15):

Notice - when John Barrasso starts droning the GOP false talking points, Roy Blunt looks for all the world like, "Fuck me - I'm so glad I won't have to do this anymore."

A Survey

The kicker - spoiler alert - is that when Joe Manchin tries to assert that 20-25% of Americans don't feel terribly confident in our elections and woe is me, we can't take the chance on making it worse...?

What the actual fuck, Joe?

First, that means 75-80% of us do in fact have confidence in our elections, so your argument is pretty weak shit to begin with.

Second, you're in a position to change those minds, SENATOR Manchin. Jeezus H Fuq, you have access to everything thing you could possibly want if you decided just to do your fucking job, asshole.

Vox:

Back in March, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer obtained a recording of an adviser to Mitch McConnell privately bemoaning, on a call with conservative group leaders, that Democrats’ big voting rights bill, the For the People Act, polled quite well. “When presented with a very neutral description” of it, “people were generally supportive,” the adviser said.

A new Data for Progress poll conducted as part of a partnership with Vox backs up that assessment. The poll surveyed 1,138 likely voters nationally between April 16 and April 19, and it finds that much of what the 800-page bill claims to do is overwhelmingly popular.

More than 80 percent of respondents said they supported preventing foreign interference in elections, limiting the influence of money in politics, and modernizing election infrastructure to increase election security. More than 60 percent of respondents supported requiring nonpartisan redistricting commissions, a 15-day early voting period for all federal elections, same-day registration for all eligible voters, automatic voter registration for all eligible voters, and giving every voter the option to vote by mail.

There are, of course, a few caveats. The poll presented these questions without partisan cues about which party supports which proposal. Indeed, the one question that mentioned the parties — about whether Democrats should change Senate rules so they could pass redistricting reform without Republican support — was much more closely divided. (Forty-seven percent of respondents said they supported doing this, and 42 percent said they opposed it.)

The questions also didn’t spotlight Republicans’ preferred arguments — for instance, Republicans would stress concerns that same-day and automatic registration could allow ineligible people to vote, which would likely make some respondents more concerned about these proposals.

And other parts of the bill, like its limits to voter ID laws (it would allow voters without ID to submit a sworn statement vouching for their identity) and its creation of a public financing system to match small donations, may be more controversial. Voter ID requirements generally poll quite well and support for public financing can vary greatly based on question wording. (In polling for a separate client, Data for Progress found 56 percent support for one detailed description of the For the People Act’s matching program, but the conservative polling firm Echelon Insights found very little support for the general concept of “using government dollars to match donations to political campaigns.”)

The poll also asked about a competing redistricting reform proposal not currently in the For the People Act — setting proportional standards such that, if a party wins about half of votes in a state, it should win about half the seats. (I recently wrote about the debate among Democrats over this idea.) This got less support than any of the other provisions above but still was backed by 51 percent of poll respondents, with 34 percent saying they opposed this.

In any case, Democrats’ problem when it comes to enacting the For the People Act isn’t the polls — it’s the Senate filibuster. The bill that already passed in a near party-line vote in the House will require a 60-vote supermajority to pass in the Senate. Since no Republican support appears to be in the offing, activists have argued that the Senate should change its rules to let the bill pass. But moderate Democratic senators don’t want to do this.

One key holdout, Joe Manchin, told me in a recent profile that he fears passing a major voting bill on party lines would only further divide the country. He argued that 20 to 25 percent of the public already doesn’t trust the system and that a party-line overhaul would “guarantee” that number would increase, leading to more “anarchy” like that at the Capitol on January 6. He added, “I just believe with all my heart and soul that’s what would happen, and I’m not going to be part of it.”

Unless he changes his mind, the For the People Act can’t pass the Senate.

The Daddy State Slips - A Little

Interesting how Mitch McConnell first comes out with that ridiculous sound bite about "corporations oughta stay outa politics", and then a day later, he flips a U turn like a drunk comin' up on a check point on New Year's Eve.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion: Republicans’ unexpected rupture with corporate America

Republicans learned a valuable lesson this past week: There’s more to capitalism than tax cuts.

Turns out successful capitalists also need to keep their customers happy.

For a long time, the Republican Party had what it believed was a tacit deal with corporate America. Companies donated enormous sums to GOP campaigns and aligned groups, and in exchange, Republicans delivered tax cuts: on corporate profits, capital gains, estates. Whatever other agenda items Republicans pursued — on immigration, civil rights or anything else — corporate America would generally keep its mouth shut. So long as the tax cuts kept flowing, the only “speech” that corporations engaged in came from their wallets, which in turn were fattened by those tax cuts.

An un-virtuous cycle, if you will.

But recently, something funny happened. Democrats, having achieved unified control of government, are threatening to reverse the major corporate tax cut Republicans passed in 2017. Yet corporate America is criticizing Republicans, and for something unrelated: legislation in Georgia, Texas and other states that threatens to strip Americans of their voting rights.

Republicans are furious that corporations appear so ungrateful.

“I found it completely discouraging to find a bunch of corporate CEOs getting in the middle of politics,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) whined Monday. He fumed on Tuesday that his “warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics.” Then he hastened to add: “I’m not talking about political contributions.”

McConnell wasn’t the only politico suggesting that companies should butt out of politics (except when it comes to contributions, of course) if they wanted to continue reaping fiscal benefits. Georgia legislators were more explicit about what corporations need to do to keep the tax-cut gravy train rolling.

Last week, the Georgia House of Representatives voted to revoke a break on fuel taxes that benefits Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, which had criticized the state’s recent voting law. House Speaker David Ralston (R) explained: “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You gotta keep that in mind sometimes.” Apparently — shockingly! — this tax break had not been based on some abstract notion of public welfare or good governance or economy-boosting policy but, rather, a perceived quid pro quo. (Georgia’s Senate adjourned before taking up the legislation.)

There are a couple of takeaways here.

One is that what had recently been an extremely anodyne stance for companies to embrace — that voting is good — is now, somehow, construed as worthy of political retaliation. This says more about how far out on a limb Republicans are, not corporations. Despite spin that they are promoting “election integrity,” GOP legislators in dozens of states have introduced bills that include potent weapons for disenfranchising voters.

Georgia’s law, for instance, allows political appointees to seize control of election planning and ballot counting from local officials whenever those political appointees see fit. Had this law been in place last year, it might have enabled the GOP to overturn the results of the presidential election, and to find those “11,780 votes” Donald Trump was seeking. Even Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, acknowledged the provision was “the fallout from the 10 weeks of misinformation that flew in from former president Donald Trump,” rather than any attempt at genuinely improving election functioning.

Second, for the most part, these corporations aren’t criticizing anti-voter bills out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re doing so because speaking up is good for the bottom line. They’ve crunched the numbers and determined that promoting voting rights is more financially valuable than whatever they stand to gain from slightly lower tax rates.

Among those at risk of disenfranchisement, after all, are these companies’ customers and employees. And it’s not such a great business move to endorse attempts to take away your customers’ and employees’ civil rights; even staying neutral on the issue — as some companies tried to do before the Georgia law passed — can alienate consumers who are either direct victims of the law or allies of those victims. Similar dynamics emerged after Republicans pursued other divisive laws in recent years (such as North Carolina’s “bathroom bill”).

This is, in fact, how capitalism works: Customers get to ditch you if they’re unhappy with your brand. Republican officials are now trying to show just how valuable their own side’s purchasing power is by urging supporters to boycott companies that criticize voting restrictions. They’ve struggled so far; shortly after Trump asked followers to boycott Coca-Cola products, for instance, an adviser tweeted a photo showing Trump with what appeared to be a Diet Coke on his desk.

Hard to blame Republicans too much for having difficulty with the concept of voting with your feet, though. As their approach in Georgia shows, they’re accustomed to getting to pick and choose which votes count.

Rise Up

It's good to see the Dems up on their hind legs for a fucking change.

It passed the house, and then Mike Lee (R-UT) went on DumFux News:

Never forget how deeply "conservatives" hate our traditions of democracy and self-government. For over 50 years their project has been to tear it all down and replace it with a monied plutocracy.

Democrats are called to serve.

Republicans feel entitled to rule.

The Scam

We talked for a while, and as he was fixin' to leave, my new buddy the banker looked me up and down - at my frayed cuffs and my slouchy hat - and he said, "You're smart - why aren't you rich?"

I smiled, and said, "You're rich - why ain't you smart?"

WaPo:

Like many Trump supporters, conservative donor Fred Eshelman awoke the day after the presidential election with the suspicion that something wasn’t right. His candidate’s apparent lead in key battleground states had evaporated overnight.

Fred Eshelman - Gullible Rich Guy

The next day, the North Carolina financier and his advisers reached out to a small conservative nonprofit group in Texas that was seeking to expose voter fraud. After a 20-minute talk with the group’s president, their first conversation, Eshelman was sold.

“I’m in for 2,” he told the president of True the Vote, according to court documents and interviews with Eshelman and others.

“$200,000?” one of his advisers on the call asked.

“$2 million,” Eshelman responded.

Over the next 12 days, Eshelman came to regret his donation and to doubt conspiracy theories of rampant illegal voting, according to court records and interviews.

Now, he wants his money back.

The story behind the Eshelman donation — detailed in previously unreported court filings and exclusive interviews with those involved — provides new insights into the frenetic days after the election, when baseless claims led donors to give hundreds of millions of dollars to reverse President Biden’s victory.

Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party collected $255 million in two months, saying the money would support legal challenges to an election marred by fraud. Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress also raised money off those false allegations, as did pro-Trump lawyers seeking to overturn the election results — and even some of their witnesses.

True the Vote was one of several conservative “election integrity” groups that sought to press the case in court. Though its lawsuits drew less attention than those brought by the Trump campaign, True the Vote nonetheless sought to raise more than $7 million for its investigation of the 2020 election.

Documents that have surfaced in Eshelman’s litigation, along with interviews, show how True the Vote’s private assurances that it was on the cusp of revealing illegal election schemes repeatedly fizzled as the group’s focus shifted from one allegation to the next. The nonprofit sought to coordinate its efforts with a coalition of Trump’s allies, including Trump attorney Jay Sekulow and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the documents show.

Eshelman has alleged in two lawsuits — one in federal court has been withdrawn and the other is ongoing in a Texas state court — that True the Vote did not spend his $2 million gift and a subsequent $500,000 donation as it said it would. Eshelman also alleges that True the Vote directed much of his money to people or businesses connected to the group’s president, Catherine Engelbrecht.

Asked about the shifting focus from allegation to allegation, Engelbrecht said, “A good thorough investigation takes the course it takes, and we were not going to expose whistleblowers to make a quick headline.” She said that the group’s investigation “is ongoing even now.” In court documents, True the Vote says Eshelman’s money was spent properly.

True the Vote’s lawyer, James Bopp, said that no conditions were attached to Eshelman’s donations and he is not entitled to the return of his money just because he didn’t like the outcome.

The court documents and interviews show how quickly Eshelman and his allies became disillusioned with True the Vote.

“We were just not getting any data or proof,” said Tom Crawford, who had worked for Eshelman as a lobbyist and served as his representative on the True the Vote effort. “We were looking at this and saying to ourselves, ‘This just is not adding up.’ ”

Search for a 'smoking gun'

True the Vote was formed in 2010 by Engelbrecht, a Texas-based tea party activist. Engelbrecht, 51, came to prominence during the Obama administration partly for accusing the Internal Revenue Service of improperly targeting True the Vote and other conservative nonprofit groups.

True the Vote has spent the past decade aggressively promoting claims of voter fraud and pushing for voter-identification laws. The group has established itself as a hub for training volunteer poll watchers to monitor voters for their eligibility. Democrats have accused it of trying to intimidate minorities and other low-participation voters.

As a nonprofit, True The Vote is required to be nonpartisan, and Engelbrecht has said that its mission has nothing to do with party politics. But it has worked with Republicans on other campaigns — for instance, partnering with the Georgia GOP on a “voter integrity” effort for last month’s Senate runoffs in that state.

Eshelman, 72, was not familiar with True the Vote before Election Day. A drug company founder turned financier whose Wilmington, N.C.-based firm invests in health-care companies, he had previously donated largely to initiatives and groups that championed free-market principles and attacked Democratic candidates.

But after Biden jumped ahead — a shift election experts had expected as mail-in ballots were tallied — Eshelman asked Crawford for advice on funding an operation to determine if widespread fraud existed. Crawford agreed to help as an unpaid, informal adviser.

“I thought about the range of possibilities around vote fraud,” Eshelman said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There was already noise around cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Philadelphia.”

He added: “I wanted to determine if this was legit. Can we find a real smoking gun?”

Eshelman’s Nov. 5 donation was easily the biggest gift True the Vote had ever received, according to a person familiar with its operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters in litigation. True the Vote had never raised more than $1.8 million in a single year, its tax returns show.

The windfall propelled the nonprofit into action.

That evening, Engelbrecht sent Crawford a one-page summary of the group’s ambitious new “Validate the Vote 2020” campaign. It included a budget of $7.3 million and envisioned plans to set up cash rewards for whistleblowers, analyze voter data to identify “patterns of election subversion” and file lawsuits to “nullify the results” in seven battleground states.

In a news release announcing the whistleblower program the next morning, Engelbrecht said: “Unfortunately, there is significant tangible evidence that numerous illegal ballots have been cast and counted in the 2020 general election, potentially enough to sway the legitimate results of the election in some of the currently contested states.”

But over the following days, in federal lawsuits True the Vote filed in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the group said the evidence for its claims was still being developed.

The suits, filed by Bopp, said True the Vote would use “sophisticated and groundbreaking programs” to show that enough illegal votes had been cast — by noncitizens, felons, fake voters and others — to swing the election to Biden. “This evidence will be shortly forthcoming,” each complaint said.

Bopp, whose firm received a retainer of $500,000 for its work on the lawsuits, told The Post that there was “tons of evidence” of voter fraud but that it was “anecdotal, circumstantial.”

Drawn in deeper

True the Vote and Eshelman believed that finding people in swing states with vivid tales of voter fraud would be a crucial part of the project’s success, according to emails. Crawford gave Eshelman regular updates about True the Vote’s progress on that front.

Catherine Engelbrecht - SmarmSpace native

“We need [True the Vote] to get whistleblowers vetted and ready and to get their data teams beefed up,” Crawford told Eshelman in a Nov. 10 email.

Later that day, Crawford reported to the financier that a man in Yuma, Ariz., had come to True the Vote with allegations of large-scale “ballot harvesting” by Democrats in the region. “Please God let his story pan out,” Crawford wrote.

“Sensational,” Eshelman replied, adding that he was “still committed to putting in big money” if progress was made.

While it scrutinized the accounts of purported whistleblowers, True the Vote also sought to prove fraud through data analysis. Bopp’s lawsuits promised “expert reports” comparing vote tallies with registration databases and other records. True the Vote, he wrote, had “persons with such expertise and data-analysis software already in place.”

Engelbrecht’s Validate the Vote plan, an exhibit in the lawsuit, budgeted $1.75 million for “data and research” work. It was to be led by a company whose name evoked the shadowy world of intelligence operations: OPSEC Group LLC.

Records show that OPSEC had been formed less than two months earlier in Alabama by Gregg Phillips, a former True the Vote board member whose 2016 tweet was the source of the false claim that Trump would have won the popular vote that year but for millions of fraudulent votes by undocumented immigrants.

Phillips, 60, and Engelbrecht are business partners in a health-care company. Eshelman alleges in a legal filing — without providing evidence — that the two are also lovers.

In an interview, Phillips denied any such romantic relationship. Engelbrecht declined to comment on the allegation, which was first reported by the Intercept in partnership with the website Type Investigations.

On Nov. 12, Eshelman and Crawford joined a conference call with Engelbrecht and Bopp to hear an update on the data analysis and other aspects of the legal plan. “I was encouraged,” Eshelman wrote in an email to Crawford a couple of hours later, but noted: “You did not really give details on whistleblowers. Where are we on that?”

Crawford replied that three whistleblower complaints, including the Yuma allegation, had survived initial screening.

The following day, Eshelman wired another $500,000 to True the Vote.

'We cannot get ANY information'

On that day, Nov. 13, Engelbrecht received a bill for a $1 million publicity campaign from Old Town Digital Agency, an online advertising firm whose founder, Dikran Yacoubian, has worked in Republican politics on and off since the 1990s. Yacoubian had worked with Eshelman and helped introduce him to True the Vote. Eshelman and Crawford then brought Yacoubian on to help plan a publicity campaign.

Most of the money was to cover the upfront costs of online ads to trumpet True the Vote’s fraud findings, according to Yacoubian. The rest, he said, was to be spent on retainers for Republican consultants who would push the project’s findings through political and media channels.

Yacoubian said he had already begun securing the services of these consultants, including Robert Heckman, a longtime strategist for Graham. Yacoubian hoped Heckman would pass the group’s findings on to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Graham then chaired.

But Engelbrecht didn’t pay the $1 million bill, saying later in an email to Eshelman’s handpicked firm that it had no contractual agreement with True the Vote and had not provided “any services.”

Her refusal to pay contributed to an emerging rift between Engelbrecht and Crawford, who at the same time was growing frustrated by what he described as the group’s vague and ever-shifting leads.

“There was a guy in Georgia who claimed to be the bagman for Stacey Abrams,” Crawford told The Post. “It was, ‘We’re getting an affidavit,’ and then it was, ‘He ran away and we can’t find him.’ ”

The “ballot harvesting” whistleblower in Yuma turned out to have already contacted law enforcement, according to the person familiar with the group’s operations. Two people were later indicted on a charge of submitting votes for other people — but during August’s primary, not the general election.

Yacoubian, too, was frustrated that True the Vote’s whistleblowers were not materializing. “I really didn’t get to do, on the promotion side, anything — because there wasn’t anything to promote,” he said in an interview.

At one point, a publicist working for Engelbrecht instead sent Yacoubian an eight-minute video titled “Who Is Catherine Engelbrecht?” that she wanted posted online.

Engelbrecht continued to make promises about whistleblowers, claiming in a Nov. 14 email to Eshelman: “We are writing up the briefs on these individuals now to give Senator Graham and Cruz.”

Heckman, the veteran Graham consultant, said he listened to a pair of conference-call presentations from Engelbrecht and Phillips but came away so unimpressed that he never even mentioned the effort to Graham. “I was asked to determine whether there was any legitimate evidence there,” he told The Post. “My conclusion was there wasn’t.”

In an email, Engelbrecht said the group shared promising early leads with Heckman while it continued to gather information. She acknowledged that her publicist sought help in posting the video.

She denied that True the Vote gave Yacoubian and Crawford nothing to work with, saying that the group’s own publicists were “working non-stop” at the time to issue news releases on its activities. “The fact is that [neither] Dikran nor Tom seemed interested in actually doing anything,” she wrote.

In any case, Crawford’s exasperation was growing.

“We cannot get ANY information from her or her team,” he wrote in a Nov. 15 email to Eshelman. “It goes on and on like this.”

Abandoned efforts

As True the Vote struggled to produce solid whistleblower accounts, its lawsuits also failed to gain traction. Bopp, who serves as the group’s general counsel, told The Post that he reached out to Trump and his legal team with a proposal: that they join forces.

In phone conversations with Sekulow and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorneys, Bopp said he urged the Trump legal team to adopt True the Vote’s legal strategy, which hinged on persuading a federal judge to open up access to voter rolls.

“It was becoming clear to me that the lawsuits we filed were not getting the attention they needed” from judges, Bopp said in an interview. “And the Trump legal effort was a disaster, both their strategy and the tactics.”

Bopp said Sekulow and Giuliani supported the proposal and told him they would recommend it to Trump.

Bopp said that, at Sekulow’s request, he briefed a group of Trump allies in a phone call that included Sekulow, Graham and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives for Graham and Hannity declined to comment. Sekulow wrote in a text message: “I do not disclose discussions that I may have had on legal matters on behalf of a client.”

Bopp said that on the morning of Nov. 15 he spoke to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, and sent him a written proposal about True the Vote’s legal approach. A spokesman for Meadows declined to comment.

According to Bopp, Meadows said he would speak to Trump and get back to Bopp by 3 p.m. that day. But the call never came.

The following day, Bopp decided to abandon all four of True the Vote’s lawsuits, concluding that without the campaign’s involvement the suits had little chance of advancing before the election was to be certified in December. The lawsuits were just one component of the operation Eshelman was funding, but True the Vote had pitched them as critical to overturning the election results.

Bopp told Eshelman about the decision that day, during a tense phone call.

Eshelman was furious, according to court documents and interviews.

On Nov. 17, he sent Engelbrecht an email demanding the return of his money. True the Vote offered on Nov. 23 to return $1 million to settle the matter. Eshelman filed his first lawsuit two days later, saying the group had failed to provide an accounting of how the remainder of his money had been spent.

He withdrew the federal lawsuit on Feb. 1 and filed the suit in Texas state court.

None of Eshelman’s money has been returned, court documents show.

Bopp told The Post his firm ultimately billed True the Vote roughly $300,000 — more than half its retainer — for its work on the four lawsuits. He said he withdrew them because he “could see they were not going to accomplish anything.”

Overall, the experience left several people who were involved in the effort unconvinced that there ever was evidence of voter fraud to be discovered.

Even Phillips, the former True the Vote board member, said he has doubts about the impact of any irregularities. “I don’t know if there was enough to make a difference in the presidential election,” he said.

Crawford said: “I believe very much that Biden won and that anything we saw in terms of irregularities was not widespread enough to have changed the outcome.”

Eshelman said he still believes there was “some misbehavior” in the election. “But do I believe it might have risen to a degree that would change the electoral outcome?” he said. “I don’t know.”

Sometimes the "smart money" leads to some pretty stoopid places.

And not that I expect anything to come of it, but given the investigation launched by DA Fani Willis in Georgia, Lindsey Graham could be in bigger trouble than previously thought. That one bears watching.

Today's Today

120 years ago today - Black Friday Demonstration for women's right to vote.

That 3rd Party Thing

Still waiting for a discussion on this one.

Trump lost in 4 critically close states by a total of 95,568 votes.

In those 4 states, Jorgensen got a total of 227,162 votes.

These's been no conversation that I've heard regarding how this little phenomenon materialized, and that surprises me a bit.

We have gotten a good bit of noise about how The Lincoln Project collected a shitload of money - enough to ensure their entry into the Big Media fray now that the dust is settling - while moving zero votes from Trump to Biden.

Maybe we're overlooking a successful attempt at moving "traditional" voters (ie: US Military) from Trump to Jorgensen, while ensuring a very important core group of voters stay away from those nasty mean libruls (?)

This would fit in with the slicing-n-dicing that's become a real hallmark of political marketing.

It's a slight variation on The Wheeler Dealers, where you just keep nudging 49% to one side, and 49% to the other side, while gaining some control over the 2% that will ultimately make the difference in who wins the big prize.

I love it and I hate it all at the same time.

Vote.org

The Juice Media - Mail-in Voting

Ad

From vote.org/register-to-vote

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

"...one of the critical flaws in our representative democracy."

Two Dots

Coupla semi-long ones. But not bad.

The connection for me is that there's been even more study thrown at "Voter Fraud" and everything still points to "No - there's nothing wrong with it."

In fact, we get some reinforcement that the typical GOP bullshit machine is hard at work telling us that it's a huge problem cuz the Dems are doing evil things, while the only real problems anyone ever discovers is what the Repubs are doing.

Daddy State Awareness, Rule 1:

Every accusation is a confession

Reuters:

With the number of Americans voting by mail on Nov. 3 expected to nearly double due to COVID-19, election experts see little reason to expect an increase in ballot fraud, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims.

Voting by mail is not new in the United States — nearly 1 in 4 voters cast 2016 presidential ballots that way. Routine methods and the decentralized nature of U.S. elections make it very hard to interfere with mailed ballots, experts say.

While mail balloting has its drawbacks, it can help minimize the long lines, faulty voting machines and COVID-19-induced staffing shortages that have plagued some elections this year.

HOW SECURE IS IT?

Election experts say it would be nearly impossible for foreign actors to disrupt an election by mailing out fake ballots, a scenario floated by Attorney General William Barr.

For one thing, voters won’t just be selecting a president: They might be choosing candidates for city council, school board and weighing in on ballot initiatives. That can require hundreds of different ballot designs in a single county and the United States has more than 3,000 counties.

Ballots aren’t counted if they aren’t printed on the proper type of paper and don’t include specific technical markings.

States also require voters to sign the outside of their envelope, which they match to a signature on file.

Some 29 states and the District of Columbia allow voters to track their ballots to ensure they are received, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Fourteen states and D.C. also allow voters to return their ballots by hand if they don’t trust the mail.

Those envelopes are typically opened by a different group of workers than those who scan the ballots. Outside observers are allowed to monitor the process to ensure voter privacy.

IS FRAUD A PROBLEM?

As with other forms of voting, documented cases of mail-ballot fraud are extremely rare.

The conservative Heritage Foundation, which has warned of the risks of mail voting, found 14 cases of attempted mail fraud out of roughly 15.5 million ballots cast in Oregon since that state started conducting elections by mail in 1998.

The most prominent cases of mail fraud have involved campaigns, not voters. North Carolina invalidated the results of a 2018 congressional election after state officials found that a Republican campaign operative had orchestrated a ballot fraud scheme.

Experts say those scenarios can be minimized by nixing requirements — currently in place in 11 states — which instruct voters to get at least one witness to sign their return envelopes.

“All of these policies remove the need to hand over your ballot to someone you don’t know,” said Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Maricopa County, Arizona.

DOES IT HELP TURNOUT?

Turnout rates tend to be higher in states that conduct elections by mail. A Stanford University study found that participation increased by roughly 2 percentage points in three states that rolled out universal voting by mail from 1996 to 2018. It had no effect on partisan outcome and did not appear to give an advantage to any particular racial, economic or age group.

In Colorado, 77% of voting age citizens cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election, the highest figure in the country, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In Oregon, that figure was 72% and in Washington it was 68%, well above the national rate of 63%.

ARE THERE BARRIERS?

Like any other voting method, mail balloting has its drawbacks.

States rejected 1% of returned ballots in 2016 for arriving too late, missing signatures or other problems, according to EAC figures — though that figure was as high as 5% in some states. It can be more difficult to fix errors on mail ballots than on those cast in person, experts say.

Mail ballots can pose additional barriers to those who don’t speak English or have disabilities, and delivery can be problematic on Native American reservations, where residents sometimes don’t have street addresses.

In California, which started transitioning to mail ballots in 2018, Black and Hispanic voters were twice as likely to cast their ballots in person, according to David Becker, head of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

So 45* continues to spout off about the sheer horribleness of it all, and those few Repubs with the sense god gave a fuckin' stump can't figure out how to ride 45*'s coattails and not be as completely stoopid as he's making them all look.

WaPo:

President Trump’s relentless attacks on the security of mail voting are driving suspicion among GOP voters toward absentee ballots — a dynamic alarming Republican strategists, who say it could undercut their own candidates, including Trump himself.

In several primaries this spring, Democratic voters have embraced mail ballots in far larger numbers than Republicans during a campaign season defined by the coronavirus pandemic. And when they urge their supporters to vote by mail, GOP campaigns around the country are hearing from more and more Republican voters who say they do not trust absentee ballots, according to multiple strategists. In one particularly vivid example, a group of Michigan voters held a public burning of their absentee ballot applications last month.

The growing Republican antagonism toward voting by mail comes even as the Trump campaign is launching a major absentee-ballot program in every competitive state, according to multiple campaign advisers — a delicate balancing act, considering what one strategist described as the president’s “imprecision” on the subject.

“It’s very concerning for Republicans,” said a top party operative, who like several others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing Trump’s ire. “I guarantee our Republican Senate candidates are having it drilled into them that they cannot accept this. They have to have sophisticated mail programs. If we don’t adapt, we won’t win.”

The president, however, has been arguing the opposite. Nearly daily in recent weeks and usually on Twitter, Trump has attacked mail balloting, leveling many unsubstantiated allegations. He has claimed without evidence that it will lead to widespread fraud and that foreign governments will try to dump millions of forged ballots into U.S. elections. He has accused Democrats of using the pandemic to expand mail balloting for political gain.

“Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history — unless this stupidity is ended,” the president tweeted late last month. “We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!”

Veteran Republican campaign operatives, who note that the party has long had strong absentee-ballot programs in states including Arizona and Florida, have cringed at such comments.

“It does reduce the likelihood of Republicans embracing this process,” said a senior GOP strategist. “Especially for older, more rural voters, that could be important for Republicans getting out the vote in 2020. I don’t want ‘I will not vote by mail’ to become a political statement. But it may be too late.”

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said the president is critical of universal mail balloting, not the kind of absentee voting available to only a narrow group of qualified voters, such as older voters or those out of the country on Election Day.

“What the president is talking about is efforts on the Democrats’ part to weaken the integrity of our elections,” Murtaugh said.

However, in 29 states — including Florida, where Trump himself voted by mail this year — there is no such distinction. Any voter is allowed to cast a ballot by mail.

Justin Clark, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said “people don’t give voters enough credit,” saying they are able to separate what the president is saying about absentee ballots vs. mass voting by mail.

“The president is absolutely right when he says vote by mail is less secure,” he said, adding about Trump’s stance: “I haven’t seen any data or evidence that it is dampening voter turnout.”

The campaign has launched what another adviser, Chris Carr, called an “aggressive” effort to get voters to cast ballots by mail, including direct contacts with those who have voted absentee in the past and a successful test run in a recent California election.

The president’s message “doesn’t mean we don’t push absentee in a state that allows it,” Carr said.

The challenge for Republicans is particularly acute because the pandemic has dramatically changed the way voters are casting ballots — with mail-voting rates in some states rocketing from below 10 percent in previous elections to upward of 70 percent in this year’s primaries. A Democratic advantage is emerging in those turnout numbers.

In Virginia, 118,000 voters applied for absentee ballots for Democratic primaries June 23, while only 59,000 voters did so for the Republican primary — even though Republicans voted in a statewide Senate primary contest, while Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) was unopposed for his nomination.

Mail voting also soared in Kentucky’s June 23 primary; only about 10 percent of Democratic votes were cast on the day of the election, while 20 percent of GOP votes were.

Similarly, in Georgia’s June 9 primaries, about 600,000 voters cast mail ballots in Democratic primaries, while about 524,000 did so in Republican contests, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

“It’s a legitimate question whether or not the president’s rhetoric changes voter behavior on the Republican side,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “I think there’s some evidence to suggest that it has.”

Some of the surge in Georgia and Kentucky can be attributed to increased overall enthusiasm on the Democratic side; Democrats turned out in larger numbers than Republicans in Georgia, for instance, with 1.2 million votes compared with just under 1 million.

But the trend line concerns Republicans at a time when efforts to expand voting by mail for the fall are the subject of court battles around the country.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll in late May, a sharp partisan divide has emerged over whether to make it easier for people to cast an absentee ballot, with 87 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of Republicans saying it should be easier.

Democratic and Republican campaigns alike have long sought to “bank” votes before Election Day — amassing as many votes as early as possible, whether at early-voting sites or through absentee ballots. That way, a sudden turn of events — such as an economic collapse or a surge in coronavirus infections — is less likely to dampen turnout.

If Republican candidates lock down fewer votes than Democrats, they are more susceptible to the whims of Election Day — long lines, closed polling locations and the possibility that their voters decide to stay home.

And anti-mail-balloting sentiment has recently been cropping up in races around the country.

Last month, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) posted a simple message for her Facebook followers, exhorting them to vote in the next day’s primary and offering a link with “information on how to return your absentee ballot,” a process Iowa made easier to reduce the risks of coronavirus infection.

Not everyone welcomed the suggestion. “I will be voting, in person, for you,” wrote one supporter. “Senator, I can’t believe you’d support absentee ballots,” wrote another. “We need in-person voting with ID or no voting at all."

Two things:

1. Like Brother Bob Cesca says - Trump always makes things worse for Trump
2. Don't get happy - get busy - get shit done