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The post Trump: Vote-By-Mail Is Rigged. Trump’s Campaign? It’s ‘Easy And Secure.’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>“REQUEST YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT TODAY,” reads a mailer sent to North Carolina Republicans earlier this week by the North Carolina Trump Victory campaign, the Trump campaign’s joint field operation with the Republican National Committee in the state. The mailer, part of a push to contact more than three million voters in the state, calls voting by mail “easy and secure,” and urges recipients to use the “Official Republican Party Absentee Ballot Application to safely and securely request your ballot.”
“All North Carolina voters are eligible to vote absentee—no matter the reason,” states the mailer, which contains step-by-step instructions for applying for an absentee ballot. “Your fellow conservatives are counting on your vote. Do not wait any longer.”
It sounds off-brand for a campaign whose candidate has repeatedly derided voting by mail as corruption in waiting. In fact, the mailing appears to directly contradict the president’s consistent public statements since the rise of the coronavirus pandemic, in which he has baselessly called voting by mail insufficiently secure. Trump has threatened to withhold federal funds from states that send absentee ballots or ballot applications to all registered voters, and in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that aired on Sunday, he threatened not to accept the results of the election if mail-in ballot expansion in states like Nevada and Michigan goes ahead as planned.
“I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose. I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose,” Trump said in that interview. “You don’t know until you see. It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do.”
The mailer appears to be part of a larger push by state-level Republicans to ensure that the president’s distrust of mail-in ballots doesn’t discourage his own voters from casting those ballots. Newly minted Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said last week that organization on the ground will be key—particularly when it comes to voter outreach.
“We have a better team, better voter information, a better ground game, better fundraising, and most importantly, a better candidate with a better record,” Stepien said in a statement after taking the reins. “If we win more days than Joe Biden wins, President Trump will be re-elected.”
Most of Trump’s claims regarding absentee voting—that mail-in voting favors Democrats, that ballots submitted by mail are rife with fraud, and that such ballots would be easy for a foreign government to forge—have been thoroughly debunked, and the president himself has voted absentee numerous times.
The White House has described Trump’s own absentee voting as fundamentally different than vote-by-mail, with press secretary Kayleigh McEnany—who has herself voted absentee 11 times in the past decade—telling reporters in May that the president supports mail-in voting “when you have a reason that you are unable to be present.”
That argument, experts in election security said, amounts to a distinction without a difference.
“This is a once-in-a-century event, so we don’t have a lot of good models for it,” said Professor Larry Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law Center. “But it seems to me it’s feasible: it’s not high technology, it’s relatively secure, and it doesn’t disenfranchise everybody—everybody has the same equal opportunity to vote.”
Public health experts told The Daily Beast that voting by mail is, just as the Trump Victory mailer promises, both easy and secure—and has the added benefit of not putting voters at risk of contracting COVID-19 while exercising their constitutional rights.
“From a public health perspective, anything that reduces the amount of time that people have to spend together particularly indoors and in close contact would be valuable in preventing COVID-19 transmission,” said Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health and of Medicine.
At least 16 states have expanded access to absentee voting due to the coronavirus pandemic, and nine states currently require voters to provide a non-pandemic-related excuse to obtain a mail-in ballot. Of those nine states, only Texas is considered potentially competitive this election cycle.
The Trump campaign said that apparent contradiction between the president’s campaign calling voting by mail “easy and secure” and the president himself saying it will “lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation’s History” is, in fact, no contradiction at all.
“If a voter can’t make it to the polls, they should request an absentee ballot,” said Matthew Morgan, the campaign’s general counsel. “But as President Trump has rightly said, universal vote by mail is inherently less secure than voting in person.”
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]]>The post Oregon’s vote-by-mail primary election: 3 key House races to watch appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Oregon is going ahead with its usual vote-by-mail primary Tuesday, and though the presidential primary race is all but settled, three particular races for US House seats have drawn national attention — and spending.
Headlining the electoral slate is an 11-way race to replace retiring Republican Rep. Greg Walden in the state’s Second Congressional District, and a closer-than-expected primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader in the Fifth.
All registered voters in the state received a mail-in ballot two to three weeks ahead of the primary, which they can then fill out and mail back in or drop off at one of the state’s ballot drop locations before 8 pm local time Tuesday.
As of Monday, just over 30 percent of registered voters had returned ballots, according to data released by the Secretary of State’s office, clocking in just under the turnout at the same point in the 2016 primary.
The US House primaries aren’t the only big races in the state worth keeping an eye on; sitting Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler faces off against 17 — yes, 17 — challengers Tuesday. The city will also vote on a set of new income and business taxes which are estimated to raise $2.5 billion over a decade to fight homelessness.
In addition to the race to replace Walden and Schrader’s primary battle, Vox is following the coastal Fourth District race, a seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, which has been deemed a top GOP target for 2020. Vox is covering the results live, in partnership with our friends at Decision Desk.
The 11-way race for Oregon’s rural Second District
With an open seat thanks to Walden’s upcoming retirement from the House, the Republican primary in Oregon’s Second District, which covers a largely rural area in the southeast portion of the state, has become a free-for-all over who can establish themselves as a “true conservative.”
The race features 11 candidates in total for the safe Republican seat, but four candidates have established themselves as the favorites: Former state Rep. Knute Buehler, former state Sens. Cliff Bentz and Jason Atkinson, and businessman Jimmy Crumpacker.
Several important local issues have emerged in the race, including what to do with the dams on the Klamath River and key forest management issues. One fringe candidate, Jeff Smith, said he would like to abolish the Endangered Species Act in order to free up forestry operations in the region, according to OregonLive.
Buehler has had to defend himself from charges that he’s not conservative enough after running a more moderate campaign for governor of the blue state two years ago. Back then, he encouraged President Donald Trump to withdraw his support for the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court after allegations of sexual assault emerged. He also waffled on abortion rights.
Bentz resigned from the state Senate to run for Congress full-time. He was among a group of Republican state senators to walk out of the legislature last year to stall a climate change bill, eventually fleeing to neighboring Idaho to avoid Oregon State Police, according to the Oregonian.
Atkinson is the chairman of the Dove Christian Broadcast Network, which “exists to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ through all media platforms,” and unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006.
Crumpacker, a commodity trader, told OregonLive that he thought his status as a political newcomer would appeal to voters in the Second District. “People in the Republican Party are frustrated with career politicians,” he said. “I’ve never run for public office, and I’m a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump.”
The race has drawn millions in outside spending, with anti-abortion groups like Oregon Right to Life and their PAC dropping a combined $207,000 and the anti-tax Club for Growth spending $213,000 attacking Buehler, according to a RollCall report. Oregon Right to Life has endorsed Crumpacker in the race.
Buehler is backed by a group funded in part by Nike co-founder Phil Knight called Republican Leadership for Oregon. The group has spent a total of $343,000 supporting Buehler and attacking other candidates in the race.
Progressive candidate Mark Gamba is primarying Blue Dog Democrat Kurt Schrader in the Fifth District
The race for the Fifth District seat feels familiar to followers of Democratic politics over the last four years. Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba, a progressive who supports Medicare-for-all, is challenging a more-established centrist House member, Rep. Kurt Schrader, in an energized primary.
Schrader is a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of mostly centrist Democrats who frequently shoot down more ambitious spending plans in Congress. Schrader also runs the Blue Dog’s PAC.
The six-term incumbent holds a significant money advantage, raising more than $3 million compared to Gamba’s $223,000, but has also had to weather attacks on his fiscally centrist voting record. Schrader, for example, was one of just 14 Democrats to vote against the $3 trillion Democratic coronavirus relief on Friday.
Gamba has gotten endorsements from several local and national progressives, like state Sen. Shemia Fagan, former Portland City Commissioner Steve Novick, and former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. But the mayor also has a checkered history of his own.
According to the Willamette Week, Gamba posted an anti-vax article on Facebook after a local measles outbreak in 2015. “You need to put some time into some honest research rather than swallowing the status quo and scare tactics that the Big Pharma dishes out,” Gamba said at the time, in response to criticism over the post.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary (and Schrader is the heavily favored candidate) is likely to go on to win the seat, as the district is rated “Solid Democratic” by RollCall.
Republicans think they can win in the coastal Fourth District this year
In early February, the National Republican Congressional Committee released a list of 55 target races for retaking control of the House this fall. Among them was Oregon’s Fourth District, which lies along the southern coast of the state.
The seat has been held by Democrat Peter DeFazio since 1987 but has trended more conservative over recent years. In 2016, Trump lost the district by less than two-tenths of a percentage point.
The Republican primary in the district also features a celebrity candidate, Afghanistan veteran and former Dancing With the Stars performer Alek Skarlatos. In 2015, Skarlatos and two friends disarmed a terrorist on a Paris-bound train before going on to star in a movie about the incident. He lost a race for Douglas County commissioner in 2018.
Skarlatos is set to face off against Nelson Ijih, a former US intelligence officer who is running on a platform calling for mandatory term limits for federal legislators and more use of blockchain technology by the government.
According to RollCall, Skarlatos holds a significant fundraising advantage over his opponent, raising $490,000 with $109,000 on hand as of April 29. Robinson reportedly didn’t raise enough to warrant filing an FEC report.
DeFazio, a member of the progressive caucus, faces a challenger in the form of community organizer Doyle Canning, who has criticized the incumbent for taking it easy on Trump. She’s also said the 72-year-old representative may be too old for the position.
“This race is about the future ― of our district, of the country and of the Democratic Party,” Canning told HuffPost. “And we need leadership that is willing to take a stand against the corruption of the Trump administration.”
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]]>The post Nevada’s vote-by-mail primary stirs fraud concerns, as unclaimed ballots pile up: ‘Something stinks here’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Red flags are being raised about the all-mail voting system being used in Nevada’s most populous county ahead of the state’s June 9 primary election amid reports that thousands of ballots are being sent to inactive voters — fueling concerns about the possibility of voter fraud and ballot harvesting.
Thousands of ballots have been sent out by the Clark County Election Department to inactive voters – those who have not voted in recent elections, a roster that can include people who either have moved or are deceased – and the envelopes are piling up in post office trays, outside apartment complexes and on community bulletin boards in and around Las Vegas.
HOW BALLOT HARVESTING HELPED DEMS ROUT GOP IN CALIFORNIA
The excess ballots have drawn complaints from local residents, who worry that anyone could pick up a ballot off the street and cast a fraudulent vote, as well as from Republican Party officials in the state who see a nefarious motive behind the vote-by-mail system being employed by the Democrat-dominated Clark County Commission.
‘This just seems fraudulent to me, something stinks here.’
— Jenny Trobiani, a postal worker in Clark County
“What’s going to happen with these things, they’re not secured at all and there are thousands of them just sitting here,” Jenny Trobiani, a postal worker in Clark County who told Fox News that she has seen hundreds of ballots being mailed to inactive voters.
“This just seems fraudulent to me, something stinks here,” she added.
While the coronavirus pandemic has elevated the conversation surrounding mail-in ballots to the national stage, the debate over the issue has been batted back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in the Silver State for a while.
Most recently, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and progressive political nonprofit Priorities USA dropped a lawsuit against Clark County after officials agreed to implement multiple changes to voting in June that included sending out ballots to inactive voters, reviewing every flagged mismatched signature by at least two reviewers of different parties, and opening up two additional in-person voting sites.
“The Clark County Registrar made the right decision in moving to mail ballots to all registered voters — not just those deemed ‘active,’ expanding the number of in-person polling locations, and updating their signature review process,” Nevada Democrats said in a statement earlier this month.
According to the court filing, the changes will cost county taxpayers at least $323,000.
Democrats are still miffed that the state’s existing election laws outlaw “ballot harvesting” – calling the statute unconstitutional and raising the specter of further litigation. Ballot harvesting, or the practice of allowing political operatives and others to collect voters’ ballots and turn them in en masse to polling stations, has drawn bipartisan concerns of fraud from election watchers.
EX-CLINTON LAWYER THREATENS TO SUE NEVADA UNLESS IT PERMITS BALLOT HARVESTING
The decision by Clark County officials to agree to Democratic demands has vexed Republican Party leaders in the state.
“The Democratic county commissioners were working with the Democratic Party on some kind of backroom deal,” Rick Gorka, the deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee, told Fox News. “If Trump was accused of doing this, there would be an outrage.”
Republicans argue that sending out ballots to inactive voters will make the polling process ripe for fraud.
“Anyone can turn in a ballot they pick off the ground,” Keith Schipper, the Nevada Trump Victory communications director, told Fox News. “This is a dangerous proposition.”
Ballots laying on the sidewalk outside an apartment complex in Las Vegas. (Photo Courtesy of Jim M.)
Schipper added that with Democrats vowing to continue legal action to overturn the state’s ban on ballot harvesting, Republicans are concerned about how the issue will affect the outcome of November’s presidential election in a key battleground state.
“They made it pretty clear they will continue with the lawsuit to make sure they get what they want for the November election,” Schipper added.
Ballots being sent to inactive voters may be a concern for the GOP in Nevada, but nationally Republicans have also railed against ballot harvesting as they worry they’ll see another scenario like the one during the 2018 midterm elections in California’s Orange County.
Despite holding substantial leads on Election Day, many Republican candidates in California saw their advantage shrink, and then disappear, as late-arriving Democratic votes were counted in the weeks following the election. Many observers pointed to the Democrats’ use of ballot harvesting as a key to their success in the elections.
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In Orange County, Calif. – once seen as a Republican stronghold in the state – every House seat went to a Democrat after an unprecedented 250,000 vote-by-mail drop-offs were counted, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
“People were carrying in stacks of 100 and 200 of them. We had had multiple people calling to ask if these people were allowed to do this,” Neal Kelley, the registrar for voters in Orange County, said at the time.
California had recently legalized ballot harvesting ahead of the election. In 2019, a GOP operative in North Carolina was arrested related to alleged ballot harvesting, which is prohibited in that state.
Several states have enacted some restrictions on the practice, while others have expressly allowed it or failed to regulate it at all. According to a 2019 analysis by Ballotpedia, 24 states and the District of Columbia permit someone chosen by the voter to return mail ballots on their own, with nine of those states adding some specific exceptions.
Twelve states outline who specifically can return ballots (such as family members or caregivers); and one state explicitly requires that only voters can return their ballots. Eleven states establish a limit on the number of ballots that a so-called “harvester” can return.
Fox News’ Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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