Speaking of slander

 I think Colorado could have a lawsuit here.

And where does he want to move it to?  Huntsville, Alabama.  "Rocket City."

President Donald Trump appeared to believe he was bestowing a new nickname for Huntsville after announcing Tuesday the north Alabama city will house U.S. Space Command headquarters.

[...]

“I am thrilled to report that the U.S. Space Command headquarters will move to the beautiful locale of a place called Huntsville, Alabama — forever to be known, from this point forward, as Rocket City," Trump announced Tuesday in the Oval Office as he was flanked by Alabama federal elected officials.

[...]

But the nickname Trump gave Huntsville has been around since the 1950s.

  AL.com

I should have been keeping a list of all the words and phrases Trump thinks he coined.

There is no quiet part in Trump 2.0

 They want you to know they own you.

Trump in the Oval Office this week said he will soon issue a blatantly unconstitutional executive order as part of a bid to do away with mail voting. The goal, he suggested, is not to make elections more secure but to hurt his political opponents.

“If you [end] mail in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected,” Trump claimed, adding that ending mail voting was “bigger than anything having to do with redistricting.”

[...]

Trump’s attempt to kill off vote by mail, the GOP’s brazen mid-decade redistricting, the DOJ’s demands for state voting data and his allies’ calls to station federal police at polling places indicate that Republicans feel entitled to power and may use any means necessary to hold onto it - including ending fair elections.

  Democracy Docket

Not "may", will. ICE will be deployed at polling stations. Count on it.

Even worse, he made clear that he will issue an executive order directing states to defer to him “in counting and tabulating the votes.”

[...]

This is a clear and direct threat to free and fair elections and, more fundamentally, to democracy itself. It should be front-page news, dominating headlines and sparking wall-to-wall outrage and condemnation from political leaders, civic institutions and everyday Americans.

Yet, the legacy media treats it as just another day in Trump’s bizarro-world soap opera, while the business community just wants to make sure it doesn't interfere with them counting their money.

  Democracy Docket

Can't wait to see what happens when this gets to the Supreme Court.  I'm surprised he didn't wait until later in the game to announce it.

Of course paper ballots are not cheaper or faster or more reliable than voting machines.  I don't suppose that matters.

Radicalized judges

No one said they're the smartest bunch

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pennsylvania about to report - Update

How wrong I was!

Allegheny County in Pennsylvania has announced that it will be waiting until Friday to count another 35,413 ballots due to the need to perform "administrative work," according to The New York Times election correspondent Trip Gabriel.

  The Post Millennial

WTF???

The delay appears to be connected to an issue from October whereby a company named Midwest Direct, which was contracted by the Allegheny County to deliver mail-in ballots, accidentally sent 29,000 ballots to the wrong voters.

According to officials, these ballots need to be checked to ensure that none of these voters voted twice, as those who were sent the wrong ballots later received new, correct ones. Other ballots, according to an email sent to Gabriel, had incomplete or ineligible information on them.

[...]

Allegheny County is the home of Pittsburgh, the second largest city in Pennsylvania and a Democratic Party hub within the highly contested battleground state.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Interesting look at who cast mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania

             https://www.votespa.com/About-Elections/Pages/Counting-Dashboard.aspx

DeJoy voter suppression continued

[S]tate courts over the last several months have overturned witness signature mandates in Rhode Island, Virginia, Minnesota, and Alaska. Yet such restrictions are still on the books in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and South Carolina. [...] [T]he Associated Press reported last month that “lack of a witness signature or other witness information has emerged as the leading cause of ballots being set aside before being counted in North Carolina, with problems disproportionately affecting Black voters in the state.”

In past elections, the requirement has not been much of a problem because few people in these states voted absentee and, if they did, they had a handy workaround. They could get their local letter carriers to co-sign their ballots or ask a clerk at their local post office to do so.

[...]

[I]n a much under-covered move, the U.S. Postal Service under Donald Trump’s handpicked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued an order this summer forbidding Postal Service employees from providing witness signatures on voters’ absentee ballots.

Over the last several weeks, postal union officials have pushed DeJoy’s top lieutenants to rescind the prohibition. [...] Last week, however, the USPS national management refused a final plea from the unions to reverse the order.

  Washington Monthly

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Also...

Good news for Texas voters

A federal judge in Texas on Friday barred officials from enforcing Governor Greg Abbott's order that would limit the number of mail in voting drop off boxes to one per county. Civil rights and voting rights groups sued Abbott over the order last week. Abbott said the move was designed to "strengthen voting safety in Texas." But Judge Robert Pitman said the directive imposed a "burden on an already vulnerable voting population that is somewhere between 'slight' and 'severe.'"

[...]

Harris County, a 1,777-square-mile region that's home to Houston and is the country's third largest county, had established 11 drop off locations before the governor issued his order.

In a previous court filing, the Harris County Clerk noted that the lone drop off site "could be more than fifty miles away" for some voters. Some activists also raised concerns that the reduced locations could disproportionately affect low-income voters and voters of color.

[...]

"To the extent that this Court's injunction to reinstate the ballot return centers does potentially cause confusion, the Court is satisfied that it would be minimal and outweighed by the increase in voting access," Pitman wrote. The judge's ruling could be appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

  CBS

Wouldn't that be an ever bigger asshole move this close to November 3? So, they'll probably do it.

UPDATE 10/28, less than a week to election day:  It went straight to the Texas Supreme Court:  go ahead and suppress those votes.

Voter suppression blocked in Pennsylvania

The opposite of Texas.

Does the GOP have time to run this through the Supreme Court before November 3?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  GOP: There's more than one way to suppress a vote.

Speaking of court orders...

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit from President Trump’s reelection campaign to block New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) plan to send mail-in ballots to all registered voters as a safety precaution during the pandemic.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp wrote that the plaintiff's claims that unsolicited mail-in ballots would lead to rampant illegal voting “are largely conjectural, hypothetical, and lacking in imminence."

[...]

The judge pointed to how state election officials have implemented several security measures, including bar codes on each ballot and laws making it a third-degree crime to engage in voter fraud.

“Any suggestion of these measures’ imminent failure is also speculative,” wrote Shipp.

[...]

The statewide July 7 primary was conducted entirely through mail-in ballots and encountered some problems. Approximately 1,666 ballots in Sussex County were accidentally left uncounted for more than two months, according to elections officials.

But despite the issues, Murphy heralded the process as “not perfect, but overwhelmingly a success.”

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Because they can't win if they don't cheat

This is awful.

My son in Illinois had his mail-in ballot rejected for this reason, but Illinois notified him and gave him the chance to verify it so it will count.  Every state should permit that.

A federal appeals court reinstated Texas's procedures for rejecting ballots with signatures that don't appear to match those on record with elections officials, temporarily blocking a district judge's ruling that the process is unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed an injunction against the mismatched-signatures procedure while a legal challenge plays out.

"Because Texas’s strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state’s voting procedures place on the right to vote, we stay the injunction pending appeal," Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, wrote in the unanimous panel's decision.

  The Hill

That's not safeguarding elections from voter fraud, that's vote suppression.

The League of Women Voters of Texas, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, called Monday's decision "deeply disappointing because it allows the State to shirk its responsibility to ensure that each vote is counted.

[...]

“To prevent voter disenfranchisement mail ballots that are rejected due to a signature mismatch ought to have the opportunity to be cured," said Grace Chimene, the group's president. "We call on Texas counties to commit to notifying voters in cases of a signature mismatch as soon as possible before Election Day, and to fight for voters’ ballots to be counted—in court if need be.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Courts blocking mail ballot extensions

If you're voting by mail, do it now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A little good news for Pennsylvania voters

A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Saturday threw out a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign, dismissing its challenges to the battleground state’s poll-watching law and its efforts to limit how mail-in ballots can be collected and which of them can be counted.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan — who was appointed by Trump — in Pittsburgh also poured cold water on Trump’s claims [about] election fraud.

Trump’s campaign said it would appeal at least one element of the decision, with barely three weeks to go until Election Day.

[...]

“The ruling is a complete rejection of the continued misinformation about voter fraud and corruption, and those who seek to sow chaos and discord ahead of the upcoming election,” [Pennsylvania governor Tom] Wolf’s office said in a statement.

[...]

“We told the Trump campaign and the president, ‘put up or shut up’ to his claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania,” [Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh] Shapiro told The Associated Press. “It’s important to note they didn’t even need to prove actual voter fraud, just that it was likely or impending, and they couldn’t even do that.”

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that it looked forward to a quick decision from the appeals court “that will further protect Pennsylvania voters from the Democrats’ radical voting system.”

[...]

In this case, Trump’s campaign wanted the court to bar counties from using drop boxes or mobile sites to collect mail-in ballots that are not “staffed, secured, and employed consistently within and across all 67 of Pennsylvania’s counties.” Trump’s campaign said it would appeal the matter of drop boxes.

[...]

Trump’s campaign also wanted the court to free county election officials to disqualify mail-in ballots where the voter’s signature may not match their signature on file and to remove a county residency requirement in state law for certified poll watchers.

  USA Today

Let the people vote

They know they can't win if they let people vote; they can't win if they don't cheat.  Texas, now Ohio...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Let the people vote

IN 2018, Democrats won three of Iowa’s four congressional districts, picked up five seats in the state House, and lost the governor’s race by less than 3 points. The state has only trended more Democratic since, giving the party real hope that its six electoral votes could wind up in the camp of Joe Biden and that its Senate seat, now held by Republican Joni Ernst, could flip to Democrat Theresa Greenfield.

It may all hinge, however, on an absentee ballot snafu affecting tens of thousands of voters that the party is scrambling to rectify.

In July, the top elections officials in Linn and Johnson counties went ahead and began mailing out absentee-ballot request forms with some voter information already filled in, like names and dates of birth. Crucially, voters need to know their voter ID number. Most don’t, and Linn County Auditor Joel Miller had the state’s vendor fill it in for them. Republicans protested, and courts sided with the GOP, saying that Miller’s decision to proceed with the mailing violated a “clear directive” from Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate.

More than 100,000 absentee ballot requests have already been invalidated in several Iowa counties. In late August, judges ordered two Iowa counties to invalidate at least 64,000 ballot requests, siding with a challenge brought by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the GOP, which have been filing similar lawsuits nationwide. About 50,000 voters in Linn County and at least 14,000 in Woodbury will be informed that their absentee-ballot requests won’t count and that anyone who still wants to vote by mail in November will have to send in a new form in order to receive their ballot. In a separate case in Johnson County, home to the University of Iowa, more than 92,000 ballot request forms were voided.

  The Intercept

Where is the river?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A little voting good news

Let the people vote

The GOP is shameless.

UPDATE:  Now Ohio.

New York Board of Elections is helping Trump

Intentionally or due to simple incompetence, it makes no difference.

The notoriously dysfunctional entity has given ammo to Trump’s charges [of vote by mail fraud] by mailing some 100,000 ballots with erroneously marked return envelopes to voters in Brooklyn. The latest screw-up from the bipartisan board — whose members are appointed by local party leaders and approved by the City Council as one of the last vestiges of old-school machine politics — became an immediate talking point for Republicans.

Trump retweeted several stories Monday that referenced the snafu as part of his running attacks on mail-in voting. [...] On Wednesday, he again cited the city's ballot issues and urged people to go to the polls.

"Wow! 100,000 Mail In Ballots in New York City a total MESS. Mayor and Governor have no idea what to do," the president tweeted. "Big Fraud, Unfixable! Cancel Ballots and go out and VOTE, just like in past decades, when there were no problems!"

[...]

“A lot of district leaders’ second cousin's idiot sons are given jobs at the Board of Elections,” said an election expert who spoke with POLITICO on background. “They want to do something for them and they hope they won’t do too much damage — but now we are seeing what kind of damage they can do.”

[...]

“Time and time again, they single-handedly make the GOP’s case that mailed ballots are prone to errors and abuse, or that voter rolls are being purged, or that absentee ballots are sent in error,” City Council Member Joe Borelli said in a statement to POLITICO. “Some junior producers at Fox should send over pizzas for making their jobs so easy.”

Dean Kevlin, a Brooklyn resident who received a faulty ballot over the weekend, agreed.

[...]

His whole family requested mail-in ballots and each received one containing an error: His wife’s return envelope bore his name, his was marked with the name of a neighborhood friend and his son’s had a name no one in the household recognized.

  Politico

That can't be simple incompetence.

The screw-up has forced him to reconsider his plans.

“If it meant I’d die and it would stop Trump getting in, I might be willing to [stand in line for hours and hours and hours and risk getting Covid],” he said.

The executive director of the board, Michael Ryan, briefly addressed the controversy during a routine meeting Tuesday. He blamed a vendor for incorrectly printing the envelopes, and said new ballots would be sent to everyone affected.

Perhaps we should be checking into who that vendor is.

“It’s appalling,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “I don't know how many times we're going to see the same thing happen at the Board of Elections and be surprised."

Until you install a new board, I'm guessing.

Frustration with the board dates back decades: Mike Bloomberg, who was mayor from 2002 through 2013, often waged war with the board and attempted to undo partisan municipal elections entirely.

[...]

“Who is ultimately responsible for its construction and who can dismantle it and replace it with something better?” Staten Island Borough President Jimmy Oddo, a Republican, said of the board in an interview Tuesday. “That should be the sole focus.”

[...]

The board’s most egregious offense in recent memory was purging around 200,000 New Yorkers from the voter rolls during the 2016 election, prompting a lawsuit from then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Yeah, this isn't sounding like simple incompetence.

As recently as June, the board was fending off heavy criticism for failing to send out absentee ballots in time for voters to actually use them and then taking weeks to tally the results of several races.

[...]

The sanctity of mail-in ballots is not the only uncertainty facing New York City voters ahead of the momentous presidential election in November. The board hasn’t even instructed voters on how much postage to use for sending their ballots in, according to city and state officials. And last week, Ryan indicated a final count of all the votes may not come until well into December.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Many things are already going very wrong!

And they're all because Donald Trump is in the White House.

Ellen Weintraub is the federal elections commissioner.