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JEFFERSON CITY • Just as Democrats predicted, legislation that would reverse an ethics reform initiative approved by voters in November has surfaced in the Republican-led Missouri Legislature.In a maneuver engineered by Rep. Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, a proposal initially introduced to ban lobbyists from giving any gifts to lawmakers has been amended to include changes in the way the state draws its political map.Gone would be a plan to use a nonpartisan state demographer to draw the boundaries of House and Senate districts. In its place, a panel of residents appointed by legislative leaders would craft the maps that often determine which parties control the Legislature.The transformation of House Joint Resolution 48 during a hearing Tuesday evening wasn’t a surprise to those who supported the Clean Missouri ballot initiative in November.An initial hearing on Plocher’s gift ban in March drew a crowd of protesters concerned that the relatively simple ban was a “Trojan horse” for a Republican-led effort to dump the redistricting provisions of the Clean Missouri law.The law was approved by 62 percent of the voters in November. It banned gifts worth more than $5, imposed limits on campaign contributions, opened lawmaker records to the Sunshine Law and altered the redistricting process.Republicans have worked throughout the legislative session to overturn parts of the constitutional changes, arguing that Clean Missouri was the work of Democratic activists who want to use the once-per-decade map-making process to reduce or reverse the GOP super-majorities in the Legislature.Under the changes endorsed by voters, Missouri will rely on a new mathematical formula to try to engineer “partisan fairness” and “competitiveness” in its state legislative districts.It requires a new nonpartisan state demographer to base state House and Senate districts on the votes cast in the previous three elections for president, governor and U.S. senator — races that are decided by voters statewide and are not affected by gerrymandering.The districts must come as close as practical to achieving “partisan fairness” as measured by a formula called “the efficiency gap.”Plocher’s amendment would toss out those standards and negate the use of the demographer, instead putting the power of redistricting in the hands of a panel of residents picked by legislative leaders.Plocher and other Republicans contend the demographer could be a partisan because the auditor — an elected official — is in charge of filling the post. Democrats say legislative leaders, who are also elected, play a role in confirming that appointment, which would remove any partisanship from the process.Plocher said his proposed system would allow for a wider array of elected officials to appoint the members, taking politics out of the process.“You have broader diversification on the panel of interests and perceptions and understandings of what Missouri is all about,” Plocher said.Rep. Peter Merideth, D-St. Louis, said the proposal is an effort to undo the will of the voters.“I think they are going to sell it in a great political way, where it’s about getting rid of an unelected bureaucrat and putting what they call an independent bipartisan citizens commission,” Merideth said. “They will market it to voters as if it is getting rid of gerrymandering, rather than restoring the ability for politicians to gerrymander.”The legislation could be debated in the full House as early as next week.
Russian hackers breached the systems of two county elections systems in Florida in 2016, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday at a news conference. DeSantis said no data were tampered with and vote tallies were not affected.The intrusions, which had not ever been publicly confirmed, were first disclosed in special counsel Robert Mueller's report about Russian interference in the 2016 election last month."I recently met with the FBI concerning the election issue mentioned in the Mueller report," DeSantis said. "Two Florida counties experienced intrusion into the supervisor of election networks. There was no manipulation."DeSantis said he could not disclose which counties' networks were compromised, but he said the voter data that the attackers gained access to was already public."Nothing that affected the vote count," DeSantis said.One sentence in the Mueller report prompted DeSantis' meeting with the FBI: "We understand the FBI believes that this operation enabled [Russian military intelligence] to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government" during the 2016 election.The mention that Russian hackers had accessed Florida networks came as a surprise to many in the state."I haven't heard even a whisper" about such a breach, said Paul Lux, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections in an interview with NPR last month.To break into the Florida elections systems, the Russian hackers used a spear-phishing campaign, where they used email addresses designed to look like a voting system vendor to trick the election officials into giving them access to their networks.The campaign was detailed in an indictment filed last summer by Mueller's office:In or around November 2016 and prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators used an email account designed to look like a Vendor 1 email address to send over 100 spearphishing emails to organizations and personnel involved in administering elections in numerous Florida counties. The spearphishing emails contained malware that the Conspirators embedded into Word documents bearing Vendor 1's logo.Last year, former Florida Sen. Bill Nelson warned that Russia had "penetrated" Florida's voter registration systems, but election officials denied that vehemently at the time.Then-Gov. Rick Scott, who defeated Nelson in the Senate race, decried Nelson's claims and said they "only serve to erode public trust in our elections at a critical time."
The absentee ballot fraud scandal that forced a new election in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District resulted in criminal charges Tuesday against more than a half-dozen people.McCrae Dowless, the Bladen County political operative who emerged as the central figure in a state investigation into irregularities in the 9th District election last fall, was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and one count each of conspiracy to obstruct justice, illegal possession of an absentee ballot, perjury and solicitation to commit perjury.According to testimony from a State Board of Elections hearing in February, Dowless paid people to go door to door to first sign people up to vote by mail and later to collect those absentee ballots. Dowless' crew sometimes completed ballots for voters and also certified dozens of absentee ballots in a central office instead of in front of individual voters, witnesses said during the hearing.North Carolina law prohibits anyone except close relatives from taking an absentee ballot from a voter.Dowless has, through his attorney, previously denied any wrongdoing.Lisa Michelle Britt, Ginger Shae Eason, Kelly Hendrix, Woody Darrel Hester and James R. Singletary were indicted on conspiracy to obstruct justice and illegal possession of an absentee ballot charges. Britt also was charged with voting as a convicted felon.Jessica Hales Dowless was indicted on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and falsely certifying absentee ballots.All seven have surrendered to authorities in Bladen County and have been released on $10,000 unsecured bonds."The absentee ballot fraud that occurred in the 9th Congressional District effectively disenfranchised voters in that district," Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a statement. "North Carolina voters should be confident that state officials will continue to be vigilant and pursue any individuals or organizations that attempt to undermine our elections."Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said the investigation into absentee ballot fraud is ongoing, and more charges and defendants are possible."We have always been interested in trying to determine what the level of knowledge was as to this operation that was going on in Bladen County by those people who had funded this operation," Freeman said. "We have not concluded that part of the investigation. Whether that will result in criminal charges, I think it would be premature to say."Freeman has led the investigation into absentee ballot irregularities since last year, when Bladen County's district attorney recused himself from the case forwarded by state elections investigators.McCrae Dowless was working for Republican Mark Harris in the 9th District campaign last year. Neither Harris nor any of his campaign staff have been charged in the case.Harris said during the February hearing that he wanted Dowless on his team after seeing how effective he was in previous elections, including Harris' 2016 primary loss in the 9th District, when Dowless worked for his opponent. But Harris said he had no idea what Dowless was doing, despite warnings from his son that something fishy was going on in Bladen County.Britt was a key witness in the state investigation, detailing the work she and others did for Dowless, her former stepfather. She also said that he tried to influence what she told the elections board.Hendrix also testified at the state hearing, breaking into tears because McCrae Dowless was a father figure to her. She also was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to obstruct justice and illegal possession of an absentee ballot for her work with Dowless in the 2016 election.Dowless was indicted in February on obstruction and conspiracy charges in connection with his absentee ballot activities in the 2016 election and the 2018 primaries. The perjury charge against him Tuesday also was related to the 2016 election.Harris, who appeared to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by about 900 votes in last fall's 9th District election, chose not to run in the do-over election. McCready will face Republican state Sen. Dan Bishop, Libertarian Jeff Scott and Green Party candidate Allen Smith in the Sept. 10 election.
The state of Georgia has likely removed nearly 200,000 Georgia citizens from the voter rolls for wrongfully concluding that those people had moved and not changed the address on their voter registration, when in fact they never moved, according to a new report released on Wednesday.The ACLU of Georgia released the report which was conducted by the Palast Investigative Fund, a nonpartisan group that focuses on data journalism, on Wednesday.For the report, Palast hired expert firms to conduct an Advanced Address List Hygiene, a method of residential address verification, to review 313,243 names that were removed from the state's voter rolls in late 2019. Their findings claim that 63.3% of voters had not, in fact, moved and were purged in error.Reacting to the report, Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, told CNN, "on the one hand, I was deeply saddened and on the other side, not entirely surprised."Young described the method the state has used to maintain its voting list as "prone to tremendous error" and not on par with the industry standard for residential address verification.CNN previously reported the Georgia Secretary of State said the removal of the voters is not a "purge" but part of routine maintenance on voting lists that dates back to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.In December 2019, the Georgia Secretary of State said they had removed hundreds of thousands of registered voters it classified as "inactive" from its voting rolls as part of a state provision. Under the provision, the state must remove registration records from the voter rolls that have been deemed "inactive" for more than three years. A voter is categorized as "inactive" if they don't vote in two general elections and have had no contact with board of elections in that time, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office.Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs responded to the report by saying, "A year ago, Justin Grey, a credible journalist with WSB-TV, conducted a story to see if the people on the list had moved or not. His on the ground reporting showed that those who were on the list to be canceled were no longer at that address. It is unfortunate that the ACLU hired a known Stacey Abrams shill to conduct 'research,' especially when there are so many credible options on the left to hire."The story Fuchs references is a 2019 report published by CNN affiliate, WSB-TV, that involved one West Atlanta neighborhood. The 30 homes the reporter checked seemed to have been removed because the person moved away or was deceased.About 313,000 voters were removed from the list, or about 4% of all registered voters in the state, at that time. The "inactive" voters were marked for removal after failing to respond to a pre-addressed, postage paid confirmation card within 30 days; the card asked voters to confirm or update their information. A prior lawsuit over the 313,000 voters from Fair Fight Action ended up forcing the state to restore 22,000 of the voter registrations until December 2021."The real takeaway from this is the state of Georgia is using a methodology for maintaining its voter rolls that is both more expensive and less accurate than what industry would use to maintain a high-quality mailing list," Young said.The report outlined three ways the state of Georgia verifies a person's address: a form of the National Change of Address registry of the US Postal Service, returned mail, or failure to vote in two federal election cycles combined with a failure to return a postcard that is used to confirm an address.