https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-new-jersey-early-vote-count Trump campaign asks judge to halt early vote count in New Jersey New Jersey is planning to conduct a primarily mail-based election in November President Trump's campaign called on a federal judge to stop the state of New Jersey's plans to count mail-in votes prior to Election Day, pending the results of a lawsuit the campaign filed in August. In a court filing in the lawsuit against New Jersey's secretary of state, the campaign, the Republican National Committee and the New Jersey GOP also sought blockage of New Jersey's plan to count ballots without postmarks that are received up to two days after Election Day.
Take a knee Donnie: They need to order reversal of the damage: https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...fb85a0-f91e-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html Federal judge temporarily blocks USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns, election A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy are “involved in a politically motivated attack” on the agency that could disrupt the 2020 election. Stanley A. Bastian, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, said policies put in place under DeJoy “likely will slow down delivery of ballots” this fall, creating a “substantial possibility that many voters will be disenfranchised and the states may not be able to effectively, timely, accurately determine election outcomes.” “The states have demonstrated that the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service,” Bastian said in brief remarks after a two-and-a-half hour hearing in Yakima, Wash. “They have also demonstrated that this attack on the Postal Service is likely to irreparably harm the states’ ability to administer the 2020 general election.” The ruling — the first major decision to come out of several lawsuits filed by states against the Postal Service — was a victory for Democratic state officials who view Trump’s persistent attacks on mail voting and DeJoy’s operational changes as part of a concerted effort to impede the vote on Nov. 3. Partisan tensions are running high as millions of Americans prepare to cast mail ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic, and mail delays have heightened concerns that voters unfamiliar with the process will be disenfranchised. In a written order released Thursday night, Bastian laid out more than a page of specific prohibitions on the Postal Service until a final judgment is reached in the case — restrictions that could broadly affect the agency’s services. He connected the USPS policies to Trump’s broadsides against mail voting, saying the actions amount to “voter disenfranchisement.” “It is easy to conclude that the recent Postal Services’ changes is an intentional effort on the part the current Administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections,” he wrote. USPS spokesman Dave Partenheimer said in a statement “while we are exploring our legal options, there should be no doubt that the Postal Service is ready and committed to handle whatever volume of election mail it receives. Our number one priority is to deliver election mail on-time.” Added Donald Lee Moak, a Democrat who chairs the election mail committee of the USPS Board of Governors: “Any suggestion that there is a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service is completely and utterly without merit.” Last month, DeJoy told lawmakers that ensuring the safe and timely delivery of election mail was his “sacred duty,” disputing accusations that changes he put in place were politically motivated. He reiterated his commitment to election mail in a call Thursday with secretaries of states and election officials around the country. Postal Service backlog sparks worries that ballot delivery could be delayed in November The judge’s decision could produce more tumult within the Postal Service just as states start to send out mail ballots. At least nine states have started proactively sending mail ballot applications or request forms to voters, and by Sunday approximately 20 states will have started distributing actual ballots through the mail, according The Post’s 50-state voting guide. “Changes this close to an election have a cost, and that cost is usually paid in voter confusion,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, adding: “What it comes down to is: can voters rely on the Postal Service getting their ballots to them and getting them to election officials in a reasonable amount of time?” It is unclear how the court decision will impact mail service in the short term. The suit, filed by Washington and 13 other states, sought a broad injunction prohibiting the Postal Service from implementing operational changes, distribution center closures and removal of mail sorting machines, among other changes, absent an opinion by the Postal Regulatory Commission. In his decision, Bastian largely granted that request, ordering the Postal Service to reverse any instructions for mail carriers to leave mail behind at postal facilities, to stop requiring trucks to leave a set times regardless of whether the mail is ready and to allow return trips to distribution centers to ensure “timely delivery.” USPS must also treat all election mail according to First Class delivery standards and replace or restore the equipment required to do that. Any request to “reconnect or replace any decommissioned or removed sorting machine(s)” must be directed through the court for approval, unless USPS has already approved it. Some policies blamed for delivery delays have long been in place. For example, the Postal Service routinely mothballs sorting machines to cut out excess capacity, USPS officials have said. After taking office in June, DeJoy also instituted new measures he later said were aimed at cutting costs, but postal workers said they led to a curtailing of overtime and mail backlogs. John Barger, a Republican member of the Board of Governors, told a Senate panel earlier this month DeJoy did not brief the governors on his new policies, but said the board was “thrilled” by the postmaster general’s performance. Concerns about the USPS’s ability to handle election mail rose during the summer amid widespread reports of mail delays. Those worries grew acute when the Postal Service sent detailed letters to 46 states and the District of Columbia warning it could not guarantee that mail ballots would arrive in time to be counted in November. Days later, 21 states cited concerns about the election as they announced they planned to file several lawsuits over DeJoy’s operational changes. Washington’s suit was joined by Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. In a complaint filed Aug. 18, the group argued that the Postal Service acted outside of its authority by making operational changes without seeking an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent agency with broad power to review USPS’s policies and performance. By pursuing an operational shake-up the summer before the election, the Postal Service also interfered with states’ constitutionally mandated role in setting the “time, place, and manner” of elections, the states argued. Kristin Beneski, an assistant attorney general for Washington state, told the court that one of the changes involved instructing letter carriers to leave mail behind if it would slow down the delivery process. “Most significantly, Postmaster DeJoy himself testified to Congress that he was responsible for this policy and that this policy was a direct cause of the delays we’ve seen,” she said. A lawyer for the federal goverment argued that the Postal Service is prepared to handle the crush of election mail and that delivery delays from the summer have abated. “The practices it has always had in place are designed to move this mail” quickly, said Joseph Borson, trial attorney with the Justice Department, adding that USPS understands its responsibility to the public during election season. Borson also told the court that the agency’s warning to states was not unusual and that a similar warning was issued before the 2016 general election. “The only thing that has changed is that the Postal Service has increased its communications with states,” he said. Amid building public outcry over the mail delays, DeJoy announced last month that he was suspending several policies “to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail,” including the removal of public collection boxes and sorting machines. He said the Postal Service would not cut post office retail hours or workers’ overtime hours and that mail processing equipment and collection boxes would “remain where they are.” The agency was set to remove 671 machines this summer, a job that was mostly completed when DeJoy suspended the policy, according to a removal schedule filed as part of a labor grievance by the American Postal Workers Union on June 22. But many mail sorting machines have already been discarded, and others were sold. Others were disassembled and had parts used for scrap or to extend the capabilities of other machines. The former logistics executive and Trump donor has claimed that the lone operational change he instituted was enforcing a stricter dispatch schedule of mail transportation trucks and letter carriers to their daily rounds. Postal workers and independent experts say that has caused mail to pile up in post offices and caused multiday delays in localities across the country. A Senate report published Wednesday claimed that policy delayed 7 percent of the country’s first-class mail in the five weeks after it took effect. However, the Postal Service was just starting to adapt to DeJoy’s new transportation schedule, with on-time delivery rates rebounding, according to data submitted to lawmakers. Newly revealed USPS documents show an agency struggling to manage Trump, Amazon and the pandemic Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight, called Thursday’s court decision “a win for democracy and every American voter.” “To everyone except Postmaster DeJoy, the Postal Board Governors, and congressional Republicans, the changes at the USPS are evidence of deliberate, political sabotage, and massive voter suppression on the eve of the election,” Connolly said in a statement. Before Bastian’s ruling, Borson argued that states should have taken their complaints to the Postal Regulatory Commission then pursued appeals through the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The responsibility is “on them and on Congress for having chosen that particular mechanism,” he argued. Meanwhile, in a call with secretaries of state and election administrators shortly before the court ruling, DeJoy sought to emphasize his commitment to voting by mail, according to people familiar with the call. The postmaster general said he disagreed with Trump’s statements attacking the ability of the Postal Service to safely deliver mail ballots, the people said. He also said he disagreed with Attorney General William A. Barr’s claims that postal workers handling mail ballots could be subject to bribery by foreign actors or others trying to commit election fraud. More than a dozen secretaries appeared via video on the Zoom call, while DeJoy and a number of his aides participated only by audio, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D). A sharp critic of Trump and DeJoy, Griswold grilled the postmaster general on several points, according to Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap (D). One line of questioning focused on the mail piece sent by USPS to postal customers across the country with general advice for mail voting that contradicted election laws in some states. Griswold successfully sued to temporarily block the mailer from being sent to voters in Colorado. DeJoy also said he would try not to send out election materials without first consulting with election officials to ensure accuracy, according to officials who participated in the call. “There seems to be, coming from DeJoy, the confirmation they are going to do everything they can to ensure the delivery and timeliness of all mailed ballots — that standards are going to be followed so that all of that happens — and in the future they will try to run things by election officials before public information is placed out,” said DC Board of Elections Director Alice Miller. Griswold said: “Actions speak louder than words and I hope we have can have a good partnership going forward.”
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...olina-are-rejected-way-more-than-white-voters Mail-In Ballots From Black Voters in North Carolina Are Rejected Way More Than White Voters' Meanwhile, the president is spreading misinformation about vote-by-mail in the state, calling it a "rigged election in waiting." Of the more than 60,000 votes cast by white voters so far in North Carolina, 644 had been rejected as of Thursday, at a rate of 1.07 percent. By comparison, 13,539 Black voters had cast their ballots, with 597 rejections—a rate of 4.41 percent. Of the 1,390 ballots that have been rejected in North Carolina, 46% came from white voters and 43% were cast by Black voters. By comparison, 74% of the accepted ballots were cast by white voters and 16% were cast by Black voters. It’s worth noting that the number of votes rejected is a fraction of those cast, which itself is a fraction of the absentee ballots that will eventually be cast this year across the nation. But it does follow a worrying trend, especially in a statewide election that’s expected to have several close races including for the presidency and the U.S. Senate: In the state’s March 3 primary, which was held before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, 18% of Black voters’ absentee ballots were rejected, according to voting rights watchdog Democracy NC. Ballots can be rejected for a number of reasons, including ballot “spoiling” and signature issues, such as a missing signature or a signature in the wrong place. In North Carolina, lawmakers eased absentee ballot restrictions earlier this year, including changing the number of witnesses required to cast a ballot from two to one.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/trump-campaign-election-coup-bypass-biden-win THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN IS REPORTEDLY PLOTTING AN ELECTION COUP TO “BYPASS” A BIDEN WIN How Republican-controlled state legislatures could be used to circumvent the results of the election and ensure a Trump victory. Now the Trump campaign is said to be considering another, even more outrageous approach: In a thorough and deeply disconcerting piece about the constitutional crisis that may await us between November 3 and the inauguration in January, the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman reports that the Trump campaign has been discussing “contingency plans to bypass the election results and appoint local electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” Citing the president’s baseless claims of fraud, Team Trump could ask GOP-controlled state governments to choose electors, completely ignoring an unfavorable or uncertain popular vote, state and national Republican sources told Gellman. “The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power,’” a Trump campaign legal adviser explained to the Atlantic. “‘We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state.’” Does completely ignoring the will of the voters seem anti-democratic? Unconstitutional? Impossible? One would think. But as Gellman points out, however authoritarian this kind of end-around may seem, the Constitution doesn’t forbid such a move, and it’s something the Trump campaign could pull off. Indeed, state Republican leaders have already casually indicated that they’d be all too happy to enable this kind of power grab. “I’ve mentioned it to them, and I hope they’re thinking about it too,” Lawrence Tabas, chairman of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, one of the swing states on which the 2020 race could hinge, told Gellman. “It is one of the available legal options set forth in the constitution.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/27/trump-legal-network-election-day-fight-422035 Trump readies thousands of attorneys for election fight Dozens of lawyers from three major firms have been hired. Thousands of volunteer attorneys and poll watchers across the country have been recruited. A year before President Donald Trump alarmed Americans with talk of disputing elections last week, his team started building a massive legal network to do just that. Dozens of lawyers from three major law firms have been hired. Thousands of volunteer attorneys and poll watchers across the country have been recruited. Republicans are preparing pre-written legal pleadings that can be hurried to the courthouse the day after the election, as wrangling begins over close results and a crush of mail-in ballots. Attorneys from non-battleground states, including California, New York and Illinois, are being dispatched to more competitive areas and trained on local election laws. It’s a massive undertaking — one the RNC calls its largest election-year legal effort ever. And it’s one that could determine the winner of the pandemic-beset 2020 election. Both political parties are bracing for the Nov. 3 election to spill over into the days and perhaps weeks after Election Day, given the drawn out process of counting what’s expected to be a historic number of mail-in votes. Since Republicans and Democrats vehemently disagree over how — and when — those ballots should be counted, the court system might be the ultimate arbiter.
https://www.channel4.com/news/revea...llions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016 Revealed: Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016 By Channel 4 News Investigations Team 3.5 million Black Americans were profiled and categorised as ‘Deterrence’ by Trump campaign – voters they wanted to stay home on election day Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters. It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day. Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence amounted to a new form of voter “suppression” and called on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has never been made public. The ‘Deterrence’ project can be revealed after Channel 4 News obtained the database used by Trump’s digital campaign team – credited with helping deliver his shock victory to become president four years ago. Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data – making it one of the biggest leaks in history. It reveals not only the huge amounts of data held on every individual voter, but how that data was used and manipulated by models and algorithms. In 16 key battleground states, millions of Americans were separated by an algorithm into one of eight categories, also described as ‘audiences’, so they could then be targeted with tailored ads on Facebook and other platforms. One of the categories was named ‘Deterrence’, which was later described publicly by Trump’s chief data scientist as containing people that the campaign “hope don’t show up to vote”. Analysis by Channel 4 News shows Black Americans – historically a community targeted with voter suppression tactics – were disproportionately marked ‘Deterrence’ by the 2016 campaign. In total, 3.5 million Black Americans were marked ‘Deterrence’. In Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the ‘Deterrence’ category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population but were 46% of ‘Deterrence’. In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population but made up 17% of ‘Deterrence’. The disproportionate categorising of Black Americans for ‘Deterrence’ is seen across the US. Overall, people of colour labelled as Black, Hispanic, Asian and ‘Other’ groups made up 54% of the ‘Deterrence’ category. In contrast, other categories of voters the campaign wished to attract were overwhelmingly white. The 2016 campaign preceded the first fall in Black turnout in 20 years and allowed Donald Trump to take shock victories in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan by wafer-thin margins, reaching the White House despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Trump’s digital campaign, called ‘Project Alamo’ and based in San Antonio, Texas, involved a team from the now defunct British company Cambridge Analytica, working with a team from the Republican National Committee. Two senior members of the Cambridge Analytica team are working on the Trump 2020 campaign. Cambridge Analytica collapsed after investigations by Channel 4 News, The Observer and the New York Times in 2018. Facebook is facing calls to ban political advertising, following an international backlash over the use of its platform to spread misinformation, disinformation, and suppression during election campaigns. The Trump campaign spent £44 million on Facebook ads alone during 2016, posting almost six million different versions of highly targeted messages that were pumped directly into the feeds of target voters across America, helped by a Facebook employee embedded within the Trump campaign. But many of the ads were so called ‘dark posts’, which could vanish from recipients’ feeds once a campaign stopped paying for them. It means no complete public record exists of the ads posted on Facebook during the 2016 campaign or the audience lists used to target voters. The platform offered no ‘Ad Library’ at the time. Without Facebook or the campaign itself revealing the information, it means it’s not possible to ascertain exactly how potential voters in the ‘Deterrence’ group may have been targeted on Facebook. The Trump campaign itself has categorically stated that it did not target African Americans. Brad Parscale, the campaign’s 2016 digital director told PBS Frontline: “I would say I’m nearly 100 percent sure we did not run any campaigns that targeted even African Americans.” But Channel 4 News has uncovered evidence that the campaign did target Black voters with negative ads designed to crush Hillary Clinton’s turnout. These included videos featuring Hillary Clinton referring to Black youths as “super predators” which aired on television 402 times in October 2016 and received millions of views on Facebook. In one confidential document seen by Channel 4 News, Cambridge Analytica admitted the Trump campaign did target “AA” (African Americans) with what it called the “Predators video” – spending $55,000 USD in the state of Georgia alone. Reacting to the Channel 4 News revelations, Jamal Watkins, vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branded it a modern-day suppression campaign, using data and digital technology to keep Black voters at home. He said: “The thing that’s shocking slash troubling about this is that there’s this category of suppression. That ‘Deterrence’ part. So, we use data – similar to voter file data – but it’s to motivate, persuade and encourage folks to participate. We don’t use the data to say who can we deter and keep at home. That just seems, fundamentally, it’s a shift from the notion of democracy. “It’s not ‘may the best candidate win’ at that point it’s ‘may the best well-funded machine suppress voters and keep them at home thereby rigging the election so that someone can win’.” He added: “I don’t believe Facebook has fully disclosed their role, and fully disclosed the types of ads that were run, who was involved and literally how they may have been embedded in, say, the Trump campaign to make this all come to life. “Facebook is a very profitable platform. It reaches billions of folks every day. It doesn’t need this kind of money. If it were to monitor and check these suppressive ads and say this is not the platform for this type of misinformation disinformation suppression tactics, Mark Zuckerberg would still live well, and eat well.” Today, a Facebook spokesperson said: “Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook – what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn’t happen today. We have 35,000 people working to ensure the integrity of our platform, created a political ads library… and have protected more than 200 elections worldwide. We also have rules prohibiting voter suppression and are running the largest voter information campaign in American history.” The Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the White House did not provide any comment to Channel 4 News prior to broadcast.