2022 elections. The steady march for sanity continues.

Texas’ audit of the 2020 election results thus far hasn’t unveiled anything out of the ordinary, despite former President Donald Trump pushing for an examination of what he dubbed a “scam” election in the state he won comfortably.
The Texas secretary of state’s office on New Year’s Eve released the first phase of its review of election data in four counties. Its findings were unremarkable, with few discrepancies between electronic and manual ballot counts.
The four counties audited were able to explain those differences, according to the review. One county cited voters who cast ballots from their cars using machines that didn’t leave a paper record. Another said its vote discrepancy of 10 was due to an election worker typing in data incorrectly. A third county blamed its five-vote difference on a manual counting error. The fourth county audited had zero discrepancies. The four counties account for 35 percent of the votes cast statewide

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Nothing Resembling Fraud Detected in Initial Findings of Texas Election Audit Trump Pushed for Desperately

Texas Secretary of State John Scott released the very unremarkable initial findings of the state's 2020 election audit on New Year's Eve.

www.rollingstone.com

Mark Finchem was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

He says he didn't go inside, but he snapped some photos of people who did.

"What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. #stopthesteal," he tweeted.

The Arizona state representative was there to share what he called "evidence" of an "irredeemably compromised" 2020 election with Republican lawmakers from his home state. To be clear, Republican election officials in the state deemed the results "free, fair, and accurate" and even a discredited GOP-led "audit" run in the state's largest county agreed Biden won.

More recently, Finchem also appeared at a QAnon conference, and in speaking with NPR declined to describe what happened at the Capitol as a riot or an insurrection, instead making allusions to some sort of conspiracy involving law enforcement.

Now, he is running to oversee voting in Arizona in 2022.

And he's not alone.

An NPR analysis of 2022 secretary of state races across the country found at least 15 Republican candidates running who question the legitimacy of President Biden's 2020 win, even though no evidence of widespread fraud has been uncovered about the race over the last 14 months. In fact, claims of any sort of fraud that swung the election have been explicitly refuted in state after state, including those run by Republicans.



The duties of a state secretary of state vary, but in most cases, they are the state's top voting official and have a role in carrying out election laws. Wisconsin is the only state included in NPR's analysis where the state secretary of state does not oversee its elections, though at least one Republican lawmaker there has floated the idea of changing that.

Current and former election officials, as well as election experts worry what could become of democracy should some or many of the candidates across the country win.

"The reasons why Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election failed is because there were state officials who refused to substantiate his claims of fraud," said Franita Tolson, an election law expert at the University of Southern California. "These folks really are gatekeepers."

In many cases, the races are setting up a deciding moment for Republican voters — just how far down the election denial rabbit hole are they willing to follow former President Donald Trump?

In Georgia for instance, the Republican primary will pit incumbent Brad Raffensperger against two candidates, Rep. Jody Hice and former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle, both of whom allege that Trump was the rightful winner of the state.

Raffensperger, however, became one of the leading Republican voices in 2020 cutting against Trump's misinformation about the election, culminating in a phone call where he told the then-president directly that he was wrong.

"I think [Trump] knows in his heart that he lost this election," Raffensperger told NPR recently.

The 2022 secretary of state race in Kansas is shaping up similarly.

Incumbent Scott Schwab corrected Trump's false claims about mail voting security in 2020, and at least one Republican challenger, Mike Brown, is seizing on those comments to call for audits and defend Trump.

Trump has endorsed three secretary of state candidates so far — Finchem in Arizona, Hice in Georgia and Kristina Karamo, a community college professor in Michigan who has pushed conspiracy theories about the election and the attack on the Capitol.

Trey Grayson, a Republican former secretary of state from Kentucky, said the trend is worrisome but that it also makes sense since polling shows a majority of Republican voters feel similarly. A recent NPR/Ipsos poll, for example, found that two-thirds of Republicans nationally feel like fraud helped Biden win.

"There's a lot of crazy going around," Grayson said. "You have people running for these offices where the most important duty is counting the votes and accepting the results even if you don't like the outcome, and these folks don't appear to be well-positioned to do that."

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printer said:

Cook Report projects GOP as clear favorite to win House majority
The new batch of ratings from the nonpartisan election handicapper shows Democrats defending eight so-called toss-up districts across seven states. By comparison, Republicans are defending six toss-up seats in four states at this point.

At the same time, three Democratic-held districts — Arizona’s 6th, New Jersey’s 7th and Texas’s 15th — have landed in The Cook Political Report’s “lean Republican” column. Two more — Arizona’s 2nd District and Michigan’s 10th District — are in the “likely Republican” column.


Only one Republican-held district, Illinois’s 13th, currently leans toward Democrats, according to the latest ratings.

The Cook Political Report is issuing the ratings on a rolling basis given ongoing redistricting efforts across the country that will further reshape the nation’s political lines in the coming months.

Still, the latest race ratings from the election handicapper paint a difficult picture for Democrats, who are facing an uphill battle to hold on to their narrow House majority next year.

Republicans need to net just five seats in 2022 to recapture control of the lower chamber, a goal that appears well within reach, especially given the fact that the party of a new president tends to lose ground in Congress in midterm election years.

The ratings released by The Cook Political Report on Thursday account for only a portion of the races that could decide the House majority next year.

The National Republican Congressional Committee says it is targeting 70 Democratic-held districts in 2022 after expanding its list last month. Democrats, meanwhile, are going after a more limited slate of 22 GOP-held districts.

Cook Report projects GOP as clear favorite to win House majority

Ratings released by The Cook Political Report on Thursday show the GOP with a clear edge in the 2022 battle for control of the House. The new batch of ratings from the nonpartisan election han…

thehill.com

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

it doesn't matter...what matters is getting trump and as many of his cronies into a cell before the elections as possible...the republicans can have a majority, as long as the worst of them are locked up. the remaining magats will quickly be silenced by the real republicans as they crawl out from under the rocks they were hiding under, like the cowards they are. they won't want the magats drawing attention to trump, they won't want them making ridiculous stupid racist statements in public, they may even refuse to appear on shithole "news" sources like fox and oan....in short, if they have any sense at all, once the real trouble makers are indicted or already in cells, they won't want to be associated with them...
i expect the entire party to shift gears once trump and his "party" start paying the piper

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CatHedral said:

I do not share your optimism. Which pains me, because you don’t show it often.
But I think the GOP won’t quickly recover from that man ripping the cloak off. Too many authoritarians.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

i don't expect it to recover quickly, but i do expect it to go into full blown survival mode. the indictments against trump and who knows how many of his aids in treason will be a severe blow to the republican party, and they will want to stand separately from those who supported trump rabidly...rats that desert a sinking ship still have to know how to swim to shore, i expect mcconnel and company to stand as the core of a "new" republican party that will have very little patience for the shit of idiots like gosar, greene and boebert.

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printer said:

Cook Report projects GOP as clear favorite to win House majority
The new batch of ratings from the nonpartisan election handicapper shows Democrats defending eight so-called toss-up districts across seven states. By comparison, Republicans are defending six toss-up seats in four states at this point.

At the same time, three Democratic-held districts — Arizona’s 6th, New Jersey’s 7th and Texas’s 15th — have landed in The Cook Political Report’s “lean Republican” column. Two more — Arizona’s 2nd District and Michigan’s 10th District — are in the “likely Republican” column.


Only one Republican-held district, Illinois’s 13th, currently leans toward Democrats, according to the latest ratings.

The Cook Political Report is issuing the ratings on a rolling basis given ongoing redistricting efforts across the country that will further reshape the nation’s political lines in the coming months.

Still, the latest race ratings from the election handicapper paint a difficult picture for Democrats, who are facing an uphill battle to hold on to their narrow House majority next year.

Republicans need to net just five seats in 2022 to recapture control of the lower chamber, a goal that appears well within reach, especially given the fact that the party of a new president tends to lose ground in Congress in midterm election years.

The ratings released by The Cook Political Report on Thursday account for only a portion of the races that could decide the House majority next year.

The National Republican Congressional Committee says it is targeting 70 Democratic-held districts in 2022 after expanding its list last month. Democrats, meanwhile, are going after a more limited slate of 22 GOP-held districts.

Cook Report projects GOP as clear favorite to win House majority

Ratings released by The Cook Political Report on Thursday show the GOP with a clear edge in the 2022 battle for control of the House. The new batch of ratings from the nonpartisan election han…

thehill.com

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CatHedral said:

I am unwilling to forgive Moscow Mitch. He was instrumental in freezing Congress against That Man’s destructive impulses.
any new replacement party will have to keep him out as he is a former traitriot shot-caller.

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printer said:

Wisconsin Judge Rules Against Absentee Ballot Drop Boxes
A Wisconsin judge on Thursday sided with conservatives, ruling that absentee ballot drop boxes cannot be located anywhere other than at offices of local clerks and that no one other than the voter may return such a ballot.

The ruling, if it stands, means that no ballot drop boxes can be used in the upcoming Feb. 15 spring primary election featuring a bevy of local races. The spring general election is April 5.

The lawsuit is part of a multipronged attack on absentee ballot boxes by Republicans in Wisconsin. Republicans are also attempting to change state law to limit ballot boxes and force the bipartisan state elections commission to enact rules restricting their location.

The Republican push against absentee ballot boxes comes after President Joe Biden narrowly won Wisconsin over Donald Trump by just under 21,000 votes. A Republican-ordered investigation into the election is ongoing, even after numerous lawsuits, recounts and other probes have upheld Biden’s victory and determined there was no widespread fraud.

Thursday’s ruling will certainly be appealed. The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court is ultimately expected to rule on the legality of the widespread use of drop boxes in the battleground state.

One of the defense attorneys told the judge following his oral ruling that the changes he ordered were contrary to a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said the rules of elections should not be changed close to when ballots are cast because it creates confusion.

Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren responded that he was confident the changes could be executed in time.

Bohren ruled that absentee ballots could only be returned by mail or dropped off at the local election clerk's office by the person who cast the vote. Events such as “Democracy in the Park,” in which election officials accepted absentee ballots at more than 200 city parks in 2020, would be prohibited.

Wisconsin Judge Rules Against Absentee Ballot Drop Boxes

A Wisconsin judge on Thursday sided with conservatives, ruling that absentee ballot drop boxes cannot be located anywhere other than at offices of local clerks and that no one other than the voter may return such a ballot.The ruling, if it stands, means that no ballot drop...

www.newsmax.com

Mail in early, mail in often.

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After 7 years of voting by mail, Colorado voters aren't taken in by absentee ballot drama

Colorado's mail ballot voting system developed over years to become the 'gold standard' for other states to reach.

www.coloradoan.com

HGCC said:

I really like how voting is done here in CO. Works well and is super convenient, also, if you don't know what something is you can look it up and take your time to decide.

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printer said:

So Republicans elsewhere would welcome a similar system if the feds say do it? In the interest of election security.

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