Judges Aren’t Buying Trump’s Claims Of Widespread Voter Fraud- Will the Trump administration use the right wing militia to attack voters ? Not funny

Right wing terror fanaticism may get its mojo due to the following pressure points for the GOP

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“In the past, the tipping point was the state that got you the Electoral College victory,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper explained. “Given what Trump is doing… people see that if you can make the tipping point ending the nightmare before it starts, make that the tipping point.”

In addition to Ohio and its 18 electoral votes, other states that Politico says could deliver an election night knockout include Florida (29 votes), North Carolina (15 votes) and Arizona (11 votes).

And see this prelude to Militia fanaticism

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“While Plaintiffs may not need to prove actual voter fraud, they must at least prove that such fraud is ‘certainly impending.’ They haven’t met that burden. At most, they have pieced together a sequence of uncertain assumptions,” wrote Ranjan, who was nominated by Trump to the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania and confirmed in July 2019.

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Militia violence will be selectively used as the end game becomes apparent in the last week before November 3rd

Now for Chicken little, and the GOP Voting scam cries, as a tie into militia utilization:

https://www-buzzfeednews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/zoetillman/judges-reject-trump-claims-mail-voter-fraud

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Judges Aren’t Buying Trump’s Claims Of Widespread Voter Fraud

Trump has lost lawsuits challenging pandemic-related mail-in voting plans in Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, and, most recently, Pennsylvania.

Zoe Tillman

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

Washington, DC

Posted on October 11, 2020, at 11:06 a.m. ET

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

President Donald Trump at a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 26, 2020.

WASHINGTON — On the campaign trail and online, President Donald Trump is pushing debunked and unsupported claims that mail-in voting leads to widespread fraud. But in court, far from the bluster of his rallies and Twitter rants, a growing number of judges have examined the evidence he’s presented to back those claims and found it unconvincing.

On Saturday, US District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan in Pittsburgh tossed a lawsuit filed by Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee that challenged some of Pennsylvania’s plans to make it easier for residents to vote remotely during the coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, Trump and the RNC argued the state shouldn’t be able to set up drop boxes where voters can return ballots — as opposed to sending them back by mail — and count ballots if the voter’s signature doesn’t match the one that election officials have on file.

Ranjan wrote that, at most, the campaign and the RNC presented a “chain of theoretical events” to show how Pennsylvania’s election policies could lead to voter fraud. For a plaintiff to have standing to bring a lawsuit, they have to show some kind of harm, and without more than speculation about what might happen in the future, Trump’s lawsuit couldn’t clear that bar, the judge concluded.

“While Plaintiffs may not need to prove actual voter fraud, they must at least prove that such fraud is ‘certainly impending.’ They haven’t met that burden. At most, they have pieced together a sequence of uncertain assumptions,” wrote Ranjan, who was nominated by Trump to the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania and confirmed in July 2019.

Federal judges in Montana, Nevada, and New Jersey reached similar conclusions in rulings over the past month that rebuffed Trump campaign lawsuits against states that adopted new rules and practices to expand mail-in voting during the pandemic. The campaign hasn’t pursued appeals in those other cases so far, but Matthew Morgan, the campaign’s general counsel, released a statement on Saturday saying they planned to take the Pennsylvania case to the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.

“Clearly, we disagree with the Western District’s decision on unsecure drop boxes, and President Trump’s team will immediately file an appeal to the Third Circuit to continue our fight to protect every Pennsylvania voter. We look forward to a swift Third Circuit decision that will further protect Pennsylvania voters from the Democrats’ radical voting system,” Morgan said.

A spokesperson for Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar’s office did not immediately return a request for comment. Boockvar’s office was responsible for crafting guidance to county election officials that allowed for ballot drop boxes and directing officials to count ballots even if the voter’s signature didn’t match what was on file.

The Trump campaign and Republicans have notched wins in some cases filed against state and local election officials who have tried to make it easier for people to vote by mail. In Iowa, for instance, state judges in four cases blocked county officials from sending out ballot request forms to voters with information already filled in from registration records on file. A judge in Woodbury County gave weight to Republicans’ fraud theory, writing that there was a reasonable chance that sending out pre-filled applications would make it easier for potential fraudsters to request ballots that they weren’t legally entitled to get.

“While the Defendants claim that voter fraud with absentee ballots is almost nonexistent, it is also the type of fraud that is almost impossible to detect,” Judge Patrick Tott wrote in an Aug. 28 ruling.

But in the federal court cases brought by Trump’s campaign challenging statewide policies around mail-in voting in Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, judges have found Republicans’ claims of widespread fraud too speculative to justify blocking those plans altogether.

In the latest case in Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign and the RNC argued that voter fraud — for instance, one person casting more than one ballot — would dilute the power of other, lawful votes. They claimed fraudsters would take advantage of unmanned drop boxes and the state’s decision to effectively lift the signature match requirement.

Ranjan’s 138-page opinion includes an exhaustive overview of the evidence submitted by both sides; the parties filed more than 300 exhibits with the court. He found that the evidence that Trump and the RNC submitted — which included a New York Post article claiming to describe the firsthand anonymous account of someone who committed voting fraud; officials in Philadelphia accidentally allowing 40 people to vote twice in this year’s primary election; and photographs that appeared to show people putting multiple ballots in a mailbox — was “speculative” and “scant.”

Ranjan wrote that even if Trump and the RNC were right that stationing guards at drop boxes, increasing poll watchers, and checking ballot signatures would help prevent voter fraud, it wasn’t the court’s job to “contradict the reasoned judgment of democratically elected officials.”

“[T]he Court finds that the election regulations put in place by the General Assembly and implemented by Defendants do not significantly burden any right to vote. They are rational. They further important state interests. They align with the Commonwealth’s elaborate election-security measures. They do not run afoul of the United States Constitution. They will not otherwise be second-guessed by this Court,” the judge wrote.

In Montana, US District Judge Dana Christensen dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Trump campaign, RNC, and state Republicans challenging Gov. Steve Bullock’s decision to allow counties to carry out the November election by mail-in ballots. Christensen noted that at a hearing in the case, lawyers for the campaign and Republican challengers “were compelled to concede that they cannot point to a single instance of voter fraud in Montana in any election during the last 20 years.”

“In many respects, this case requires the Court to separate fact from fiction,” Christensen wrote in the Sept. 30 order. “Central to some of the Plaintiffs’ claims is the contention that the upcoming election, both nationally and in Montana, will fall prey to widespread voter fraud. The evidence suggests, however, that this allegation, specifically in Montana, is a fiction.”

In New Jersey, state lawmakers approved a plan this year to send all registered voters a mail-in ballot, and adopted other measures aimed at supporting the expansion of mail-in voting. The Trump campaign sued and asked for an injunction blocking provisions that would allow election officials to begin counting mailed ballots 10 days before Election Day and to accept ballots without a clear postmark up to two days after Nov. 3.

On Oct. 6, US District Judge Michael Shipp denied the campaign’s request. Shipp noted that there were, in fact, real allegations of voter fraud in New Jersey during the May primary, including that someone had stolen ballots from mailboxes and that ballots were bundled and sent from a single location. But the judge pointed out in a footnote that the evidence of past voter fraud presented by Trump’s campaign didn’t relate to issues with ballots received without a postmark, or mail-in ballots counted before Election Day.

“Plaintiffs offer no instances of voter fraud resulting from ballots cast after Election Day, or any reason to suspect that a fraudulent ballot or a ballot cast after Election Day is more likely to lack a postmark,” Shipp wrote.

In Nevada, the Trump campaign, RNC, and state Republican party sued over a law the state legislature adopted this year directing local election officials to send ballots to all active registered voters. On Sept. 18, US District Judge James Mahan dismissed the case, finding that the claims that the state’s plan would lead to voter fraud were not only speculative, but also not specific to the Republican challengers.

Trump’s campaign and the RNC submitted news articles detailing issues other states faced in expanding mail-in voting this year, as well as evidence that Nevada had to contend with a large number of ballots deemed undeliverable during the June primary election. But he wrote that the Republican challengers failed to show that even if there was a risk of vote dilution, that their members specifically would be affected and not all voters.

“Not only have plaintiffs failed to allege a substantial risk of voter fraud, the State of Nevada has its own mechanisms for deterring and prosecuting voter fraud,” Mahan wrote. “Here, plaintiffs do not allege that those mechanisms would fail and that they would need to divert resources accordingly.”

MORE ON THIS

• Millions Of People Are Already Voting And Courts Keep Changing The Rules
• Zoe Tillman · Oct. 8, 2020
• Trump Is Waging A Multistate, Multimillion-Dollar Legal Battle Against Mail-In Voting During The Pandemic
• Zoe Tillman · Sept. 17, 2020
• Trump And The Republicans Are Doing Everything They Can To Confuse Voters Before The Election
• Clarissa-Jan Lim · Sept. 24, 2020

Zoe Tillman is a senior legal reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Contact Zoe Tillman at [email protected].

Got a confidential tip? Submit it here

1. TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLEDonald Trump

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Also see this

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/10/politics/poll-watching-protection-election-2020/index.html

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What to do if your right to vote is challenged by a poll watcher

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN

Updated 7:26 AM ET, Sat October 10, 2020

JUST WATCHED

Efforts to protect against voter intimidation underway

Source: CNN

Efforts to protect against voter intimidation underway 02:18

(CNN)Who will get to vote and how are two things that are very much up for dispute in 2020.

At both the presidential and vice presidential debates this year, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence said they would fight in court against easy access to mail-in ballots to make sure there was no fraud, while the Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris encouraged as many people as possible to vote.

MORE ON VOTING

• CNN's Election 101
• Voter registration, explained
• How to track your mail-in ballot
• How to stay safe when voting in person
• What are poll watchers?
• Your questions about voting, answered

Trump has also called on his supporters to go, en masse, to polling places to make sure there's no fraud with in-person voting, although it would break election law in every state and could lead to voter intimidation.

So the right of every American to vote seems more at risk this year than ever.

CNN talked to Sarah Brannon, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project about how to protect your vote this year. The telephone conversation, edited slightly for length, is below:

What should you do if you feel nervous at your polling place?

WHAT MATTERS: Why don't we start with the the first question: President Trump is essentially inviting the support of white supremacists and people who carry guns and protests and all these other groups. And then he is simultaneously telling his supporters to go to polls in in a non-traditional way and essentially watch people vote. What should Americans do if they feel nervous going to the polls?

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BRANNON: I think the first answer is that they should understand that in most states, it is illegal to be in a polling place if you are not a certified poll watcher.

And in most states, it is illegal to be in a polling place with a gun, a firearm, unless you are state police officer who is there on official duty. You have to have a justification.

That's true for the federal government also. Federal law enforcement officers are prohibited by federal law from being in polling places with guns or firearms.

I do say by most states because it does vary state by state, and there are a few exceptions. They do have exceptions in certain states about the ability of people to carry guns and where they can bring them.

Also, many polling places are on school grounds and there are laws about bringing firearms and guns onto the school property.

When I talk about being a certified poll watcher, I also think it's important for people to understand what that means.

You have to be certified by a political party with a written certification that has been obtained so that your name has gone on a list that is approved ahead of time to be at that polling location.

In many states and counties in the country, you have to be a resident of the county where the polling place is located and certainly have to be a resident of the state to be approved to be a certified poll watcher, and you can only have one poll watcher, so each polling place can only have one representative of the local party to watch voting as it's going on.

The ability of the general public to enter polling locations and interact with voters is prohibited by state law in almost every state in the country.

If you are in a circumstance as a voter where something like that (intimidation or an unauthorized person in the polling place) is occurring, you need to report it to the election official. You can call (866) OUR-VOTE, which is a nonpartisan election protection hotline, and report that this incident is occurring. If the local elections official at the point is not helpful, you should call your state election official and report that this is going on and hopefully steps can be taken to stop the prohibitive activity.

What's appropriate outside a polling place?

WHAT MATTERS: Separate from the official poll watchers, there is this idea that maybe there will be protests outside polling places or there will be large gatherings of partisan supporters. And laws do allow that. So, you know, should you just ignore those if you feel intimidated by those people? What's the remedy for that?

BRANNON: Yes, I think the advice would be to ignore them.

Let me go back and give you one more fact about the poll watchers, which is also, I think, helpful for people understand is that in most states, it is prohibited for the poll watcher to speak directly to the voter. While they are allowed in the polling place and observing what is going on, if they have concerns, they're supposed to raise the concerns only with the election officials. So their ability to make voters feel intimidated should be limited because, I mean, obviously their presence may intimidate people... they have to go through a certain chain if they have concerns. And those rules and regulations that states have are intended to protect voters so that the poll watchers are not speaking directly to the voters.

Poll watchers should not be engaging with voters

WHAT MATTERS: Does that happen in real time? I've always wondered this. Do I know that they're challenging my registration or my ability to vote if they're not engaging me?

BRANNON: What happens in real time -- that's probably something that's fairly nuanced and will vary a great deal by state because it depends on what the state law requires of the poll worker -- the election official in the polling place -- to respond to the challenge.

In some states, the poll worker then needs to first talk with the voter and respond to the challenge, whatever it might be: 'you're not really who you say you are,' 'I don't think your ID is valid' or whatever, and the poll worker has an obligation to investigate.

In some states, the poll workers don't have to do anything, so you might not know. That's going to vary a great deal.

Why is there more concern this year?

WHAT MATTERS: Those rules and the way you've just described them sounds pretty reassuring. So why are people nervous about the, for instance, the end of the consent decree from 1982 (Read more about that here). Why is there concern about intimidation this year If the things that you just said her correct?

BRANNON: There are two answers to that question.

The first is that you mentioned the protesters who are outside the polling place who are allowed, and every state has rules, too, because if you are doing any partisan advocacy at a polling place, most states have what they call an electioneering line. So you have to be outside of a certain distance from the entrance to the poll, which are also designed to encourage people to feel comfortable to then actually go into the door of the poll. If they want to walk around or not engage protestors, they can avoid them more easily.

I think the concern is twofold:

1. That there are individuals who won't adhere to those walls and those rules, and is that circumstance going to exist. And are local election officials gonna have the capacity to manage individuals who don't adhere to what the state law or the local rules are about interacting with on Election Day.
2. I also think there's a concern about poll watchers being in polling places and being obstructionist, as opposed to really just looking for a valid concern. Those may not intimidate the voter, but they may impact the flow of the process.

How could poll watchers be disruptive?

WHAT MATTERS: Is there evidence or precedent in real life for poll watchers being obstructionist? Is there any evidence to suggest that Republican poll watchers will just try to gum up the works?

BRANNON: We are very concerned. I think that's all we can say. As you noted, there was a consent decree in place for many years that helped regulate this and part of what the consent decree did was help ensure that the state rules are followed. But given that there is not currently a consent decree, we are concerned about some of the statements the president has made. We are concerned about what might happen.

WHAT MATTERS: If you could get hypothetical for a minute, let's imagine the poll watcher was being obstructionist. Would the end result of that be a longer line? Would it be challenged ballots? What would be the aim of the obstruction of poll worker? What is what is victory for them?

BRANNON: I think we don't know because we haven't seen it, right? This has not been a problem that has occurred, in part because of the consent decree, in recent years. So what exactly would their goal would be and then what they would be able to accomplish, I think we're unclear about at this time, so I don't want to speculate. But we are very concerned that they are thinking about doing things that would have an impact. Potentially of making the lines longer and of creating a situation where people were denied the right to vote.

Freedom to speak vs. the freedom to vote

WHAT MATTERS: You were talking about electioneering. Where does the ACLU stand on electioneering outside polling places? Because it's an organization that advocates for free speech. But I would think you're also trying to protect people's right to vote. So what is the happy medium?

BRANNON: I am not a First Amendment lawyer. I'm a voting rights lawyer, so I don't want to overstate the official position on that that issue but in terms of how it works from a voting perspective, it is a long established legal process that states have of setting up an electioneering line so that there is a distance between the front of the polling place and any public individuals.

That is applied equally to all individuals. Whatever you're campaigning for, whatever protesting you're doing that you can't get that close to the front door of a polling place.

I think it's a good thing to have some sort of designated area so that people can be at the polling place; they are allowed to express their opinions. That, of course, is their right. But that it's set up in such a way so that those voters going in and out of the place are not, you know, have an opportunity to feel that they can avoid that interaction if they choose to.

It's important to understand when absentee and mail-in ballots are processed in your state

WHAT MATTERS: The thing that President Trump was seeing a conspiracy in was the lack of poll watchers or the inability of his poll watchers to go into an early absentee voting place in Philadelphia. He kind of mangled the delivery, but does he have a point there in that so many people are voting absentee or in person and those campaigns or parties are not going to get the same ability to oversee the process that they normally would simply because of the way people are voting.

BRANNON: In Pennsylvania, they don't canvas the mail and absentee ballots until Election Day. That's the state law. So those ballots will not be reviewed and then put in the appropriate pile for being counted until Election Day. They can't start until Election Day, and I think so most people understand, they will be counting after Election Day because there are going to be a lot of mail ballots and they can't start counting them until Election Day.

When they do the canvas of the mail and absentee ballots, there will be a poll watcher who can be present in that to observe that counting. That is Pennsylvania State law -- that a poll watcher is allowed observe the canvas of the mail and absentee ballots.

What's going on right now is people are essentially delivering their mail ballots, they're leaving them with election officials. They're not being processed, counted or evaluated, and that will not happen until Election Day.

What should I do if my vote is challenged?

WHAT MATTERS: The rules in every state are different. But let's say, just in a general imaginary state, I show up, I can't fulfill the voter ID requirement. Should I leave the polling place, or should I cast a provisional ballot? What should you do to make sure that you do something on Election Day if you can't satisfy one of these laws that are in, I think 35 states?

BRANNON: People have trouble voting at Election Day for a couple of reasons.

ID. If the issue is that you don't have the acceptable form of ID on your person and you do not have the opportunity to go and get your ID and come back and vote later in the day, then yes, you should vote a provisional ballot.

I would say that as a fail-safe in all circumstances, you should vote a provisional ballot versus walking away.

One thing I want to flag when people ask a question like that is in some states you have to vote at your correct precinct. And sometimes people show up at the wrong precinct. And they might have the option to go to the correct precinct, where they would be able to vote a regular ballot. And if that is your case and you have the capacity to go to the correct precinct, you should do that so you can vote a regular ballot instead of a provisional ballot.

It's important for people to understand that because in a lot of states -- Pennsylvania is definitely one of them -- the correct precinct is not geographically that far away.

But in all the circumstances, or if you're having other issues, you should always vote a provisional ballot. Federal law allows you to do that.

Should I vote by mail or in person?

WHAT MATTERS: Do you have a position on whether people should vote by mail or vote, early in person or on Election Day?

BRANNON: I think everybody should vote.

You should make a voting plan that is the best voting option for you in light of the pandemic.

WHAT MATTERS: And it could be any one of the above.

BRANNON: Yes. I think people should have options as a matter of policy. This year, like every year, voters should decide what options are work best for them.

What are your plans to protect the results?

WHAT MATTERS: There is a ton of evidence that Republicans and President Trump are essentially banking that their performance will be better on Election Day and that they will try to use what the Election Day tabulation is instead of the final tabulation. How is the ACLU preparing to fight that if that happens?

BRANNON: I don't think I can speak to you right now to our specific plans. I think it is definitely our policy position that every ballot is counted and then we intend to use our resources to help ensure that everything is counted. What that means and what that looks like I think will vary very much state by state and depending on what happens. So our position is that that every single ballot should be counted.

Are you expecting the results to be challenged?

WHAT MATTERS: Do you think that there will be challenges this year in a way that there have not been in previous years to election results?

BRANNON: I would hope not, but I think the evidence speaks for itself. I'm sure you're aware of the vast volume of election-related litigation that is already going on. And it's been unprecedented this year the number of lawsuits that have been filed related to election issues, which I think supports a concern that there will be unprecedented challenges that continue as we go through the actual voting accounting process. But I don't know the answer to that. And I certainly hope that we will allow election officials to do their job and to count every ballot and adhere to the results.

end of quote

Having said that, what are the chances of right wing militia being utilized to attack voters?

First see this vector

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/ending-the-nightmare-these-states-could-deliver-a-knockout-blow-to-trump-on-election-night/

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‘Ending the nightmare’: These states could deliver a knockout blow to Trump on election night

Published 11 mins ago on October 12, 2020

By Brad Reed 

Facebook

President Donald Trump is hoping that the 2020 presidential election once again comes down to the Midwestern battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all of which are projected to take longer than usual to announce vote totals this year thanks to a massive increase in mail-in ballots.

However, Politico reports that many allies of Democratic nominee Joe Biden are hoping to deliver a knockout blow to the president on election night that means America won’t have to wait days to find out who its next president will be.

One state that is projected to have its ballots counted on election night is Ohio, where recent polls show Trump and Biden are running neck and neck and where local Democrats are encouraging the Biden campaign to make a big push.

“In the past, the tipping point was the state that got you the Electoral College victory,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper explained. “Given what Trump is doing… people see that if you can make the tipping point ending the nightmare before it starts, make that the tipping point.”

In addition to Ohio and its 18 electoral votes, other states that Politico says could deliver an election night knockout include Florida (29 votes), North Carolina (15 votes) and Arizona (11 votes).

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If you wish to know the states where right wing militia could be utilized to terrorize voters, it comes to

quote

“In the past, the tipping point was the state that got you the Electoral College victory,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper explained. “Given what Trump is doing… people see that if you can make the tipping point ending the nightmare before it starts, make that the tipping point.”

In addition to Ohio and its 18 electoral votes, other states that Politico says could deliver an election night knockout include Florida (29 votes), North Carolina (15 votes) and Arizona (11 votes).

end of quote

This is it. Expect right wing militia fanaticism to be turned on, full bore, in these states, with also Wisconsin to have another do over of hate groups.

Pennsylvania will have the Russian Mafia out in force too.