On today’s BradCast: It was an all too rare moment of good news, of late, for Democrats and, indeed, the nation on Tuesday, after what appears to have been a stunning upset by Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s U.S. Senate Special Election. But Dems may not want to spend too much time celebrating. [Audio link to show is posted below.]
Following Jones’ apparent stunning victory on Tuesday, his highly controversial opponent has so far refused to concede or reportedly even speak to Jones. At the same time, despite Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s demand in 2010, when Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate, to wait to hold a vote on the Affordable Care Act (‘ObamaCare’) until Republican Sen. Scott Brown could be seated after his special election in Massachusetts, the GOP appears to be barreling ahead with their plan to vote on their radical and wildly unpopular tax scheme in the coming days, before Jones can be seated. That, even after McConnell had held a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court open for almost a year, claiming that “the American people should have a voice” in who would be the next Supreme Court Justice during the 2016 Presidential election.
In the meantime, even after the voice of AL voters seems to have quite clearly said they want to be represented by a Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Moore suggested on Tuesday night that he may hold out for a “recount” of paper ballots processed by computer scanners across the state. AL’s Sec. of State John Merrill told CNN Tuesday night that Moore has the right to do so, but election statutes in the state seem to say otherwise.
We’re joined today by veteran recount expert, attorney, author and professor CHRIS SAUTTER of American University, to discuss all of this. Sautter, formerly an adviser to Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and many other Democrats, worked on the recount efforts by Al Gore in Florida in 2000 and Al Franken in Minnesota in 2008, among many other such efforts going back decades.
“I’ve been doing recounts now since the 1984 [U.S.] House recount in Indiana that was ultimately decided by 4 votes — still the closest House race in modern times,” Sautter tells me. “One thing I’ve observed is that in the heart of the narrowly-defeated candidate lies the belief that he actually won or at least the hope that a recount will somehow salvage a victory. It’s another way of describing denial in an election that is close, heartbreakingly close, for the loser.”
Sautter was also part of the team supporting the multi-partisan lawsuit recently filed in Alabama in hopes of forcing the state to retain digital “ballot images” created by their paper ballot computer scanners. Those images, many election integrity advocates argue, can be useful for public oversight of results, particularly in states like Alabama which make it virtually impossible for citizens to oversee tabulation of paper ballots, and which simply rescan them through the same computers a second time in the rare event of a “recount”.
As we have been reporting, the transparency advocates who filed that lawsuit appeared to have won it on Monday afternoon, but by Monday evening, in a ruling that Sautter describes as “extraordinary” the night before the Election, the Sec. of State was successful in convincing the state Supreme Court to allow counties to destroy those “ballot images” altogether.
Sautter offers insight, among other things, as to Moore’s chances of success in a potential “recount” (and of being allowed to have one at all under state law); on the bizarre circumstances under which the AL Supremes reversed the lower court’s “ballot images” ruling at the last minute without input from the plaintiffs; and how he and other election integrity advocates hope to take their fight for transparency nationwide in 2018.
Finally, while Jones’ apparent victory on Tuesday may have been good news for Democrats, Alabama, the nation as a whole (and even the Republican Party), we explain why what happened on Tuesday actually serves as a startling reminder of just how rigged against Democrats the electoral system is as they prepare to head into next year’s crucial mid-term elections…
QUESTION FOR BRAD OR OTHER INFORMED PERSON:
How much apparent influence did the infamous Interstate Crosscheck program have on the Alabama special election we just had?
I can’t seem to find anything recent on IC operating in Alabama, and I wonder if it were a factor on Tuesday, “caging” many votes.
If so, then the election wasn’t really as close as it turned out, due to the caging.
I also wonder about polling place closures (in Dem-voting areas), and if those were a factor in the special election, as they likely have been in others in the recent past.
Thanks for any response, from anyone.
You might want to keep track of Greg Palast. He has done a lot of work regarding Operation Crosscheck.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/i...abama-election
Here are the most recent articles on Alabama vote-suppression I can find:
http://www.motherjones.com/poli...bama-election/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-...te-moore-jones
http://www.motherjones.com/poli...hould-be-easy/
https://www.theatlantic.com/pol...to-win/547574/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/c...e-to-roy-moore
https://grondamorin.com/2017/12...s-on-12-12-17/
http://www.newsweek.com/alabama...orhoods-746190
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/...ushpmg00000009
https://rdtdaily.com/alabama-sp...ession-tricks/
There is little, if any, mention of Interstate Crosscheck in any of the articles above.
But there’s lots of info on other methods that may have come into play.
In any case, it doesn’t look like the Alabama special election was entirely free of GOP election-fraud methods.
I’d still really love to hear Greg Palast himself weigh-in on how much Interstate Crosscheck may have influenced the special election.
DonL @ 1:
Happily, Alabama is not one of the Crosscheck states, so it wouldn’t have had any direct influence on voter suppression in the state.
Also worth keeping in mind regarding Crosscheck, the highly-flawed program doesn’t directly remove anybody from the registration lists, as some have suggested. The program shares lists of voters (based on their ridiculouslly flawed comparison of names) from member states where the voters appear to be registered in more than one of those states. What state election officials then do with that list is up to them. There is a different legal process in each state that is supposed to be followed for voters found to have been registered in more than one state. The Crosscheck list is only supposed to serve as a list for officials to further investigate before taking action in their own state. So, even in (most) Crosscheck states, appearing on the list, on its own, does not result in removal from the rolls. At least in theory.
That said, there were a high number of voters reported to have been set to “inactive” on Tuesday in Alabama, for reasons still unknown. Those voters should have been allowed to vote with a provisional ballot instead, but that process includes filling out an extra form, and then, in some cases, bringing additional information to county headquarters in the days after the election.
So, yes, I suspect the margin is likely to increase for Jones once those provisionals are processed….presumably.
I haven’t heard anything about polling place closures. Though that could have happened as well. I just haven’t seen anything on it yet or heard about it from folks in AL.
Thanks, Brad!
That’s good news about Interstate Crosscheck not being a factor in Alabama.
It does look like they blocked at least a few.
But Dem vote losses don’t seem to have been really major, this time around.
DonL @6:
Unclear how large the vote losses were at this time. I think it may have been worse than people realize yet. We’ll get a better picture after provisionals are processed.
But, best explanation I’ve seen of what seems to have happened is here, from Mark Joseph Stern at Slate.