772 search results for ""voter fraud""

Congratulations, it’s a Democrat
by Tom Sullivan

Well, it looks as if Pat McCrory won’t be stealing North Carolina’s governorship from sitting state Attorney General Roy Cooper after all:

Four years after becoming the first Republican to win the North Carolina governor’s office in more than two decades, McCrory made the concession in a video message posted around noon Monday as a recount he requested in Durham County entered its final hours. Durham officials finished the recount later Monday with virtually no change in the vote tally there.

I use after all because McCrory (of HB2 “bathroom bill” fame) conceded yesterday after making multiple allegations of “voting irregularities” in Durham and elsewhere:

McCrory had refused to concede for almost a month, using a flurry of ballot complaints filed by Republicans to decry widespread voter fraud in the state. But the Republican-led state board of elections effectively dismissed all complaints about voter eligibility last week, and the board on Saturday rejected another complaint alleging that absentee ballots were improperly filled out in Balden County.

As in, there was no there there. We covered the unintentional hilarity of the Bladen hearing on Sunday. Now that it appears after all that McCrory won’t be throwing the close election to the Republican legislature to settle. Besides McCrory resurfacing as the Trump administration’s bathroom monitor, all North Carolina has to worry about now is, after the GOP lost the majority on the state Supreme Court on November 8, the legislature using a special session to pack the court. A special session is scheduled for a week from today. It is ostensibly about Hurricane Matthew relief.

Paranoia? It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you. Say, after all the surgically precise gerrymandering and voter suppression legislation. Oh, and Republicans in the U.S. Senate flagrantly stealing a sitting Democratic president’s U.S. Supreme Court pick.

David Waldman (KagroX on Twitter) suggests a way Democrats in the U.S. Senate can show the country they’re tired of having sand kicked in their faces. Karoli at Crooks and Liars explains:

On January 3, 2017, Democrats will hold the majority in the Senate for a few minutes, until the newly-elected Senators are sworn in. Biden could convene the Senate in those few minutes and call for a vote. The majority could then suspend the rules and vote in Merrick Garland.

The key here is that VP Biden would have to be willing to convene the Senate and recognize Senator Dick Durbin instead of Mitch McConnell. Durbin moves to re-nominate Garland, and Senate Democrats then vote to confirm him. They will have a quorum for those few minutes.

It’s bold. Garland would be confirmed by 34 Democrats and no Republicans. It will certainly enrage Republicans, but they’re already enraged and full of hubris about how they’re going to screw Democrats anyway, so what do they really have to lose?

Not much. It takes courage. It takes a resolve to do what’s right for this country, to reclaim the Supreme Court nomination Republicans think they stole from us. It takes backbone.

There’s the rub, Hamlet said.

Send Biden to the Senate on Jan. 3 w Garland's renomination & instructions to recognize Durbin before swearing in. https://t.co/KUNbf8qF8a— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 25, 2016

@CatrionaMDW On 1/3, before new Sens. are sworn, 67 seated Sens. & Biden are in the chamber. Biden turns to Durbin instead of McConnell. Go.— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 22, 2016

@CatrionaMDW 67 Senators are seated. 34 is a quorum. Rs walk out & it's unanimous instead of 34-30.— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 22, 2016

Here’s Samantha Bee lampooning McCrory in May:

Yeah, these people voted for Trump because of his trade policies

by digby

Dear God. We’re doomed:

CNN’s Alysin Camerota sat down with several long-time Trump supporters for a focus group-style interview on Thursday’s “New Day” and pressed them for their thoughts on the president-elect’s transition and postelection performance.

Each of the participants, with whom Camerota has spoken with before on CNN, praised Trump’s performance so far.

“How do you feel about the ‘white nationalist movement,’ the alt-right, some Neo-Nazi salutes that we’ve seen? What are we to make of what feels like a groundswell of that with the Steve Bannon-Breitbart connection,” Camerota asked the group after one participant claimed that the people “that Trump has appointed or nominated have all been top of the class, number one in their field, extremely talented, great leaders on their own.”

Former Democratic state legislator and co-chair of the New Hampshire-based Women for Trump Paula Johnson jumped in to defend Trump: “That’s been around forever,” Johnson pushed back against Camerota’s questioning. “You know, if you keep reporting on it, it’s going to grow like a cancer. If you forget about it then it’s probably going to go away.” Using a favorite rhetorical device of the former reality-TV star: media bashing,” she added, “The media has to harp on everything. And it’s wrong.”

Johnson continued that many anti-Trump voters had little room to complain if they failed to vote in the election. “Voting is a privilege in this country,” Johnson said, before adding, “and you need to be legal, not like California where three million illegals voted.”

A confused Camerota asked Johson, “Where are you getting your information?”

“From the media!” Johnson insisted. “Some of them were CNN, I believe.”

“CNN said that 3 million illegal people voted in California?” an incredulous Camerota asked.

Johnson then decided to source her false report directly to President Obama.

“I think there was a good amount because the president told people that they could vote,” Johnson claimed. “They said, ‘The president said I could vote. I’m here illegally.’”

To her credit, Camerota kept up the line of questioning while seemingly holding back laughter.

“Did you hear President Obama said that illegal people could vote?” asked Camerota, to which nearly all the participants nodded their heads and replied, “Yes.”

“Tell me, where?” Camerota demanded.

At that point, another Trump voter directed Camerota to, “Google it. You could find it on Facebook.”

So she did.

Camerota, a former long-time Fox News host, was then forced to read a recent Mediate headline to the group that read, “Fox deceptively edits Obama interview to falsely claim he told illegal immigrants to vote.”

The Trump voters were apparently referring to Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney’s false claim that the president “appears to encourage illegals to vote, and he promises no repercussions if they do.”

While the above clip is clearly deceptively edited to conflate undocumented immigrants with all Latino voters in the U.S., Fox Business Network not only failed to make that distinction but falsely implied such a distinction was never even made. In fact, Fox Business Network left out the portion of Obama’s comments in which he explicitly stated that undocumented immigrants do not have the legal right to vote.

Still, Trump voters remained wedded to the fake news nearly a month after the election.

“You as you sit here today think that millions of illegal people voted in this country and you believe that there was widespread voting abuse? In the millions of people?” a clearly exasperated Camerota continued to challenge the Trump voters.

“California allows it,” Johnson said.

“They do not allow illegals — you mean voter fraud, California allows?” asked a dumbfounded Camerota.

“I believe there was voter fraud in this country,” she insisted, remaining steadfast to her false belief.

I don’t know which members of the non-college educated white Trump voters Democrats can peel off to win but it’s not going to be easy.

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Use your leverage? You bet they will
by Tom Sullivan

You wonder why Donald Trump doesn’t simply move on to the next lie. He has a boundless supply. But after being hammered for his tweets about the popular vote totals being compromised by millions of illegal votes, his team seems determined to dig in. Daily Beast reports:

President-elect Donald Trump doubled down on claims of voter fraud on Monday night, lashing out at journalists who dared to ask for some evidence. Addressing several journalists, Trump wrote, “There is NO QUESTION THAT voter fraud did take place, and in favor of Corrupt Hillary!” As for those who expressed doubt about Trump’s assertions, the president-elect told them to put up or shut up: “Pathetic – you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame! Bad reporter.”

That last one complaining the press has failed to prove a negative was Trump retweeting a 16 year-old from Beverly Hills. Actually, Trump didn’t use the retweet function. He simply copied and pasted the kid’s tweet.

@realDonaldTrump Good evening! Have been looking for examples of voter fraud. Please send our way. Full-time journalist here still working.— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) November 29, 2016

The New York Times editorial board figured, like many of us, that should Trump lose on Nov. 8 he would try to delegitimize the election by floating conspiracy theories from “right-wing propaganda sites like InfoWars.” Instead he’s trying to delegitimize his own victory. The Times writes:

In addition to insulting law-abiding voters everywhere, these lies about fraud threaten the foundations of American democracy. They have provided the justification for state voter-suppression laws around the country, and they could give the Trump administration a pretext to roll back voting rights on a national scale.

And why is Mr. Trump so hung up on the popular vote in the first place? After all, he won where it counts — in the Electoral College. And yet, in the three weeks since his victory, Mr. Trump has already admitted at least twice that he would prefer the presidency be determined by the popular vote, and not by 538 electors. It’s clear he feels threatened by Mrs. Clinton’s popular-vote lead — now more than 2.3 million and expected to exceed 2.5 million; as a percentage of the electorate, that is a wider margin than five presidents enjoyed. With support for third-party candidates added in, 54 percent of voters rejected Mr. Trump.

The right has been flogging the tiresome fraud meme for decades, insisting they are deeply concerned with election integrity when evidence exists that’s not their real motivation and evidence for massive fraud is absent.

Can we get back to something that’s a real threat to the country (in addition to Trump’s immaturity)? Say, how his business dealings worldwide leave him compromised as president when dealing with foreign powers? The Atlantic has a handy crib sheet on Trump’s global conflicts of interest:

The unprecedented nature of Trump’s business interests, coupled with the many precedents that Trump broke throughout his campaign—not releasing his tax returns, for example, which severely limits attempts to understand his financial situation—has provoked speculation that his presidency may bring about equally unprecedented opportunities for conflicts of interest. Trump’s response—provided on Twitter—only reinforces concerns that he will make little effort to avoid entangling his business and personal interests, and will instead attack those who point that out.

Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world.Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016

The short-fingered vulgarian is insecure about the size of his win, the size of his, uh, hands, and the size of his net worth. “Use your leverage,” Trump advises in “The Art of the Deal.” Foreign powers? You bet they will.

Thanks for the tip, Mr. Minority.

By hook or by crook
by Tom Sullivan

Outgoing NC Gov. Pat McCrory, via NCDOT Communications.

North Carolina did not see a Karl Rove-like meltdown on election night when results showed Gov. Pat McCrory losing his reelection bid to Attorney General Roy Cooper by 5,000 votes. The meltdown has been more of a slow burn. McCrory as refused to concede, even as absentee and provisional vote tallies show the margin against him widening.

Civitas, the Art Pope-funded think tank, as filed suit in federal court to delay final certification of results while the state verifies the addresses of over 90,000 same-day registrants.

McCrory’s team, meanwhile, is alleging widespread voting irregularities:

Rather than throwing in the towel, McCrory is instead throwing around wild and unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud across the state. The governor is claiming that results in half of North Carolina’s 100 counties were tainted by irregularities, but some of those claims have already been dismissed by county election boards. The result is close enough to trigger a recount, which McCrory officially requested today, but past recounts in close North Carolina elections have not produced any significant changes in vote tallies.

Nonetheless, McCrory’s team is accusing Cooper of winning by illicit means and trying to cover up evidence of a supposedly fraudulent victory. “Why is Roy Cooper so insistent on circumventing the electoral process and counting the votes of dead people and felons?” one McCrory flack said in a statement. “It may be because he needs those fraudulent votes to count in order to win.”

Salon’s Simon Malloy notes that in the same election, Donald Trump won North Carolina by 4 points and Republican Sen. Richard Burr won reelection by 6 points. Being “champion of the country’s most notorious anti-LGBTQ law” had nothing to do with McCrory’s loss, of course. But if Roy Cooper’s team somehow managed to manipulate results to take out McCrory alone, now that’s some targeting. I’d want to hire them.

McCroy’s end game, rumor has it, may be to sow enough doubt long enough to create a legitimacy crisis that would trigger the involvement of the GOP-controlled legislature in settling the election. The News and Observer says it’s not that simple:

Yes, N.C. lawmakers can declare a winner, a power given to them both by the N.C. Constitution, which says the General Assembly can settle “contested” state races, but also a 2005 law cited by the New York Times and Slate that says losers in Council of State races can appeal the results to the legislature.

[…]

As for whether such a decision now could be reviewed by courts, here’s what that 2005 N.C. statute actually says: “The decision of the General Assembly in determining the contest of the election pursuant to this section may not be reviewed by the General Court of Justice.” According to the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts, the “General Court of Justice” is the entire N.C. court system, which includes Appellate, Superior and District courts.

That wouldn’t stop the federal courts from jumping in, says Rick Hasen (Election Law Blog):

If there is clear evidence both that Roy Cooper got more votes in North Carolina, with no plausible basis to claim that fraud infected the result (and by all indications so far, both of these facts are true), it could well be both a Due Process and Equal Protection Clause violation for the North Carolina legislature on a partisan basis to consider a “contest” and overturn the results and hand them to Pat McCrory. There are cases where federal courts have gotten involved in these kinds of ugly election disputes (think Roe v. Alabama, Bush v. Gore). But a brazen power grab without a plausible basis for overturning the results of a democratically conducted election? I expect the federal courts would take a very close look at such a thing.

McCrory doesn’t have to be Catholic to throw a Hail Mary.

McCrory's first priority after installation will I guess be the No More Elections Act https://t.co/FNe12oXdQX— David Dayen (@ddayen) November 21, 2016

What will they think of next?
by Tom Sullivan

“Bless your heart” is an expression slowly dying out across a South awash (as everywhere else) in social media and a gagillion cable channels. Depending on subtle cues in delivery, as many know, it was an overly genteel way southerners once insulted you with a smile on their faces. (R.I.P., Dixie Carter.)

We note today that Republicans in North Carolina are especially ungracious losers, bless their hearts. Two tricksy maneuvers rumored to be considered as GOP workarounds for November 8 losses illustrate the case.

First, Gov. Pat McCrory is falling further behind Attorney General Roy Cooper in the vote count in a very tight race for governor. Cooper’s November 8 margin has grown steadily as Boards of Election across the state canvass absentee and provisional ballots. The State Board of Elections reported Democrat Cooper with a 6,600 vote lead on Friday; the Cooper campaign believes the final vote spread will be greater. The News and Observer reports:

Cooper, the Democrat, has held a lead of about 5,000 votes since Election Day. That lead has increased to 7,448 votes, according to Marc Elias who spoke to reporters in a phone-in conference. He said he expects that lead to grow slightly, based on the mix of counties that have yet to report outstanding ballots.

McCrory is crying “voter fraud” in an attempt to cast doubt on the process, claiming in over 50 counties (Republicans control the boards of election in all of them) that “up to 200 ballots should be thrown out because they were cast under the names of dead people or by felons or individuals who voted more than once, according to the campaign.” Rumors are circulating that the GOP-led legislature could step in to decide the election:

The provision has only been used once before in modern history, when lawmakers named June Atkinson state superintendent of public instruction over Bill Fletcher in 2005, in a process that took nine months to resolve. At the time, the legislature was controlled by Democrats; Atkinson was a Democrat and Fletcher was a Republican.

But the main issue then was whether some 11,000 provisional ballots should be counted even though they were cast in precincts outside of where the voters lived. This time the question is whether computer problems in Durham County led to errors in the vote count that could change the outcome. On Tuesday, the Durham elections board chairman, a Republican, said the board has not seen evidence of any problems.

House Speaker Tim Moore tells the press that invoking that process (explained here) would be “an absolute last resort.” We shall see. Atkinson lost her bid for reelection this year.

Second, after Democrat Michael Morgan won a State Supreme Court race on Election Day (tipping the ideological balance of the court leftward), more than rumors are flying that Republicans might invoke a provision in the state constitution to get it back through (presumably) lame-duck appointments by Pat McCrory. That is, by court-packing. Zoë Carpenter explains for The Nation:

Last week, the conservative John Locke Foundation argued that the Legislature has the authority to expand the high court by two additional justices, who could be appointed by McCrory during his final weeks in office. The vote could take place during a December special session, which McCrory is expected to call under the guise of passing an aid package related to Hurricane Matthew. This would tip the balance of power on the court back to the Republicans.

The state chapter of the NAACP is already preparing a lawsuit in the event that the Legislature does try to pack the court. (Republicans in the General Assembly are sending conflicting signals about whether it’s really on the table.) “There is no justification for this. The court has had seven members since 1936, and there is no increase in the volume of cases that would dictate this,” said the Rev. William Barber II, the president of the North Carolina NAACP. “Clearly it is simply to engage in some form of legislative coup.” Barber believes court-packing would violate the Voting Rights Act; Wake Forest Law professor Harold Lloyd argues it could also violate the state Constitution.

Bless their hearts.

Republican legislators backed into this cactus after losing judicial races to Democrats in 2014, a year where across the country Republicans won seemingly everything:

In nonpartisan judicial elections in 2014, North Carolina Democrats also took three out of three contested Supreme Court races and won two out of three contested Appeals Court races. And those, in a sweep election where the GOP should have won it all. Republicans in the North Carolina legislature responded in 2015 by changing the way North Carolina elects judges.

Naturally, this was not an outcome they could allow to stand. So Republican legislature first tried to make judicial races “retention elections.” A three-judge state panel this year ruled that unconstitutional and a split State Supreme Court affirmed the ruling. So Republicans settled for switching the judicial contests to partisan races:

Appellate judicial races had been nonpartisan since 2004. The House passed a bill last year that made races for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals partisan. But the Senate passed a different version, leaving out the Supreme Court and making only the Court of Appeals partisan. That version became law.

Morgan and Edmunds, then, were on the ballot with no party by their name, and Morgan was listed first. In the five Court of Appeals races, parties were included and each Republican was listed first. They went five-for-five.

In the State Supreme Court race, however, the African-American Judge Morgan won by nine points, tipping the court leftward unless Republican legislators, bless their hearts, think up some other way of undoing the results of the election.

When Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep at age 80 several months ago, I don’t think anyone thought it would be easy to replace him before the election. President Barack Obama’s appointing a justice to his seat would change the balance of the court, and that would be a fraught proposition regardless of the timing.

But it did come as a surprise when the Republicans didn’t simply delay hearings or drag their feet. Instead, they openly declared that a president in his seventh year had no right to name a Supreme Court justice at all. As it has done repeatedly in recent times, the anarchistic GOP is simply making up new rules to serve its interests and daring the Democrats to do something about it.

Despite numerous sanctimonious speeches and interviews by Republicans explaining that they simply wanted to ensure that members of the public could “weigh in” on the Supreme Court choice through their presidential selection (as if they hadn’t done that already by electing Obama twice) it now appears that at least a few Republicans are prepared to continue the blockade as long as a Democrat is in the White House. As Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye reported yesterday, GOP Sens. Richard Burr, Ted Cruz and John McCain have all made statements to that effect.

Cruz, as usual, made the most fatuous comments, claiming that there’s “historical precedent” for leaving the court short of a full nine justices for extended lengths of time. Historical is the right word. What he failed to mention was that it hasn’t happened since 1844 when the court only had eight justices for two years. Burr, on the other hand, just blurted out that he thinks the seat should be left empty for four years if Democrat Hillary Clinton wins.

This is all assuming the Republicans are able to maintain their Senate majority. In the past they might have been able to achieve this epic obstruction even if they were in the minority with the use of the filibuster.

But outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who clearly has gotten wind of this plan, explained that he has prepared the blueprint for a Democratic majority to nuke the filibuster for Supreme Court justices if they have to: “I’ve told ’em how and I’ve done it, not just talking about it. I did it in changing the rules of the Senate. It’ll have to be done again.” Added Reid: “They mess with the Supreme Court, it’ll be changed just like that in my opinion.”

But if the GOP fails to win the White House and maintains its Senate majority, there’s a good possibility that the Republicans won’t confirm any new justices appointed by Clinton, ever. Indeed, one can imagine if other justices retire or die, the court dwindling down in number for years. Keeping the Democrats from nominating Supreme Court justices is now a GOP litmus test.

And let’s face it, this is a foreshadowing of something even more disruptive and dangerous. Ever since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have increasingly seen Democratic presidents as illegitimate. They said Bill Clinton wasn’t “their president” because he won with a plurality rather than a majority (which may well happen this year as well). The GOP-led Congress spent years trying to drive him from office on trumped-up charges.

Many in the Republican rank and file believed that Barack Obama was ineligible for the White House because he was a secret Muslim who had lied about being born in America. Republicans’ decades-long “voter fraud” myth has created an underlying sense among their voters that our election systems are always tilted against them by Democrats’ attempts to steal elections.

But this election has taken it to an entirely different level. We’ve never seen a presidential candidate state in advance that he believes the vote is rigged and declare that he will only accept he outcome if he wins. Even if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ends up conceding in some technical sense, his voters will never truly accept his loss and he will be a martyr for their cause. In that sense, Trump has already won regardless of the actual vote count.

We’ve also never had a presidential candidate delegitimized before the election even occurs. Trump routinely claims that Clinton should “not have been allowed” to run because she is “guilty as hell” of unnamed crimes and has promised to imprison her if he wins the office. His followers are convinced this is true and chant “Lock her up!” and “Hang the bitch!” at his rallies. (The outrageous actions of the FBI director last Friday have made such people only more certain in that belief.)

On Tuesday night in Wisconsin, Trump declared that if Clinton wins the election “it would create an unprecedented crisis and the work of government would grind to an unbelievably inglorious halt.” In fact, he and the Republicans are now making that an explicit promise. Some, like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (who faces likely defeat in his re-election battle), are actually running on that agenda. He told a local newspaper this week that he believed Clinton will be impeached should she win the office.

I would say yes, high crime or misdemeanor, I believe she is in violation of both laws [related to gathering, transmission or destruction of defense information or official government record]. She purposefully circumvented it. This was willful concealment and destruction.

Unfortunately, Johnson is not the only one already talking about impeachment:

To hold on to their congressional majorities, Republicans should promise voters they’ll impeach Hillary by 2018.

— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) October 18, 2016

They un-rigged the polls!


by digby

Trump’s back to reading his poll numbers again:

Donald Trump appears to have rekindled the flame for his on-again, off-again relationship with the polls, falling back in love with them just as they show him narrowing Hillary Clinton’s lead in the race for the White House. 

Trump was quick to tout a fresh ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll released Tuesday, showing him leading by a single percentage point, 46 percent to 45 percent, with just one week to go until Election Day. It’s the same tracking poll that put the Manhattan billionaire down 12 points earlier this month and his comeback story was cause for celebration on Twitter Tuesday morning.

“Wow, now leading in @ABC /@washingtonpost Poll 46 to 45. Gone up 12 points in two weeks, mostly before the Crooked Hillary blow-up!” Trump tweeted just before 9 a.m. Monday, a sharp turn from the weeks he spent on the campaign trail decrying “rigged” polls and suggesting that the election might be stolen out from under him by widespread voter fraud.

Clinton’s “blow-up” has picked up steam in recent weeks amid the daily trickle of emails hacked from the personal account of her campaign chairman John Podesta and as news broke that premiums on Obamacare health insurance policies will spike next year. But the Democratic nominee’s campaign was pushed fully back onto its heels Friday when FBI Director James Comey wrote a letter to Congress disclosing that the bureau is reviewing fresh evidence pertaining to Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

That announcement from Comey delivered to Trump a powerful rhetorical weapon with which to hammer Clinton in the campaign’s final days, bolstering his “crooked Hillary” talking points and re-raising questions about her ethics.

Well played James Comey, well played.

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“The most chaotic election for people of color in 50 years”

 by digby

Maybe the Department of Justice could redirect some of their email investigators to monitoring the vote. They can go back to their witch hunting right after the election:

Imagine going to the polls on election day and your polling location has been shut down or your right to vote challenged or worse, you’re taunted by people at the polling site because you’re a person of color.

These are just some of the concerns that civil rights groups around the country have as early voting begins. Groups representing Latino, Black, Asian, Arab and Muslim-American voters are preparing for what they expect will be a confusing and contentious presidential election.

“We are on the precipice of the most chaotic election for people of color in 50 years,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights on Wednesday. “We are doing everything we can to prevent discrimination, intimidation and violence at the polls.”

Henderson and other civil rights groups say they are growing particularly worried as Donald Trump ratchets up claims that the election is “rigged” and calls for his supporters to monitor the polls.

On Wednesday, a group named the Oath Keepers called on “retired police officers, our military intelligence veterans, and our Special Warfare veterans” to “apply their considerable training in investigation, intelligence gathering, and field-craft to help stop voter fraud.”

In response to the Oath Keepers’ release, Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued a statement: “There is no place in our democracy for this form of vigilantism and extremism,” particularly since “their efforts seem directed against minority communities.” The organization is urging voters to call 866-OUR-VOTE if they encounter intimidation tactics at the polls.

Rev. Dr. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP, said his offices have been “inundated with complaints” since early voting began in the state. In a conference call Thursday, Barber noted reports of hecklers photographing black voters during events and one instance where KKK-inspired graffiti was written on a street in front of a black church where a “souls to the polls” event was being held.

“It is, in fact, voter suppression that is the legal threat in this election,” Barber said.

The NAACP noted that more than 100 voters in Beaufort County, North Carolina, had their voter registration challenged after local residents raised questions to the local election bureau about whether they could legally vote in the county. Of that group, nearly 60% of the residents whose voting rights were being challenged were African-American, the NAACP said.

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Ref working James Comey FTW

by digby

Trump and the rest of the right wing has been dogging him relentlessly as a sell-out whore for failing to put Clinton in jail. Looks like it worked.

There was a time when it was considered unacceptable for the authorities to talk about investigations or draw up charges against  politicians in the dy leading up to elections. That seems to have changed since this happened back in 2006:

The controversy surrounding the U.S. Attorneys dismissals was often linked to elections or voter-fraud issues. Allegations were that some of the U.S. Attorneys were dismissed for failing to instigate investigations damaging to Democratic politicians, or for failing to more aggressively pursue voter-fraud cases. Such allegations were made by some of the dismissed U.S. Attorneys themselves to suggest reasons they may have been dismissed. The background to the allegations is the recent tendency for elections in parts of the United States to be very close; an election outcome can be affected by an announced investigation of a politician. It is explicit policy of the Department of Justice to avoid bringing voter-related cases during an election for this reason. In September 2008, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice concluded that some of the dismissals were motivated by the refusal of some of the U.S. Attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases during the 2006 election cycle.

By April 2007, there was some speculation that the dismissal of the US attorneys might affect cases of public corruption and voter fraud. According to the National Law Journal,

“Just the appearance of political influence in cases related to those firings, combined with the recent, unusual reversal of a federal public corruption conviction in Wisconsin [c.f., Georgia Thompson], some say, will spur aggressive defense lawyers to question the political motivation of prosecutors in certain cases; make magistrates and judges more skeptical of the evidence before them; and perhaps even chill line prosecutors in their pursuit of some indictments.”

But nobody cares about any of this stuff anymore. Anything goes. Wikileaks, FOIA, FBI all used for political purposes is just fine — as long as the ox that’s being gored is the ox you hate.