‌‌‌‌‌Forgeries Be Damned, I Want To Be Governor!

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SPONSORED MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN*

Franchise readers, Wisconsin is ground zero in the fight for voting rights: whether we beat back far-right attacks on the freedom to vote could determine the future of our democracy. Add your name to help us fight back.

Hello readers!

With a massive signature forgery scandal rocking Michigan, one candidate told TPM it’s time for politicians to take personal responsibility. 

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‘You Can’t Claim Competency And Ignorance’

We reported on this all last week: Multiple candidates for office in MICHIGAN, including five Republican gubernatorial candidates, collectively submitted tens of thousands of fraudulent signatures in their effort to qualify for ballot placement. As a result, those candidates — including two Republican frontrunners for governor — are off the ballot for now. A new crop of b-listers has taken their place.

Several candidates are pursuing lawsuits, arguing alternately that the state should have warned them more strenuously to look out for frauds, and also that the state Bureau of Elections’ method for affirming fraud — line-by-line checks, supplemented by a check against the Qualified Voter File in around 10% of fraudulent signatures — wasn’t sufficient.

We should stress: The Bureau did not find one valid signature after reviewing thousands of fraudulent ones submitted by these candidates. And at least one candidate who discovered fraud in her signatures — and who quickly fixed the problem before turning her signatures in — doesn’t have much sympathy for her banished also-rans.

“You can’t claim competency and ignorance at the same time,” said Amanda Shelton, a judicial candidate who realized that her competitor, Tricia Dare, turned in signature sheets that included a few pages that were nearly identical to Shelton’s. Turns out, both sheets came from a petition circulator who the state has now accused of forgery. Dare turned those signatures into the state; Shelton tossed them and collected new ones before the deadline.

“Ten minutes with Tricia Dare’s petitions, anybody could have seen: This does not pass the smell test,” Shelton told me. “It was not rocket science.” 

Ohio Supreme Court Despairs At Lawless Republicans And Federal Judges Who Aid Them

For the fifth time, the OHIO Supreme Court rejected maps submitted by the state’s Republican-controlled redistricting commission, saying for the fifth time that they violate anti-gerrymandering constitutional language.

And yet, the Republicans will get their way: Last month, two Trump appointees writing for the majority of a federal court panel said that, if the commission and the state’s highest court didn’t “set aside their differences” by May 28, the federal court would greenlight the use of one of the unconstitutional maps.

And so, as expected, Republicans simply submitted one of their earlier unconstitutional maps and waited for the state Supreme Court to strike it down. That happened last week, and on Friday, the two Trump appointees ordered the use of a map that the Ohio Supreme Court already found to be unconstitutional. 
 

In a concurring opinion last week, the state court’s soon-to-be-term-limited Republican chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, spelled out what had happened: The federal court had assisted in violating the state’s constitution.

“Lamentably, the federal court’s optimism that the commission members ‘are public servants who still view partisan advantage as subordinate to the rule of the law,’ proved to be unfounded,” she wrote. “And its hope ‘that the Commission and the Ohio Supreme Court can set aside their differences and work together to find a solution,’ failed to recognize the commission’s utter refusal to comply with this court’s orders as rulings of law and the Republican commission members’ insistence that they can act in derogation of the law and against their oaths to uphold it.”

Or, as redistricting commission member and Senate President Matt Huffman (R) said recently in many fewer words, “We can kind of do what we want.” 

Around The States

SPONSORED MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN*

Franchise readers, Wisconsin is ground zero in the fight for voting rights: whether we beat back far-right attacks on the freedom to vote could determine the future of our democracy. Add your name to help us fight back.

The FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMISSION has a new Democratic member. 
 

Three people have been charged in FLORIDA over a ghost candidate scheme that has clear ties to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
 

Donald Trump’s pro-election-theft candidate for GEORGIA secretary of state, Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), lost to incumbent Brad Raffensperger. 

A federal court found that SOUTH DAKOTA’s secretary of state failed to comply with the National Voting Rights Act, which mandates that government institutions that interact with the public — like social services or criminal-legal agencies — also register people to vote. 
 

A center-right member of the WISCONSIN Elections Commission has resigned, setting the stage for a Fake Trump elector to take over.

The Latest In Election Sabotage

ARIZONA Attorney General Mark Brnovich has made a deal with the Arizona GOP not to defend the state’s robust early voting system in court; the Republicans want to eliminate all but the smallest exceptions for mail-in voting, and mandate that Arizonans vote in-person despite the fact that nearly 90% of voters cast ballots early in 2020.
 

Mehmet “Dr.” Oz and the Republican Party want courts to exclude absentee ballots without dates in the too-close-to-call Senate race in PENNSYLVANIA, while David McCormick has sued to have those ballots counted. A federal appeals court has signaled that the dates are immaterial and the ballots should be counted, but there are signs this is headed for the Supreme Court. 
 

Just because Civil War insurrectionists were granted amnesty doesn’t mean that amnesty extends to present-day insurrectionists, an appeals court ruled. 

A committee of the State Bar of TEXAS has filed a professional misconduct lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton, citing his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. 
 

The voting rights media organization VoteBeat has a permanent newsroom now, and we’ll all be better off for it. 
 

VoteBeat: Georgia’s and Texas’s successful elections don’t mean voting is easy

NYT: A Big Lie in a New Package (The Times takes on Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules)
 

NYT: Lawyer Who Plotted to Overturn Trump Loss Recruits Election Deniers to Watch Over the Vote

*Paid for by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Wisdems.org. Not authorized by any candidate’s campaign or committee. Donations to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin are not tax deductible.

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