Election in Georgia's Fulton County to be observed by independent monitor

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 5:43 PM EDT, September 10, 2024


ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Fulton County has hired a team of independent monitors to observe its operations for this year’s general election after a selection process that highlighted discord between the deeply Democratic county and a Donald Trump-endorsed majority on the State Election Board.

The monitoring of Fulton’s elections was proposed by State Election Board members earlier this year as they discussed a case against the county that included findings of double-scanning of some ballots during an election recount in 2020 that was closed with a reprimand. The county ultimately chose a monitoring proposal opposed by the Republican partisans who have a 3-2 majority on the State Election Board.

The county was within its rights to do that, according to a legal opinion written by state Attorney General Chris Carr and obtained by The Associated Press. Carr wrote that the State Election Board doesn’t have the authority to order an election monitor and that Fulton’s agreement to propose and pay for a monitoring team was voluntary.

Carr’s opinion, dated Aug. 19, cautioned that if the state board failed to approve the monitoring team Fulton had chosen or if the board tried to reopen the 2020 investigation, it “appears highly likely that no monitoring team will be engaged.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/fulton-county-georgia-election-monitor-d0a1dee73b54e0610c396e8f1f5089f1

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Is GA a special case ?

Kemp and Raffensperger do some Republican things (purges, appointments) but they always seem to uphold a fair count of every vote in the end.

Is that due to Jimmy Carter's commitment to democratic election monitoring around the world? IOW Rethugs can only go so far. Not that GA elections are monitored like they would be in a banana republic, but that in the atmosphere of democracy you can only go so far to tilt the outcomes.

[Think. Again.]

2. I don't think it's GA that is the concern, but specifically Fulton County....

...due to very distinct incidents in that county.

[slightlv]

13. My first thought was Jimmy Carter's independent monitors for foreign elections, too.

How far the magas have pushed us that we have to have independent monitors in this country... the first land of democracy. (sigh) A pox on them!

[Think. Again.]

3. I would have thought by now we would have a Federal Monitoring Committee....

....to monitor all Federal elections after the election crimes the republicans have committed over the past few elections.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Something along that line

was proposed in H.R.1 - For the People Act of 2021.

But that, codifying Roe, and the restoration of key sections thrown out by the SCOTUS in the VRA by enacting H.R.4 - John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021, have been stalled due to the 60-vote filibuster rule in the Senate (and 2 Senators, both now (I) who refused to change that rule), and then the loss of the House.

[Think. Again.]

5. I don't see why the Federal Election Commission...

...can't just start an office dedicated to Federal election monitoring.

Oh, wait, it's chaired by a rightwinger. Nevermind.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. "I don't see why the Federal Election Commission..can't just start an office dedicated to Federal election monitoring."

Because the law that created them indicated their scope would relate to monitoring adherence to campaign finance laws for federal elections, NOT "election monitoring" itself - https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/92/s382/summary

Congress would need to enact amendments to give them any additional authorities.

[Think. Again.]

7. Elections are inarguably the culmination of any...

...campaign finance laws.

Monitoring campaign finances includes every aspect of any campaign activities, including participation in the elections.

The fact that the rnc has spent funds on recruiting and "training" pollworkers in support of their candidates campaign, or that campaign donations are spent on legal fees to argue election-related matters, justifies FEC attention to election irregularites.

But, again, the FEC is chaired by a rightwinger, so he will find any excuse to pretend his hands are tied when it comes to campaign-funded election activities.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. But it it still a "financial focus" and not any generic authority to "monitor elections" regardless of who heads it up

The closest to what you are talking about is under the much-reviled DOJ and their Civil Rights Division/Voting Section and they have been monitoring the goings on within their authority - https://www.justice.gov/crt/recent-activities-voting-section

[Think. Again.]

9. Yeah, between a rightwinger heading up the FEC...

....and the federalist society's garland heading up DOJ, we're going to have to hope the American Bar Association's volunteer election task force can do both those agencies work for them.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. "the federalist society's garland"

He may have moderated some of their events but if he WERE a "member", then they wouldn't have spent $7 million to block his nomination to the SCOTUS. From Sheldon Whitehouse - https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/the-third-federalist-society/

Good Cop, Bad Cop

The Federalist Society as a 501(c)(3) organization is supposed to stay out of politics. The Judicial Crisis Network is a 501(c)(4), which can and does get involved in politics. The Judicial Crisis Network is led by a disciple of Leonard Leo’s, a former clerk for ultra conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. The Judicial Crisis Network has been described as, and I quote here, “Leonard Leo’s PR organization?—?nothing more and nothing less.” When it comes time to muscle a judicial nominee through Senate confirmation, JCN swings into action. Media campaigns. Attack ads. Big spending. That’s the JCN’s world.

Like its Federalist Society partner, the JCN gets massive sums of dark money, and it spends massively too. It spent $7 million dollars on campaigns to block Merrick Garland from getting a hearing on his nomination to the Supreme Court and it spent $10 million to support the nomination the blockage enabled, of Neil Gorsuch

But that other CT sounds "cool" so...

[Think. Again.]

11. It's not reasonable to believe...

....he would just innocently engage with a radical partisan group if he didn't give their ideology some credence.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. If he were one of their favored dogmatists

then Turtle wouldn't have sat on his nomination for almost a fucking year after Scalia bought the farm, in order to put an ACTUAL Federalist Society hack in that slot instead - Neil Gorsuch.

[slightlv]

14. We're going to have a LOT of work to do in a short amount of time

once we win the Houses of Congress and the Presidency! It's going to be a lot of long, hard work. I hope they work it out so Kamala doesn't spend the first three months of her office trying to get the rest of government funded, thank you to the R's.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. I know there was talk about doing a 6-month C.R.

which would fund the government until around March (to avoid the theatrics of re-upping in December before the end of that Congress' session). In the past, they often timed it from Oct. 1 to some time in December to force some kind of compromise (and that happened a couple times, including when Obama was re-elected in 2012, where they did a 3-month from Dec. to Mar., but then after that, they got bogged down in the "debt ceiling" mess during 2013 for the next FY's budget).

[slightlv]

16. But if they do the 6 month, she necessarily spends an

inordinate amount of time on something that should have been finished before she took office. I'd rather see the 3 month CR. And yes, I hated these when I was still up on Post.

I don't see how they're going to end this time around. I'm very worried there will be a shut down. But Trump has already come right out and told the R's in the House to shut down the government, at least as of yesterday, as I read here on DU. He wants that voter suppression poison pill in the CR. Democrats won't do anything of the kind. They want (and should get) a clean CR. Actually, the R's have had SO much time, they should have finished the job before now!!

This time, tho, I'm willing to bear the pain of a shutdown, even tho it will eat into my already meager monthly income. Not suppressing new voters is that important this election. Also, I'm not entirely sure they wouldn't try to make us ALL re-register with citizenship papers. I wouldn't put it pass them to try something like that. They know T is headed for the dustbin of history and they're desperate.

I'm just as desperate to deny them the Oval Office, and both sides of Congress!

[BumRushDaShow]

17. "she necessarily spends an inordinate amount of time on something that should have been finished before she took office"

That's not an Executive Branch function, it's Congress. Her time would be spent getting Department Heads nominated and confirmed and then having them come up with what would be the FY26 Budget.

The Congressional leadership can work out how to handle what would be the FY25 appropriations.

I don't think they are going to shut down (just posted about Johnson pulling the GOP poison-pill C.R. vote for today) and remember, Joe Biden is STILL the President and I think he and Schumer are going to put the pressure on to get something, even if short-term, in place.

Where they may mess around is the debt ceiling, the date of which is apparently approaching sometime around January 1, 2025, where Treasury will have to implement "extraordinary measures" to stay below the limit before the country defaults. And that is the same sort of thing that they pulled on Obama that year after his reelection, forcing passage of what became the "Budget Control Act", which required sequestration of domestic and military spending, and imposing a top-line budget/appropriations number, among other things.

[slightlv]

18. I just saw where Johnson pulled the vote. He's not in an envious

position... same position that knocked Kevin out, but with even more defectors this time.

You're right the budget isn't an executive function, BUT the president does commit quite a bit of time in meetings with both parties in situations like this to try to hammer out compromises. Hard to do when one party has forgotten the meaning and use of the word "compromise." That's what I don't want her to be saddled with. I especially want her first 180 days to be as productive as T always says his is going to be... and everything that can be done by Executive Order to right this ship of state can be the top priority on her mind, without last year's budget issues hanging over her head.

Don't remind me of the sequestration. I, and so many others, took a real hit with that crap. It was not a happy time. The Debt Ceiling is one of those issues that needs to go back to being a "non issue." That's one of the reasons I want a Blue Tsunami... a TriFecta win! But I so agree with you on judgeships. We have so much to make up for there, although Biden has done a pretty damned good job so far, tho he's gotten very little press about it. Both houses of Congress means we can maybe do something to rein in this out of control religious, partisan SCOTUS, among other things. Do I wish for too much? Sometimes it feels like it. But feeling happy is such a strange feeling right now... I've laughed more in the last day and a half than I have for months... and I forgot it feels so good!

[BumRushDaShow]

19. Remember that assuming she wins

and she MUST win, then she is coming into office in an entirely DIFFERENT environment than both Obama and Biden for their first terms.

I.e., unless something really freaky happens between now and the end of the year, the economy is in a good place to continue to stabilize, we are not in an "active war", the pandemic is essentially under control, the border finally has some of the infrastructure put in place in the origin countries, kicking in, "crime" (notably "violent crime" ) is the lowest in years...

So what she is going to need is a Congress that is (D) (which may be iffy with the Senate), and then she can basically "finish the job", with things like dealing with the expiration of the tax cuts for the billionaires and revising that to work for the "rest of us", codifying Roe, shepherding through some enforceable ethics codes for the SCOTUS, and getting the VRA bills passed, since a lot of the heavy lifting, has already been done under her term with Biden.

One of my sisters texted me this about 20 minutes ago -



All I could do is

[slightlv]

20. Yes, she MUST win!

And you've hit I think all my high points on what needs to happen asap. I'm hopeful we'll keep the Senate, although I know there's a good chance we lose some. I just dearly hope not, because I want to see the filibuster gone. I've seen some Trump signs have gone down around my area. Unfortunately, my neighbor behind me (with the anger mgmt issue) and the one across the street (who is really a sweet and helpful guy -- just don't talk politics) still have their freak flags flying. (sigh)

This year, tho, it's not going to stop me from putting up a Harris/Walz sign. Preferably, one of the Crazy Cat Lady signs!!!

[BumRushDaShow]

21. My lawn sign went out the day after the end of DNC convention!

(literally put it out right after it was delivered )