Inside Trump's state by state plan to control elections: investigation

Source: Alternet.org · Bias: Left

Summary

A new investigation by Reuters details how the Trump administration is seeking to gain federal control over elections in at least eight states, employing investigations, raids and demands for access to balloting systems and voter ID records for the campaign.“What we’re seeing is the Trump administration, in some ways, is seeking to relitigate the 2020 election, and they’re also seeking to impose federal authority over the administration of elections,” says investigative journalist Ned Parker.Parker also discusses the Trump administration’s campaign of retribution against the president’s perceived enemies, for which he and his colleagues at Reuters just won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. “What we found in our count of 470 targets was that it really cut across all aspects of American society,” he says.This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state Legislature has approved a new congressional map to carve up the state’s only Black-majority district in an effort to help Tennessee Republicans secure all nine House seats. Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee quickly signed the bill into law.Similar efforts to rapidly with redraw maps are underway across Southern states following the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act last week. The gerrymandering is just one part of a larger Republican push to overhaul the nation’s electoral system. A new investigation by Reuters details how the Trump administration is seeking to gain federal control over elections in at least eight states, using investigations, raids and demands for access to balloting systems and voter ID records.We’re joined now by Reuters investigative journalist Ned Parker. Earlier this week, he and his colleagues at Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize for documenting how President Trump has used the levers of government to punish his political enemies.Ned Parker, congratulations on the Pulitzer. We want to get to that investigative series that you did, but we want to begin with your latest investigation. It’s headlined “How Trump is moving to control U.S. elections, one state at a time.” Start off by just laying out how he’s doing this.NED PARKER: Right. What we did in this piece is we really examined the ways that the federal government, the Trump administration, is probing the boundaries of state and local administration of elections by doing things such as the raid in Fulton County, Georgia, in January, having a senior Justice Department official contact two election clerks in Missouri to see if he would — if they could get access to their voting machines. We’ve also found out about investigations in Ohio by Homeland Security into voter fraud. So, there are things across the board, the questioning of the secretary of state’s office in Nevada by the FBI about data related to the 2020 election.All of this I would describe as a probing by the federal government about what’s possible, how much more they can exert power over states and localities regarding the coming election. And it’s a black box, really, how far this goes. The election experts we spoke to, they really see this as a testing of the waters. And what comes next is really an open question.JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ned, President Trump has mentioned in the past trying to federalize elections, which are clearly — always have been run at the state level. But what you’re seeing is a state-by-state effort to basically go under the radar?NED PARKER: Right. Well, what we did was we documented the eight states where there have been operations. So, this is everything from the raid in Fulton County, Georgia, ongoing federal investigations in Arizona into the 2020 election, a similar effort in Nevada, and then things like a former Trump administration official, now a lobbyist, who made calls to Republican clerks, county clerks, in Colorado, representing himself as working on behalf of the White House, seeking access to voting machines. And in one case, a clerk from a large county said he received a call from a senior cyberdefense official from Homeland Security to seek access to his county’s voting machines, and he said no. When we asked the White House about this and Homeland Security, while they said that they — the White House declined to comment about the lobbyist, and Homeland Security basically declined to answer about whether or not there was a call from a senior cyberdefense official in their agency to this local county clerk, who’s Republican. And what’s really interesting in all of this is that you see real pressure on local officials, certainly state officials, but on local officials. And this cuts across the board. It’s a nonpartisan issue. We’re talking about Republican clerks, clerks who are Democrats, people who are independent, who administer elections.And as you said, elections have always been administered by state and local officials.

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Inside Trump's state by state plan to control elections: investigation
Alternet.org

Inside Trump's state by state plan to control elections: investigation

Left

A new investigation by Reuters details how the Trump administration is seeking to gain federal control over elections in at least eight states, employing investigations, raids and demands for access to balloting systems and voter ID records for the campaign.“What we’re seeing is the Trump administration, in some ways, is seeking to relitigate the 2020 election, and they’re also seeking to impose federal authority over the administration of elections,” says investigative journalist Ned Parker.Parker also discusses the Trump administration’s campaign of retribution against the president’s perceived enemies, for which he and his colleagues at Reuters just won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. “What we found in our count of 470 targets was that it really cut across all aspects of American society,” he says.This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state Legislature has approved a new congressional map to carve up the state’s only Black-majority district in an effort to help Tennessee Republicans secure all nine House seats. Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee quickly signed the bill into law.Similar efforts to rapidly with redraw maps are underway across Southern states following the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act last week. The gerrymandering is just one part of a larger Republican push to overhaul the nation’s electoral system. A new investigation by Reuters details how the Trump administration is seeking to gain federal control over elections in at least eight states, using investigations, raids and demands for access to balloting systems and voter ID records.We’re joined now by Reuters investigative journalist Ned Parker. Earlier this week, he and his colleagues at Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize for documenting how President Trump has used the levers of government to punish his political enemies.Ned Parker, congratulations on the Pulitzer. We want to get to that investigative series that you did, but we want to begin with your latest investigation. It’s headlined “How Trump is moving to control U.S. elections, one state at a time.” Start off by just laying out how he’s doing this.NED PARKER: Right. What we did in this piece is we really examined the ways that the federal government, the Trump administration, is probing the boundaries of state and local administration of elections by doing things such as the raid in Fulton County, Georgia, in January, having a senior Justice Department official contact two election clerks in Missouri to see if he would — if they could get access to their voting machines. We’ve also found out about investigations in Ohio by Homeland Security into voter fraud. So, there are things across the board, the questioning of the secretary of state’s office in Nevada by the FBI about data related to the 2020 election.All of this I would describe as a probing by the federal government about what’s possible, how much more they can exert power over states and localities regarding the coming election. And it’s a black box, really, how far this goes. The election experts we spoke to, they really see this as a testing of the waters. And what comes next is really an open question.JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ned, President Trump has mentioned in the past trying to federalize elections, which are clearly — always have been run at the state level. But what you’re seeing is a state-by-state effort to basically go under the radar?NED PARKER: Right. Well, what we did was we documented the eight states where there have been operations. So, this is everything from the raid in Fulton County, Georgia, ongoing federal investigations in Arizona into the 2020 election, a similar effort in Nevada, and then things like a former Trump administration official, now a lobbyist, who made calls to Republican clerks, county clerks, in Colorado, representing himself as working on behalf of the White House, seeking access to voting machines. And in one case, a clerk from a large county said he received a call from a senior cyberdefense official from Homeland Security to seek access to his county’s voting machines, and he said no. When we asked the White House about this and Homeland Security, while they said that they — the White House declined to comment about the lobbyist, and Homeland Security basically declined to answer about whether or not there was a call from a senior cyberdefense official in their agency to this local county clerk, who’s Republican. And what’s really interesting in all of this is that you see real pressure on local officials, certainly state officials, but on local officials. And this cuts across the board. It’s a nonpartisan issue. We’re talking about Republican clerks, clerks who are Democrats, people who are independent, who administer elections.And as you said, elections have always been administered by state and local officials.

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