RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-warning-to-pelosi-on-iowa-11616453810?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The eight-seat House Democratic majority has been remarkably disciplined so far in 2021, passing radical legislation on elections and unions with few defections. But the limits of loyalty to Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be tested as the party moves to overturn an Iowa House race and expel from Congress the certified winner.

GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks was certified the winner of Iowa’s 2nd district last year, prevailing by 47 votes in the first count and six votes after a county-by-county recount. The losing candidate, Democrat Rita Hart, points to 22 votes she says should have been counted and asked the House to seat her under the Federal Contested Elections Act—bypassing Iowa’s special court process for election disputes.

At a House Administration hearing this month, where Democrats hold a 6-3 majority, Mrs. Pelosi’s Members were unanimous in tabling Rep. Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss the challenge. That’s the first step toward a recommendation to overturn the election.

But as the reality of Mrs. Pelosi’s Iowa bloody-mindedness sets in, vulnerable Members are facing questions. On Monday Politico listed four Democratic Congressmen who have spoken publicly against reversing Iowa’s election in the last week. Another said anonymously that expelling Ms. Miller-Meeks would be “political malpractice. While we would gain one seat, we would lose a lot more next year.”

Ask Republicans, who suffered in the Georgia Senate races from trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In 1938, the last time the House kicked out a sitting Member over election disputes, New Hampshire voters seated him again in the next election. Democrats’ 1985 reversal of an Indiana election succeeded in the short term but invigorated Newt Gingrich’s rise to GOP leader.

Few politicians think about long-term institutional interests anymore, but let’s hope there are enough worried about political blowback to stop Mrs. Pelosi from a power play that would deepen the rancor on Capitol Hill.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/thumonths-after-trump-complaints-some-courts-are-finding-illegalities

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded.

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2021/03/17/new-data-show-92367-mail-ballots-in-nevada-went-to-wrong-address-n1433120

Hindsight is 20/20, and now numbers from the 2020 election show how Nevada made a mistake rushing to automatic mail ballots. Dirty voter rolls combined with automatic mail made the 2020 election a mess in Nevada.

Concrete post-election data show that 92,367 mail ballots sent out by Clark County election officials came back as undeliverable. They had incorrect or outdated addresses.

That means they were sent where the registered voter did not live. That means someone else could have snatched those misdirected live ballots. That means someone probably did.

This unfortunate number is unwelcome considering President Joe Biden only carried Nevada by 33,596 votes. Clark’s 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate a real vulnerability with mass mail balloting.

That’s just Clark County where Las Vegas is. The number of ballots that went to the wrong addresses statewide is most certainly much higher.

It is true that these ballots ultimately bounced back uncast. If nothing else, that’s a lot of wasted paper and postage. But how many ballots never came back because there wasn’t yet clear information about the registrants who had died or moved away?

More importantly, sending 92,367 ballots to the wrong places was a gamble our system of electing leaders should not be making.

Remember, last year The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an organization I am affiliated with, documented through video that ballots were mailed and cast from vacant lots, abandoned mines, liquor stores, and casinos in Nevada.

Nobody should want tens of thousands of ballots floating through the mails to destinations unknown. Elections don’t run well when voting is scattered and distant from election officials. The 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate slack in the system.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2021/03/18/months_later_some_courts_are_finding_

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/17/mike-lindell-announces-countersuits-against-dominion-claims-to-have-amazing-evidence-the-2020-election-was-stolen/

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has announced that he will countersue Dominion Voting Systems with the help of a team of lawyers, including Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz.

The U.S.-based voting machine supplier is suing MyPillow and Lindell for $1.3 billion for defamation, alleging that Trump’s ally spread baseless lies when he accused Dominion of helping to rig the 2020 presidential election.

Dominion is also suing Trump allies Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell in similar civil suits. Meanwhile, several news outlets have retracted claims about Dominion voting machines after receiving legal warnings from the company’s lawyers.

During a conversation with Stephen K. Bannon on his popular “War Room Pandemic” podcast, Monday,  Lindell said that he and his business would be “going after” Dominion in two separate lawsuits of his own. According to the conservative businessman, the voting software company violated RICO law by bullying news outlets that booked him as a guest.

“You’re also going to have My Pillow going after Dominion in a counter-suit,” Lindell, 59, said, explaining that the suits will be about protecting “First Amendment speech.”

“There are two cases. One will be My Pillow, one will be Mike Lindell. They’re both going to be a little bit different because what Dominion did is violate the rights of everyone in this country by using bullying lawsuits and RICO law,” he explained. “Basically what they’re saying to news outlets is, ‘If you let this guy on to talk about Dominion we’re going to sue you!’ That’s racketeering. That goes back to the mafia days.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/03/17/trump-vindicated-as-federal-judge-rules-michigan-secretary-of-state-violated-election-laws-n1433162

A judge in Michigan has vindicated President Trump by ruling that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, broke state law when she unilaterally changed election rules concerning absentee balloting in the 2020 election. This ruling legitimizes a key claim made by the Trump legal team in its challenges to the 2020 election.

A major change imposed by Benson was loosening the signature verification requirement for absentee ballots. Michigan Court of Claims Chief Judge Christopher Murray ruled that this change violated Michigan Administrative Procedures Act.

The court made the following conclusion:

…nowhere in this state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid, nor did the Legislature require that signatures are to be accepted so long as there are any redeeming qualities in the application or return envelope as compared with the signature on file. Policy determinations like the one at issue — which places the thumb on the scale in favor of a signature’s validity — should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA or by the Legislature.

Over 3.1 million Michiganders voted by absentee ballot in November. Biden “won” the state by just over 154,000 votes, according to the state-certified results.

“I’m glad the court sees Secretary of State Benson’s attempts at lawmaking for what they are – clear violations of her authority,” said State Rep. Matt Hall, a Republican. “If she wants to make changes like these, she needs to work with the Legislature or properly promulgate them through the laws we have on the books.”

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/17/medias-entire-georgia-narrative-is-fraudulent-not-just-the-fabricated-trump-quotes/

The Washington Post was busted for publishing fabricated quotes from an anonymous source, attributing them to a sitting president, and using those quotes as a basis to speculate the president committed a crime. The invented Donald Trump quotes, which related to a fight over election integrity in Georgia, were cited in Democrats’ impeachment brief and during the Senate impeachment trial.

But the fake quotes, bad as they were, are just one of many ways the media have done a horrible job of covering election disputes in the state.

According to the media narrative, the Georgia presidential election was as perfectly run as any election in history, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. To push that narrative, the media steadfastly downplayed, ignored, or prejudiciously dismissed legitimate concerns with how Georgia had run its November 2020 election and complaints about it.

That posture was the complete opposite of how they were reporting on Georgia elections prior to Democrats performing well in them. In the months prior to November, some media sounded a bit like Lin Wood when they wrote about Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Dominion Voting Systems, legal challenges in the state, and Georgia election integrity in general.

How Media Talked About Georgia Before Biden Won

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2021/03/court-invalidates-michigan-rule-on-how-to-verify-absentee-ballot-application-signatures.html

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson last year said local clerks should start with a presumption of validity when verifying signatures on absentee ballot applications, but a court ruling says that rule wasn’t properly established.

A Michigan Court of Claims judge last week ruled that clerks no longer need to follow those instructions for determining whether to send an absentee ballot to applicants.

According to the March 9 opinion and order issued by Judge Christopher M. Murray, Benson issued instructions that constituted “rules” without following the process for creating a formal rule under state and federal law.

Murray wrote that “the guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.”

The Michigan Republican Party and Allegan County Clerk Robert Genetski, who jointly filed their complaint prior to the Nov. 3 election, claimed the signature standards allowed for “invalid” ballots to be counted.

Murray noted in his opinion that Genetski, however, never claimed the “guidance caused him to accept a signature that he believed was invalid.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2021/03/16/loeffler-n2586334

A watchdog in Georgia filed a lawsuit for absentee ballots to be unsealed in Fulton County on account of allegations of potential fraud. Judge Brian Amero indicated on Monday that the ballots could be unsealed, as mandated by Georgia law, in order to dispel a lack of confidence in the 2020 election’s integrity.

“We want to do this in such a way that dispels rumors and disinformation and sheds light,” Amero said at a hearing regarding the ballots on Monday, per the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “The devil’s in the details.”

Former Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), who is heading a new group focused on restoring election integrity and voter confidence, supports the move to “unseal and investigate” absentee ballots.

“Georgia voters deserve to have confidence that their voice – and their vote – is heard. Unfortunately, the many irregularities we saw in the 2020 elections have eroded trust in our electoral process,” Loeffler said. “We fully support the move to unseal and investigate absentee ballot process in Fulton County. Transparency is the first step toward restoring integrity and accountability in our elections, and we look forward to the investigations’ findings.”