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This latest congressional map coughed up by the Republican majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission is a joke.

Not a funny, ha-ha joke. A horrible joke of a map where five statehouse Republicans are once again trying to con the public and slip one by the Ohio Supreme Court.

It boggles the mind how they could, with straight faces, present a map that creates 10 Republican congressional districts, three Democratic districts and two that ostensibly lean Democratic but in fact could go either way and say it is not gerrymandered.

And then, in their meeting Wednesday where they passed this hash, they wagged their fingers at the two Democrats on the commission because they wouldn't go along with this nonsense; and pretended to have their feelings hurt by the Democrats' refusal to play along.

David Niven, a political professor at the University of Cincinnati who has advised the Fair Districts Coalition, made fun of the Republicans and their sham of being offended by the Democrats' opposition.

It was, Niven said on Twitter, as if the Republican members of the commission were saying, "The nerve of these Democrats; here we are trying to dig their graves, the least they could do is pick up a shovel and help."

They are so desperate to hold their grip on power in the Ohio Statehouse that they will throw the entire election system in Ohio into utter, absolute chaos and pretend they are blameless and the victims of a rogue majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, who have rejected their state legislative and congressional district maps at every turn.

This new one they came up with will almost certainly be challenged in court by the same voting rights groups who have successfully fought off the Republicans' previous attempts to ram through unconstitutional four-year maps with zero Democratic support.

The Republicans on the commission and their allies in the Ohio General Assembly are hoping against hope that Ohioans will blame the Ohio Supreme Court for the current mess and the uncertainty it has created for the May 3 Ohio primary.

Blame the court for what? Following the Ohio constitution? Following the mandates of the constitutional amendments passed by over 70% of the voters in both 2015 and 2018 setting new rules for drawing legislative district lines? For insisting that the maps follow the 54%/46% split between Republican and Democratic votes in Ohio elections over the past decade?

Well, the court is guilty of all of that.

The rest of the confusion and chaos you can lay at the feet of five Republican commissioners who seem determined to thumb their noses at Ohio voters, the Ohio Supreme Court, and anyone else who stands in their way.

These five people have names, by the way. If you follow Ohio politics at all, you probably know them.

They are the two ringleaders of the commission, Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman and Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp; and three statewide elected officials Gov. Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and State Auditor Keith Faber.

DeWine, Jason Whitman

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All others AP

The two Democrats on the commission are State Sen. Vernon Sykes of Akron and State Rep. Allison Russo, the newly elected minority leader of the Ohio House.

LaRose, the chief elections officer of the state, has ordered the 88 count boards of elections to use the current state legislative and congressional maps passed by the redistricting commission as they prepare the ballot for the May 3 primary even though neither set of maps have been signed off on by the Ohio Supreme Court.

And, the fact is, the county elected officials who actually have to do the work of putting on elections, are not at all certain they can get it done in time. The Ohio Association of Election Officials sent a letter last week to legislative leaders pleading with them to postpone this election, in part so there is more time to sort out this mess with the maps.

At Wednesday's meeting of the redistricting commission, Russo offered the Republicans an alternative a map that created eight Republican congressional districts, six Democratic and one Democratic-leaner that could go either way. She said she was willing to work with the Republicans to hammer out the details.

The Republicans turned it down flat.

Instead, Huffman launched into a long, convoluted argument, using mile-long sentences that would have made my eighth grade English teacher's head hurt, which boiled down to this: At this stage of the process, we don't have to follow the rules and can do whatever we want.

And then they proceeded to do so.

Russo seemed flabbergasted by Huffman's long-winded assertion.

"That is like me robbing a bank and saying it is my money," Russo said.

Is there any good news for Democrats in this new congressional map?

Well, maybe in Hamilton County. Maybe.

Congressman Steve Chabot's backside was protected back in 2011 when the Republicans in the legislature grafted heavily Republican Warren County onto his 1st Congressional District, connected by a tiny land bridge.

The land bridge is still there, but the district now includes the entire city of Cincinnati, a very, very blue place where Joe Biden won 76% of the vote in 2020. The partisan split under the new map is at 51% Democratic, giving the Democrats a slight advantage. But, in fact, it is a toss-up district the only real jump ball district on the GOP map.

There is no doubt this silly map will end up being challenged before the Ohio Supreme Court, as have the others.

But, unlike the state legislative maps, there is nothing in the language of the 2018 constitutional amendment that would prevent the Ohio Supreme Court from drawing its own map or hiring a special master to do so.

In the meantime, Ohioans are subjected to this seemingly endless charade yet again.

It's like being stuck in the movie Groundhog Day, without Bill Murray around to provide some humor.

There's nothing funny about this disaster.

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Commentary: Ohio voters get an encore presentation of Republicans thumbing their noses at them - WVXU

The South Carolina House on Wednesday unanimously approved allowing two weeks of early voting and other smaller changes to state election laws, uniting Democrats and Republicans on issues that have been contentious in other states.

The 114-0 vote sends the bill to the state Senate.

Democrats praised Republicans for listening to them and crafting a bill they could support, even if there were a few partisan votes on alterations like making voter fraud a felony and requiring audits of at least 5% of all votes in a county in the days after an election.

The subcommittee that crafted the bill did a great job in a bipartisan effort to put a good bill together that we can all live with. I would ask you to please consider not messing the bill up with all these crazy amendments, Democratic Rep. Leon Howard of Columbia asked his Republican colleagues.

And Republicans did help defeat changes that might have had Democrats vote against the entire bill like closing primaries to only party members or requiring a driver's license or voter ID number for witnesses who sign absentee ballots.

The biggest change in the bill would be to make South Carolina the 45th state to allow anyone to vote outside of Election Day without an excuse.

The state would have two weeks of early voting with polls open from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. A formula that takes into account the number of registered voters and the size of the county would decide the number of early voting sites.

For many years, South Carolina has allowed people to cast absentee ballots in person, but they had to include an excuse for why they couldn't be at the polls on Election Day. Under the proposal, the state would go back to mail-in absentee ballots and voters would now have to include the last four digits of their Social Security numbers when requesting the ballots.

The bill allows poll workers to open absentee ballots earlier with penalties if they report results and bans fusion voting where candidates can appear on the ballot under multiple political parties.

This was truly the work of a lot of different people, said Rep. Brandon Newton, the Lancaster Republican who helped shepherd the bill through the House.

The bill also would make voter fraud a felony, increasing fines and possible jail time for people who try to vote under a false name, vote more than once or poll managers who intentionally break the law.

The House did defeat an effort to eliminate voters from clicking on one box and voting a straight ticket for all their party's candidates. But the biggest fight came over whether to only allow voters registered with a political party to vote in that party's primary.

Currently, primaries are open, so any registered voters can cast a ballot in the Democratic or Republican primaries.

If you want to vote for a Republican nominee, you need to be in the Republican party, said RJ May, a Republican from West Columbia. He said he was motivated by stories of members of the opposite party trying to cause chaos in open primaries.

But several Democrats and Republicans said in a state where the GOP dominates and the party divisions in counties are sharp, open primaries are key to keeping some sense of bipartisanship. In many races, the primaries are contested, while the major party candidate has no opposition in the general election.

Republican Rep. Kirkman Finlay said his mother is a staunch Democrat in very Democratic Richland County but she sure would like to vote for her son in the primary.

Republican Rep. Micah Caskey said his father also lives in Richland County, but is a supporter of Republican Rep. Nathan Ballentine and Democratic Sheriff Leon Lott.

Caskey said his dad would be disappointed to know when either of them leave office with closed primaries he would have no say in one of their replacements.

Im a Republican because of my value and I think in those terms because I'm a legislator," said Caskey of West Columbia. There are a lot of people out there who dont live in this isolated bubble where we think in partisan terms.

The rest is here:
In the SC House, Democrats and Republicans are united on allowing 2 weeks of early voting - WFAE

The Jan. 6 select committee filing that set off a siren in the political world landed with a thud among Senate Republicans on Thursday.

The House panel said it had "a good-faith basis for concluding" former President TrumpDonald TrumpMcCarthy-backed Republican wins contested Texas House primary DHS grants temporary immigration status to all Ukrainians in the US Senate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation MORE and members of his campaign "engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,"and that Trump tried toobstruct Congress's formal counting of the Electoral College vote.

The filing marked a bombshell moment for the committee, offering a preview into the panel's thinking about the former president months into its investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, when a mob of his supporters breached the Capitol.

But Senate Republicans, many of whom have been skeptical of the House panel, shrugged off the revelation or said they missed it altogether.

"I'm aware of the reporting on it. I haven't seen the filing or anything around it, and so I just really don't have anything for you on that," said Sen. John ThuneJohn Randolph ThuneSenate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation Senate Republicans oppose Biden's .5 billion COVID-19 relief request The Hill's Morning Report - Russia-Ukraine war enters second deadly week MORE (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.

Asked about the filing, Sen. Kevin CramerKevin John CramerSenate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation Partisan cracks emerge over how to implement T infrastructure law McConnell, Scott face off over GOP's agenda MORE (R-N.D.), who Trump helped recruit for his 2018 Senate bid, said he "didn't see that" before pivoting to President BidenJoe BidenFire breaks out at major nuclear plant in Ukraine amid fighting Russia inflames political war over gas prices, oil drilling On The Money Push to block Russian imports hits wall MORE.

"The current president does so many ... things every day I can hardly worry about the last one," he said, as he left the Capitol for the week.

The filing from the House select committee is tied to the panel's legal battle to forceJohn Eastman, the lawyer charged with drafting Trump's strategy for the Jan. 6 certification, to turn over documents. Eastman had filed a lawsuit to try to block the committee's subpoena, arguing that it was privileged in part because of his legal work for Trump.

The committee's filings aren't formal charges, and no former U.S. president has been charged with a crime. But the House panel does plan to release a report of its findings, which could be formally referred to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.

It's hardly the first time Trump-focused drama has ricocheted back around to Senate Republicans, many of whom are eager to keep the focus on Biden, and not the former president, heading into the November election when they are optimistic about their chances of winning back the majority.

Trump faced pushback from some senators earlier this week over his warm rhetoric toward Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinKennedy Center lights up in blue and yellow to show support for Ukraine Russian opera star ditches Met performances to avoid Putin rebuke DHS grants temporary immigration status to all Ukrainians in the US MORE. Senate Republicans broke with the Republican National Committee (RNC) resolution last month censuring GOP Reps. Liz CheneyElizabeth (Liz) Lynn CheneySenate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation Thune on glide path to reelection a year after Trump's primary threats The Memo: Boebert's antics seen as new sign of politics' decline MORE (Wyo.) and Adam KinzingerAdam Daniel KinzingerMcCarthy-backed Republican wins contested Texas House primary Senate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation The Memo: Boebert's antics seen as new sign of politics' decline MORE (Ill.) and referring to Jan. 6 as "legitimate political discourse."

And they've seen a steady churn of legal drama that they've tried to parse to figure out what it could mean for Trump and their party whenhe's still widely considered to be the front-runner for the 2024 nomination.

But Senate Republicans have been wary for months of the House Jan. 6 committee. Six GOP senators voted last year in support of a failed effort to start an independent commission to probe the Jan. 6 attack. But most Republicans warned that a probe could be used against the party during the 2022 election by keeping Jan. 6, 2021 and Trump in a spotlight.

Sen. Mike BraunMichael BraunSenate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation On The Money Fed puts strict limits on trades by top officials Biden signs bill to extend funding, avoid government shutdown MORE (R-Ind.) said on Thursday that he had only heard about the court filing from another reporter.

"I just heard about it now," Braun said. "I think we'll have that kind of thing be highlighted here until the time Trump announces whether he's going to run or not. ...To be honest I don't pay much attention to that."

Sen. Lindsey GrahamLindsey Olin GrahamSenate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation Biden signs bill banning forced arbitration in sexual misconduct cases Pelosi says Boebert and Greene 'should just shut up' MORE (R-S.C.), who has remained close to Trump, also cast doubt on any Justice Department case that could stem from a potential referral from the committee. If the panel makes a referral to the Justice Department, it would then have to determine whether to move forward.

"I don't see anything coming out of this committee not tainted by politics," Graham said.

Read more from the original source:
Senate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation | TheHill - The Hill

Its been a terrible twelve months for voting rights in the United States. By the end of 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least nineteenstates had passed a combined thirty-fourlaws that restrict access to voting, and legislators in at least twenty-sevenstates are currently working onmore than two hundred and fifty bills that would do the same. In the Senate, Republicans have thwarted every attempt by Democrats to protect the right to vote, successively rejecting the comprehensive For the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (which would have restored those parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were eviscerated by the Supreme Court, in 2013), and, most recently, the Freedom to Vote Act, which was constructed to appeal to Republicans. (It didnt.)

So it struck many as odd that when, last month, some Senate Republicans, led by Susan Collins, of Maine, dangled the prospect of a bipartisan fix to an existing piece of election-related legislationthe Electoral Count Act, of 1887the Democratic leadership was less than enthusiastic. At the time, the Party was pressing Senators Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, to agree to change the filibuster rulescurrently the only way forward for voting-rights legislationand the two senators were holding out for a buy-in from their Republican colleagues. The timing of Collinss approach, then, raised suspicions in some Democratic quarters that it was intended to circumvent those discussions. Even more problematic, it appeared to be a bait and switch, since the Electoral Count Actwhich is meant, among other things, to codify procedures in Congress for counting Electoral College votes several weeks after a Presidential election has taken placehas nothing to do with protecting the right to vote. As Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said, If youre going to rig the game and then say, Oh, well count the rigged game accurately, what good is that?

There is no doubt that the E.C.A.whose official long title is An act to fix the day for the meeting of the electors of President and Vice-President, and to provide for and regulate the counting of the votes for President and Vice-President, and the decision of questions arising thereonis flawed, potentially dangerous, and in need of reform. It was enacted in response to the contested Presidential election of 1876, when Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic nominee, who appeared to have won the popular vote, came up one vote shy of the hundred and eighty-five Electoral College votes then required to assume the Presidency. His Republican opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes, tallied around twenty fewer votes, but, after officials in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon sent competing slates of electors to Washington, the outcome was thrown into doubt. Ultimately, Southern Democrats agreed to cede the election to Hayes, in return for the removal of federal troops and the restoration of local rulea euphemism for the Jim Crow laws that followedeffectively ending Reconstruction.

The E.C.A., which was passed a decade later, was intended to avoid any future such crises by clarifying the practices and procedures for certifying a Presidential election, laying out the process with more specificity than the Twelfth Amendment, which sets out the protocol for electing the President and Vice-President. Among other things, the E.C.A. establishes a safe harbor deadlinesix days before the meeting of the Electoral Collegeby which states must resolve disputes about the winner of the election. (In most states, slates of electors formally select the candidate who won the popular vote there; Maine and Nebraska use a congressional-district method.) The E.C.A. also enables members of Congress to object to counting votes from certain states, as long as one senator and one House member object in writing. The law does not, however, indicate what constitutes an appropriate objection, leaving that up to Congress. For an objection to stick, it needs to garner a simple majority in each chamber. (That has never happened. On January 6, 2021, after the attack on the Capitol, Senators Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Josh Hawley, of Missouri, were prominently chastised by some of their Republican colleagues for what were perceived to be bald attempts to further their own political ambitions by currying favor with Trumps base, through continued objections to counting the votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona. In total, fewer than a dozen Republican senators and more than a hundred Republican representatives voted against certifying the Presidential elections results.)

Even before the 2020 election, commentators were warning that the E.C.A. could be used to upend the outcome in states, for example, with a Democratic governor and secretary of state but a Republican-controlled legislature. If Trump had an early lead in the votes, experts warned, the Republican lawmakers in those states might submit a slate of Trump electors (based on provisional results), while the Democratic governor, waiting until all the ballots were counted to submit a slate, could miss the safe-harbor deadline. If this were to happen, the observers warned, the Vice-President could invoke the E.C.A. and potentially void a legitimate slate of Biden electors, handing the election to Trump. According to an investigation by the Washington Post, some of Trumps campaign officials, and his attorney Rudolph Giuliani, had a similar idea. They were reportedly behind an effort that saw illegitimate slates of Trump electors from five states that Biden wonWisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and Michiganpresent themselves at their state capitols and send signed fake certificates to Washington. Republican electors from two additional states, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, also sent certificates, but, the Post noted, those documents explicitly stated that they were to be considered only if the election results were upended. (Giuliani and a Trump spokesperson did not respond at the time to the Posts requests for comment.) Around the same time, some of Trumps most ardent supporters, led by Representative Louie Gohmert, of Texas, brought suit in U.S. District Court arguing that the E.C.A. is unconstitutional. They claimed that, as Vice-President, Mike Pence may exercise the exclusive authority and sole discretion in determining which electoral votes to count for a given State, and must ignore and may not rely on any provisions of the Electoral Count Act that would limit his exclusive authority and his sole discretion to determine the count, which could include votes from the slates of Republican electors from the Contested States. After the case was tossed out, it was appealed to the Supreme Court, which received it on January 6th, just as Trump and the Stop the Steal rioters were hounding Pence to do Trumps bidding. The Court rejected the suit the next day.

Trump, for his part, still seems to think that Pence had the power, under the E.C.A., to single-handedly reverse the will of the people. In a statement issued a few weeks ago, he wrote, If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had absolutely no right to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election? Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didnt exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!

Despite the former Presidents convoluted and faulty logic, he and his supporters might be forgiven for invoking the E.C.A. in contradictory ways. Writing about the law after the 2020 election, my colleague Steve Coll called it kludgy. As the Times has pointed out, it isa morass of archaic and confusing language. One especially baffling sentence inSection 15which lays out what is meant to happen when Congress counts the votes on Jan. 6is 275 words long and contains 21 commas and two semicolons. Bob Bauer, a law professor at New York University who advised the Biden campaign on voting rights and voter protections, told me that the E.C.A., as it is written, is premised on and reflects a role for Congress that is not consistent with the constitutional designor even with basic intuitionsabout the imperative of limiting political manipulation of the electoral process. But reforming the E.C.A. by increasing the number of Congress members required to object to a slate of electorsa provision supported by some Republicans and Democratsactually may exacerbate the danger of manipulation. As the journalist Judd Legum has argued in his newsletter Popular Information, this could make it harder for Congress to reject a slate of phony electors submitted by a governor who supports a candidate trying to steal an election. (For example, David Perdue, who is running for governor in Georgia, has said that, if he had been governor in 2020, he would not have certified the states results of the Presidential election. Trump has endorsed Perdue over the incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp.)

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Why Are Republicans Suddenly Interested in Reforming an Election-Related Law? - The New Yorker

More Republicans have a negative view of Joe Biden than of Vladimir Putin and more Democrats have a negative view of Donald Trump than of the Russian leader, according to a new poll.

The findings point to deep domestic divisions as well as disagreement over Bidens handling of the Ukraine crisis.

Fox News released the poll, which it said was carried out before Russia invaded Ukraine.

It said 92% of Republicans had a negative view of Biden while 81% had a negative view of Putin. Among Democrats, 87% had a negative view of Trump and 85% a negative view of Putin.

Biden has condemned the Russian invasion and introduced tough economic sanctions, in concert with other world powers.

Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and criticised Biden, on Thursday adapting a favorite golfing metaphor to claim the Russian leader was playing his counterpart like a drum.

Trumps attacks are in line with those from Republicans in Congress, who claim Biden has been too weak on Russia, both as president and as vice-president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

In the Fox News poll, 56% said Biden had not been tough enough on Russia, 8% said he had been too tough and 29% said he had been about right.

Among Democrats, 42% of respondents said they wanted Biden to be tougher and 47% said his actions were about right.

Fox News said Bidens numbers tracked closely to the same question about Trump when he was in power. In July 2018, 53% said Trump was not tough enough, 5% too tough and 35% about right.

That month, Russian election interference in Trumps favor and his links with Moscow were the subject of an investigation in which the special counsel, Robert Mueller, ultimately said he could not say Trump did not seek to obstruct justice.

Also in July 2018, at a summit in Helsinki, Trump and Putin conducted a meeting behind closed doors and with no close aides. What was discussed is not known.

Trump was impeached in 2020, for attempting to blackmail Ukraine, withholding military aid while requesting dirt on Biden. At trial in the Senate, only one Republican, Mitt Romney, voted to convict.

As the Republican nominee for president in 2012, Romney took a more hawkish position on Russia than Obama.

Amid the Ukraine crisis, Republicans have pointed to Romneys stance on Russia. They have been less keen to mention his vote to convict Trump over Ukraine.

The Utah senator also voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

The Fox News poll returned closely matched favorability ratings for the 45th and 46th presidents, Trump on 45% and Biden 43%.

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More Republicans have negative view of Biden than of Putin, poll finds - The Guardian