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Yet even among those who celebrated the outcome of the case, many feared the longer term impact of Mr. Trumps rhetoric on public trust in democracy and the mechanics of elections.

Pleased with the SCOTUS ruling, but also immediately slightly terrified of where this crazy train goes next, Brendan Buck, an adviser to the last two Republican speakers, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, wrote on Twitter. He later added, We should know by now theres a bottomless supply of crazy.

Not long after, Allen West, a former congressman and the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, slashed at the Supreme Court and said in a statement that hinted at secession that perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the Constitution.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, called on the Texas G.O.P. to retract the statement and fire Mr. West. My guy Abraham Lincoln and the Union soldiers already told you no, Mr. Kinzinger wrote on Twitter.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has trained his anger at Fox News, the often sympathetic cable network, for accepting the election results, and directed his supporters to Newsmax, which has seen a surge in pro-Trump viewers since Election Day. On Friday, the Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly opened his 7 p.m. program by reassuring his audience, Its not over.

When a guest, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, depicted Fridays court order as a game-over moment for the president saying there was now a close to zero chance that the Supreme Court might reverse the election results Mr. Kelly objected.

Ive seen stranger things happen in a courtroom, Mr. Kelly said, before invoking one of Mr. Dershowitzs most famous legal cases: Ive seen O.J. Simpson walk!

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Democrats, and Even Some Republicans, Cheer as Justices Spurn Trump - The New York Times

PHOENIXThe Arizona Republican Party has been racked by infighting as elected officials argue over President Trumps efforts to overturn the election results and as the GOP governor grapples with a worsening Covid-19 pandemic. The public spats have some worried about the partys chances going into the next round of elections.

The chief disputes are between the partys establishment and its right wing over whether to keep contesting President-elect Joe Bidens win in the state, despite no evidence of widespread fraud, and how far to go on restrictions related to the pandemic.

After Republican Gov. Doug Ducey defended Arizonas election system last month, the state GOP chairwoman, Kelli Ward, tweeted that he should #STHU, shorthand for shut the hell up. (She later said in a radio interview she meant shut the heck up.) Mr. Ducey told reporters: The feelings mutual to her.

On Wednesday, the Arizona GOP Twitter account accused Mr. Ducey of trying to replace Ms. Ward as state party chairwoman. Ms. Ward said in an interview she hasnt decided what she will do next, adding that Mr. Trump told her he would support her remaining the state GOP partys leader or running for another position. The world is my oyster, she said.

Both the White House and the governors office declined to comment for this article.

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Arizona Republicans Are Racked by Infighting Over Trump, Coronavirus - The Wall Street Journal

There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Colorado presented during a day-long, legislative hearing held by Republicans Tuesday on the states election integrity. But there was plenty of bipartisan praise for Colorados voting systems and processes.

We are the gold standard for voting in our country, said El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman, a Republican. Everybody wants to be like Colorado.

The Legislative Audit Committee hearing, held at the Colorado Capitol with some lawmakers participating virtually because of the pandemic, was initiated by Republican members of the state House, namely Rep. Lori Saine, the panels GOP chairwoman. It happened under the backdrop of persisting, baseless claims from President Donald Trump about mass voter fraud that cost him reelection.

Saine, who lives in Firestone, told The Colorado Sun before the meeting that she called for it after hearing concerns from constituents. Youve got certain states with election integrity issues, she said last week. But did it happen here in Colorado? Its really kind of on us to help answer that question. Did it happen here? Did we have widespread fraud?

The resounding answer from county clerks, Republican former Secretary of States Scott Gessler and Wayne Williams, and even Jenna Ellis, a top attorney for Trump, was no.

Williams said there are instances of fraud in every election, but not to the level where it would affect congressional or statewide races.

We do have good, redundant systems, Gessler said.

Ellis, a Coloradan who has been leading Trumps floundering efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the his favor, said while she didnt have evidence of widespread wrongdoing in Colorado, there was enough suspicion that the legislature should investigate.

Ellis pressed the Legislative Audit Committee to look into Colorado counties use of software from Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems. She offered no evidence for why, other than pointing to debunked claims about problems with Dominions systems in other states.

Ellis also raised the unfounded suspicion of impropriety in Jefferson County because of its shift from an election battleground to a Democratic-learning area of the state, and because of its use of Dominion products. Jefferson County, like many Denver-are counties, has shifted to the left over the past eight years.

We dont know if its happened in Colorado, Ellis said of widespread fraud. Wouldnt you like to find out?

RELATED: Jenna Ellis, President Trumps lawyer, was fired from Weld County DAs office for mistakes, records show

Democrats on the committee rejected Ellis premise, saying theres no need to look into Colorados election integrity because theres no proof that anything is wrong. Sen. Rhonda Fields, an Aurora Democrat who sits on the audit committee, said she was outraged that taxpayer money was being used for Tuesdays hearing. She said questions about the states election systems amounted to a nothingburger.

Theres no evidence, Fields said during fiery remarks directed at Ellis.

Rep. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Commerce City Democrat and vice chair of the audit committee, echoed that sentiment.

Colorado runs some of the most secure elections in the country, she said. Were proud to showcase a number of the processes and tools we use that states around the country look to for best practices.

County clerks, meanwhile, pointed out that they are constantly looking for fraud and malfeasance and have not found anything substantial. Each Colorado election is audited to ensure there are no abnormalities or voter impropriety. On the rare occasion allegations surface, they are investigated by local elections officials and prosecutors. There are also automatic checks and balances, including voter-signature verification and a paper trail for every vote cast.

We have bipartisan teams test our voting machines before each election and we have bipartisan teams audit our voting machines after each election, said George Stern, Jefferson Countys Democratic clerk and recorder. Our elections are run by hundreds of bipartisan judges and are observed by hundreds of bipartisan watchers.

Stern resoundingly rejected the assertion of wrongdoing in Jefferson County, pointing to inaccuracies in Ellis testimony about voter registration in his county decreasing over the past six years when it has steadily gone up.

As for Dominion Voting Systems, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, submitted written testimony as part of the hearing defending the companys efficacy and security. She said that the state runs checks to make sure Dominion systems are running appropriately.

Dominion software has been used broadly in Colorado since 2015, Griswold wrote. Dominion hardware and software, under a previous set of contracts, was used by several Colorado counties as far back as the 1990s. Importantly, no evidence of wrongdoing has been presented against Dominion concerning its use and performance in this election or any other.

Griswold did not appear in person at the hearing. We were given the option of participating in writing, and chose to do so, Betsy Hart, a spokeswoman for Griswold, said in a statement. We hope our written testimony helps dispel election misinformation by underlining the facts.

Merlin Klotz, Douglas Countys Republican clerk and recorder, said he thinks Dominion has generally performed very well in Colorado.

Despite the overall praise for Colorados election systems, Pamela Anderson, who leads the Colorado County Clerks Association, said there is always room for improvement. She outlined several legislative measures that could make Colorados already-strong voting systems and processes even better, including unspecified fixes to technical aspects of state voting law and better funding for county clerks and recorders.

Republicans on the audit committee still sought a state audit of the Colorado Secretary of States Office despite the overwhelming testimony about whats working when it comes to the states elections. They were rebuffed, however, by Democrats on the panel, who said eight hours of testimony showed there is no need.

The facts and the evidence do not lead us into OKing a fishing expedition into the Secretary of States Office, said Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp, an Arvada Democrat.

Want exclusive Colorado political news and analysis? Subscribe here to get The Unaffiliated, the twice-weekly political newsletter from The Colorado Sun.

Saine, the audit committees chair who is term limited and wont be returning to the legislature when it reconvenes next month, urged the public to reach out to their state representatives and senators about ways to improve Colorados election processes.

I think we identified a number of things we can improve, said Sen. Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican. At the same time, however, Lundeen said hes confident that the election was spot on in his El Paso County and that the contest generally went off without a hitch across the state.

The legislature returns for its 2021 lawmaking term on Jan. 13.

Support local journalism around the state.Become a member of The Colorado Sun today!

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8-hour, Republican-led hearing on Colorado's election integrity ends without of evidence widespread fraud - The Colorado Sun

With one of our political parties trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election, we are way farther down that road now than we were before the election, or a year ago, she told me. Republicans have been going down that road all through Trumps term, but this is the parting gift, which is more extreme than what has happened before.

Adam Serwer: If you didnt vote for Trump, your vote is fraudulent

Republicans widespread enlistment in Trumps efforts follows years in which officials have advanced hundreds of state-level measures making it more difficult to vote; engaged in extraordinary legislative maneuvering to deny former President Barack Obama the opportunity to fill a vacant U.S. Supreme Court seat; and have either looked the other way or abetted Trump in a series of actions shredding democratic norms, including attempting to weaponize the Postal Service, tilt the results of the census, and pressure the Justice Department to investigate his opponents.

Polling has consistently found that the majority of Republican voters believe, without evidence, that the election was stolen. One academic study, based on a national survey conducted early this year, found that a stunningly large share of self-identified Republicans endorsed antidemocratic propositions such as The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. GOP behavior during this postelection period suggests that these are not abstract sentiments: The secretaries of state in Georgia and Arizona, who have rejected Trumps claims of fraud, have faced death threats, and a mob of armed protesters gathered last weekend outside the home of Michigans secretary of state, whos also stood by her states results.

Geoffrey Kabaservice, the director of political studies at the libertarian Niskanen Center, told me he sees a fateful watershed in the partys postelection deference to Trump. Once the Republican Party got into this idea that voter suppression was the way to go, once it stopped believing it was the majority partyand the entire American project was at stake, and Democrats would ruin the country if they hold powerthen anything would be permitted, including antidemocratic means, said Kabaservice, who is also the author of Rule and Ruin, a history of moderate Republicans. This was all before Trump came on the scene, so Trump simply furthered what was there.

The Republican Party, without acknowledging or realizing it, has become an antidemocratic force, he added.

Some key local Republican officials have conspicuously resisted Trumps pressure, including Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp, the Republican governors of Arizona and Georgia, respectively. In Michigan, a young GOP member of the states canvassing board voted to uphold the states results recording a decisive Biden win there. And many Republican-appointed federal judges, as well as some elected at the state level, have joined in rejecting Trump lawyers unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud.

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The GOP's Antidemocratic Bid to Overturn the Election - The Atlantic

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On November 30, Georgias Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, held a press conference to refute the fantastic claims, half-truths, misinformation spread by Trump supporters that the election was rigged.

But at the same time, Raffensperger announced he was opening an investigation into four progressive voter registration groups who he claimed sought to register ineligible, out-of-state, or deceased voters.

Establishment Georgia Republicans like Raffensperger have been widely lauded in the media for standing up to President Donald Trumps baseless election claims. But with far less fanfare, theyve continued to perpetuate a widely discredited narrative of voter fraud in order to build support for new restrictions on voting that will make it harder for Georgiansparticularly in Democratic-leaning demographicsto cast ballots in future elections.

With control of the Senate hanging on Georgias two runoff elections on January 5, Trumps actions are already making voting more difficult in the state, with key early voting sites closing as the recounts demanded by the Trump campaign have stretched election officials thin. But the narrative being pushed by Raffensperger and other state leaders could have much longer-lasting implications, spurring new restrictions that could impede voting in the suddenly competitive state for years to come.

One of the groups Raffensperger is investigating is the New Georgia Project, which was founded by Stacey Abrams in 2013 to register young people and voters of color in the state and was chaired by Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock until February. The group, Raffensperger said on November 30, sent voter registration applications to New York City and would be held responsible if it encouraged illegal voting.

Ns Ufot, the CEO of the New Georgia Project, told me the accusation was ridiculous and not true. She said the group had sent postcards to volunteers, including in New York City, who wanted to send letters to eligible Georgia voters encouraging them to register and turn out on January 5. Their allegation is we are trying to register voters out of state, which we are not, she said. Its flimsy as helltheir evidence is thinner than a single strand of hair.

A few days later, Raffsenperger held another press conference, where he held up postcards that had been sent by the group to his son who passed away two years ago, encouraging him to register to vote. We have proof in our own home, he said.

Ufot said the mailing had been sent to Raffsenpergers son based on faulty data in Georgias voter file or other databases used to find unregistered voters and was not a nefarious attempt to register dead people to vote. Nonetheless, Trump supporters seized on the investigations as evidence that the voter fraud they claimed existed was now real. Fox News called it a formal acknowledgement that there was some impropriety in the voting process.

When you hear reports like that of whats happening in Georgia, it makes your blood boil, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told the network. This sounds like fraudPeople need to be arrested here.

It shakes peoples faith in the process, Ufot said of the allegations against her group. Hes looking for ways to shrink the electorate and construct additional hurdles that people have to clear to participate.

While Raffsenperger has defended the integrity of Georgias elections system, he and Gov. Brian Kemp have called for voter ID requirements to be extended to mail ballots.Under the proposal, voters would have to include a copy of a government-issued identification along with their mail-in ballotsan extra procedural hurdle than undermines the purpose of mail voting, particularly for people with mobility issues or a lack of access to printers and copiers. Republicans specifically declined to require identification for mail voting in 2005, when they believed more Republicans than Democrats would vote by mail. Voters casting their ballots in person must show a photo ID, and we should consider applying that same standard to mail-in balloting, Kemp said last week.

Leaders in the Republican-controlled state legislature have gone much further, vowing to take up sweeping restrictions on mail voting when they convene in a new session next year after the runoff. These measures wouldmake mail voting available only to people with a valid reason, ban drop boxes for mail voting, and make it easier to reject mail ballots.

Though Republicans have long touted mail voting in Georgia, this year Democratsand Black voters in particularvoted by mail at much higher rates than GOP voters after Trump attacked the process. Georgia House Speaker David Ralston predicted in the spring that mail voting will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia.

There was no evidence of fraudulent mail voting in Georgia or any other state in 2020, but the mere perception of such fraud among Trump supporters is now enough to justify new restrictions on voting. The Georgia Senate Republicans have heard the calls of millions of Georgians who have raised deep and heartfelt concerns that state law has been violated and our elections process abused in our November 3, 2020 elections, the state senate GOP caucus said in astatement on Tuesday. We will fix this. Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchsargued that voter ID requirements were needed for mail ballots to prevent candidates from claiming the election was rigged.

We have a Republican Party that is singularly focused on disinformation warfare around nonexistent voter fraud, Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of the voting rights group Fair Fight and Abrams 2018 gubernatorial campaign manager, told me. We can look at state after state in the country where those disinformation narratives are directly connected to restrictions on the right to vote.

Theres a long history of this tactic in Georgia. In 2014, when he was secretary of state, Kemp first opened an investigation into voter registration drives by the New Georgia Project, which Abrams was overseeing at the time. Were just not going to put up with fraud, Kemp said. The group submitted 85,000 voter registration applications that year, and roughly 50.06 percent of the totalwere deemed to be forgeries submitted by independent contractors.(Under Georgia law, the New Georgia Project was required to submit all applications it received, regardless of whether they were legitimate.) Kemps own investigator concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing, and no one was charged. Yet Kemp continued to raise the specter of fraud to erect new barriers to voting, such as removing voters from the rolls, blocking registration drives, and rejecting mail ballots.

After an array of voting restrictions disproportionately disenfranchised Abrams supporters in 2018, access to the ballot was expanded in Georgia in 2020, allowing for record turnout and the emergence of a diverse coalition that helped Joe Biden win the state. Abrams is expected to run for governor in 2022, and Georgia Republicans are already plotting how to prevent a Democrat from carrying the state again.

This feels, in a lot of ways, like the last stand for white supremacy and the Republican Party, says Ufot. They are going to break the machinery of democracy on their way out the door.

Already, some voters may have fewer opportunities to vote in the crucial Senate elections on January 5 than they did in November. Four of the ten most populous counties in the state are closing early voting locations for the runoffs. That includes Cobb County, the third-largest county in the state, which Biden won by 14 points.The county is cutting the number of early voting sites from 11 to 5, consolidating four voting locations in the southern part of the county that are home to many Black and Latino voters into just one. During early voting for the November election, some residents waited up to 10 hours to vote in Cobb County.

Cobb County elections director Janine Eveler says Trumps actions are already having an impact on the runoff elections. The reason six of the countys early voting sites are closing, she says, is that she cant recruit enough people to staff the early voting sites, given all the people working on the recounts Trump requested. (Amid an outcry, the county agreed to reopen two polling sites for the last week of early voting.)

But whatever effect the closure of polling placeswill have on the runoffs, its a mere preview of the much broader voter suppression strategy Georgia Republicanseven those who stood up to Trumpwill employ next year.

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Georgia Republicans Are Using Fake Claims of Fraud to Make It Harder to Vote - Mother Jones