News. Debate. Community. Levers for a better democracy.
Check out our Election Dissection blog:
Our panel of experts will be analyzing voting controversies until the 2020 winners are clear.
MOST READ
Get some leverage.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter.
Mandel Ngan/Getty Images
Three ways a conservative finds Trump overstepping his bounds amid pandemic
Oct 21 2020
Griffith is a research fellow specializing in financial regulations at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
<p>Stalemate continues in Congress over how to next mitigate the lingering economic pain inflicted by the coronavirus shutdown. Nearly all House members and senators publicly agree on the need to provide assistance to those impacted by this economic crisis. Yet, despite almost six months of discussion, legislation remains elusive.</p><p>President Trump has identified similar concerns and repeatedly expressed support for additional aid. And because of the lack of congressional action, he has aggressively explored an array of possible executive actions linked to existing statutory authority. </p><p>Much of this authority granted by Congress is either expansive or vaguely defined. Since our nation's founding, presidents have tested its outer limits. In response, Congress has often shirked its constitutional mandate to check the president from exceeding these limits. In addition, over the decades Congress has proactively ceded large swaths of its responsibilities to the executive branch. As a result, the executive branch wields power unimagined by the Founders. </p><p>Recent executive orders on payroll tax deferments, unemployment compensation and eviction moratoriums highlight the importance of restoring the balance of power envisioned by our founders. Our Constitution gives Congress the ultimate power to levy taxes, allocate spending and create law. The executive branch, headed by the president, bears the responsibility of faithfully executing those laws.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/deferral-of-employment-tax-deposits-and-payments-through-december-31-2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Congress granted businesses leeway</a> to defer until the end of 2022 the employer portion of the Social Security tax owed on the remainder of this year's wages. However, Congress chose not to defer the taxes for the employee portion. So Trump issued an executive order suspending collection of the employee portion for the rest of the year.</p><p>Regardless of desired economic outcome, the president <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/08/10/payroll-tax-suspension-executive-order-is-legally-dubious-economically-unnecessary/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lacks clear statutory authority</a> to suspend collection of the tax in this manner.</p><p>Furthermore, most businesses are hesitant to transmit deferred taxes to employees. After all, employers still must remit these taxes, albeit at a delayed date. When the IRS bill comes due, they will be forced to withhold these deferred taxes from the paychecks of their workers.</p><p>The attempt to alter tax policy through executive order has frustrated the administration's desire to provide workers with a boost in take-home pay during the economic uncertainty.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Next, consider the state of federal unemployment benefits. The end of July marked the expiration of a weekly boost of $600 that had been provided since March under the last recovery package, known as the CARES Act. Ever since, Congress has failed to enact additional aid to the more than 11 million made jobless during the pandemic.</p><p>To lessen the blow, Trump issued an executive order directing that as much as $44 billion in the disaster aid reserves of the Federal Emergency Management Agency be used to provide $300 weekly in benefits (matched with $100 state payments) to anyone eligible for jobless insurance under the CARES Act. <a href="https://www.twc.texas.gov/news/fema-ends-lost-wages-assistance-program-state-unemployment-benefits-continue#:~:text=The%20Lost%20Wages%20Assistance%20Program%20was%20a%20temporary%20provision%20established,expire%20until%20December%2026%2C%202020." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">These funds were depleted</a> in less than two months. </p><p>The president only embarked on this novel approach following Congress's failure to find a legislative solution. Unfortunately, the executive order sets a precedent of unilaterally declaring a federal emergency and then using that emergency to redirect appropriations.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Trump's third big move was on eviction moratoriums. He issued an <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/04/2020-19654/temporary-halt-in-residential-evictions-to-prevent-the-further-spread-of-covid-19" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">executive order</a> protecting all residents of rental properties until the end of the year. This order was predicated on the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/link/uscode/42/264?type=usc&year=mostrecent&link-type=html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Public Health Services Act</a> , which authorizes regulations "necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the states or possessions, or from one state or possession into any other." Examples listed in the law include "inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures." </p><p>So what legal rationale links an eviction moratorium to this authority? The clearest connection seems to be <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/04/2020-19654/temporary-halt-in-residential-evictions-to-prevent-the-further-spread-of-covid-19" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">this part of the order</a>: "Eviction moratoria — like quarantine, isolation, and social distancing — can be an effective public health measure utilized to prevent the spread of communicable disease."</p><p>But is a ban on evictions related to preventing the international or interstate spread of communicable diseases? Here are the facts: Total relocations in a typical year far exceed the number of evictions experienced even in the depths of the Great Recession at the end of the last decade. Then, the number of evictions failed to top <a href="https://evictionlab.org/national-estimates/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">1 million households annually</a> — or fewer than 2.5 million individuals. In contrast, <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2019/demo/geographic-mobility/cps-2019.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">more than 30 million Americans moved</a> from one location to another last year in a healthy economy. </p><p>A blanket moratorium that fails to target a tenant's underlying health condition or coronavirus symptoms strays far from the express intent of the law Trump cited. Even the order itself hints the ban is meant as an economic relief measure, not a tool to protect the public from the spread of disease. For instance, the moratorium excludes people not in poverty or otherwise able to pay their rent.</p><p>In the midst of the current economic storm, the president's desire to help revive the economy and give relief to Americans who continue to suffer is understandable. And given the lack of action by a dysfunctional and politically divided Congress, it's understandable Trump is pursuing alternative approaches to alleviate the economic pain.</p><p>But our system of government, including enumerated powers and separation of powers, requires each branch to stay in its assigned lane. Creating economic policy through executive order threatens a further encroachment of the executive branch upon the legislative branch. </p>
<div></div><p>Reversing this long-term trend requires Congress to reassert its responsibility to legislate — and for the executive branch to once again focus on executing the law as written.</p>
From Your Site Articles
- Trump's fight to count citizens and non-citizens: 5 questions answered ›
- Trump is dissolving Congress in plain sight - The Fulcrum ›
- Fact-checking Trump's executive order on social media - The Fulcrum ›
- Fact checking legality of Trump's Covid-19 executive orders - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
Sergio Flores/Getty Images
The total number of votes cast on the first day of early voting in Austin met or exceeded the previous record.
Long early lines in Texas and Georgia seem more about enthusiasm than suppression
Oct 14 2020
This week's start of in-person voting in a pair of battleground states has produced some of the year's first hints of cautious optimism about electoral democracy's resilience, dispute the extraordinary challenges of a public health crisis and a president fueling doubt about the integrity of the result.
Long lines outside polling places, but only minimal problems inside, continued Wednesday as voting stations were open for a third day in Georgia and the second day in Texas. Both states reported record turnouts for their opening days of early voting.
While tens of thousands queued up at a social distance for several hours to cast ballots at libraries and schools, however, attorneys were in courthouses continuing their partisan war over whether aspects of the election should be made easier in the closing days.
<p>"Through pandemic, foreign interference, and everything else 2020 throws at them, the American voter will not be silenced!" David Becker, who runs the nonpartisan <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/center-for-election-innovation-and-research" target="_self">Center for Election Innovation and Research</a>, exulted on Twitter.<br></p><p>"This is a sign of democracy working," tweeted Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>More than 128,000 Georgians went to the polls Monday. It was a record for the first day of early voting in the state, according to the secretary of state's office, fully 40 percent more than the number from four years ago. Fulton County, the state's most populous because it includes much of Atlanta, reported 20,000 ballots cast — more than on any day except the last day of early voting in 2016.</p><p>Reports of problems were sporadic. Electronic poll books failed for almost an hour at State Farm Arena, idling 300 voting machines on the floor where the NBA's Atlanta Hawks play. More than a dozen rural counties did not open on Monday, citing the federal holiday. The line Tuesday in one Atlanta suburb was eight hours long. </p><p>Unlike Georgia, Texas did not offer a statewide total. But election officials in its largest county — Harris, which is mainly Houston — said more than 128,000 people voted Tuesday, approaching double the previous opening day record of 68,000, set four years ago. The counties including Austin, Dallas and San Antonio also reported that previous records were matched if not broken.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Only sporadic problems were reported in Texas, as well, including a technical glitch that shut down all the machines in one suburban Houston county for several hours and a voting center in Austin that got shuttered early after a poll workers received a positive Covid-19 test.</p><p>Texas is one of just five states that did not dramatically expand mail-in voting this year to make turnout safer because of the coronavirus pandemic — and the only one of them that's competitive in the presidential race. Its 38 electoral votes are the second-biggest prize available to President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden, who's close but narrowly behind in his bid to be the first Democrat to take the state since 1976.</p><p>Polling shows Georgia, with 16 electoral votes, has become a pure tossup. Trump carried it handily last time, extending the GOP nominees' winning streak in the state to six.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Election officials and advocacy groups have been pushing people to vote early in anticipation of record turnout and concerns about coronavirus exposure.</p><p>As photos and videos of the long lines circulated on social media, some voting rights groups wondered online if voter suppression was to blame. But some election administration experts sought to tamp down such talk. </p><p>"Election officials have limited resources — especially during the pandemic," tweeted Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine. "Great enthusiasm on the first day of voting leading to long lines does not necessarily mean there's a systemic problem. Let's give it a few days."</p><p>Hours before the polls opened in Texas, however, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of GOP Gov. Gregg Abott's decree that all 254 counties provide just a single location for voters dropping off absentee ballots in person rather than returning them by mail. </p><p>Late in the day, the state GOP sued to stop Harris County from allowing people to vote curbside without getting out of their cars, an option thousands took advantage of Tuesday as a way to limit their coronavirus exposure. The county said it would keep the option available unless ordered to stop.</p><p>In Georgia, meanwhile, federal judges ruled against a pair of lawsuits seeking to make the election easier. </p><p>Judge Michael Brown on Tuesday dismissed a suit Democrats filed this summer to make election officials take steps to prevent long lines at the polls on Election Day, concluding the state has taken appropriate steps since a highly problematic primary to reduce waiting times. "It is possible, of course, these measures will ultimately prove insufficient and long lines will still arise," he wrote. "But that is not the point; no one, including this court, can guarantee short lines."</p><p>Judge Amy Totenberg on Monday night declined to make the state print thousands more emergency paper ballots to have on hand in case the state's new armada of electronic voting machines malfunction at the rate they did in the June primary.</p><p>President Trump did not make mention of the surge of people at the polls when he addressed an airport rally Monday night in Orlando, his first campaign stop since his hospitalization for Covid-19, but he did make fun of questions about whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he's defeated.</p><p>The next test of early voting's reliability in a big purple state will start Thursday in North Carolina. Democratic Secretary of State Elaine Marshall is predicting that a plurality of ballots statewide will be cast in person by the end of the month, not by mail or on Election Day, because options have been expanded to 450 early voting sites (with masks available to those who forget one) — including at least one in every county with at least 10 hours of voting on weekends.</p><p>Early voting started last week in two battlegrounds, Ohio and Arizona, and it will begin next week in Florida and Wisconsin. </p>
From Your Site Articles
- Poll: Most Americans want to vote before Election Day - The Fulcrum ›
- Texas joins election rule mainstream one way: Early voting - The ... ›
- Just 16 states can get a head start on counting mailed-in ballots ›
- Democrats challenge early voting limits in two '20 battlegrounds ›
- Normally tight Texas extends early voting - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
A playbook for balancing pandemic safety and election security
Oct 08 2020
Election Dissection contributor David Levine of the Alliance for Securing Democracy put out a comprehensive guidebook for securing the vote in 2020. The report shows that the innovative ways officials in the United States and Europe are making voting more accessible during the Covid-19 pandemic come with some security risks. On top of that, the persistent risks of foreign interference, cyberattacks and disinformation continue.
Levine addresses everything from added infection-prevention costs to poll watching to post-election audits.
<p>Here's the conclusion: </p><blockquote>As countries' authorities and election management bodies make changes to their election processes in response to the coronavirus, they must carefully consider the election security risks such changes introduce, while ensuring that elections carried out during the pandemic are accessible, secure, and legitimate. Doing otherwise risks making elections more vulnerable to adversaries and undermining public confidence in the democratic process.</blockquote><p><a href="https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/conducting-secure-elections-amid-a-pandemic/" target="_blank">Read the full report.</a></p>
From Your Site Articles
- Wisconsin's debacle is an election security wake-up call - The Fulcrum ›
- Swing states build protections around 2020 elections - The Fulcrum ›
- Election security experts keep up pressure for more cash - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
Darylann Elmi/Getty Images
Even if Congress doesn't approve more election funding for the states, voters shouldn't panic, writes Trevor Potter.
If coronavirus relief talks end, states will be on their own for the election
Oct 08 2020
President Trump ended negotiations with Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a new Covid-19 economic aid package. Then he urged Congress to immediately pass some spending bills, but excluded funding to states.
Unfortunately, it looks as if state and local governments won't be getting the money needed to cover extra costs for this year's election, for processing a flood of mail-in ballots or new pandemic-related safety protocols. With no additional federal help coming, states are in a hole. Because of the entrenched partisan disputes, some have even turned to private funding.
Election funding was unable to make it through Congress despite overwhelming public support. An online poll for the Campaign Legal Center and Protect Democracy showed 72 percent of likely 2020 voters backed more money for safe and secure elections.
<p>Even so, voters shouldn't panic. Most states — red and blue alike — have <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/mail-voting-what-has-changed-2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expanded access</a> to absentee voting. In the past few weeks, <a href="https://campaignlegal.org/update/federal-judge-rebukes-trump-campaign-trying-suppress-mail-voting" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">courts across the country</a> have ruled <a href="https://campaignlegal.org/update/victory-court-orders-tennessee-allow-citizens-vote-mail" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">on the side of voters</a> and against making voting more difficult. The U.S. Postal Service has reassured the public it can handle the surge in mail-in ballots. People are stepping up to be poll workers as older volunteers choose to stay home during the pandemic.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>More voters than ever are choosing to vote by mail, a process that's been proven to be safe and secure. There are ballot-tracking procedures so voters can check the status of their ballot at any time. There is 24-hour surveillance to ensure ballots and their drop boxes are safe. Drop boxes have been <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx#provide" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">used</a><a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx#provide" target="_blank"> for decades</a>, particularly in Western states. A strict chain of custody ensures only authorized election officials ever handle ballots. None of this is new. </p><p>While Americans should be encouraged to vote early in-person or return their mail-in ballots as soon as possible, they should know that, if they <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/07/upshot/mail-voting-ballots-signature-ma" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">follow instructions carefully</a>, their vote will count. </p><p>Our most important right as Americans is the right to vote. America should ensure that every eligible citizen, regardless of race or ethnicity, has a convenient way to vote and have their vote counted. Even though the president and Congress have dropped the ball, our election system is remarkably resilient.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p><a href="https://campaignlegal.org/staff/trevor-potter" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Trevor Potter </em></a><em>is founder and president of the </em><a href="https://campaignlegal.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Campaign Legal Center</em></a><em>. He was general counsel to John McCain's presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2008. <em><em><em>Read more from The Fulcrum's <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/election-dissection" target="_self">Election Dissection</a> blog or see our <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/election-dissection/election-coverage" target="_self">full list of contributors</a>.</em></em></em></em></p>
From Your Site Articles
- Coronavirus bill includes $400 million to make voting safer - The ... ›
- Election aid in limbo during coronavirus stimulus talks - The Fulcrum ›
- House Democrats include $3.6B for elections in new stimulus - The ... ›
- Fact check: Covid-19 bill includes funding for FBI building - The ... ›
- Businesses step up funding for elections, despite objections - The Fulcrum ›
- Businesses step up funding for elections, despite objections - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
