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Bill Theobald
Bill Theobald is senior writer at The Fulcrum, where he focuses on everything to do with voting. This December marks his 40th anniversary in the business, and he still believes -- now more than ever -- that the glow from great journalism can truly light the world.
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Trump and Biden supporters are equally likely to say they will not accept the results of the election if their candidate loses.
Millions of voters will be very sore losers, either way, poll shows
Oct 26 2020
The intensity of the presidential campaign appears to be creating a huge number of sore losers in waiting.
More than two out of every five supporters of President Donald Trump, and of former Vice President Joe Biden, say in a survey out Sunday that they will not accept the results of the coming election if their candidate is defeated. And decent numbers in both camps say they're prepared to protest a result they don't like.
The numbers from the new Reuters/Ipsos poll provide fresh evidence of the fragility of American electoral democracy, which has relied for more than two centuries on the losers deciding the election was fair enough to peacefully accept the outcome.
<p>The survey pegged at 43 percent the share of Biden supporters who would not accept a Trump victory, with 22 percent of the Democratic nominee's backers saying they would engage in street demonstrations or even violence if he loses. </p>
<p>The president's camp was almost as impassioned: 41 percent said they would not accept a Biden win and 16 percent said they would protest if they're told the Republican has lost re-election.</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>The degree of distrust in the outcome raises the stakes anew for those cautioning patience in eight days. Definitive results from many of the Electoral College battlegrounds may not be known on election night if the contest remains as close in those states as polling suggests. That is not because the sort of cheating that Trump baselessly allegess is surely coming, but because of legally required delays in processing and tabulating the record numbers of ballots being returned by mail in response to the coronavirus pandemic.</p><p>Confusion and skepticism about delayed results is just one of the many challenges that have amplified concerns about the public's confidence in the result.</p><p>Russian attempts to hack into election systems during the 2016 campaign heightened concerns about the legitimacy of the 2020 vote long before the first ballots were cast. The pandemic then prompted most states to relax at least some rules for mail voting — which has prompted a steady diet of unsubstantiated claims by Trump that absentee ballot fraud will rob him of a second term.</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>During his campaign rally Sunday in New Hampshire, for example, Trump went on another long diatribe in which he claimed that mail-in ballots that had been requested by voters are OK — while those being proactively sent to voters are highly problematic. (Of the 10 states where that's happening, only Nevada is competitive in the presidential race.)</p>
<p>"The ballots get handled by many, many people by the time they even get there and it shouldn't be allowed," Trump said. "And the Democrats know it's a hoax and they know and it's going to cause problems."</p>
<p>Last week top national security officials warned that Russia and Iran had been attempting to hack into U.S. voting systems and looking for other ways to undermine confidence in the election.</p>
<p>Trump also has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if the vote count shows him to be losing.</p><p>A poll <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/election-results-2020" target="_self">released three weeks ago</a>, by Politico and Morning Consult, found most voters do not expect to know who won the presidential contest on election night. Only a small majority in that survey thought the election would be fair, and three-fourths expressed concern about violent post-election protests.</p><p>The Reuters/Ipsos poll was of 2,649 adults the week ending Oct. 20 — including 1,039 who said they had voted for Trump or were planning to vote for him and 1,153 similarly behind Biden. The margin of error was 4 percentage points.</p>
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FixUS has sponsored a new national poll which confirms the huge partisan divide in the country but points the way to areas of agreement that can be the subject of dialogue.
Amid the storm of conflict, new evidence there's a place for calm
Oct 23 2020
At the end of what has been the most tumultuous campaign season in recent history, a national good governance group is launching a new effort to tackle what appears to be the impossible:
Bridging the enormous partisan divide that has set neighbor against neighbor and made governing the country so difficult.
FixUs, an initiative to help Americans better understand our differences, announced Thursday the results of a national survey outlining these differences — and some areas of agreement — that will serve as a springboard to the program called "A National Dialogue on Common Values, Goals and Aspirations."
<p>The poll vividly captures the divide between Republicans and Democrats on what the priorities for the country should be.<br></p>
<p>Democrats ranked as their top policy goals: health care affordability (64 percent) and improving racial justice (51 percent).</p>
<p>Republicans said their top goals were a strong and growing economy (68 percent) and putting America first (54 percent).</p>
<p>Areas where the parties differ by a wide margin include Democrats' focus on reducing income and wealth inequality (46 percent to just 15 percent for Republicans), and addressing climate change (43 percent to just 16 percent for Republicans.)</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>Republicans prioritize personal freedom (46 percent to 24 percent for Democrats).</p>
<p>Members of the two parties also have widely divergent views of where the county stands, with Republicans much more positive than Democrats.</p>
<p>For example, 81 percent of Republicans said the American economy was strong and growing while only 37 percent of Democrats said that. Also 65 percent of Republicans believe the country ensures racial justice while only 22 percent of Democrats believe that.</p>
<p>There is strong agreement, and perhaps the meeting ground for productive dialogue, on national and individual values and goals, the survey found. Lopsided majorities of both parties described these national values as extremely or very important:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Free speech: 81 percent</li><li>Equal justice under law: 80 percent</li><li>Ensuring everyone has the opportunity to succeed: 80 percent</li><li>Individual freedom: 78 percent</li></ul><p>Individual values where there is strong bipartisan agreement include being honest, hard-working and independent. Conversely, only a fourth of respondents listed being wealthy as extremely or very important.</p><p>The common areas on which most agree are a starting point for the dialogue FixUS hopes to create.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>"Americans feel divided and alienated from one another and from the political process," said Maya MacGuineas, the founder of FixUs, a project of the <a data-linked-post="2638674268" href="https://thefulcrum.us/committee-for-responsible-federal-budget" target="_blank">Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget</a> that has also has been acting as an informal coordinator of disparate players in the world of democracy reform. "It is important that no matter the outcome of the election, we remain focused on what will be the long and difficult work of reuniting the country."</p><p>The next step is for <a href="https://fixusnow.org/national-dialogue" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">people to participate</a> in small group discussions and focus groups to better understand the differences and similarities and attempt to find ways forward.</p><p>The Ipsos poll of 1,005 adults was conducted Sept. 2-3 and has a 3.5 percentage point margin of sampling error.</p>
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The test case for citizens' ability to sue, when the Federal Election Commission does not act, involves a group working for the re-election of GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa.
Enforcing money-in-politics rules is about to be left to you and me
Oct 21 2020
Here's how far the Federal Election Commission has sunk in failing to carry out its job of overseeing the rules of presidential and congressional campaign finance.
Barring a highly unlikely turn of events, a sort of line of shame will be crossed in three months: For the first time, responsibility for enforcing the laws regulating money in federal politics will essentially pass to the citizenry, sidelining the agency created to do the work.
The FEC has not had enough commissioners to do any substantive business for almost all the past year, a consequence of the partisan deadlock over campaign finance regulation. Odds are scant any new members will be confirmed until after January's inauguration. And right around then, a dispute will have been gathering dust for so long at the FEC that the case can be moved to federal court.
<p>While FEC decisions can be appealed to federal judges, this looms as the first time in the agency's 46-year history when a campaign finance dispute would start at the courthouse.</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>The <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/campaign-legal-center" target="_self">Campaign Legal Center</a>, a money-in-politics watchdog, filed a complaint against a political nonprofit called Iowa Values, which has helped promote the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. The CLC believes the organization has violated federal campaign finance law by not registering with the FEC and not filing regular reports showing who has donated to the group and how those funds are being spent. Others have complained that Ernst's campaign has illegally coordinated its efforts with the so-called <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/dark-money" target="_self">dark money</a> group.The group filed papers with the FEC in December asking for an investigation. But no action has ever been taken, because it takes four commissioners to consider the matter and there have been only three on the job for 12 of the past 13 months.<br></p>
<p>Last week, a federal judge invoked a wrinkle in federal law providing that, if the FEC sits on its hands and doesn't do its job for long enough, private individuals have the power to pursue alleged campaign finance scofflaws through the courts. In what's termed a default judgment, Judge Royce Lamberth told the agency to do something with the case by Jan. 12 — or else stand aside as the CLC takes Iowa Values to court on its own. </p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>"It's really unfortunate that we are weeks away from a federal election and the agency tasked with oversight of campaign finance laws lacks a quorum to do its job," said CLC attorney Erin Chlopak, who is handling the Iowa Values lawsuit.</p>
<p>Previously, the private cause of action provision in federal law has been invoked by groups that filed complaints with the FEC and were not happy with its decision, which over the past decade has more often than not been to dismiss the matter.</p>
<p>The case took a strange twist two days after the judge's ruling, when the Justice Department asked Lamberth to reverse himself and dismiss the case on the grounds the watchdog group lacks legal standing to sue. What makes the filing strange is that the FEC is an independent agency with its own legal staff, and Justice attorneys admitted in their filing that they don't represent the FEC.</p>
<p>"It is notable that DOJ is inserting itself into this lawsuit, the underlying allegations of which concern apparent campaign finance violations by a political ally of the president," said Chlopak.</p>
<p>Ernst has been a stalwart ally of President Trump. She's in a tossup fight for a second term against Democratic businesswoman Theresa Greenfield. Even if she loses, the importance of the case to the cause of campaign finance regulation will not fade.</p>
<p>The Campaign Legal Center has filed three other federal lawsuits this year hoping to push the FEC to act on its complaints. A judge is expected to rule soon in the group's favor in one of them. Brought two years ago, it alleges that a group called the 45Committee spent $22 million on advertising, consultants and other expenses in support of Donald Trump and attacking Hillary Clinton in the last presidential campaign without registering as a political committee and reporting its donors and spending.</p>
<p>The FEC also has not taken action on a complaint filed in 2015 regarding the Right to Rise Super PAC, established to support then-Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida's presidential bid. The lawsuit in that case says the "prolonged inaction has fostered a Wild West atmosphere in the financing of campaigns for federal office allowing wealthy donors, including corporations and unions, to sidestep (federal election law) contribution limits and disclosure requirements."</p>
<p>Trey Trainor, who joined the FEC this spring as Trump's lone nominee, issued a lengthy statement in August on the "dangers of procedural dysfunction" at the agency, in which he argued that the attempts by CLC and other groups to bring private actions were an unwelcome development.</p>
<p>"A dangerous paradigm shift is happening in federal campaign finance law that is threatening Americans' free speech rights," he wrote. "Outside groups," he said, "are "seeking private enforcement of the federal campaign finance laws and using the courts to get their preferred policy positions enacted."</p>
<p>The FEC has not had a full complement of members since March 2017. It did not have the four needed for a quorum between August 2019 and May, when the Senate confirmed Trainor. But a week after the first meeting in months, in June, Commissioner Caroline Hunter resigned and the panel was shorthanded again.</p>
<p>Trump immediately promised to nominate conservative attorney Allen Dickerson as her replacement, but the Senate did not even receive the paperwork until last month. No hearing has been scheduled, and Democrats have vowed to do what they can to stall confirmation unless nominees to fill the other vacancies are forwarded as well.</p>
<p>In the meantime, several hundred unresolved complaints of campaign finance law violations continue to pile up in FEC offices.</p>
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