2016

Anti-Trump forces launch attack on Electoral College

The last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump is gaining momentum.

Anti-Trump forces are preparing an unprecedented assault on the Electoral College, marked by a wave of lawsuits and an intensive lobbying effort aimed at persuading 37 Republican electors to vote for a candidate other than Donald Trump.

It’s a bracing stress-test for an institution that Alexander Hamilton envisioned as a safeguard against popular whims, and a direct challenge to the role that the Electoral College has evolved to play in picking the president: constitutional rubber stamp.

Behind the overt anti-Trump push is a covert agenda: If the courts establish that individual electors can switch allegiances, supporting candidates other than those who win their states, it would inject so much uncertainty into the process that states may be willing to junk the Electoral College in favor of a popular-vote winner.

“There might well be a clamor to get rid of the Electoral College altogether, a move that would have some disadvantages (like eliminating Hamilton's safeguard) but many advantages as well,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University. “Anyhow, clamor and anger have become par for the course in this loony election year.”

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Anti-Trump electors form fundraising committee

A coalition of anti-Trump Electoral College members has opened a nonprofit political committee that enables it to raise funds in support of a three-week mad dash to halt Donald Trump's election.

The group, which has dubbed itself Hamilton Electors, registered a 527 political committee with Colorado's secretary of state on Tuesday; 527 is a reference to the section of the federal tax code that provides for tax-exempt political organizations.

The organization lists its incorporation address in Las Vegas, though it is registered to Micheal Baca, a Democratic elector from Colorado and a leader of the group. Baca and a handful of other Democratic electors are building an organization to lobby Republican counterparts to reject Trump.

Though it's unclear how quickly the group could raise money and what it would be used for, there's an appetite among those disgruntled by the impending Trump presidency to resist. A last-minute effort by Green Party candidate Jill Stein to file recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin has generated more than $6 million. And a change.org petition encouraging presidential electors to reject Trump has garnered more than 4.5 million signatures.

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Jill Stein gets her recount bill

For Jill Stein, it's time to put her money where her mouth is.

After raising $6.5 million and taking steps to initiate recounts in a trio of states Hillary Clinton lost in the Nov. 8 presidential election, Stein has to now pay for the recounts. The estimated costs vary for the three states where she's fueling recount efforts —Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — but combined, it's within the amount of money Stein has raised so far.

Stein on Tuesday met the 4:30 CT filing deadline and paid the nearly $3.5 million required for a recount, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Earlier in the day, fringe independent presidential candidate Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente withdrew his petition for a recount. The recount starts Thursday.

In Michigan, Stein has until Wednesday to request a formal recount and must pay $973,250 to underwrite the costs, according to the Michigan secretary of state's office. Her campaign on Monday notified the Michigan Board of State Canvassers of its intent to request -- but has yet to file paperwork. Michigan officials expect Stein to pay the fee and initiate the recount before the deadline.

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7 questions about Jill Stein's recounts

Donald Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton in the three states that provided the Republican’s decisive Electoral College majority is only a combined 104,000 votes. But don't expect that to change.

The odds that Clinton will somehow end up reciting the oath of office on January 20 are extremely low.

Despite pending recounts or audits planned in those three states -- Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – the reality is that the results would have to change to such a degree that Clinton would carry all of them. Even Democratic officials in those states insist that the count wouldn’t change that drastically.

Still, Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee who finished fourth in each of the three states, is moving to challenge the election results, citing irregularities in the vote count.

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticized Jill Stein’s push for a partial recount of the presidential election on Tuesday, suggesting that the Green Party candidate “represents sort of the nut wing of American politics.”

Gingrich, a Republican and adviser to Donald Trump, dismissed Stein’s call for a recount in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states that the president-elect won, arguing on Fox News that “there is not a single state in the country, not one, where a recount would allow her to win.”

Gingrich, also noting that the White House has refuted unsubstantiated claims that the election results were compromised, suggested that a “nut fringe” emerges when liberals do poorly in elections. Gingrich also tried to tie Stein’s push to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which has said its lawyers will attend recount proceedings but says it has found no evidence that the election results are illegitimate.

“When the left loses as badly as they have, at every level from local state legislatures to governors to Congress to the presidency, you begin to get this sort of nut fringe showing up,” Gingrich said. “The fact that Hillary's people are associating with her, I think tells you how desperate and how disoriented Hillary's campaign has become, and the whole thing is a joke.”

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Stein moves for Pennsylvania recount

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is taking steps to initiate a recount in Pennsylvania, three days after filing for a recount in Wisconsin. Recount requests were filed Monday in more than 100 Pennsylvania precincts, according to her campaign.

"The Stein recount effort is mobilizing concerned voters across Pennsylvania to request recounts in their precincts," Stein campaign manager David Cobb said in a statement. "Additionally, the campaign filed a legal petition in state court today on behalf of 100 Pennsylvania voters to protect their right to substantively contest the election in Pennsylvania beyond the recounts being filed by voters at the precinct level. This petition will allow the campaign to pursue a full statewide recount in Pennsylvania if precinct-level recounts uncover any irregularities or tampering.”

Stein campaign lawyer Lawrence Otter announced Monday that he filed a lawsuit arguing for a statewide recount of the Nov. 8 presidential election results. The suit, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, argues that a recount is warranted based on "grave concerns" by the more than 100 petitioners involved in the lawsuit "about the integrity of electronic voting machines used in their districts."

To initiate a statewide recount through the courts, the Stein campaign must sufficiently prove that there was a strong probability of election fraud in Pennsylvania.

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Michigan certifies Trump as winner

Donald Trump has officially won Michigan, the final state to be awarded and the capstone of Trump’s unlikely run of narrow victories in the Midwestern states that will deliver the first-time political candidate to the White House.

Michigan’s Board of Canvassers certified the results on Monday afternoon in Lansing. Trump won 2,279,543 votes (47.5 percent), according to the certified results — 10,704 more than Hillary Clinton’s 2,268,839 (47.3 percent).

Trump becomes the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Michigan since George H.W. Bush won it in 1988, breaking a six-cycle Democratic winning streak.

That adds Michigan’s 16 electoral votes to Trump’s already impressive tally of triumphs in the Midwest. Trump carried Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — states that had last voted Republican in 1988 and 1984, respectively — by margins only slightly larger than his advantage in Michigan.

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Texas elector who criticized Trump says he’s resigning

A Republican member of the Electoral College who had expressed reservations about supporting President-elect Donald Trump has opted instead to resign his position and turn it over to an alternate elector.

Art Sisneros, a Texas Republican elector who told POLITICO in August that he was strongly weighing a vote against Trump, confirmed Monday that he would quit the position. Sisneros had said as recently as last week that he still hadn't decided how to cast his electoral vote.

Sisneros detailed his decision to resign in a little-noticed blog post over the weekend. In it, he argued that Trump is unqualified to be president — but also wrote that he knows he can’t prevent it from happening.

“If Trump is not qualified and my role, both morally and historically, as an elected official is to vote my conscience, then I can not and will not vote for Donald Trump for President. I believe voting for Trump would bring dishonor to God,” Sisneros wrote. “The reality is Trump will be our President, no matter what my decision is.”

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Clinton team starts firing back at Trump

Her operation has been careful to frame its participation in the recount as simply reflecting a desire to be helpful and a response to voters’ concerns.

The remnants of Hillary Clinton’s campaign roared to life on Sunday, their Twitter feeds boiling over in frustration as President-elect Donald Trump falsely claimed that “millions” of people, acting illegally, had tipped the popular vote in her favor.

“Winning the electoral college won him the presidency, so Trump’s excuses on why he lost the popular vote by millions are just small and sad,” Christina Reynolds, who was the Clinton campaign’s deputy communications director, tweeted in reaction to Trump’s boast that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

“We are getting attacked for participating in a recount that we didn’t ask for by the man who won election but thinks there was massive fraud,” complained Marc Elias, Clinton’s campaign lawyer, who explained the decision to join the recount effort in a Medium post on Saturday.

Clinton herself has said nothing about the recounts, popping up in the media only because she posed for selfies a few times with fans who have stumbled across her in the woods and at a bookstore in Rhode Island.

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Sanders: Recount 'not a big deal'

Those despairing about Donald Trump’s election to the presidency should not be getting too excited about a Green Party-driven recount in some states, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” Sanders also sought to ensure that voters know the recount, which he said is "not a big deal," is not being driven by the Democrats.

“The Democrats, Martha, are not doing the recount,” Sanders told ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz. “I trust that you know that was initiated by the Green Party, who has every right in the world to do it.”

Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, has officially filed for a recount in Wisconsin, which Trump won by about 27,000 votes. Stein has also said she will seek recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Those three states’ 46 electoral votes were enough to push Trump over the top. The Hillary Clinton campaign has said that, while it will not initiate the recount process, it will participate in the recounts.

“Well, of course they joined in,” Sanders said of the Clinton campaign’s participation. “We will see what happens. It's a legal right. It's not a big deal. I don't think anybody, Secretary Clinton or anybody else, thinks that there's going to be profound changes. And we will see what happens.”

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Presidential Transition

Trump douses White House hopes of Cruz, Rubio and others

The GOP's crowded bench will have to remain seated — possibly for a long time.

Early this month, a long list of Republicans stood poised to lead the party forward after yet another crushing White House defeat. The GOP would have a menu of options to take on Hillary Clinton in 2020: the hard-edged conservatism of Ted Cruz, the lofty oratory of Marco Rubio, the earnest wonkery of Paul Ryan or the brawny national security vision of Tom Cotton.

Instead, the GOP’s crowded bench of 40-something upstarts will have to remain seated. Their short-term presidential hopes have been essentially extinguished by Donald Trump’s conquest of both the Republican Party and Clinton.

And barring a first-term collapse of the first-time officeholder, it may be several White House election cycles before they have another shot. In the interim, waves of new GOP lawmakers will come to Congress to put their own stamp on the future of the party.

For now, the next generation of GOP leaders is left to implement the agenda of a man many of them opposed, to one degree or another, for the presidency.

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2016

Democrats wrestle with Rust Belt dilemma

Party leaders in fast-growing states warn against obsessing over Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

One month ago, Democrats viewed Arizona and Georgia as winnable states for the first time in decades. And demographic trends seem to have put Texas in play as well.

But then came Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss to Donald Trump, powered largely by her unexpected weakness across the traditionally Democratic industrial states of the Rust Belt.

Now, party officials in the fast-growing, so-called purple states that so recently looked within reach — all of which also fell to Trump — are increasingly wary that national party leaders will redirect their focus toward Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, denying them the critical attention and resources that might otherwise accelerate their movement toward swing-state status.

“Right now, Democrats need to make sure we correct but we don’t overcorrect,” said Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. “This isn’t a situation where we need to be making false choices. We need to understand we won the popular vote, [but] we lost states we should not have lost."

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Jill Stein files for recount in Wisconsin

Jill Stein on Friday filed a petition for a recount in Wisconsin, barely making the 5 p.m. EST deadline, according to the state's election commission.

"The Commission has received the Stein and Del La Fuente recount petitions," the commission announced on Twitter at 4:36 p.m.

On the back of a debunked fear of election tampering in key swing states, the Green Party presidential candidate raised nearly $5 million to fund a recount effort.

Stein first set a goal to raise $2.5 million to fund a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania based off a report from New York Magazine that said prominent cybersecurity experts were urging Hillary Clinton’s campaign to contest the results there, citing suspicious results.

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Hillary Clinton’s Thanksgiving surprise spearheaded by 6-year-old boy

Hillary Clinton received a display of gratitude near her home Thursday as a collection of colorful signs were posted thanking the former Democratic nominee for president.

The effort was spearheaded by a 6-year-old named Liam. He cheered for Clinton throughout the election and sobbed on election night as the results came in, said his mother, who asked that their last names be kept private to avoid online harassment. Not long after the election, on a drive near Clinton’s Chappaqua, New York, home, Liam was disappointed that there was only one sign reading, “We love HRC.”

“Liam said there ‘should be lots and lots of signs,’ because ‘she's probably even sadder than me,’ ” his mother recounted in a note to friends inviting them to participate in Liam's project. “[S]o he wants to go back and leave lots of signs on Thanksgiving – to say ‘thank you,’ show support, love and encouragement. If anyone else wants to help by making a sign for his little project, let me know!”

His mother told POLITICO on Thursday that “We got some posters emailed to us and a few dropped off. Liam and I made some, too.”

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2016

How Trump roasted Clinton in turkey country

Donald Trump won the nation's top turkey-producing areas by a landslide.

If your Thanksgiving turkey could vote, it probably would have cast its ballot for Donald Trump.

The Republican president-elect won the nation's top turkey-producing areas by a landslide, winning nearly all of the top 25 congressional districts ranked by the number of turkeys sold — and typically by large margins.

Trump's dominance in turkey country featured wins in four of the five states that produce the most turkeys — including the swing state of North Carolina. While he narrowly lost the nation's leading turkey-producing state, Minnesota, he managed to romp to victory in the parts of the state where the turkey production actually takes place.

In the vast, mostly rural western Minnesota district that ranks as the No. 1 turkey-producing congressional district in the nation — held for 26 years by Democrat Collin Peterson — Trump proved especially popular. While John McCain won Peterson’s district by 3 points, followed by a 10-point Romney win, Trump won there by 31 points.

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Clinton's lead in the popular vote surpasses 2 million

A half-dozen electors, those who will formally cast votes for Trump and Clinton on Dec. 19, are pushing to block Trump from winning a majority of votes.

A series of long-shot bids to reconsider the result of the 2016 election cropped up on Wednesday as Democrats and liberals dismayed by Donald Trump’s victory saw Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote surpass 2 million on Wednesday.

Clinton’s camp and leading Democrats have been entirely silent on the efforts — including a potential request for a recount of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin sponsored by Green Party candidate Jill Stein — further underscoring the unlikelihood of movement on that front. But left-leaning activists were nonetheless temporarily cheered after New York Magazine reported on Tuesday evening that Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign attorney Marc Elias spoke with a group of election lawyers and computer scientists about the possibility that results may have been altered in those states.

The former secretary of state has garnered 64,223,958 votes, compared to the president-elect’s 62,206,395, according to a count curated by Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Among the potential steps to challenge the results on Wednesday was an announcement from Stein, often a strident Clinton critic, that she would seek to challenge the results in all three of the states if she raised the $2 million necessary to do so. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are traditionally Democrats states that fell into Trump’s column on Nov. 8, and Michigan’s story is similar, though it has yet to be officially called for Trump. As of Thursday mornng, Stein's campaign had raised at least $2.5 million, according to multiple news reports.

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Citing ‘reported hacks,’ Jill Stein says she’ll file for recounts in three states

Jill Stein’s presidential campaign announced Wednesday that it plans to file for recounts in three key states if it can raise enough money.

“After a divisive and painful presidential race,” the Green Party candidate said in a statement, “reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts are causing many Americans to wonder if our election results are reliable.”

Stein wants to request recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — states that were critical to President-elect Donald Trump's victory. The GOP candidate carried Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and is likely to win Michigan, although the state has not yet been officially called.

A Stein spokeswoman said the campaign has not yet filed the official paperwork for the recounts. The campaign needs $2 million to pay for the filing fees and the actual recount process, and it has set up a fundraising website to collect the money. As of Thursday morning, the campaign had raised $2.5 million, according to multiple news reports.

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Professor cited in report says election results 'probably not' hacked

A computer science professor at the University of Michigan confirmed on Wednesday that he has been spoken with the Clinton campaign about seeking a recount in several key states — but he clarified that he thinks the election results were “probably not” the result of a cyberattack.

New York magazine reported on Tuesday that experts were urging the Clinton camp to contest the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania after finding “persuasive evidence” that they may have been “manipulated or hacked.”

Trump was declared the winner of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on election night, but Michigan remains too close to call, with Trump's lead now under 10,000 votes. The Michigan secretary of state is expected to certify the results later this month.

The New York magazine story cited a source briefed on a conference call between the experts and Clinton campaign officials to report that they had found that “Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots” in Wisconsin.

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President-elect Donald Trump conceded Tuesday that he probably won’t make good on his campaign pledge to pursue a new criminal investigation into his political rival, Hillary Clinton.

“It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about,” he said Tuesday afternoon in an on-the-record discussion with reporters from The New York Times.

Trump cast his reversal as a unifying move that, contrary to some of the early backlash, he believes won’t upset his supporters.

“I don't think they will be disappointed. I think I will explain it that we in many ways will save our country,” he said, adding that prosecuting Clinton “would be very, very divisive for the country.”

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2016

North Carolina governor alleges voter fraud in bid to hang on

Republican Pat McCrory is trailing in a tight race, but his campaign is challenging votes.

North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed a 2013 voter-ID law which a federal court rolled back this year for illegally suppressing African-American votes, is now claiming that massive voter fraud in his state swung the 2016 election against him, as McCrory’s campaign continues to challenge Democrat Roy Cooper’s thin lead two weeks after Election Day.

The contentious, bitter race between McCrory and Cooper, the state attorney general, is the closest governor’s race in the country in a dozen years — and it’s not officially over. Cooper, the state attorney general, has extended his lead to 7,902 votes during an ongoing canvass of absentee and provisional ballots, his campaign says. (The State Board of Elections, which updates less frequently, shows Cooper leading by 6,703 votes.) And on Monday, Cooper announced a transition team to prepare to take the reins of state government despite McCrory’s intense push to dispute the results.

But McCrory still hasn’t conceded, alleging voter fraud in 50 of North Carolina’s 100 counties and contesting individual votes before dozens of local election boards, claiming that dead people, felons and people who voted in other states cast ballots in the race. On Sunday, the McCrory campaign emailed supporters, saying the “election is still in overtime,” and soliciting contributions for its legal fund.

North Carolina, carried by Donald Trump, was a key battleground state in the presidential race, and the incredibly tight gubernatorial election has drawn national attention thanks to McCrory’s outsized role in tightening North Carolina voting laws and signing the state’s “bathroom bill” earlier this year. With the governor on the wrong end of a very tight race, his supporters are crying foul.

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