An Election Round Up (10.17.24)

Critical legal rulings and appearances by the candidates made headlines as the clock ticks down to Election Day.

Photos by Getty Images

Today I’m covering four election developments.

First: two legal rulings. 

In Georgia, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who was appointed by a Republican governor in 2012, struck down several rules that had been adopted by the state elections board. He also clarified the ministerial, non-discretionary role of county election officials in the certification process. A second ruling from state court Judge Thomas A. Cox, Jr. dropped yesterday evening at the end of court business, striking down four of the same rules.

In Nebraska, the state supreme court affirmed the right to vote for felons who’ve completed their sentences, affecting some 100,000 people. A 2005 law restoring those rights had been declared unconstitutional by the state’s GOP attorney general and secretary of state. For reasons I’ll discuss below, this decision could have big national consequences.

Second, dueling appearances by the presidential candidates. Kamala Harris walked into a lion’s den and sat for an interview with Bret Baier of Fox. Baier treated the session more like a second debate, talking over Harris and badgering her with GOP talking points. But Harris held her own, taking command of the session and scoring high marks, even from Fox.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump went before a hand-picked audience of women on Fox, where he still managed to ramble incoherently and threaten his political opponents. Then he spoke with undecided Latino voters at Univision, where he called January 6 a “love fest” and maligned all migrants as criminals.

Let’s explore each of these developments a bit more in depth.

The Georgia rulings

For many months, democracy advocates had one eye on the MAGA-leaning State Election Board of Georgia, which had gained prominence after Trump singled some of its members out for praise and thanks during a rally he’d held in the state. As I wrote in an earlier piece in The Big Picture, proponents of the Big Lie about a stolen 2020 presidential election 

were now in charge of the Georgia State Election Board and had begun passing new “rules,” in excess of their authority and in contravention of state law, that could cause chaos and delay, thwarting the timely certification of that state’s vote.

The recent rules passed by the MAGA majority on the Board included a “hand count” requirement, a “reasonable inquiry” requirement and an “examination” rule for documents. They also threw in a new “Drop Box” rule requiring photo ID,  a video “Surveillance Rule” for drop boxes, a “Poll Watcher” rule for where observers would be positioned, and a “Daily Reporting Rule” adding further requirements to daily absentee reports.

While the rules were troubling, many appeared to be clearly outside of the Board’s authority and past the 90-day deadline to make changes to election procedures. I wanted to assure readers that

the shenanigans of the Georgia State Election Board will not prevail once legal challenges are heard and adjudicated. This is based on a long line of authority that the state Supreme Court is very likely to uphold—and, I should add, that the U.S. Supreme Court shouldn’t and very likely won’t have any say over. Everything that these MAGA-aligned officials are attempting is likely headed to failure in the courts, and none of the measures they have put in place is likely to disrupt or delay certification of Georgia’s election and the awarding of its Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular election in the state.

That’s why Judge McBurney’s and Judge Cox’s rulings came as no surprise, even though they were very welcome given that early voting is already underway in Georgia.

The basic reasoning for the rulings are that the Board exceeded its authority; the rules ran contrary to Election Code; the rules violated the federal elections language of the U.S. Constitution; and the rules were untimely and would cause significant confusion and delay; and the certification of results by officials is mandatory, not discretionary. You can read the two opinions here and here.

With two respected judges weighing in on the illegality of the rules, and the law being so clear on these points, it seems unlikely that the Board will prevail should it appeal either or both rulings. This development throws a significant wrench into MAGA plans to encourage county-level elections officials in the state to upend or delay the certification of results. Should they attempt to do so under cover of the Board’s rules (which were struck down), they will be in clear violation of these decisions and could be compelled through something called a writ of mandamus to certify the results no matter what.

The Nebraska ruling

In a sweeping, 90-page opinion, with opinions from each of the seven justices, the Nebraska Supreme Court kneecapped efforts by the Republican Secretary of State and state Attorney General to prevent those with felony convictions from voting in the state. The Court ordered immediate compliance with state law that expressly allows such citizens to vote.

A bit of background. Historically, people convicted of felonies in Nebraska had their right to vote restored two years after completing their sentencing. Earlier this year, the legislature actually eliminated the two-year waiting period, a great move for democracy. But the state’s Attorney General, Mike Hilgers, and its Secretary of State, Robert Evnen, didn’t like the new law at all. Hilgers argued that only the state’s board of pardons could restore voting rights, while Evnen actually ordered local registrars to prevent all those with prior felony convictions from voting, claiming the laws that had enfranchised them were unconstitutional.

That’s a lot of people. While the ACLU lawsuit concerned 7,000 people directly affected by the elimination of the waiting period, the move by Evnan actually threatened the right of some 100,000 people in the state from voting. Imagine having completed your felony sentencing decades ago, only to be turned away from a polling station by the actions of a county registrar.

The ruling now makes clear that the laws were in fact constitutional, and that all felons who have completed their sentencing have a right to vote in Nebraska. The deadline to register is fast approaching—online by October 18th and in person by October 25th—so activists are busy assisting affected voters with their registrations.

It bears noting that Nebraska is pivotal to the national election in two important ways. The Harris Campaign needs NE-2’s single electoral vote to cross the 270 threshold, should Harris prevail in the Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Further, the state’s Senate race, where independent Dan Osborn is neck-and-neck in the polls with incumbent Sen. Deb Fischer, could determine control of the upper chamber of Congress.

Here’s a fun tidbit from the opinion. As civil rights lawyer Matthew Segal pointed out,

Justice Miller-Lerman, in explaining why the state AG couldn't simply instruct officials to disregard a law restoring voting rights to people with felony convictions, appears to make a Simpsons reference:

The Fox Network Harris Interview 

The media has rather unfairly criticized Harris for not doing enough interviews, despite her recent appearances on 60 Minutes (which Trump dropped out of), The View, the popular Call Her Daddy podcast, Howard Stern, and yesterday with radio personality Charlamagne tha God. But to settle the matter once and for all, Harris accepted an invitation to appear in enemy territory on the Fox Network, in a sit down interview with anchor Bret Baier.

As a Harris supporter, I had my concerns about this, one shared by many. We did not believe for a moment that Baier, who shamelessly bats for Trump, would treat Harris fairly or respectfully. And on this score we were correct.

Throughout the interview, Baier was belligerent, armed with right-wing talking points and gotchas, and ready to interrupt and talk over Harris. It felt like a set-up, with Baier playing the role of a second debater because Trump had declined to do so.

As reporter Aaron Rupar noted as he real-time commented on the session, “Baier’s first question to Kamala Harris presses her on undocumented immigration. Baier barely lets her get a word in.” 

It quickly became apparent that Baier felt he had more to prove than Harris during the interview. But Harris held her own, and at several points she had to ask him to stop talking over her and interrupting. Baier had to back down when she demanded that she get to finish her response. “Yes, Ma’am,” Baier murmured, tail between his legs.

Baier tried to bait Harris for supporting gender affirming surgery for prisoners, but she shut him down, saying that she would “follow the law,” which requires inmates get medically necessary care. She also pointed out that Trump spent $20 million on anti-trans ads in order to “create fear.” Other politicians faced with this same attack should follow her example.

Baier also tried to suggest that she believed the American people were “stupid” for following Trump, and she also shot that down quickly and masterfully. “Oh God, I would never say that about the American people!” Harris said, looking at Baier with appropriate indignation. She noted that, if you watch any of Trump’s rallies, “he’s the one who tends to demean and belittle.”

At one point, Baier tried to pull a fast one by playing a clip from an interview with Trump in which he made no mention of the “enemy within,” a phrase Harris had singled out as unacceptable. But Harris had done her homework and called out Baier for playing the wrong clip, even from that very same day. That showed high level of mastery of the unfolding facts. Anderson Cooper of CNN zeroed in on this moment and explained to listeners that Baier did not actually show the correct clip, that it was an “interesting choice” Baier had made, and that Harris was correct.

Harris scored high marks from others in the media, from political strategists, and from Fox itself, while Baier received a lot of criticism over his tone and demeanor. 

Symone Sanders-Townsend of MSNBC's The Weekend tweeted,

I have sat in the room for a number of interviews with VP Harris and they have been tough. I’ve never witnessed what I witnessed tonight though. The interviewer wasn’t themselves - instead he was rude, misleading and pulled questions straight out of a proverbial Trump/Vance press release.

The best part is, VP’s response was simply to match his energy, stick to her why of the interview and not take the bait. <— this is what a President would do

Former campaign manager and Democratic consultant David Doak noted that the very fact Harris did this interview at all was great for voters to see:

Often times in politics the message sent has nothing to do with the questions asked.  Like Nixon looking [s]weaty and nervous, JFK cool and calm, Dukakis answer to death penalty for someone who [raped] his wife.....here the FOX interview showed a woman so confident she would go into the lion’s den, so tough and ready to be President that she could take the heat. The non verbal message was she is ready to be President, fearless, and tough.

Ron Filipkowski of The Meidas Network astutely observed,

There is not a single interviewer at Fox who has ever interviewed Trump the way that they just interviewed Harris. They wouldn’t dare. And if they dared, he would rage at them for months and tell everyone not to watch it. But Harris did great and showed them for who they are. 

Peter Wehner, who writes for the New York Times and the Atlantic, was unsparing on Baier while praising Harris.

My take: Bret Baier has rarely looked as bad (or tendentious) as he did in his interview with Kamala Harris. On the flip side, this was one of her best interviews. She dominated Bret. All in all it was quite a bad day for MAGA world’s most important media outlet.

Baier himself admitted that Harris scored points during the interview. Speaking about the interview later, he said, 

“I think she had a mission that she wanted to do. And maybe she wanted to have a viral moment, she wanted to have a pushback. She came to Fox News and she wanted to have a ‘go after Donald Trump’ viral moment that plays on a lot of other channels and on social media. And I think she may have gotten that.”

Mark Cuban, who once supported Trump, has been stumping hard recently for Harris to convince the business community of Harris’s leadership qualities. As he summarized, drawing a sharp contrast to Trump,

When Bret went hard after her[, she] didn’t call him names. She didn’t quit the interview. She didn’t make things up. She never once complained the questions were tough. She never played the victim card. She didn’t lose her temper. She didn’t take the bait to diminish or talk down to Trump supporters.  

She stood up to him with force and never backed down. 

Trump pads a Fox appearance, then blows it with undecided Latino voters

When it was announced that Trump would appear in Georgia before an audience of women voters on the Fox Network, it was already evident that this would be a friendly crowd, even though women tend to support Harris by a sizable margin. 

As The Independent reported, “many in attendance didn’t need their minds swayed as they were already part devoted fans.” Matt Gertz of Media Matters reported that the very first question came from someone who appeared to be Lisa Cauley, the president of the Fulton County Republican Women.

This serves as a reminder that the Fox Network is simply the propaganda arm of the GOP, and not news by any stretch. It acts more like Russian state-owned television with its fake audiences and planted questions.

Trump still managed to create news by doubling down on the idea that the true enemies of the U.S. are “the enemy within”—including soon to be California senator Adam Schiff and “The Pelosis.” Trump believes the White House should be able to use the military to go after such people. It’s no wonder the former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley called him “fascist to the core.”

Trump didn’t fare so well before a less friendly audience of Latino voters who still consider themselves undecided in the election. The Spanish-language Q&A was conducted by Univision, and some of the questions were better than any member of the media have ever asked Trump directly.

For example, a farmer asked Trump who will do the hard jobs if he deports undocumented immigrants. It’s a reality that Florida recently had to learn the hard way as it drove migrants out of the state, leading many growers and construction sites without an adequate number of hands to complete their harvests or their projects. But Trump had no response at all to this, instead veering off into his usual false diatribe against migrants as being criminals of the worst kind.

You can watch the excellent question and hear Trump’s full non-answer here.

One audience member asked Trump if he really believed that Haitian migrants in Springfield were eating the pets of the local residents. Rather than apologize for getting his facts wrong and spreading dangerous misinformation, Trump claimed that this is what was “reported” and “All I do is report.” 

Another voter, who was formerly registered as a Republican, gave Trump the opportunity to win back his vote. As White House adviser Neera Tanden noted, this was akin to a “Joe the Plumber” moment which the Harris campaign should jump on. 

The voter was Ramiro González. He said that Trump’s inaction, during the January 6 riot, was a little disturbing to him, and he felt Trump had misled the public during Covid. He asked why he should support Trump when so many in his own administration didn’t.

Trump responded by saying that 97 percent of the people in his administration support him, which is probably news to the half of his former cabinet officials who do not support his reelection. He said that besides Ashli Babbitt, “nobody was killed” and “there were no guns” present at the attack at the Capitol (both statements are untrue) and that it was a “day of love” from the standpoint of his supporters.

These statements garnered incredulous reactions from González and other members of the audience. You can watch the question, given in English, and Trump’s response here. Notice also that Trump uses the word “we” when talking about the MAGA crowd that attacked the building—a fact of which Special Counsel Jack Smith might take note.

Undecided Latino voters are a critical piece of the puzzle for both campaigns, particularly in the Southwestern battlegrounds of Nevada and Arizona. This group has been hit very hard by inflation and remains soft in the polling for Democrats. In these final weeks of the election, how those voters decide could swing these states to either camp. 

On Wednesday, Trump did little to convince this critical voting bloc that they should put their trust in him again as president.