Abuse of Power

The Trump administration attorneys said the lawsuit was premature since it’s impossible to know who will be affected by the exclusion order before the head count is finished and whether the Census Bureau will come up with a method for figuring out who is a citizen. But Gregory Diskant, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, Common Cause, said waiting to challenge the president’s memo until after the apportionment numbers are turned in would create even greater problems. 

President Trump further attempted to confuse voters and undermine the integrity of our elections tonight. Instead of encouraging people to participate in the political process, he continued to spread lies to try to delegitimize the election results. Voters should know the truth: voting by mail is a secure, tried, and tested process with checks, balances, and safeguards. 

Americans deserve an impartial Supreme Court that puts judicial integrity, the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law above partisan interests. But, unfortunately, President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have a different view of justice. The two are rushing to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — a champion for all Americans’ constitutional rights and liberties — in the middle of a national election and a pandemic that has led to the deaths of over 200,000 Americans, millions losing their jobs and many people struggling to make ends meet as a result of Trump and McConnell’s failure of leadership.

Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, an elections watchdog group, said she believes disruption of the voting process is unlikely, but she shared the concerns of others that the counting process could be at risk. “There are strong laws on voter intimidation,” said Albert. “Counting comes into regular laws around disturbing the police or being in a group; there’s nothing specific on that issue. That’s not to say laws don’t cover it, they do – various laws cover being a nuisance but how that’s interpreted in the situation is going to vary by location.” Albert stressed that she did not believe it was probable there would be altercations at vote-counting sites, but she said: “I’m fearful of violence in a way that I was not in 2000.” “We have seen that the rhetoric on the right, both from the president and Republican lawmakers, has encouraged people to take up arms. And whether directly or indirectly, encouraged violence. And that was not happening from George Bush.”

On Wednesday, Common Cause filed its reply brief in support of its motion for summary judgment in its challenge to President Trump’s memorandum requiring the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the congressional apportionment base following the 2020 Census. The brief, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Common Cause v. Trump, also urges the court to expedite proceedings so that a final judgment and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court can be completed before January  2021, when the President is scheduled to send apportionment numbers to Congress.  

"Over the past number of years, there's been significant evidence documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan report and numerous other places, including the 17 intelligence agencies, that Russia infiltrated our elections in the 2016 race and was continuing to do that throughout not only the 2018 elections, but also into the 2020 election," Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at the government watchdog group Common Cause, told Salon. "And so it's no surprise at all that this new evidence was revealed recently about their involvement in trying to hack the Biden campaign."