On today’s BradCast: Just days from Alabama’s mid-term primaries next week — in which Sec. of State John Merrill (R) will be on the ballot himself — we share a wild, and often inexplicable, string of bizarre emails sent sent to me over the past week by the state’s chief election official. [Audio link to show follows below.]
The weird story begins late last year, with the contentious and closely watched December U.S. Senate special election in Alabama between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. On election night, following the state’s computer-tallied results reported a narrow victory for Jones, Merrill inaccurately stated on CNN that “any candidate can ask for a recount and if they pay for it, they can receive a recount.”
After UC Irvine’s highly-regarded election law expert, Rick Hasen, noted on Twitter that Merrill appeared to be in error, that AL’s state election code appeared to allow only candidates in NON-federal races to request and pay for a recount if the margin was larger than 0.5%, Merrill blocked him, rather than correct his own error or cite a different section of the state law to support his assertions. That pattern would be repeated as Merrill blocked other election law experts on Twitter.
Days later, the Secretary of State injected himself into a Twitter exchange I was having with others, to insist, repeatedly and inaccurately that Alabama’s computerized paper ballot scanners “do not capture or preserve digital ballot images.” In fact, they do, as made clear during a successful state court action just before the election. (My interview at the time with one of the organizers of the lawsuit is here). Merrill, however, was able to have the ruling stayed by the AL Supreme Court the night before the election. (My election day interview, with one of the plaintiff attorneys is here.)
Rather than cite evidence during the, extremely bizarre Twitter conversation [PDF], Merrill ended up blocking me there as well.
All of which brings us to last week, when a federal court in New York determined that public officials — in that case, the President of the United States — was in violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment for blocking perceived “political opponents” on Twitter. (My interview with one of the plaintiffs in that case is here.)
Before we covered the ruling on a BradCast last week with University of Kentucky College of Law constitutional expert Joshua A. Douglas, who had also been blocked by Merrill (my interview with him on that earlier last year is here), I sought comment from the Secretary as to whether he intended to restore those he’d blocked, given the federal court ruling.
The subsequent string of bizarre emails [PDF] and phone calls I then received from the state’s top election official is remarkable, and we share those on today’s show, in the interest of Alabama voters who head to the polls next week.
In addition to steadfastly refusing to unblock the election law experts and journalists he’s blocked on Twitter, Merrill unleashes a number of unhinged and often inexplicable rants in response to polite queries about both the Twitter blocks and whether Merrill has asked county election officials to set their vote tabulation computers to preserve scanned ballot images in the upcoming primary, in order to make public oversight of results somewhat easier.
At several points, Merrill’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director John Bennett attempted to intercede via both email and phone. As I explain on the show today, the call from Bennett was very pleasant and he seemed to me, in truth, somewhat embarrassed by his boss’ behavior. But he promised to get back to me after looking into both the Twitter ruling and the issue of Alabama’s ES&S computer tabulation systems capturing digital ballot images. A note he sent shortly thereafter confirmed that they do. (See the PDF linked above for details.)
But, then Merrill blew things up again, with another string of emailed rants. Among the odd attacks from the emails in which the first term Sec. of State describes himself as “a nationally recognized expert in the field of elections”, Merrill charges that I have a “problem…bigger than one that I have the ability to solve” (but refuses to specify what that “problem” might be), that I live with my mother (I don’t), “has absolutely no idea what [I’m] talking about” (despite some 15 years of covering elections and voting systems as a journalist), and should try to “get a job with an elections program system” so I can “contribute to the discussion as an expert in the field”. That’s just a taste.
As noted today, I didn’t even want to cover this at all, in truth, because it’s largely just embarrassing for Merrill. But when I realized he was actually on the ballot next week, it seemed this was information that voters in Alabama deserved to know before making their decision. For the record, Merrill is being challenged in the Republican primary by Michael Johnson. On the Democratic side, two candidates, Heather Milam and Lula Albert-Kaigler. (She ran unsuccessfully against Merrill in 2014, though I can’t find an official campaign website for her now.)
Also today: A new book by a longtime senior adviser to President Obama reportedly reveals that he feared sanctions against Russia before the 2016 election might have resulted in hacked computer tabulation systems (despite public assertions by the Administration before and after that Presidential results could not be easily manipulated by foreign attack), and election officials in a number of states are now reportedly very concerned about hacking — or the perception that results were tampered with — in advance of the crucial 2018 midterm elections (just as we’ve been warning, non-stop, for more than a decade.)
Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as climate change wreaks havoc with a number of deadly storms over the Memorial Day weekend…
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Brad I worked in Mississippi for 3 years in the 1980’s. The people who are native there do not like outsiders ever any suggesting how to do things. They know they live in a backwater state so they are always on the offensive to outsiders. So he appears to me to be acting almost normally for a white man there. There are a few progressives around, but most are really tight assed uptight conservatives. Don’t take it personally I’m sure he treats everyone else the same for those in his Southern Babtist Church. If he thought you were black it would have been worse. Keep up the heat!
Brad,
The communications you provide to and from the Alabama SECSTATE, along with Trump’s failure (to date) to unblock Twitter users, leads me to hope that someone with sufficient standing petitions the Federal court who ruled on Trump’s use of Twitter blocks for the following orders:
Order Twitter to:
1) Immediately disable to ability to “block” anyone from the accounts @POTUS and @Real_Donald_Trump.
2) Remove any existing blocks from those same 2 accounts.
3) Apply the above measures to any and all “official” accounts maintained by governmental agencies or office holders at all levels.
4) Develop a mechanism whereby any member of the public can report the apparent use of non-official, personal accounts of agency employees or officials (appointed or elected) for governmental purposes.
5) Develop publicly disclosed criteria for evaluation of the reports generated by #4 (above)
6) Work with the court to enable the court to quickly order the actions of #1 and #2 (above) to be applied to the accounts evaluated to likely be “public forums” by #5 (above).
I’d like to see you ask NASS.org for commentary on the behavior of Merrill. If he is a member of NASS.org and took their oath, then he is violating the oath, IMHO.
Allin,
I just searched the nass.org site for “oath”. I could find no nass.org specific oath, only a reference that most “members” are required to take a state oath, usually to faithfully execute their office.
Note to Steven Dorst: a number of links have been pulled from the NASS.org site; I did find a link to the Constitution of NASS.org via google search – but it’s no longer directly accessible at the site (but is on the internet)
https://www.nass.org/about-nass/constitution
Also, I know I had read about an oath being taken to become a member, however that is no longer posted as well. Makes a person wonder…
As far as I’m concerned, every single SOS is violating Article III of the Constitution of NASS.org since they are all approving of computerized voting & tabulation:
ARTICLE III – STATEMENT OF ETHICS
The role of Secretary of State is a noble calling, and carries a high ethical mandate and a conscientious duty to our democracy. Accordingly, Association members commit to the following:
Adhering to the highest standards of excellence that will nurture and maintain the public trust;
Placing loyalty to state and federal constitutions, the law, and ethical principles above private or political gain; and
For those Secretaries of State who serve as their state’s chief elections official, practicing fair and unbiased election administration that recognizes each eligible citizen’s right to cast his or her vote, and for that vote to be counted with the highest regard to constitutional foundations.
The Russian “compromat” party candidates will do well in Alabama it would seem (Eposodes of Voting Machine Target Practice).
I think it important to note that Merrill obtained an AL Supreme Court order vacating the trial court’s order directing the retention of ballot images via an ex parte application without notice or opportunity for his opposition to be heard–a violation of the fundamental right to due process of law.
So, Merrill thinks Des is your mother. Who knew?
OK. I read the nass.org Constitution.
One question occurs to me: How are we to know whether ANY of the listed members were aware of that Constitution when they joined? And that their “joining” wasn’t just that they signed an application, filled out by an aide in response to their receiving a “Welcome to the NASS” packet “To confirm your membership, please complete, sign, and return the enclosed form.”?
To quote Abigail Bartlett: “It’s a form. It was presented to me and I signed it. That’s what you do with forms.”
Without knowing far more about the joining process, I can’t fault any SOS for violating this Constitution.
And just for the record, I can find fault with the Alabama SOS for many other things.
NASS.org is an active organization which holds several conferences a year where SOS’s are wined and dined by corporate affiliates –Facebook has a Platinum membership; the big voting machine vendors are members, as are mega-data mining firms. Their Constitution overlaps with the job description of a SOS – and I believe SOS’s are sworn into their state offices. It is high time that NASS.org and its members be held accountable for the devastation of transparency in the voting process. They should be called upon by the media to comment on actions taken by their members that do not uphold their Constitution (and/or job description) — where do they stand with Kobach’s Voter Fraud Commission? Cross Check? Hacking of voting machines?
When you can’t argue your claims, the best thing to do is lose your temper. This guy is a fraud who doesn’t want to talk to one of the leading experts on US elections for obvious reasons.
I’m a little slow on this, but I hope you’ll forgive that. I was confused when I heard you saying you couldn’t see Secretary Merrill’s tweets because he blocked you. If you aren’t logged in, you can. That doesn’t solve the problem of responding to him, of course, but it does allow you to see what he posts.