“Governor Overruled His Own Clemency Board to Release an Election Denier”

election subversion risk

NYT:

Months before Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado freed the felonious election denier Tina Peters from prison, his own clemency board voted unanimously — twice — to reject her bid for early release, according to two of the board’s members.

The first vote, taken under a cloak of secrecy, came in January, when the board reviewed Ms. Peters’s application during one of its meetings. At those gatherings, board members wrestle with some of the state’s toughest criminal cases, poring over handwritten pleas from convicted killers and others serving life sentences.

A month later, the board got an unusual request from the Democratic governor’s office, which was under enormous political pressure from President Trump to free Ms. Peters, two board members said — take a second look.

The clemency board obliged, but again, its vote was a unanimous no.

Colorado’s 11-person clemency advisory board, which is appointed by the governor, operates largely in secret. Its meetings are not open to the public, its members are told not to take notes, and they do not publicly discuss the clemency recommendations they make to the governor, who has the final say in issuing pardons and commutations.

But two Denver lawyers who serve on the board, Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, said they had decided to speak out now, pulling back the curtain on one of their most fateful cases, after Mr. Polis overruled the board’s recommendations in May and cut short Ms. Peters’s nine-year prison sentence.

“It really was a punch in the gut,” Ms. Proff said. “It flies in the face of justice.”

Ms. Peters, 70, a former county clerk in western Colorado, was convicted of tampering with voting machines under her control in a plot to show that the 2020 election had been rigged against Mr. Trump, a case that made her a martyr to the election-denial movement and a hero to the president, who spent months browbeating Mr. Polis to free her….

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“Republicans fear Trump is hurting their chances. He can’t understand why.” (Including on the Fate of the SAVE America Act, Etc.)

fraudulent fraud squad, legislation and legislatures

Politico:

President Donald Trump believes he handed Republicans a winning playbook for the midterms — if only they’d follow it.

Gerrymander everywhere possible, get rid of the filibuster, fire the Senate parliamentarian and pass the SAVE America Act.

None of it is likely to happen, and the gap between what is likely and what is possible explains Trump’s frustrations with many in Congress and the anger the White House channels at operatives and pundits who say the president isn’t doing enough to help retain control of Congress.

“If everyone just follows his lead, follows the blueprints he’s laid out, and runs on the record that he has, then I think we’ll fare well,” said a senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The divide reflects irreconcilable views of political power: Trump’s ends-justify-the-means approach is colliding with the protect-the-norms posture of Republicans on the Hill and in statehouses. Unlike Trump, rank-and-file Republicans are staring down years of electoral consequences and hedging their bets on institutions they will have to operate within long after he’s gone.

And, with five months until the midterms, the president and many in his party have been left talking past one another.

Nowhere is that disconnect more visible than in Trump’s repeated demands for the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act — by any means necessary.

On Monday, he wanted it attached to a must-pass national security bill, and on Wednesday he upped the stakes by blowing up the Senate’s plans to swiftly confirm his pick for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, until lawmakers did so. Last week, Trump demanded it be included in a third party-line bill that would deliver $350 billion to the Pentagon. Trump has repeatedly framed the election reforms — coupled with unrelated amendments to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports — as political winners, and the data generally backs him up….

Trump, who has never moved past his belief the 2020 election was stolen, despite no evidence to support that, insists Democrats cheat to win and the SAVE America Act is needed to counter their assault on democracy. He frequently “weaves” during press conferences to address the issue, seeing fraud all around.

Earlier this month, Trump took aim at California’s slow ballot-counting process to argue — again, without evidence — that Democrats were stealing the election.

“Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” he wrote on Truth Social, using a pejorative for Democrats. “I hope the Republicans are watching so that they can finally pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!”

The president is receiving encouragement from outside allies, including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who believe it’s worth pushing the legislation despite Senate intransigence.

But few believe the SAVE America Act has a chance, and Trump’s insistence on attaching it to everything just makes it harder to pass anything.

“My God, we were about to fast track the DNI director and now we’re in this holding pattern,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “At some point, we’ve got to return ourselves to being a board of directors versus like a manufacturing facility that just creates whatever product the White House wants. It’s not the way you can manage the Senate agenda over time.”

For many in the GOP, it’s the latest example of a president who just doesn’t get the difference between winning a primary and winning a general election.

“The president didn’t accept the results of the 2020 election. He still thinks he won. He wants to prevent what he calls cheating,” said one person close to the White House, a former administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The Senate’s kind of like, this isn’t the issue that’s going to keep us the Senate, or gain seats … This is a primary debate, this is not a general election conversation.”…

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“Shasta supervisors vote 4-0 not to defend county and Curtis in Measure B lawsuit”

Uncategorized

KRCR:

Shasta County supervisors voted 4-0 in closed session Tuesday, June 16, 2026 not to defend the county or Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis in a lawsuit filed by the state challenging Measure B, a voter-approved election reform measure that county officials say is likely unenforceable under state law.

Measure B passed in the June election by an unofficial margin of 56% to 44%.

If implemented, the measure would require elections to be conducted in person on a single day, require voters to present photo identification, mandate hand-counting of ballots at precincts, sharply limit absentee voting and require county voter rolls to be maintained on a computer system separate from the state’s election database.

Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber filed suit shortly after the election results were finalized, arguing that key provisions of the measure conflict with California election law.

Before the closed-session vote, dozens of residents addressed the Board of Supervisors, offering sharply divided views on whether the county should fight the lawsuit….

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“Why billionaires are finally waking up to California politics”

campaign finance, Plutocrats United

SF Chronicle:

For most of the past two decades, Google co-founder Sergey Brin kept his billions away from the ballot box.

He floated a bit of pocket change to a couple of causes, usually left-oriented: $1 million to a California clean energy group in 2006, $100,000 to oppose California’s gay marriage ban in 2008 and $36,000 to support President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. But after helping subsidize rideshare rides to polling centers in 2017, the donations stopped. It seemed that Brin had closed his pocketbook to politics.

So why, after decades of political aloofness, has the world’s third-wealthiest person dropped more than $85 million on California elections this year – instantly becoming one of the state’s biggest political donors of the past quarter-century?

The answer involves more plutocrats than just Brin. Out of the 30 donors who donated at least $1 million to state- or federal-level political causes in California this year, 21 gave more in 2026 than in any of the prior 25 years. That includes Tom Steyer, who spent nearly $190 million of his own money on his failed campaign for California governor, by far the most of any individual.

For some donors, this year was the first they made a major donation to influence California politics.

The deluge of money from billionaires and other elites into California elections is part of a national trend of mega-donors throwing their weight around, said Richard Hasen, a professor of political science at UCLA who studies campaign donations and lobbying.

As Steyer’s failed campaign illustrates, money doesn’t guarantee victory. But it can help.

“It’s kind of like a lottery,” Hasen said. “The more money you spend, the more likely it is you will have a chance to influence both who is elected to office as well as what people are going to do when they’re in office.”

Hasen said concerns about federal regulation – especially for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence or cryptocurrency – led much of Silicon Valley to back Donald Trump for president in 2024. Now that regulation is now largely up to the states, and newly awakened to the importance of political advocacy, tech leaders have focused their political weight further down the ballot.

Almost all of the money Brin donated this year went to Building a Better California, a political action committee formed in February. The New York Times reported in April that Brin has helped fundraise for the group, which has also received seven- or eight-figure donations from Silicon Valley venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.

On its website, Building a Better California describes itself as a nonpartisan group advocating for more housing, better education and good-paying jobs. But by far the bulk of its spending – roughly $100 million – has gone to support potential measures that would counteract a “billionaire tax” that a healthcare union is aiming to put on the November ballot. One counter-measure, for example, would ban new taxes on retirement savings – and investment accounts….

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