Elections

‘What they call strange and bizarre, we call democracy,’ says the Democrat who oversees the state’s elections.

SAN FRANCISCO — A growing chorus of Republicans are casting doubts about the integrity of the voting system in California, where the party lost at least 6 House seats in the midterm election — including a handful where the GOP at first appeared to have emerged victorious on Election Night.

A sentiment that began as a murmur among hardline conservatives jumped to the Republican mainstream Thursday when House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested that the state’s “bizarre” voting system “just defies logic to me,” and may have contributed to the GOP’s historic thumping in California.

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“We were only down 26 seats the night of the election and three weeks later, we lost basically every California race,’’ Ryan said Thursday. “This election system they have — I can’t begin to understand what ‘ballot harvesting’ is.”

In part due to mail-in and provisional ballots that delivered the margin of victory to Democratic challengers in a handful of seats, California’s Republican delegation appears to have been slashed in half — in the new Congress, Republicans are likely to hold just 7 of the state’s 53 House seats, the party’s lowest number since the 1940’s.

Ryan’s statements drew a sharp rebuke from California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who said Thursday that “it is bizarre that Paul Ryan cannot grasp basic voting rights protections.”

Padilla, a Democrat who oversees the elections process in a state with 19 million registered voters, told POLITICO that “our elections in California are structured so that every eligible citizen can easily register, and every registered voter can easily cast their ballot.”

That concept, he said, “[might be] strange for Speaker Ryan, who comes from Wisconsin,’’ but Padilla added, “I’m happy to walk him through the bottom line.”

Ryan’s comments about a state’s elections process put him in league with some prominent California Republicans who have recently expressed befuddlement — and anger — about the series of GOP incumbents whose defeats came after officials completed the tallies of millions of absentee and provisional ballots.

In an op-ed earlier this week, former state GOP chair Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee, stopped short of claiming outright fraud in the aftermath, but charged that California’s moves to expand vote by mail, “motor-voter” registrations, early voting and allowing voting for ex-felons have “systematically undermined” voter protection laws.

Steel cited Republican Young Kim’s loss to Democrat Gil Cisneros in a heated Orange County race to replace Republican Rep. Ed Royce, saying that Kim’s defeat was rooted in Democratic moves to “erode voter integrity” in California.

“How does a 14-point Republican lead disappear? Merciless and unsparing, California Democrats have systematically undermined California’s already-weak voter protection laws to guarantee permanent one-party rule,’’ Steel wrote in the column published Wednesday.

Other Republicans, including President Trump and conservative House candidates like former state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, have gone even further, suggesting — without providing evidence — widespread voter fraud that possibly involved “millions” of ballots cast illegally by undocumented immigrants.

The losing GOP incumbents include Reps. Mimi Walters, Steve Knight, Jeff Denham and Dana Rohrabacher. Democrats also flipped open seats held by retiring GOP Reps. Darrell Issa and Ed Royce.

On Wednesday, battered California Republicans appeared to have suffered another defeat — GOP Rep. David Valadao, who was originally declared the winner by AP. His Democratic opponent, TJ Cox, gradually pulled ahead in post-Election Day tallies after trailing by nearly 4,400 votes on Election Night, and formally declared victory.

An angry Padilla said complaints by Republicans about California’s voter outcome is “nothing but an excuse” for the party’s own failures at the ballot box.

“We’ve been hearing Trump for years now make claims of massive voter fraud and millions of illegal votes and it is simply not true. And just as Trump’s ego could not handle losing the national popular vote and losing so badly in California,’’ now it appears Ryan is trying to “drum up an excuse” for the losses, he said.

“It’s their own fault that they fear a large and diverse electorate,’’ he told POLITICO.

California Democrats charge GOP leaders are now desperately trying to undermine confidence in the election without any substantive evidence to back their claims.

“Good luck to them using that line of attack….they’re basically being extinguished in California, and they don’t get it,’’ says veteran Democratic consultant Garry South. “So to cast doubt on the results here, instead of doing some soul-searching about why California is basically shutting out Republicans in every office…the only place they have to look is in the mirror.”

Darry Sragow, the publisher of the California Target Book, a non-partisan election resource, agrees that “for them to suggest the system here is rigged is beyond outrageous.’’

Sragow, who teaches election law at the University of Southern California, says the complaints are especially ludicrous in light of recent elections in Florida and Georgia, where he said Republicans have sought “to deny the right to vote to people of color, to college students and the poor people.”

Voting experts like Sragow say Republican critics are refusing to accept the realities of a solidly-blue state that has made every effort to make voting easier and more accessible: including early voting, vote by mail — now the preferred means for nearly two-thirds of state voters — and allowing voters to register and vote provisionally up until the day of the election. The changes were manifested in 2018 as millions of younger voters cast ballots for the first time — the overwhelming number of them Democratic, South noted.

But Steel, in his op-ed, charged that Democrats have put their thumb on the electoral scale with efforts that include so-called “ballot harvesting” — now legal after the passage of Assembly Bill 1921, which he said “now allows anyone,” including campaign operatives, to collect and return an absentee ballot.

Strategist Rob Stutzman, a Republican moderate, says that while charges of widespread fraud are completely “absurd,’’ there may be some real issues that merit a closer look at “ballot harvesting” practices.

Stutzman said some Democratic groups apparently became very efficient in get out the vote efforts that included collecting mail ballots en masse, and making sure they got to the local registrar.

And while concerns about those groups are not about fraud, he said, there may be legitimate questions raised “about people honestly and genuinely voting their own ballot,’’ and about whether the new efforts may open the door for outside influences — whether money or “a pack of cigarettes” — to influence someone’s vote. He said that “it would be nice to have some explanation on whether these operations were bounty-oriented because that creates a huge incentive for trouble.”

Padilla told POLITICO this latest criticism from Republicans appears “an attempt to smear the pro-voter policies that we have” in California, including newer efforts that he said were designed to “empower voters to decide for themselves who they feel most comfortable with” in returning their ballot — especially if they are older or handicapped and need assistance in doing so.

“What they call strange and bizarre,” he said, “we call democracy.’’

Congress

Democrats say Trump’s former attorney could be their star witness.

Michael Cohen was once President Donald Trump’s most militant loyalist. Now House Democrats are eyeing him to become their star witness.

Democrats think Cohen could be a linchpin in their upcoming efforts to spotlight Trump’s relationship with Russia and are hoping to call him to testify before the House once they seize control of Congress.

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They’re well aware of Cohen’s close connection to the president — and that he’s turned on Trump, making him a potential ally in their quest to uncover and highlight Trump’s alleged dirty laundry.

Even Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) has joined his Democratic vice chairman, Sen. Mark Warner, in suggesting Cohen should come back before Congress — particularly after the former Trump lawyer pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to lawmakers about Trump’s awareness of the proposed Trump Tower Moscow deal in the heat of the presidential election.

But Cohen was also at the center of the hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels and could prove to be a critical witness to House Democrats in all sorts of inquiries, Democrats say.

“He’s been at the nexus of so many different issues for so long, and given that Mr. Cohen was the president’s confidant and attorney, he knows a lot and he can shed a lot of light,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, who called Cohen “the perfect witness.” “I think that it will be good to hear him out and figure out what he knows.”

A Cohen redux at the Capitol would be a spectacle that could rival the Watergate hearings. The image of Trump’s longtime personal attorney and political fixer describing crimes connected to the president would be an all-consuming Washington event and a chance for the Democratic House majority to flex its newfound investigative powers.

He’s at the top of the list of a slew of Trump aides and associates that Democrats intend to haul before congressional committees for investigations they accuse Republicans of neglecting to pursue.

“The noose is closing around the president,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee who wants to hear from Cohen so long as it doesn’t impinge on Mueller’s investigation. “Our job on Judiciary is to get everybody in front of the committee and subpoena people if we have to.”

Cohen’s legal team declined to say whether he’d commit to additional congressional testimony. Democrats are wary of interfering with special counsel Robert Mueller, who secured Cohen’s guilty plea as part of an ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

But House Democrats also say they intend to revisit lingering mysteries about Trump’s relationship with Russia — and they also want more witnesses to testify in public to help give the American people a window on what has been a largely opaque probe.

Thursday’s guilty plea is Cohen’s most recent. He pleaded guilty in August to tax evasion and a campaign finance violation connected to the hush-money payment to Daniels, who has claimed an affair with Trump, a case that could also ensnare the president.

In Thursday’s plea, Cohen admitted to lying to Congress when he testified in late 2017 to the House and Senate intelligence committees that his efforts to arrange a Trump Tower Moscow deal ended in January 2016, before the presidential primaries. He also claimed Trump had little involvement and that the Kremlin never responded to his entreaties.

But Cohen now says talks continued into June 2016 — shortly after the presidential primaries ended — and that he briefed Trump and the president’s family on his progress. He also acknowledged corresponding with Kremlin officials about the project, which ultimately fell apart as Trump neared the GOP nomination.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Democrats will seek Cohen’s cooperation in an investigation into whether “the Russians sought financial leverage of Trump and his associates, or hold any such leverage today.” Schiff is expected to chair the House Intelligence Committee in January when Democrats take control of the House.

It’s uncertain whether Cohen’s potential testimony would be delivered publicly. But Democrats say they’re intent on conducting more investigative work in public to give Americans a clearer window into the lingering mysteries of Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.

Demand for Cohen’s testimony might not be limited to the House and Senate intelligence committees. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who is expected to become House Judiciary Committee chairman in January, issued a blistering statement noting that Cohen’s guilty plea came with a vow to cooperate with investigators.

“Anyone who still believes that this is a ‘witch hunt’ must now face the reality that the investigation appears to be closing in on the President,” Nadler said.

Cohen’s latest legal drama also underscores another rising priority for Democrats: the truthfulness of congressional witnesses. Schiff said Cohen’s plea highlights his ongoing concerns that several members of Trump’s orbit attempted to mislead the House Intelligence Committee.

“We want those transcripts reviewed by special counsel,” Schiff said in an interview. “Other witnesses … that would be brought before our committee would understand that their testimony would be scrutinized and if they perjure themselves there’s a great likelihood they’ll be prosecuted for it.”

A Democratic aide to the House Intelligence Committee noted that the panels’ Republicans have for months blocked the Democrats’ efforts to share witness interview transcripts with Mueller. They reversed course just weeks before the November elections and the transcripts are now being vetted by the intelligence community for public release.

Schiff says that if they’re not out before Democrats take the House in January, he’ll make sure they’re shared with Mueller as one of his first acts as chairman.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, however, has already sent some of its interview materials to the special counsel — the Senate has voted twice to allow the committee to share records with Mueller. And two individuals who met with Mueller’s team said it appeared the special counsel had some familiarity with their congressional testimony, if not an entire transcript of what they told House and Senate intelligence committees.

“I’m quite certain the Mueller investigation had my [congressional] testimony when I was with them, but I’m not all that concerned about it,” said ex-Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo, who appeared before both panels and later met with federal investigators.

Caputo claimed the special counsel has deliberately made it difficult for Trump associates to avoid discrepancies between what they tell Mueller and their congressional testimony because “the investigation is caught up on people remembering chapter and verse of every email, call and text they’ve ever sent.”

Attorneys for other witnesses in Mueller’s probe emphasized that false statements to Congress are rarely prosecuted — and convictions are even rarer because it’s difficult to prove that a witness intentionally lied. Though Cohen used the offense as part of a plea deal, it’s unlikely, the attorneys say,to result in a raft of future prosecutions for other Trump aides that Democrats say misled the committee.

Some House Democrats argue that Cohen could aid them in their hunt for critical documents — particularly because they expect the White House to refuse to cooperate with at least some congressional subpoenas.

Democrats believe Trump and the White House will stonewall their document requests, so they’ll likely be looking for other venues to get their hands on emails or other missives that include evidence about Russia or the Daniels payment. That could include Cohen, they say.

“Cohen knows where the documents and evidence are to actually back up his statements or to refute something that the president says, so that’s all the more reason that he should be brought in at some point,” Krishnamoorthi said.