In 2020 the most important task for Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill is to assure there is good election in Alabama, and there is not election chaos in Alabama on November 3rd and during the days following.
A main possible contributor to election chaos in Alabama are voting lawsuits that are unresolved on, or that are commenced after, November 3rd.
If there is election chaos in Alabama, immense heat will be turned on Secretary of State Merrill.
Secretary of State Merrill knows of the heat that can get turned on him. For his own good, he has presumably been thinking a lot about being sure the things he has been doing along the way in the run up to November 3rd will ultimately be judged "right," and will not be judged "wrong" as results in much political and professional damage getting inflicted on himself.
What weighs on John MerrillJohn Merrill is relatively insulated in Alabama, but he could still wind up in a cauldron if a lot of violence breaks out around the country on November 4th and days following.
Violence seems more likely if the election is close, a winner is not quickly determined, and there are aggressive charges that the election was flawed.
Blame will be cast on Secretaries of State for election problems. If Trump is blamed for election problems because of the doubts he has sowed regarding the election, Secretaries of State will be called on to defend that they acted as best they could to counter the doubts Trump sowed regarding the election.
If there is violence, voter suppression and reaction to voter suppression may be cited as a cause of violence. Secretaries of State will drawn in to defend themselves that they cannot be criticized for engaging in voter suppression.
Further, if there is violence, Secretaries of State will be called on to defend their decisions relative to accommodations to Covid.
November 6, 2020
Trump is claiming fraud in the election and trying to rile his allies and supporters to ratchet up Trump's claim of election fraud to the maximum extent possible. Trump supporters carrying weapons have protested vote counting facilities and may try to breach the facilities and attack vote counters.
John Merrill's job has been to make sure the Alabama elections were conducted fairly and honestly and to defend the integrity of Alabama elections now that they are over.
John Merrill is a member of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Other Secretaries of State have the same responsibilities for their State's elections as John Merrill has for Alabama elections.
Their National Association should be promotive of the member Secretaries of State collectively fulfilling their responsibilities, and the member Secretaries of State should be supportive of one another fulfilling their responsibilities.
This should be manifested by the National Association endeavoring to vouch for all their Secretaries of State fulfilling their election responsibilities.
Alabamians can legitimately want to know what John Merrill's involvement has been with the National Association of Secretaries of State and how he has worked with the National Association to promote collective confidence in the integrity of all State's elections.
For now, John Merrill is making utterances that are undermining the engendering of a collective confidence in all State's elections and that may contribute to Trump protesters resorting to violence against the election process.
First, see the utterance indicated in below tweets.
Further John Merrill has issued a press release today, which says in part:
Days after one of the most significant elections in our nation’s history, America is still waiting anxiously and earnestly on several states to conclude the processing of ballots.
While claims of ‘fraudulent voting’ are running rampant in the media and by campaigns, the public’s confidence in American elections is quickly diminishing.
America deserves election results in a timely, secure, and efficient manner.
The press release then levels a criticism of other Secretaries of State as follows:
However, many of the states we are currently waiting on to report results have inconsistent election laws that vary county by county or parish by parish. Many of the changes we witnessed in election administration during this time came without legislative approval or the guidance of other state officers, which have in-turn resulted in lengthy wait times and the inconsistent reporting of results.
Claims of "fraudulent voting" are running "rampant" because of Trump.
John Merrill should request his National Association to issue a pronouncement that either vouches for the integrity of all State's elections (and condemns Trump for his election fraud claims) or confess that there has been a failure by the National Association to address election integrity failure by individual Secretaries of State.
(See also https://al6thcongdist-ihaveuntiljan13.blogspot.com/2020/08/silent-majority-election-manifesto.html.)
December 13, 2020Shame on John Merrill
2/18/21The below information is copied and pasted from
https://yellowhammernews.com/7-things-severe-weather-continues-impacting-alabama-rush-limbaugh-passes-away-merrill-wants-to-restore-the-integrity-of-the-election-and-more/ 4. Merrill to help restore faith in elections
- A new commission that will work in partnership with the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) aims to restore “the American people’s confidence in the integrity of their free and fair elections.” Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill will be the co-chair of the commission.
- The commission will work to determine the best practices in running elections and advise state officials. Merrill said that “every state in the nation should be working to assess and improve their respective election laws.” He added that they’re going to identify the best methods for elections “and make sure those are available for legislative bodies in the 50 states to consider as options.”
3/6/21 Existential political war over voting access
The 2020 election is over; the votes have been counted; Trump went to extreme lengths to get the election results overturned in the courts, by pressuring state legislatures to select electors contrary to the vote results in the state, and by pressuring Secretaries of State to change the vote counts in their state.
Throughout the time after November 6th Trump, using the biggest megaphone on Earth, proclaimed that there was widespread voter fraud, the election was rigged, and he was the winner of the election. Trump called on his supporters to come to Washington DC for a "wild" day on January 6th when Congress would meet to approve the electoral college's results. On January 6th he held a Save America Rally and told his supporters in attendance to march on the Capitol. They did so, and they violently assaulted the Capitol with the intent of killing Pence, Pelosi and other members of Congress. The insurrection was stopped before the worst possible things happened.
After January 6th Trump has continued to tell his supporters that there was widespread voter fraud, and the election was rigged and stolen from him. Millions of Trump's followers believe that there was widespread voter fraud and the election was stolen.
In the House of Representatives, the Republicans gained seats and the Democratic majority has been reduced to 222 to 211 (with two additional seats not in that count). The Senate is evenly divided 50 to 50, and Vice President Harris can break a tie vote, so the Democrats are considered the majority in the Senate.
To avoid losing more elections and losing more power, the Republicans are undertaking nationwide efforts to make it harder for Democrats to vote in the 2022 and 2024 elections. The main justification the Republicans are advancing for making it harder to vote is that there is an unacceptable level of voter fraud if the procedures that make it harder to vote are not in place.
This situation creates an existential political war between Republicans and Democrats over voting access, with Republicans exerting themselves mightily to get laws passed making it harder to vote, and Democrats resisting to the utmost. This political war is existential because the winner will potentially be in a stronger position of power that the loser may have great difficulty to reverse for many years to come, if ever.
In this situation, it is reasonable to predict that, for the next 2 years, our nation's politics and governance will be consumed by the existential political war between Republicans and Democrats over voting access. The nation's governance will be adversely affected because the two sides need to show a unified strength against the other side, and there will be immense pressure on individual Senators and Representatives to stay with their side in casting votes in Congress.
Relations between the two sides are becoming toxic because the Republicans are saying to the Democrats that Biden is President due to widespread voter fraud and a rigged election, and the Republicans are using that as a justification for moving nationwide to restrict voting access for the Democrats.
The situation is further exacerbated by how evenly divided Congress is, by the great power that is provided by a few seats in the House of Representatives or by one Senate seat; and by the same token the fragility of the majority party's hold on that power, and this intensifies the efforts in the existential political war where only a small difference in electoral outcomes is needed to gain the power or lose the power.
In the situation, division and polarization are getting transmuted into a hatred by each side of the other side. These strong emotions are felt at the higher levels and lower levels of the two political sides.
How the foregoing existential war between the two political sides will play out cannot be predicted.
One element that can potentially mitigate the toxicity is for the two sides to engage in a fair minded way about the voter fraud question and to endeavor to reach an agreed characterization of the 2020 election and of the amount of voter fraud and whether or not the election was stolen (as Trump says). If it is not a fair characterization that the 2020 election was stolen, the ideal outcome would be for Trump to say it was not stolen. That will probably never happen, but, if it is not a fair characterization to say the election was stolen, it would go a long way to get Senators such as Cruz, Hawley, Cotton and Graham, and Representatives such as Alabama's Republican members of Congress to say that.
Republicans may refuse to engage on the voter fraud question and keep on saying there was widespread fraud and the election was stolen, just as Trump says.
Because of the primacy of the existential political war over access to voting, and because of the deleterious consequences to the nation of that political war, it would behooves parties with influence (such as the media) to press Republicans on whether or not they will engage with Democrats in a fair minded way on the voter fraud question.
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