But it’s important that Moore is refusing to concede and it’s important that he’s using the old Republican canard of “voter fraud” as the foundation for his baseless lawsuit. What Moore is trying to do is nothing less than undermine an American election. And his efforts are just as dangerous as whatever the Russians did in the national election, even if Moore isn’t as effective as the Russians. Moore is telling his supporters — which still include a majority of white women and a super-majority of white men in Alabama — that they didn’t really “lose,” they were “cheated.” And you don’t have to be Superman to hear that Moore wants his supporters to know that black people did the cheating:

Mr. Moore’s court filing ran for dozens of pages, and it argued that returns in Jefferson County, the state’s most populous county, “confirmed election fraud.” It also said that turnout in the county was suspiciously high; it suggested that Mr. Jones had benefited from voter intimidation; and it argued that Mr. Moore’s opponents had spread “lies and fraudulent misrepresentations.”

For Moore and his supporters, the black vote just seems fraudulent. Not fraudulent in a way that can be supported by any evidentiary standard, but these people look at the black vote as a prima facie indication of voter fraud. If you pan the camera back from Alabama, you’ll find millions and millions of white people who simply can’t understand the black vote. Those white people think “massive, systemic voter fraud” is a likely explanation. Those white people also think Occam’s Razor is made by Gillette......

Republicans have no desire to actually encourage black people to vote for them — they don’t want black people in their party beyond mere tokenism (hi Tim Scott, you keep shining those shoes and I’m sure bossman McConnell will have your committee chairmanship just as soon as he can). There is no outreach, there is no even basic understanding of the issues that face black America. I promise you there isn’t a Republican strategist who could even EXPLAIN what’s going on between Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates, much less devise a strategy to position Republican candidates on one side or the other.

For both Russia and the U.S. 2017 was year of mutual frustration in their relations. Vladimir Putin clearly anticipated, as did the Russian elite, that President Trump would make good on his frequent assertions that he would repair relations with Moscow. Yet by year’s end both Trump’s rhetoric and Putin’s hopes were dashed.

Indeed, in December 2017 the U.S. imposed new sanctions on Russia and selected individual Russian elites for violating the INF treaty and under the terms of the newly enacted “Global Magnitsky Law.”

The administration also published a new National Security Strategy forthrightly accusing Russia of intervening in the U.S. elections and portraying as an aggressor and threat to European if not global security, announced the first steps in providing Ukraine with weapons to defend against Russian aggression, and forcefully intensified the reinforcement of NATO forces in Europe and overall ties with European allies.

Needless to say, all of these moves aroused enormous anger and frustration in Moscow even though Putin formally claims that Russia still seeks partnership with the U.S. or at least cooperation on issues of mutual concern and interest.

Court: Trump voter fraud commission must give Democrat member more access
President Donald Trump's commission investigating voter fraud must give one of its Democratic members access to more of the panel's records, a federal judge ruled Friday night.

U.S. District Court Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap appeared to have been denied documents needed to be an active player in the deliberations of what is formally known as the President's Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.


"Plaintiff has a right, as a commissioner, to 'fully participate' in the proceedings of the Commission. In the Court’s view, his assertion that he will be unable to fully participate without the information contained in relevant documents that the Commission has not shared with the public has merit," wrote Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

The judge said she was issuing an injunction to prevent "dysfunction" at the commission, but her effort to keep the panel on track may be too little, too late. The group held its last meeting in September and officials have said it will not meet again this year.

In deep-red Texas, Republicans will have to fight for every congressional seat in next year's midterm elections. For the first time in 25 years, Democrats are running in all of Texas’ 36 congressional districts, according to documents filed with the Texas Secretary of State’s office.

Mark Jones, political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, says those filings set a record for the number of Democratic challengers in an era of Republican dominance, and are a departure from 2016 – when eight Republican-held congressional seats went uncontested by Democrats.

“We are seeing a groundswell of unusually high support and mobilization among progressive Democrats who are really angered by the Trump administration,” Jones said.

But, Democrats aren’t just gunning for congressional seats. According to preliminary numbers from the Texas Democratic Party, Democrats are running in 89 percent of the seats in the Texas House and 88 percent of the seats in the Texas Senate. Both are the highest percentages the party has mustered since at least 1992.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — With the spotlight squarely on Roy Moore in the closing weeks of Alabama's Senate special election, a constellation of Democratic groups embarked on an under-the-radar effort to organize voters for candidate Doug Jones.

Despite publicly remaining mum on the race, the Democratic National Committee spent nearly $1 million on the contest while dispatching and funding 30 aides here, a party official told POLITICO. That push came just as Jones sought to distance himself from the national party and win over conservatives.


It was a politically delicate move. Jones’ detractors have tried painting him as a tool of the national party, so Democrats in Washington have tried treading carefully in order to avoid leaving too much of a footprint in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in over two decades. The effort paid off: Jones prevailed Tuesday.

But the DNC and other national Democrats have also come under fire from critics this year for their perceived lack of involvement in other special elections, so the committee has been eager to chip in.

And if you look at those sections, they do not allow candidates for federal office to request such a recount or to contest the election (presumably because these would be done in the U.S. House or Senate.)

Under 40, the ones who can contest are: “The election of any person declared elected to the office of Governor, Secretary of State, Auditor, Treasurer, Attorney General, Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries, Public Service Commissioner, senator or representative in the Legislature, justices of the Supreme Court, judges of the courts of appeals, judge of the circuit court or district court, or any office which is filled by the vote of a single county, or to the office of constable.”

Section 47 only allows a contest “of any person declared to be elected to the office of senator or representative in the Legislature, judge of the circuit court or district court, any office which is filled by the vote of a single county, or constable.”

Moore is not those. I think unless there’s another provision I’m not seeing he cannot get a recount if it is outside the 0.5% margin.

The main backer of a proposed constitutional amendment that would automatically restore some felons’ voting rights after they complete their sentences told Florida Politics his effort now has collected over 900,000 signatures.

“Knowing that we set the goal of collecting 1 million, the fact that we are less than 100,000 petitions away from our goal is an amazing attestation to the growing energy, excitement, and support around second chances,” said Desmond Meade, chair of Floridians for Fair Democracy and president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, in a Tuesday email.

The Florida Division of Elections website showed as of the end of Tuesday that the citizen ballot initiative, known as “The Voting Restoration Amendment,” has 442,969 verified signatures.

Initiatives need 766,200 valid signatures for ballot placement. Signatures must be spread across Florida’s 27 congressional districts, with the total number due pegged to voter turnout in the most recent presidential election.