Republicans in state legislatures they control can’t stop talking about “election integrity” these days, now that they’ve taught their base to believe with a fervence rivaling children’s belief in Santa Claus that the last election was “stolen” from them no matter what the actual facts might suggest. They pooh-pooh any concerns over racially disparate impacts, suggesting that Democrats’ real goal in making it as easy possible for anyone qualified to vote is to lock in a permanent majority, and compete to pass the most draconian restrictions possible.
So naturally you’d expect that they’d go the extra mile to make sure that any elections for positions within the Republican Party and its supporting organizations would be models of fairness, integrity and transparency. That they’d lead by example, conducting their votes the way they want to see all us conduct votes.
As with so many other things that you’d expect of the Republican Party based on their rhetoric and lawmaking, you’d be wrong. Horribly, tragically, epically wrong.
Over the last weekend, the College Republicans held their biennial national convention, where the chief order of business would be the election of a new national chair. Most of the time, as all of us involved in big political organizations know, these things are joyful formalities, with an incumbent rubber-stamped into an additional term, or a successor more or less crowned, with minimal or no opposition.
This year would not be one of those times. Chandler Thornton (and with a name like that you would almost have no choice but to be a Republican … you can’t hear it, really, without looking around for the martinis), the outgoing chair, had made it known that he wanted to be succeeded by a young woman named Courtney Britt, who had like him worked on key Republican campaigns, for important Republican officials, done all the right networking and served him well as the organization’s southern regional chair.
But not everyone in the organization agreed. A sizable opposition was backing rival candidate Judah Waxelbaum (not a name that came with automatic country club membership in the old days), the western regional chair. Why I have not been able to find out … perhaps Thornton and Britt were rumored to have a more than professional relationship, perhaps there had been enough disagreements with the direction he had taken the CR that enough members wanted someone who had no ties to him and owed him nothing. On the other hand, he had promised more transparency in how the CR was run. So, the convention promised to be contentious.
The leadership decided that, for whatever reason, they were not going to have any surprises at the ballot box. But they didn’t have the cards to play subtly enough to keep under the radar, or they did but lacked the skill.
There are two basic ways to manipulate an election. The additive method, which Republicans have gotten their base to believe was used to put Biden in office, consists of getting ballots counted that should not be. This is the classic method of voting the dead, of adding stashed ballots to the total after the polls close, of having people vote under the names of others. It is probably easier to execute, but in modern times runs a greater risk of discovery since one who would use it must be careful not to have the added ballots exceed not only the total number of registered voters on the roll, but also the usual amount of voters in the precinct or ward in question.
Harder, but harder to prove, is the subtractive method: getting legitimate ballots tossed out for illegitimate reasons, or better yet making it so valid ballots sufficient that they might throw the election to the undesired party are never counted to begin with. This is what the CR leadership apparently decided to do.
Sometime in the runup to the convention, it was decided that a key rule would be changed. Or not changed, so much as … interpreted differently.
Apparently the CR constitution provides that the 52 member state (and DC and PR, I assume) federations qualify themselves for voting, weighted by their organization’s size within the national organization, by providing membership rolls or whatever attesting to this that are then audited by an outside firm. This year the deadline for submitting that information was February. While it’s common for some states’ federations to not receive any votes after this process, this year 22 states in total were so denied, raising eyebrows.
If federations miss the original deadline, they can still get votes at the convention by providing letters from at least two colleges with member CR chapters, on letterhead, attesting that the chapters are real, and then haggle at an appeals meeting for votes.
But very late in the process, the arbitrator, the sole authority empowered to interpret the organization’s constitution, decided that the rule required that all federations submit the two letters regardless of whether they had qualified already. This was not just in contradiction to what the organization had told member federations in pre-convention workshops. It was in contradiction to what the very same arbitrator had ruled in advance of the 2019 CR convention.
And, some of the CR people said, it was in contradiction to the organization’s constitution itself.
At this point you’re probably wondering, why haven’t I quoted the relevant passage from the CR constitution? Perhaps, you think, it’s something that reasonable people could interpret differently.
I haven’t quoted it because I can’t. The document is not available to the public, apparently. It is stored on a private Google Drive, which supposedly not all the state CR federation chairs were even aware existed, much less had access to.
And wasn’t there a possibility that someone, say the CR national board, could be appealed to to, in theory at least, overturn or modify the arbitrator’s decision? Nope. Apparently not only is the arbitrator’s decision final, he (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a he) doesn’t even have to explain it.
So, to recap, the College Republican National Convention is:
- run by procedures spelled out in a secret constitution,
- that one person alone has the power to interpret,
- and that person’s decision is nonreviewable, nor do they have any duty to explain it.
Wow! Almost aggressively opaque. A real model for democratic governance, especially of an organization part of one of the major political parties in one of the world’s most important democracies. Given that Waxelbaum’s platform called for more transparency, now maybe it isn’t such a mystery why he might have credibly been elected the organization’s chair in an free and fair election.
The new rule change was likewise kept on the down low from the membership at large. Not only were 10 state federations, coincidentally those seen as likeliest to break for Waxelbaum, not notified, the ones that were all submitted copies of the letters by emails that were all sent around 4 a.m. EDT July 11, two hours before the deadline to be considered at the final credentialing meeting before the convention (a credentialing meeting scheduled by Chandler, Waxelbaum believes, to make it hard for him to attend since it was at 3 a.m. in Arizona, where he lives), where state federations that had not been allocated votes could argue for them, and those that felt they deserved more votes could argue for them (Virginia, Britt’s home state, did, and was awarded votes that nearly doubled its total).
According to Waxelbaum, the appeals process followed a pattern: States whose federations had endorsed him were universally denied their appeals, whereas those that had endorsed Britt all won theirs. Hmm. This happened without regard to anything else: Florida submitted a 200-page appeal petition along with pages of supporting documentation of over a dozen chapters, to no avail.
The late-night letters were not the only game Thornton played. He chose to strip Louisana’s longtime federation of its membership in favor of a new rival organization that, the new rule notwithstanding, offered no epistolary proof that it had members at at least two schools in the state, on the basis of a complaint letter from a student who was not a CR national member nor a member of the Louisiana Federation. The decision came only a week after the complaint letter was received, at which point Thornton had not responded to a request from Collin McBride, the head of the formerly representative federation to see the complaint letter for himself (He still hasn’t; apparently the complaint was over the organization not having called its own convention during the spring as its bylaws dictate. The convention was held, just on March 6, which the federation conceded wasn’t springtime astronomically but might be meteorologically).
McBride said he had learned about this rival organization in February, just after submitting his federation’s membership rolls. He told Britt, his regional vice president, about it; she asked for more information and said she’d look into it. Ten minutes later he checked their website and Twitter feed again, where he found out she was already following them.
The organization which displaced McBride’s was awarded the votes in the convention based on the membership rolls he had submitted, adding insult to injury.
By the time the actual convention started, according to Waxelbaum, 12 state federations, all of which had supported his candidacy, had been disenfranchised. Additional states were disenfranchised, with Britt, as a member of the board, allowed to vote and debate on those measures despite her clear conflict of interest as a candidate.
Just like the real world, allegations of actual voter fraud were made. Britt was particularly dubious about Arkansas’s federation being allowed to participate, claiming the federation’s chair had come to the job through improper means. The Arkansas federation got the state’s actual Republican chair to call in and vouch for that election’s integrity.
That didn’t work for Courtney Britt. According to National Review, “[she] argued that the state should remain disenfranchised since it hadn’t presented evidence that fraud had not occurred.”
Yes, you read that right. A young woman, who is not some clueless undergraduate but rather as a conservative magazine itself notes a graduate of Richmond Law School, was arguing here that, contrary to common law and Anglo-American legal tradition, the burden of proof was on the accused here to disprove the charges against them. (Just how do you prove election fraud didn’t happen? Of course given the recent behavior of the Republican Party generally these last few months, she may have moved to the apparent new mainstream of Republican thinking).
Ultimately only 30 state federations, representing about 60 percent of the total College Republican membership, were allowed to vote. With only 12 of them supporting Waxelbaum, and the 18 in the majority granted extra votes that they had sought while the 12 were not, it’s no surprise that Britt won; she will formally take over as CR national chair tomorrow.
The cost of her victory will be a smaller organization than Chandler presided over. The New York federation, one of Waxelbaum’s most vocal backers, was disenfranchised along with Florida. They, Texas and California—i.e., the CR organizations representing the four most populous states—announced within minutes of Britt’s victory that they are likely to leave the national organization, “secession” they are calling it, and I can’t imagine that other states won’t follow. The outgoing national treasurer gave a damning speech at the convention accusing Chandler, Britt and other members of the leadership team allied with them of not only flagrant violations of the organization’s secret constitution but intimidating and bribing to get their way, as well as fabricating sexual assault charges when that didn’t work. New York has further released a “dossier” alleging serious financial misconduct on Thornton’s part, supported by research done by the other state federations.
The conservative media that have covered this, that I have linked to as sources, have to their credit not tried to whitewash it and blame it on liberal media bias (largely because neither the mainstream nor the progressive media have really picked this up, though doubtless that will come). NR correctly notes that behavior like this from the leadership of a national Republican organization which supplies a lot of the ground-level workers and volunteers for campaigns is not likely to make those people enthusiastic to continue doing so, much less run for office themselves in the future (I would add that it’s a perfect breeding ground for the sort of low social trust that contributed to Trump’s victory, which means that even if some of the fallout from this benefits us in the short term, it is not something we should welcome in the medium or long terms), to say nothing of the effect of a likely organizational schism among the CRs.
But I cannot help but point out to Republicans: You increasingly decry any and all close elections that are won by Democrats as rigged, fraudulent and tainted, going to such lengths as dubious months-long “audits” that demonstrate nothing really out of the ordinary and proposing to guarantee future election integrity through voting laws which would be too stern for most tyrants … and yet here within such an important sector of your own party you have seen an election manipulated to a degree, and with tactics, that would shock the conscience of an urban machine of the early 20th century? Who are you to lecture Democrats, Americans or anybody as long as you let this flourish, as long as the College Republican National Convention has a chairwoman who despite being a law school graduate does not believe in the presumption of innocence for election fraud at least?
Republicans who raise their voices about election fraud and shifty Democrats, between now and next November, need to be reminded about (or informed of) this sorry episode and asked what they did about it, what they have to say about it. Do they accept any kind of support from any CRNC-affiliated organization? If they do and try to say that, well, that’s different, we need to come right back at them with: then you’re part of the problem.
And lastly, should Britt or Thornton or anyone of those identified as having supported and abetted them in this quest for power come to seek office in coming years, as these sort of people always do, this is oppo waiting to be dug out and thrown at them as hard as possible (Assuming of course that there are no criminal charges brought). Don’t forget this.
Thursday, Jul 22, 2021 · 3:53:16 AM +00:00
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Daniel Case
OK, I’m a day late with this promised update, but there are some things to add …
Per the comments, I should make clear that I myself do not know, or care, about Courtney Britt’s personal life. I merely speculated that some College Republicans might, because, well, that’s the kind of guys they are, as many of us can attest. And I was right that they thought that way, per Britt’s pinned tweet for the last three months:
I apologize for insufficiently distinguishing the CRs’ sexism from my own reporting on it.
In another tweet, Britt says that of the state federations that did not get any votes at the convention, 9 never spoke up at the 12-hour-long credentialing meeting so, implicitly, they have nothing to complain about (Some of the states complained, conversely, that they were gaveled down, and rather rudely at that, every time they tried to speak up. Dissidents have also asked the CRNC to keep a reported promise to put the entire meeting online for the public to re/view).
She also reposted more material about the complaint against the Louisiana CR federation that led the CRNC to strip it of its delegates and award them to a rival organization formed only months ago, which seems to have little if any presence on the state’s college campuses. Apparently there was a bit more substance to the complaint than a difference of opinion about how to define “spring”; it seems that notice of the state convention was given less than the constitutionally required three weeks beforehand and meetings of the executive committee were not convened as regularly as required. The state chairwoman at the time also resigned rather than address the complaint’s issues:
This still seems, however, rather petty (or, this being Louisiana, perhaps picayune is a better word?), issues demanding a remedy far less extreme than stripping the LA federation of its national membership. Nor does this explain why the rival organization was awarded delegates without any independent vetting of its own numbers, based on the LA federation’s original submissions, apparently.
Chandler Thornton has also complained that the Daily Caller misrepresented that it had sought comment from him before publishing a story:
I may have to give him this one. The comments are suggesting the time zone difference accounts for it, but if Shi’s email is timestamped with Pacific time, that actually makes it look worse since that would mean he sent it three hours after the story posted.
Thornton also took issue with National Review for claiming, in an earlier article about his apparent interventions in the Arizona CR federation’s leadership race, that he supported Britt in the election; he said he had never endorsed anyone,
This to me is almost deliberate semantic obfuscation: to endorse someone in an election carries the connotation of a formal and public expression of support, but you can support someone discreetly without publicly expressing a preference.
But two days ago even the argument that Thornton hadn’t supported anyone became doubtful. NR ran a story about a July 6 email he sent to Case Western Reserve professor Jonathan Adler, faculty advisor to that campus’s CR chapter, asking for him to send a letter on his faculty letterhead verifying the existence of the chapter. Innocuous on its face, it becomes less so when we learn that Chandler only sent that email and others like it to chapter advisors in states whose delegations were, like Ohio’s did, expected to support Britt at the convention. No college chapter advisor in any state whose federation supported Waxelbaum got this email.
The New York federation’s dossier also included the constitutional passage with the disputed language (on page 7). It really doesn’t seem that it requires every state submit the two letters, just those that don't submit the more extensive documentation required by the first deadline.
Britt’s team has also accused Waxelbaum’s of financial shenanigans. It seems like the bad blood here goes back a couple of years, to when Waxelbaum was a freshman at Arizona State and some of the CRs there who later split off to become the more far-right-friendly College Republicans United accused him of not only being too much of a moderate (apparently Waxelbaum’s father is close to Jeff Flake) but colluding with the chapter president to rig the chapter’s elections. Britt and her supporters have blamed the ensuing schism in the Arizona campus Republicans on Waxelbaum’s supposedly poor leadership as state chair and regional vice chair, even though the CRU split began even before Waxelbaum attended ASU. And there have been allegations that this criticism is antisemitic, in the sense that blaming a Jew for outbreaks of antisemitism usually is.
The apparent election manipulation is not done. Only half the CRNC’s board has been chosen, and the board has decided to hold the next elections, for the regional vice chairs, this Saturday, which is just ever so conveniently when the national Young Republican convention, at which some of the same people will be delegates:
So, it looks like this story is not done breaking. This may, as Isaac Schorr notes in NR, the very inauspicious beginning of the great Republican crackup that pundits have been foreseeing since Trump was elected. We’ll see.