President Joe Biden’s recent nominee to the Federal Election Commission was a lawyer representing a nonprofit organization backed by Stacey Abrams in a lawsuit that made a number of unsubstantiated claims of voter suppression stemming from the 2018 gubernatorial election.
In addition, Fox News reports, nominee Dara Lindenbaum also signed on to court documents that alleged balloting machines “switched” votes from Abrams to the winner, now-GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who was the Georgia secretary of state at the time.
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The Senate Rules and Administration Committee held a confirmation hearing for Lindenbaum, a lawyer with the Washington firm of Sandler, Reiff, Lamb, Rosenstein & Birkenstock, to be a commissioner on the FEC. Days later, the Georgia trial for Fair Fight Action and Care in Action v. Raffensperger began in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.
Lindenbaum’s name appears as the third signature on the original complaint in the lawsuit alleging voter suppression in the race that saw then-Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp defeat Abrams by 55,000 votes statewide in the governor’s race.
“One troubling problem — encountered by several voters — is that voting machines switched their votes from Leader Stacey Abrams to Secretary Kemp,” the 66-page complaint filed Nov. 27, 2018, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia alleges.
The suit identified two voters who claimed they had to vote for Abrams on a voting machine four times because the first three times it selected Kemp.
In one case, the complaint alleged, only after a voter’s “fourth attempt was she able to cast a ballot for Leader Abrams.” The complaint adds that a second voter is said to have “kept pressing Abrams and, by the fourth time, the machine finally corrected.”
Fox News noted: “The plaintiffs narrowed the case in an amended complaint filed Dec. 3, 2020, to focus on allegations of poor training of poll workers and the data on voter registration lists. The amended complaint omitted the prior allegations about voting machines.”
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, who is a Republican, urged the Senate to reject Lindenbaum’s nomination.
“The FEC is supposed to be a neutral body that instills confidence in our elections,” Carr told Fox News. “She has spent the last four years making fake claims of voter suppression and pushing conspiracy theories. This has been a four-year fundraising effort for Fair Fight Action assisted by Ms. Lindenbaum.”
“This [Lindenbaum] appointment shows the hypocrisy of the left,” Carr added. “When some Trump supporters claimed machines switched votes from Trump to Biden in 2020, Democrats went bananas. But Democrats made the same claims in 2018.”
Lindenbaum was questioned about the lawsuit by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during an April 6 confirmation hearing:
“Do you think criticizing an election as stolen or otherwise invalid undermines the public faith in the democratic process?” Cruz asked.
“These matters, the election security matters, are outside the purview of the Federal Election Commission, which is solely focused on campaign finance issues and not the issues of election administration machines,” Lindenbaum responded.
Cruz asked again if claiming an election is stolen undermines faith in democracy.
“It can, I think it depends on the context involved,” Lindenbaum responded.
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