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A good way to start the New Year: The New York Times and Washington Post have run excellent post mortems on why Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has been a disaster so far. The larger question, however, is whether this failed invasion was a surprise. Many countries, particularly the United States, have blundered in using force and starting wars, assuming that its formidable military could not fail.

Why should Russia be immune to similar misjudgments?

Fully understanding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decisionmaking must be circumstantial. But consider his likely thought process, ironically paralleling that of several American presidents in deciding to go to war. In late 2021, Putin may have been ambivalent about launching a “special military operation (SMO).” But he probably thought his two options were “win-win.” 

Either the U.S., NATO and the EU could accept his “demands” for a new strategic framework in Europe, limiting NATO’s expansion east and preventing Ukraine from joining the alliance. Or, if the allies refused, having already deployed his forces on Ukraine’s borders in a so-called training exercise, an invasion would lead to a quick rout of Ukraine’s forces in the dash to seize Kyiv and other key cities. That the U.S. and NATO immediately rejected even discussion of Putin’s demands infuriated the Russian and likely provoked the decision to invade Ukraine.

After all, how could Russia not succeed? It had modernized its military, organizing its forces into self-contained Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) equipped with weapons proven in battle in Syria and elsewhere. With a relatively small force of about 5,000 and a handful of Kalibr cruise missiles, Russia had saved Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria. It had learned from its bungled South Ossetia operation in 2008 and taken Crimea peacefully in 2014 with “little green men.”  

Thus, from Putin’s perspective, while a “slam dunk” was never inevitable, this SMO was not far from that. Yet, so far, the Ukraine war has been Putin’s worst nightmare. Whether Russia can reverse the state of the war with a more competent general in charge and mount a new offensive remain to be seen. But Putin’s errors were not unique to Russia.

America’s defeats in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq after 2003 should have been warnings to Putin. They don’t seem to have been. First, all three wars were deemed in America’s vital interests when they were not. Second, American presidents were overly confident about the capability of their militaries, from President Lyndon Johnson’s order “to nail that coonskin to the wall” to George W. Bush’s “combat operations” in Iraq are over and we “have prevailed.”

Third, the U.S. was grossly wrong in estimating the ability of the enemy to respond and endure as the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese and, later, the Taliban did. After Saddam Hussein’s army was eviscerated in “Iraqi Freedom” in 2003, the Bush administration failed to anticipate the following insurgency. Putin has ignored these lessons.

Putin’s current strategy is to “win by not losing.” His obscene bombing campaign to destroy Ukraine’s power, water and food infrastructure is meant to force Kyiv to capitulate or to accept terms favorable to Moscow. Meanwhile, Russia is rebuilding and restoring a badly mauled army. Ukraine continues to mobilize and train hundreds of thousands of troops to defeat any Russian offensive and recapture as much of the occupied territories as possible.

Predicting how this war ends is what former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called an “unknown unknown.” But deadlock appears among the more likely outcomes. And, as the U.S. persisted in Vietnam for well over a decade, Afghanistan for two decades and still has some forces in Iraq, Russia could be following a similar track.

One conclusion is clear: Without full knowledge and understanding of the conditions in which force is to be used, failure may not be inevitable, but it is extremely likely. Have the U.S. and NATO taken this axiom to heart in thinking through both future strategy and the forces needed for successful execution of that strategy in dealing with the Ukrainian war? Russia did not.

Money is not the answer. Despite an $858 billion U.S. defense budget, how knowledgeable are U.S. senior political civilian and military officials on the strengths and weaknesses of China and Russia, their strategies, leaderships and overall competence to achieve strategic aims? Indeed, is it possible that China’s military prowess has been as exaggerated as Russia’s?

Putin and his generals were flagrantly ignorant about Ukraine. Is the West falling into a similar trap regarding China and Russia? Answering that question is vital.

Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of “shock and awe.” His latest  book is “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.

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Just In | The Hill 

Russia deployed a series of exploding drones around Kyiv, its most recent attack in a bombardment of strikes taken against Ukraine around the start of the new year. 

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram post on Monday that 40 drones were heading for the city overnight, but air defenses destroyed all of them. The defenses destroyed 22 drones over the city, three in the region and 15 in other provinces. 

The most recent strikes come as part of a string of attacks Russia has conducted throughout parts of Ukraine, often focusing on civilian infrastructure. Russia has tried to use these types of attacks to wear down Ukrainian morale and resistance. 

Klitschko said the strikes injured a 19-year-old man who was taken to a hospital. He said the capital’s energy infrastructure facilities were damaged, and that there were emergency power outages. 

The governor of the Kyiv region said residential buildings were also hit. 

Air defenses intercepted most drones fired in an attack on New Year’s Eve, but they did cause some casualties, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. 

Klitschko said in another Telegram message that a 46-year-old man who was in serious condition following the attacks on Saturday died on Tuesday morning. At least four civilians were killed in the attacks. 

Zelensky said in an address after the Saturday attacks that “no one” will forgive Russia for spreading terror, noting that it has attacked Ukraine on New Year’s Eve and other holidays like Easter and Christmas. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin had hoped for Russian forces to take Ukraine quickly, but the war has lingered for more than 10 months, and Russian troops have struggled to make gains against Ukraine in recent months. 

He said in a New Year’s address to his country that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.” 

Russia is observing public holidays until Jan. 8 for the new year. 

Shelling in the area of the Kherson region that Ukraine controls also injured five people on Monday. Three people were also wounded in the city of Beryslav and are in serious condition after Russian forces fired at a local market. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The Jan. 6 select committee has unloaded a vast database of its underlying evidence — emails between Trump attorneys, text messages among horrified White House aides and outside advisers, internal communications among security and intelligence officials — all coming to grips with then-President Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election and its disastrous consequences.

The panel posted thousands of pages of evidence late Sunday in a public database that provide the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win. Much of the evidence has never been seen before and, in some cases, adds extraordinary new elements to the case the select committee presented in public — from voluminous phone records to contemporaneous text messages and emails.

Trump lawyers strategized which federal courts would be likeliest to uphold their fringe constitutional theories; Trump White House aides battled to keep unhinged theories from reaching the president’s ears; as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded, West Wing aides sent horrified messages about Trump’s incendiary tweets and inaction; and after the attack, some Trump allies discussed continued efforts to derail the incoming Biden administration.

Here’s a look at some of the most extraordinary and important evidence in the select committee’s files.

“He does do his own tweets”

Jan. 6 investigators have pored over the circumstances of Trump’s tweet from Dec. 19, 2020, exhorting followers to come to Washington to protest the counting of electoral votes by Congress. “Will be wild,” Trump wrote, a message that experts and security officials viewed as rocket fuel for extremists.

The committee’s evidence includes a text exchange from Jan. 22, 2021, between Trump adviser Katrina Pierson and his longtime social media guru Dan Scavino in which Scavino makes clear: No one told Trump to author the tweet. Scavino rejected the notion that advocates involved in “Stop the Steal” efforts had anything to do with Trump’s decision to issue the tweet. And in what appears to be a nod to its authorship, Scavino wrote “He does do his own tweets.”

In an earlier exchange, just hours after Congress concluded certifying the election for Biden, Scavino told Pierson: “We’re dealing w/lot now, but we’ll prevail.”

Scavino was an elusive witness for the select committee, and the House voted to hold him in contempt for refusing to cooperate, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute him.

“Surround the Capitol”

Two days after the Jan. 6 attack, Trump adviser Steve Bannon told his spokeswoman that he didn’t necessarily think the fight to prevent a Biden administration had ended.

In an interview with Bannon’s spokesperson Alexandra Preate, the select committee read from a text exchange Preate had with Bannon on Jan. 8, 2021.

“We must turn up the heat,” Bannon wrote to Preate.

When Preate asked when Trump was leaving town ahead of Biden’s inauguration, Bannon replied: “He’s not staying in the White House after the 20th. But who says we don’t have one million people the next day?”

“I’d surround the Capitol in total silence,” Bannon added.

New call logs

The select committee posted Trump’s complete White House call logs from Jan. 2, Jan. 3 and Jan. 5, 2021 — each reflecting the then-president’s intense focus on remaining in power.

The Jan. 2 call log denotes Trump’s hour-long call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump famously urged him to “find” enough votes to flip the election results to him. The logs put that call in context: Immediately afterward, Trump had a Zoom meeting with attorney Rudy Giuliani, a phone call with chief of staff Mark Meadows and a 22-minute call with Bannon.

On Jan. 3, Trump’s call logs reflect a flurry of contacts with top Justice Department officials as he contemplated elevating Jeffrey Clark to acting attorney general — a figure he viewed as sympathetic to his bid to stay in power. Trump spoke to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) that afternoon just before the call logs reflect Clark actually being elevated, however briefly, to the top DOJ post. But the move didn’t hold. The threat of a mass resignation by DOJ leaders prompted Trump to back away from the plan.

“A dangerous idea”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) strategized with Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell about her effort to help the campaign promote the notion that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud and irregularities. But Lee repeatedly pressed Mitchell on the “slippery slope” he said her arguments entailed.

“Jan. 6 is a dangerous idea,” Lee said, in a message exchange with Mitchell that she provided to the select committee. “Not just for the republic itself, but also for the president.”

Lee lamented that no court or state authority had backed Trump’s effort, so he didn’t view Congress as an appropriate backstop.

“I had somehow thought you and I agreed that we’d need something like a judgment from a court of competent jurisdiction or a decision by a state legislature,” Lee wrote.

“That was back when I believed we would get a day in court,” Mitchell replied.

The two discussed a strategy to have friendly GOP senators hold election-related public hearings. Lee initially said he viewed it as a way to put an end to Jan. 6 challenges altogether — give Trump and his supporters a venue to air their frustrations without lodging actual election challenges. But Mitchell said she viewed the hearings as a prelude to the Jan. 6 challenges.

“We need to make a record,” she said, adding that she had discussed the strategy with Meadows.

Lee noted that the matters could be handled by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Judiciary Committee or Sen. Ron Johnson’s Homeland Security Committee. But Mitchell said she viewed Johnson as a “loose cannon.”

“We all look like domestic terrorists now”

Trump aide Hope Hicks texted with Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff Julie Radford on the afternoon of Jan. 6, decrying Trump’s actions and lamenting that their careers were likely doomed.

“All of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset,” Hicks wrote. “We all look like domestic terrorists now.”

“Oh yes I’ve been crying for an hour,” Radford replied.

“Not being dramatic but looks like we are all fucked,” Hicks continued. “Alyssa looks like a genius.”

Hicks’ message was an apparent reference to Alyssa Farah, a former Trump White House aide who departed the administration weeks before Jan. 6.

Turning back to Trump, Hicks expressed outrage about his attack on Vice President Mike Pence in the midst of the violence. “Wtf is wrong with him?” she wrote.

Redlines

The select committee’s evidence includes a version of Trump’s Jan. 6 rally speech that shows how much he deviated from the written text and ad-libbed some of his most incendiary lines.

“More likely a disaster”

A group of Trump-aligned lawyers, including John Eastman, William Olson and Kris Kobach, spent the days before Christmas 2020 debating whether to file a lawsuit against Pence, an effort to force his hand and convince a judge to declare that the vice president had the authority to reject Biden’s electoral votes.

That lawsuit would eventually be filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and some of Trump’s GOP allies like Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward in a Texas-based federal court. But initially the Trump lawyers worried that filing the suit in D.C. — a more natural venue — would face near certain defeat or worse: a ruling that Pence was required to count the electoral votes in Biden’s favor. Their initial instinct, when attorney Larry Joseph sent a draft of the complaint to the group on Dec. 22, 2020, was that he not file it yet.

“I apologize for being so blunt, as we all are operating under pressure, but strategically although this complaint could be a home run, but more likely a disaster, as it could completely tank the January 6 strategy if it resulted in a judicial determination in the District in which the Congress will meet that Pence is constrained [by the Electoral Count Act],” Olson wrote.

Olson put the odds of success in D.C. federal courts at 10 percent. But Eastman went further.

“I put the odds at winning in either [D.C. federal district or appeals courts] closer to zero, and the risk of getting a court ruling that Pence has no authority to reject the Biden-certified ballots very high,” Eastman replied. “And danger that SCOTUS will decline to take as well. Best we could hope for, then, is a dismissal as non-justiciable.”

Gohmert’s suit was filed on Dec. 27 in the Eastern District of Texas and was dismissed by a judge there and by an appeals court panel.

Trump wanted to walk to the Capitol

The select committee also posted a journal entry produced by Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump White House press secretary, from Jan. 6 describing some of the chaos and interactions she observed that day.

“POTUS wanted to walk to capital [sic]. Physically walk,” she wrote. “He said fine ride beast. Meadows said not safe enough.”

She described efforts to craft tweets with Trump responding to the violence at the Capitol, a call from Sen. Lindsey Graham worried about reports that the National Guard had been delayed, and noted that Trump looked at the TV while Biden was delivering remarks on the attack.

“Biden calls for him to speak literally as potus filming,” she wrote.

McEnany wrote that as they prepared Trump’s video address, they made sure to have Trump tell rioters to “go home.” “Important part of message,” she wrote.

Gen. Charles Flynn disclaims his brother’s fringe “martial law” effort

Gen. Charles Flynntold the Jan. 6 select committee that he didn’t share his brother Michael Flynn’s extreme view about the use of “martial law” to seize voting machines or involve the military in Trump’s effort to remain in power.

“Congresswoman, my brother’s politics are his own, not mine,” Flynn said amid questioning by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the committee.

Charles Flynn was briefly present during a phone call amid the Jan. 6 violence with Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and other security officials as they discussed deployment of the National Guard.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,put a finer point on it, telling the select committee that Michael Flynn’s words crossed lines that could warrant punishment, though he stopped short of advocating for it.

Milley says Trump admin considered court-martialing retirees who criticized Trump

Milley’s 300-page interview transcript is jammed with some of the most explosive news of the Jan. 6 committee’s entire investigation. In one exchange, also about Flynn, he said he had to dissuade Trump administration figures from a suggestion that retired military officers who wrote op-eds critical of Trump should be recalled and court-martialed.

“I advised them not to do that,” Milley said.

Milley also said he had post-election conversations with senior figures in the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and Meadows in which all uniformly described Trump as being in a “dark place” because of his defeat.

Milley also said he had dozens of calls with foreign counterparts after the Nov. 3, 2020, election to reassure them of America’s stability, despite appearances.

Milley says he classified Jan. 6 docs to ensure “appropriate” handling

At the outset of his interview with the select committee, Milley said he had gone to extraordinary lengths to collect and protect a “boatload” of documents he said he anticipated would be relevant to future investigations.

“I knew the significance, and I asked my staff, freeze all your records, collate them, get them collected up,” he said.

Later in the interview, he added another detail: After the documents were gathered, Milley said, he classified it all “at a pretty high level” to ensure only “appropriate” people saw it. He said most of it could be unclassified and shared with lawmakers and staff.

“Asking for Diet Cokes”

Trump White House photographer Shealah Craighead told the Jan. 6 select committee that she remembered a reluctant and fidgety Trump struggling to deliver his lines during early takes of a Jan. 7 video meant to begin healing after the attack on the Capitol.

“His agitation of stopping and starting the conversation was based on asking for Diet Cokes several times, or stopping to take a sip and then starting again, immediately stopping and taking another sip and then starting again, reading some of the scroll, and then asking for a new Coca-Cola, or needing a towel to wipe his head or something,” Craighead said. “Anything that he could procrastinate with before getting the words out he would do.”

Craighead said she particularly struggled to express support for the transition to Biden.

“The atmosphere and the mood, in my observation, based on what I saw, was that he was still very much against the transition of the next President and administration coming in,” Craighead said.

Chesebro pleads the Fifth

Ken Chesebro, an architect of Trump’s plans to send “alternate” electors to Congress and to use them to disrupt the Jan. 6 session of Congress, repeatedly pleaded the Fifth during his deposition with the select committee.

The first invocation came when a committee investigator asked him, “Did you have any meetings with the President?”

He then largely declined to answer substantive questions, citing both Fifth Amendment and attorney-client privileges.

Like Eastman, however, Chesebro did not produce any evidence of an attorney-client relationship with the Trump campaign. He suggested he was working pro bono and had been drafted to join the effort by Wisconsin-based attorney Jim Troupis, who handled matters for Trump in that state.

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America’s current Middle East policy arose following the 1979 Iranian revolution and Lebanon’s civil war. These seismic events convinced policymakers that Washington’s interests were best served by stability (tamping down conflicts to ensure a steady flow of oil) and containment (bottling up radicals in Tehran and Beirut to prevent the spread of their burn-the-village-to save-the-village ideologies). For more than 40 years, this policy — with notable exceptions — has served us well. Oil flowed freely, Iran’s hegemonic ambitions largely were thwarted, and most in the region rejected sectarian mayhem as a means of settling societal scores.

While the 1987-88 tanker war, Tehran’s suborning of Lebanon and Shia populations elsewhere, and more recently, the global war on terror have underscored the policy’s limitations, Washington’s approach to dealing with the Middle East has proven remarkably durable, and few decision-makers today appear eager to tamper with what they see as a winning formula. But, as I outline below, tamper they must. Widening cracks in the foundation mean building a new policy that meets current and future regional challenges, one drawing strength from a robust partnership with Saudi Arabia.

Shifting ground

Our approach to the Middle East has been predicated on unstinting support for Israel. As Iran spun away from the U.S. orbit, Israel emerged as an ally that reflected American values and through which policymakers in Washington sought to advance U.S. regional goals. The alliance came at a cost — Arabs resented what they perceived as Jewish chauvinism and Muslims wondered why their venerable Abrahamic monotheism was left out of the cozy Judeo-Christian entente — but it facilitated both stability (or a semblance thereof) and containment (ditto). Whether Israel consistently has reflected American values is an open question, one worth asking as Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu launches what promises to be the most reactionary government in his country’s history.

Indeed, concerns about Israel’s direction could prod Washington to consider “refining” U.S. policy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, by focusing on this piece of the puzzle, they risk missing the big picture: The ground again has shifted, seismically. Israel no longer is an island of stability in an otherwise chaotic region. Even apart from the oil wealth that fills Gulf coffers, much of the Middle East has witnessed improved standards of living and concomitant rising expectations. 

The World Bank expects the region’s economies to post 5.5 percent growth this year, the fastest rate since 2016, and 3.5 percent growth next year. The Arab Spring’s failure to usher in a democratic transformation notwithstanding, most Middle Easterners reside in peaceful societies that boast low crime rates. Despite the pandemic, as well as educational and employment challenges, a solid majority of Arab youths surveyed last year expressed optimism about their futures.

Indispensable partner

Israel, of course, will remain an important anchor of U.S. policy, but the region’s trajectory through the coming year and beyond will require Washington to secure its interests with more than just one linchpin. Arab and Muslim aspirations cannot be addressed, or harnessed, through Tel Aviv. Intense Israel-Iran antipathy makes it highly unlikely the Jewish state can play a constructive role in helping the United States take maximum advantage of the Islamic Republic’s inevitable implosion.

Saudi Arabia, the largest Gulf state and custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites, is the obvious candidate to help carry Washington’s water. The Kingdom long has had a robust defense relationship with the United States and U.S. and Saudi officials for decades have strived to maintain comity in the face of periodic differences and dustups that threatened to undermine bilateral ties. Indeed, after Israel, Saudi Arabia stands as our most-indispensable Middle Eastern partner. So, one might ask, if working with Riyadh represents such an obvious slam-dunk, why hasn’t Washington seized the ball and driven down the court?

Answer, and question

The answer is values. Happy to cooperate with the Kingdom privately, U.S. officials are loath to do so publicly because of the widespread perception that Saudi Arabia is just too different. It is a monarchy, and we are a republic. It cloisters women (albeit less so than before) and we celebrate their liberty. It punishes dissent; we champion freedom of expression. It hearkens to arch-conservative social mores, and we let it all hang out.

The question also is values. More specifically, do they really matter as much as we think they do? Policymakers in Washington have no apparent difficulty tolerating what human rights groups say is Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians, but they become positively apoplectic concerning the Kingdom’s rights record.

Childhood’s end

It is high time to dispense with such puerile thinking. Handwringing about remaking allies in our image retards our ability to consider clearly how best to achieve lasting security. International relations is a deadly serious game played for keeps, and we would do well to listen to Otto von Bismarck instead of Oprah. Friends make us feel good, partners help us get things done, and —mais oui! — it is lovely when a country like the United Kingdom can fill both roles.

But when we need help — and there is no doubt we do in the Middle East — it hardly matters whether we admire the party rendering assistance or how much they resemble us. We must be mature enough to recognize that, when it comes to advancing our interests, our enemies’ enemy is our friend. The White House should extend its hand to Riyadh. It should dispense with notions of pride and face and say to the Kingdom, “Come, work with us on finding a path forward through the challenges that lie ahead.”

I propose three steps forward: 

Invite de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington for a strategy summit with President Biden. Would this provoke a media firestorm and partisan cries of hypocrisy? Of course, but the juice — gaining Saudi help in a range of issues from quashing Sunni extremism to engineering a soft landing for the Iranian regime’s successor — will be well worth the squeeze.

Encourage bilateral investment. Despite the current oil-price windfall, the Kingdom faces serious economic challenges (including towering unemployment among the aforementioned high-expectations youth) that U.S. private-sector innovation can help it to overcome. 

Facilitate people-to-people exchanges. Few things are more impactful on hearts and minds than personal encounters revealing our shared humanity. 

Reducing barriers to Saudi students and helping U.S. universities to open campuses in the Kingdom will create a cadre of future U.S. and Saudi leaders with an intimate appreciation of what “the other” brings to table.

The time is now

Among the lessons U.S. policymakers drew from Iran in 1979 and Lebanon in the 1980s was the danger of hubris. Ours is the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, but we imperil ourselves by confusing might with omnipotence. In a region as fraught and complex as the Middle East, there is no shame in recognizing we need help in securing our interests. 

Saudi Arabia’s centrality — geographically, politically, socially and economically — make it uniquely positioned to render assistance. The Biden administration should treat the Kingdom as a partner, not a gas station or a piggy bank, to anchor it firmly in our camp and to influence it with our values. With White House missteps leading Riyadh to question Washington’s commitment to Saudi security, and to the region more generally, now is the time to act. Failure to do so would be tantamount to pushing Riyadh into Beijing’s and/or Moscow’s embrace, where it can do us no good — and potentially a lot of harm.

Cam Burks is a senior fellow at George Mason University’s National Security Institute. He is a corporate global security executive, previously serving in chief security officer and enterprise, geopolitical strategy leadership positions at Chevron Corporation and Adobe. He served for nearly 15 years in the Foreign Service as a special agent and American Embassy Regional Security Officer with the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service. He is a network affiliate at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

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The 2022 election just wound down, but already states are scrambling to change election laws ahead of 2024.

In Georgia, a push is underway to change or entirely scrap the state’s runoffs, while Ohio Republicans are driving toward stricter voter ID laws. Michigan Democrats are eager to implement new constitutional provisions that allow early voting, while party lawyers across the country are preparing for another cycle of litigation related to it all.

In all, according to the Voting Rights Lab, a nonprofit that supports expansive voter access, at least 100 election-related bills have already been prefiled across eight states ahead of the 2023 legislative session.

Changes to election laws after a midterm or presidential contest aren’t uncommon. But the process has become more contentious — and litigious — in recent years, portending some tense battles.In particular, several states where one party holds the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature are seriously considering changes. Despite the single-party control, those states include presidential battlegrounds where the rule changes could impact tight contests.

Red states — some closer than others — move toward change

In Georgia, the drive to change the state’s runoff system comes after two consecutive cycles of close Senate runoffs that ended with notable Republican losses. Under state law, an election goes to a runoff four weeks later when no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote.

Better Ballot Georgia, a nonpartisan group advocating for replacing the system with instant runoff voting, is lobbying the legislature to take up the reform. Instant runoffs would allow voters to rank their preferred candidates at the onset rather than coming back to the polls. The group also ran a digital ad campaign to press for the change.

“We are suffering from election fatigue at a level that I don’t know has ever been experienced,” said Scot Turner, a former Republican state lawmaker who’s involved with the effort. “If we could get our elections over in November at a lesser cost with greater turnout, I think there’s a real message there.”

The call for changing the current system has some notable boosters. Earlier this month, Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called on the General Assembly to end runoffs for general elections. “No one wants to be dealing with politics in the middle of their family holiday,” he said in a statement.

Raffensperger has floated some ideas: an instant runoff, or lowering the threshold needed to avoid a runoff from 50 to 45 percent. Either move would need the support of legislators and the governor.

The latest push comes after the implementation of SB 202, a state election law that Republicans passed last year that made a myriad of changes, including shortening the runoff period from nine weeks to four.

But even with one of the state’s top Republicans calling for a change to the runoff system — Republican Gov. Brian Kemp hasn’t voiced a preference — there might not be enough support. Turner said he doesn’t know if the legislature is ready to take on the concept statewide, and it might be better suited for down ballot races for the time being.Earlier this year, a bill for municipalities to opt in to instant runoff voting stalled. And Democratic state Rep. Jasmine Clark proposed a bill for the upcoming session that, in part, calls for a six week runoff. She said in an interview she sees it as an interim solution while the legislature decides what to do about reforming the current system.

Georgia is not the only Republican-led state contemplating election reforms. Ohio is the closest to changing the law with a bill that would require voters to show photo ID at the polls. Voters can now show alternative forms of identification, such as utility bills or bank statements. The measure would also limit the number of days to request and return an absentee ballot, as well as eliminate early in-person voting the Monday before an election.

The Republican-controlled legislature passed the bill, but it is still awaiting action from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who has not indicated whether he will sign or veto the measure. But it has already drawn rebukes from Democrats including Vice President Kamala Harris, who said the bill “would undercut the fundamental right to vote.” Marc Elias, a prominent attorney in the Democratic Party, said he would sue Ohio if the bill is signed.

Blue state trifectas

Democrats are pursuing their own changes to election laws in states where they now control all levers of government. That includes Minnesota and Michigan — two swing states where Democrats won full control in November, along with reelecting their Democratic secretaries of state.

That provides the top election officials in both states a chance to push for reforms that they have long wanted, Minnesota’s Steve Simon and Michigan’s Jocelyn Benson said in separate interviews.

“I think the voters really gave us a mandate to continue to be a leader in the democracy business, in Minnesota,” Simon said. “This isn’t a case where voters didn’t understand what the candidates were about.”

But it may not result in sweeping procedural changes in either state. Minnesota and Michigan already have fairly expansive voter-access laws that Democrats elsewhere would otherwise look to pass. In particular, Michigan voters have approved recent state constitutional changes that codified early voting in 2022 and mail voting in 2018.

Benson said in an interview that her biggest priority for the upcoming year is figuring out ways to protect “the people in elections, and ensuring that they have all the support and resources they need to continue doing their work in this threatening and challenging environment.”

Her office is also focused on implementing the state’s Proposal 2, which voters passed in November. That initiative changed the state constitution to guarantee nine early voting days, prepaid ballot postage for mail ballots and mandated access to dropboxes in the state.

That, Benson said, would require working with the legislature to ensure funding for the new voter-approved mandates, educating local clerks on the new requirements, and shepherding through any administrative changes that need to happen.

In Minnesota, the changes Simon is advocating for will likely not approach a wholesale overhaul of the state’s election procedures, but focus on how people can register to vote.

Simon listed a series of proposals around registration that would effectively expand the voter pool. They included the restoration of voting rights for people convicted of felonies in the state — something that has seen cross-ideological support in other parts of the country. He is also planning on advocating for automatic voter registration.

“These are proposals I’ve been talking about for years, even when Republicans controlled one or both of our legislative chambers,” Simon said. “They’re not partisan in origin, nor in effect.”

States that don’t have one-party control are also likely to consider election law changes, though they’re much less likely to pass.

Pennsylvania state Sen. David Argall, a Republican who chaired the state government committee this year, noted that there was bipartisan support in his state for increasing pre-processing time for mail ballots. Pennsylvania was heavily criticized for the lengthy pace it took to count votes in 2020 and such a measure would allow election officials to handle mail ballots before Election Day and speed up the release of unofficial results.

Republican legislators included it in a broader package that they passed that would have changed much of the voting process in the state, but outgoing Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it in 2021.

“I have supported it in the past, I will support it in the future, but I don’t think you can do just that one thing,” Argall said of pre-processing. “I think there’s going to be too many other people saying ‘plus this, plus this,’ and that’s where it gets complicated.”

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If there was any doubt Donald Trump’s vilification of early voting is only hurting the GOP, new receipts from the midterm elections show it.

Election data from a trio of states that dramatically expanded the ability to cast ballots before Election Day, either early or by mail, demonstrate that the voting methods that were decidedly uncontroversial before Trump do not clearly help either party.

Lawmakers of both parties made it easier to vote by expanding availability of mail and early voting in a politically mixed group of states: Vermont, Kentucky and Nevada.

The states had divergent results but shared a few key things in common. Making it easier to vote early or by mail did not lead to voter fraud, nor did it seem to advantage Republicans or Democrats. In Kentucky, Republicans held on to five of the state’s six congressional districts and a Senate seat. Both Vermont and Nevada saw split-ticket voters decide statewide races, by a gaping margin in Vermont and a narrow one in Nevada.

It reflects a broad lesson for other states that might consider expanding voter access or encouraging voting before Election Day: While voting methods have become deeply polarized by party, expanding access to early and mail voting does not appear to benefit one party over the other. Republicans do not do themselves any favors when they follow in Trump’s footsteps and vilify early voting: It puts more onus on their voters to cast ballots on a single day.

But there is little evidence that expanding voter access tilts elections toward Democrats, either.

“We’ve shown that it is bipartisan,” said Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, of his state’s new early voting window. “Both sides are comfortable using it.”

Vermont, a heavily Democratic state at the federal level that still occasionally votes for Republicans locally, set turnout records for the modern era in November after switching permanently to universal mail-in ballots. But Nevada, which adopted automatic voter registration and also mailed ballots to all voters in 2022 after a pandemic trial run in 2020, saw only a slight increase in ballots cast despite hotly contested statewide races.

In Kentucky, a rare red state that expanded access to early voting, most voters still voted on Election Day and turnout in the November midterm election was lower than 2018, though a lack of competitive races may have contributed to that.

Many states expanded mail and early voting options on short notice in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. They faced prompt backlash from Trump, who falsely claimed that mail ballots were linked to widespread voter fraud. His rhetoric helped drive an unprecedented partisan split among voting methods, with Democratic voters becoming far more likely to use mail and early voting options while Republican voters mostly cast ballots on Election Day.

That divide fueled further election-related conspiracy theories because of the order in which votes were counted in key states such as Pennsylvania.

A handful of Republican-controlled states responded in 2021 by rolling back pandemic-era voting reforms or further restricting access to alternative voting methods. GOP-controlled Texas enacted legislation banning overnight and drive-by voting options that had been used in populous Harris County, a Democratic stronghold.

But elsewhere, the successful use of mail and early voting during the pandemic provided a model for expanding voting access. In Vermont, legislation to send every active registered voter a ballot passed with bipartisan support in 2021 and was signed by Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican.

Scott, a moderate, easily won reelection in November with more than 70 percent of the vote, while Democrats won other statewide races in Vermont. The state also saw its highest turnout ever for a non-presidential election, with 57 percent of adults casting ballots — something Deputy Secretary of State Chris Wilson attributed in part to the ease of voting by mail.

“There were a number of Republicans who were worried about the security aspect of vote-by-mail and potential voter fraud that came forward afterward and said, ‘You know what, this helped a lot of people turn out who normally would not vote,’” Wilson said.

In Nevada, the Democratic-led legislature moved to make universal mail voting permanent in 2021 after it was used during the pandemic. The expansion came as part of a litany of electoral reforms. Nevada voters previously enacted automatic voter registration for individuals obtaining or updating their drivers’ licenses via a 2018 referendum, and they supported a referendum in November to use ranked-choice voting in future elections, though it will have to pass again in 2024 to go into effect.

The number of voters on the rolls has ballooned over the past two years, likely in part due to the easier registration. But despite those growing numbers and the fact that every registered Nevada voter was sent a ballot ahead of the November election, the total number of ballots cast in Nevada this election ticked up only slightly compared with 2018. The share of registered voters who cast a ballot was actually lower.

Turnout is not just about voting laws. Sondra Cosgrove, a Nevada voting-rights advocate and history professor at the College of Southern Nevada, expressed concern that the state had not allocated enough resources to voter education. A small but not insignificant share of mail ballots were thrown out, she said, because voters had made errors and not cured them.

For the state’s primary earlier in the year, about 4,000 mail ballots were not counted for that reason.

Statistics are not yet available for the general election. But both parties targeted their voters whose ballots needed curing after Election Day as key races remained close — a less than ideal outcome, Cosgrove noted, saying curing ballots shouldn’t be a “partisan exercise.”

Nevada did see some polarization by voting type. Democrats were more likely to vote by mail while Republicans tended to cast their ballots on Election Day. But both parties still came out with statewide victories. Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, the GOP nominee for governor, narrowly defeated incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, while Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto held on in one of the country’s closest Senate races.

In Kentucky, lawmakers took a different path. The state’s GOP-led Legislature reached a deal with Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, to permanently establish three days of early voting. Previously, Election Day had been the only day for voting for more than a century.

During the pandemic, the state had expanded absentee voting for the 2020 primary and added several weeks of early voting for the general election, but the three-day period was less costly, noted Adams, the secretary of state. And it still allowed voters to cast ballots on the days when early voting had been most popular.

In 2020, the state also blasted the airwaves and covered billboards with ads encouraging early voting, a strategy aimed at reducing crowds on Election Day that was made possible by an influx of federal pandemic dollars. With those funds long gone and fewer concerns about Covid-19, there was not a similar push in November.

Most Kentucky voters returned to casting their ballots on Election Day, and there was no significant polarization by voting method, with Republicans and Democrats largely using the early voting window at similar rates.

Adams speculated that the use of early voting might slowly increase over the next few election cycles as voters become more accustomed to it.

“I think the biggest factor in turnout is voter motivation,” he said. “That’s peripheral to what election rules are.”

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Every class has its clown, and in the House GOP no one has earned that reputation quite like Rep. Tim Burchett.

When the Tennessee Republican first met the wife of Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) in 2018, he simultaneously complimented her appearance while jokingly digging at her husband’s — taking off his glasses, handing them to her and saying: “Ma’am, you need these more than me.”

Another time, after visiting then-President Donald Trump at the White House with other members, Burchett was the last to run onto the bus — yelling they needed to peel out because he’d just stolen the baby Jesus from the Nativity scene (he had not actually done so).

“With Billy Long leaving Congress, the conference is in search of a new class clown,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.). “And I nominate Tim Burchett … he’s so unpredictable. He says the craziest things.”

Approachable and unguarded, Burchett is perhaps one of the least filtered members, making comments even to reporters that most politicians would fight to bury. His wisecracking and jovial nature have attracted him friends on both sides of the aisle, despite his conservative voting record, in a time when the House’s cross-party relationships are growing rarer. Asked about his unusual freewheeling approach, he replied that his constituents from East Tennessee “don’t care about that stuff.”

“I don’t take myself seriously. I take the job seriously,” Burchett said in an interview, one day before Christmas Eve.

Others agreed. GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy could tick off multiple funny moments courtesy of Burchett, but also praised him as a constituent-focused member. He said Burchett “uses that ‘aw shucks,’ but he’s very smart.”

“He has the ability to take a serious situation, lighten the room, but also make his point,” McCarthy said.

This month, Burchett invited media, colleagues and staff to a holiday party set to last 15 minutes, and said there would “possibly” be refreshments. The party, which did in fact last 15 minutes, featured a PB&J sandwich stand, a “charcuterie” board that was just Burchett spraying cheese whiz on Ritz crackers, and Christmas music courtesy of Texas GOP Reps. Louie Gohmert and Brian Babin strumming guitars.

And while the funny-guy persona has a way of overshadowing his message at times, he also uses his jokes to inoffensively vent about Hill dynamics. He isn’t a fan of the power structures that govern who rises in leadership or receives coveted committee roles, for example, which often includes alliances with party leaders, fundraising and general schmoozing.

“I get frustrated with the whole system,” Burchett said, noting that he has approached McCarthy requesting positions on certain panels, like the House Intelligence Committee. “I don’t kiss enough butt and I don’t raise money to move up in conference, so I get aggravated about that. There’s definitely some people I would say should be in some positions that they’re not, just because of that. And I hate missed opportunity.”

He also tries to provide levity in tense situations — with mixed results. Earlier this month, he elicited both chuckles and cringes during a heated moment in a conference-wide meeting, as some of his colleagues grew irritated that McCarthy allies were getting extra time from their colleagues to speak in defense of his speakership bid.

Burchett went to a microphone and bashed their weekly conference meetings as a waste of time where they never learn anything. And he told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who was managing whose turn it was to speak, that if he wanted to be disrespected by a woman, he’d go home to his wife and daughter. Some appreciated the humor, while others felt that directing the comment at the top woman in Republican leadership took the joke too far.

Generally, there is a sense among his Capitol Hill colleagues that Burchett is just that kind of person who can get away with comments that the rest of them couldn’t pull off.

“He says whatever the hell he wants to and people can get offended. He didn’t give a flip,” said GOP Rep. Mark Green, who is part of the Tennessee delegation with Burchett. “And he’s gotten to the point where people take it from him. If I said that, there’d be a [negative] article about me.”

There are plenty of incidents that back up Green’s claim. Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) said Burchett calls him his “favorite Jew after Jesus.” And, according to Armstrong, when Burchett’s chief of staff got hit by a scooter and they’d verified he was OK, he and some others gifted the chief a helmet, whistle and cape branded with Burchett’s friendly nickname for his top staffer: “Big Sexy.”

At times, Burchett’s jokes feel absolutely random. Last year, he waltzed up to Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), a first-term lawmaker who was wearing a purple ribbon to raise awareness about the opioid epidemic at the time, and told her purple was his favorite color. He said he grew up sleeping in purple sheets, but then when he was 12 his mom tried to throw them away after a baby gerbil ate holes in them.

“No, Momma, not my purple sheets!” he yelled, recalling the episode to a confused but amused Dean, whom Burchett said he had just met.

Unlike most politicians on Capitol Hill, the Tennessee Republican isn’t carefully constructing his image or donning the beltway uniform of penny loafers and button-down shirts. In fact, Burchett’s colleagues were more concerned about sharing the lawmaker’s jokes publicly, fearing bad optics or negative misinterpretations by the public, than Burchett was himself.

He saunters around the Capitol in the same tan-brown Carhartt jacket (don’t get his friends started on the reports that have dubbed Sen.-elect John Fetterman [D-Pa.] as Congress’ Carhartt ambassador), throwing out fist-bumps to friends, checking in on strangers and scandalized colleagues in a Holden Caulfield fashion, talking about how much he loves his wife and daughter, and randomly striking up conversations about when he used to sell items on Ebay as a side-hustle.

And while his voting record resembles those of members in the House Freedom Caucus, his relationships across the aisle are starkly different. He and Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly embraced after Burchett told her that he was praying for her husband after the violent assault at Pelosi’s San Francisco home, as the Tennessean recalled. He is also known to fist-bump with Democrats like progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an association that his GOP colleagues say would destroy other members among base voters.

But he doesn’t want his interactions with Democrats to end there. He has three goals he remembers listing off to now-former Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.):

“I want to run down South Beach hand-in-hand with [former Rep.] Donna Shalala. I want to go to the Bronx and party with AOC. I don’t know if she lives in the Bronx or not … I’ve never been to New York,” Burchett said. “And I said I want to party in the Kennedy compound.”

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