National: Trump’s Executive Order on Proof of Citizenship for Elections Is Partly Blocked by Judge | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

A federal judge blocked part of an expansive executive order signed last month seeking to overhaul election laws, writing on Thursday that President Trump did not have the authority to require documentary proof of citizenship for all voters. “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states — not the president — with the authority to regulate federal elections,” wrote Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court in Washington. She pointed to federal voting legislation being considered in Congress, adding that the president could not “short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.” But the judge did not block another key part of the executive order that sought to force a deadline for mail ballots in federal elections by withholding federal funding from states that failed to comply with the deadline. She found that the Democrats who brought the legal challenge did not have standing to do so. The legal concerns with this provision, Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote, are being considered in other cases brought by state attorneys general. Read Article

A little-known federal agency is at the center of Trump’s executive order to overhaul US elections | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Florida’s “hanging chads” ballot controversy riveted the nation during the 2000 presidential contest and later prompted Congress to create an independent commission to help states update their voting equipment. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has operated in relative anonymity since, but is now central to President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul elections. One of the commission’s boards will meet Thursday in North Carolina, the first commission-related meeting since the directives were announced. Among other things, Trump directed the agency to update the national voter registration form to add a proof of citizenship requirement. But whether the president can order an independent agency to act and whether the commission has the authority to do what Trump wants will likely be settled in court. Read Article

National: Trump is shifting cybersecurity to the states, but many aren’t prepared | Madyson Fitzgerald/Stateline

For the first half of his career in law enforcement, working as a police officer in South Florida, Chase Fopiano did not think cyberattacks on police agencies were a serious threat. Many of his law enforcement colleagues were under the same impression — that since they were the most likely to investigate the attacks, there was no way cybercriminals would go after them. By about 2015, as technology advanced and hackers became more creative, that changed, Fopiano said. Now, from the U.S. Secret Service to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, there are thousands of attempts to compromise networks or organizations every day, he said. “A lot of those [attempts] are toward government or even police, especially because they know that we’re not as prepared as we should be,” said Fopiano, who now oversees cybersecurity as part of a regional task force. Read Article

National: Election officials question agency about Trump’s order overhauling election operations | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

State and local election officials from around the country on Thursday questioned the leaders of a federal agency directed by President Donald Trump to implement parts of his sweeping election overhaul executive order, with some expressing concerns about the consequences for voters and the people in charge of voting. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent and bipartisan federal agency, is at the center of Trump’s March 25 order that directs the commission to update the national voter registration form to include a proof-of-citizenship requirement and revise guidelines for voting systems. Trump also wants it to withhold federal money from any state that continues to accept ballots after Election Day even if they are postmarked by then. Whether the Republican president can order an independent agency to act and whether the commission has the authority to do what Trump wants will likely be settled in court. Read Article

National: NSF cancels over 400 grants covering disinformation, deepfakes and STEM education | Alexandra Kelley and David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

Around 430 federally-funded research grants covering topics like deepfake detection, artificial intelligence advancement and the empowerment of marginalized groups in scientific fields were among several projects terminated in recent days following a major realignment in research priorities at the National Science Foundation. Other cancelled grants included nearly two dozen projects devoted to disinformation research, election security, cyber-physical systems protection and the CyberCorps scholarship program. In total, around $328 million worth of grants, many of them issued to major American universities, were canceled. The mass cancellation and realignment of NSF’s grant priorities coincided with the arrival of officials from the Department of Government Efficiency, who have been present at the agency since April 14, according to six people familiar with the matter. Read Article

National: Trump upends DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, sparking ‘bloodbath’ in senior ranks | Ken Dilanian/NBC

The Trump administration has quietly transformed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, forcing out a majority of career managers and implementing new priorities that current and former officials say abandon a decadeslong mission of enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring, housing and voting rights. More than a dozen senior lawyers — many with decades of experience working under presidents of both parties — have been reassigned, the current and former officials say. Some have resigned in frustration after they were moved to less desirable roles unrelated to their expertise, according to the sources. “It’s been a complete bloodbath,” said a senior Justice Department lawyer in the division who is not authorized to speak publicly. Read Article

National: Multiple top CISA officials behind ‘Secure by Design’ resign  | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Two top officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who worked with the private sector to manufacture secure products and technology are leaving the agency. Bob Lord, senior technical adviser and Lauren Zabierek, senior advisor at CISA, were two of the chief architects behind CISA’s Secure by Design initiative, which garnered voluntary commitments from major vendors and manufacturers to build cybersecurity protections into their products at the design stage. On Monday in dueling posts on LinkedIn, Lord and Zabierek both said they are departing the agency. Neither offered a rationale or motivation for the decision, with Lord simply calling it a “difficult decision” and Zabierek saying it was “not an easy choice.” Read Article

Opinion: Trump’s Elections Power Play and the Voting Machines | Bob Bauer/Executive Functions

On March 25, President Trump issued a sprawling executive order on Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections. The order focuses on the “integrity” of federal elections. It repeats but does not substantiate Trump’s claims that our elections are rife with fraud, including extensive noncitizen voting. The order appears to be setting the foundation for presidential intervention in the administration of elections in 2026 (and beyond). And it does so in a plainly unlawful way by supplanting the states’ constitutional authority to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections except where Congress elects to prescribe its own rules for federal elections. The Constitution does not confer on the president any share in this rule-setting authority. Already 19 states and other plaintiffs have filed suits to challenge the order’s constitutionality. Read Article

Arizona’s Mohave County approves security marks on ballot paper for 2026 | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona’s Mohave County plans to add security features to its ballot paper for the 2026 midterm election, a measure officials hope will improve voter confidence. The features could include watermarks or invisible fibers, according to a contract with election printing vendor Runbeck Election Services that county supervisors unanimously voted to approve Monday. The features will cost somewhere between 10 to 15 cents a ballot, according to Runbeck’s proposal. About 83,000 Mohave County voters cast ballots in the last midterm election. Read Article

Colorado fights Trump administration bid to help imprisoned loyalist Tina Peters | Colleen Slevin/Associated Press

Colorado officials say President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be wielding its “political power” to give unprecedented help to a former county election clerk who was convicted of allowing Trump supporters to access election equipment after his 2020 defeat. The U.S. Justice Department is trying to insert itself into the case of former election clerk Tina Peters, who wants to be released from prison while she appeals her conviction. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in federal court in Denver. It’s one of the latest Trump administration moves to reward allies who violated the law on the president’s behalf. Peters’ case is among those the government has said it is reviewing for “abuses of the criminal justice process.” Read Article

Georgia fails to make election security upgrades with midterms looming  | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This was supposed to be the year Georgia got election security upgrades in time for the 2026 midterms, featuring high-profile races for U.S. Senate and governor. Instead, election security advocates on both the right and left got nothing. Despite lawmakers’ promise — written into state law — to eliminate ballot QR codes, they didn’t appropriate any money to get it done. QR codes contain voters’ choices on ballots but aren’t readable by the human eye. Nor did lawmakers fund an upgrade to Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines that would have patched vulnerabilities in time for the midterms. And a proposal to switch to paper ballots filled out by hand will have to wait at least until next year — and likely longer. Read Article

Michigan ballot effort to require citizenship proof for voting moves ahead | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Backers of an effort to require new Michigan voters to produce proof of their U.S. citizenship have the go-ahead to begin their petition drive to get the question on the ballot next November as a proposed constitutional amendment. The bipartisan Board of State Canvassers on Friday unanimously approved a 96-word summary of the proposal that will appear on petitions around Michigan. That starts a 180-day clock for the Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights, a group that’s leading the petition drive, to gather nearly 450,000 valid signatures from registered voters across the state. The group, which also operates under the name “Prove It, Michigan,” has previously challenged state-level expansions to voting rights. Read Article

North Carolina judges block GOP law to strip governor’s election board powers | Gary D. Robertson and Makiya Seminera/Associated Press

North Carolina trial judges threw out on Wednesday another Republican attempt to strip the governor of his authority to appoint State Board of Elections members, declaring that a law shifting the task to the state auditor is unconstitutional. One registered Republican judge and one Democratic judge on the three-member panel sided with Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who with his predecessor Roy Cooper sued over the law finalized by the GOP-dominated General Assembly in December. The third judge, a Republican, dissented. The governor picks the five board members, three of whom are traditionally members of the governor’s party. Appointments are made from candidates provided by the two major political parties. Read Article

North Carolina What to Know About the Legal Battle Over a State Supreme Court Race | Eduardo Medina and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

In North Carolina, the Republican candidate for a State Supreme Court seat has refused to concede to the Democratic incumbent, even though two recounts by a state elections board confirmed that he lost the November election by a few hundred votes. The Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, who currently sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, has instead embarked on an extraordinary monthslong effort to toss out scores of ballots. The race is the last in the nation to be uncertified. Judge Griffin’s challenge has ping-ponged through federal and state courts. Most recently, the Democratic incumbent, Justice Allison Riggs, asked a federal court to overturn a State Supreme Court decision that could lead to thousands of military and overseas ballots being tossed. Read Article

Opinion: Pennsylvania is in dire need of more in-person early voting options | Deborah Rose Hinchey/Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Pennsylvania voters have been given a raw deal when it comes to early voting options. As we head into another round of municipal elections, voters across the Commonwealth again face the dilemma of whether or not they should stand in long lines to cast their ballots early. Although the problem is worse in some counties than others, it is unacceptable anywhere. Pennsylvania’s current no-excuse mail ballot system is a good idea on paper, but the long lines early voters face are due to the fact that many voters are filling out their mail ballots in person before they turn them in, likely because they want to ensure they are filled out correctly and will, therefore, be counted. Therefore, in a state where nearly half of all counties don’t even have a ballot drop box, a strong, well-funded, and complementary-to-no-excuse-mail-ballots system that encourages early voting done in person is an absolute must. Read Article

Texas election officials wary of shift to centralized voter-registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

An effort to force all of Texas’ 254 counties onto the state’s central system for managing voter registration has some election officials concerned about the system’s history of technical problems, its capacity to handle larger volumes of data and the potential for new security risks. Thirty-two Texas counties, including some of the state’s largest, currently use private vendors for software to handle voter registration and election management tasks. The software helps counties manage information including voters’ addresses, voting history, registration applications, images of signatures for verification, images of mail-ballot envelopes and other personal data. Pending legislation, Senate Bill 2382, would require counties to exclusively use the state’s system, called Texas Election Administration Management, or TEAM. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, filed the bill after many counties last year faced a surprise surcharge from one of the private vendors, Votec. Read Article

Washington: Thurston County video series wins award for humanizing elections | Kameko Marquez/JOLT News

Thurston County is in the national spotlight for its award-winning video series that builds voter trust through an unfiltered storytelling of county-level vote administration. The video series “Your Neighbors, Your Elections,” produced by the Auditor’s Office Elections Division, won the 2024 Clearinghouse Award from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), as announced by the county in a press release on Wednesday, April 16. The county received the highest national recognition, which is the “Distinguished Voter Education and Communications Initiatives,” for its “excellence in voter education and communications” among the large jurisdictions in the country. It was also chosen for its strong messaging through the use of authentic county staff voices. Read Article

Wisconsin: Rules committee deadlocks on vote to kill election observer rules | Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner

Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) deadlocked Thursday on whether to object to a proposed administrative rule that would guide the conduct of election observers at polling places. The 5-5 vote moves the rule one step closer to going into effect because if the committee doesn’t take any action, it will be returned to the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to be implemented. Even though the rule was written by WEC with input from an advisory committee that included members of right-wing election conspiracy groups, election skeptics opposed the rule’s passage at a number of public hearings. Read Article

National: Judge hears challenges to Trump’s executive order on regulating elections | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

A federal judge said she planned to rule by April 24 on a request to stop parts of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order on elections from being enforced or implemented. What’s the dispute? Multiple nonprofit groups and Democratic Party committees sued Trump, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and other federal agencies over the order he signed in March calling for broad changes in how elections are administered. The plaintiffs argue that the Constitution does not grant the president authority to set rules for elections. The lawsuits challenge multiple provisions of the executive order, including one that directs the EAC to add a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form; another requiring the agency to withhold federal funds from states that don’t comply with its requirements; and one prohibiting states from accepting mail ballots postmarked before Election Day, but received afterwards. Read Article

National: SAVE Act would create ‘chaos’ for election offices | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

Advancing legislation that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote could create chaos for state and local election offices, a state election official and a voting expert told StateScoop. The House of Representatives last Thursday passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, a bill that has received strong support from congressional Republicans who’ve deemed the measure necessary to ensure that only citizens vote in U.S. elections. The concern arrives amid mostly unfounded fears that large swaths of immigrants and undocumented individuals are participating in and influencing elections. Introduced this year by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, following a failed attempt last year, the legislation would require state and local election offices to conduct additional audits of their voter databases to weed out noncitizens. Read Article

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