National: American Democracy Might Be Stronger Than Donald Trump | Jonathan Schlefer/Politico

For the last 10 years, we’ve been hearing that President Donald Trump will preside over the end of democracy in America. In liberal circles, that assertion is often accepted as fact. For many, the proof is in the evidence from other countries’ democratic declines. A whole genre of American political writing is issuing this warning. But the United States is different from many of the countries that feature prominently in the “death of democracy” literature. And for Americans concerned about what Trump will do in his second term, the ways other democracies have died isn’t the central concern. Those accounts are a bit like detailing how Covid can kill people but not assessing the chances, depending on age and risk factors, that the disease will kill you. Read Article

Opinion: America’s Zombie Democracy – Its trappings remain, but authoritarianism and AI are hollowing out our humanity | George Packer/The Atlantic

We are living in an authoritarian state. It didn’t feel that way this morning, when I took my dog for his usual walk in the park and dew from the grass glittered on my boots in the rising sunlight. It doesn’t feel that way when you’re ordering an iced mocha latte at Starbucks or watching the Patriots lose to the Steelers. The persistent normality of daily life is disorienting, even paralyzing. Yet it’s true. We have in our heads specific images of authoritarianism that come from the 20th century: uniformed men goose-stepping in jackboots, masses of people chanting party slogans, streets lined with giant portraits of the leader, secret opposition meetings in basements, interrogations under naked light bulbs, executions by firing squad. Similar things still happen—in China, North Korea, Iran. But I’d be surprised if this essay got me hauled off to prison in America. Authoritarianism in the 21st century looks different, because it is different. Political scientists have tried to find a new term for it: illiberal democracy, competitive authoritarianism, right-wing populism. In countries such as Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, and India, democracies aren’t overthrown, nor do they collapse all at once. Instead, they erode. Opposition parties, the judiciary, the press, and civil-society groups aren’t destroyed, but over time they lose their life, staggering on like zombie institutions, giving the impression that democracy is still alive.Source: Your access has been blocked – The Atlantic

National: Justice Department Sues Six States Seeking Private Voter Data | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The Department of Justice sued six states, including Pennsylvania, the nation’s biggest presidential battleground, on Thursday as the Trump administration escalates its efforts to obtain the personal and private information of voters. The lawsuits, filed against California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, follow similar suits that the department brought against Maine and Oregon, two Democratic-controlled states. All of those states have rebuffed previous demands from the Justice Department to gain access to statewide voter rolls that include sensitive information, such as drivers license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The six lawsuits are the latest, and most aggressive, step in the Justice Department’s quest to amass the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, buttressing an effort by President Trump and his supporters to make false and unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally. Read Article

 

National: DOJ Urges SCOTUS to End Key VRA Protection for Minority Voters | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

The U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus brief Wednesday in Louisiana’s ongoing redistricting case, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court should significantly weaken the power of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to block racial gerrymanders. Though not unexpected, the brief carries major symbolic weight. For decades, the Justice Department has been at the forefront of efforts to use Section 2 of the VRA to protect minority voting rights, most frequently in the redistricting process. Under President Donald Trump, it now argues for a radically narrowed interpretation of Section 2, which could make it all but useless in stopping racially motivated gerrymanders. Read Article

National: YouTube to bring back creators banned for COVID and election misinformation | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

YouTube will offer creators a way to rejoin the streaming platform if they were banned for violating COVID-19 and election misinformation policies that are no longer in effect, its parent company Alphabet said Tuesday. In a letter submitted in response to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, attorneys for Alphabet said the decision to bring back banned accounts reflected the company’s commitment to free speech. It said the company values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes their reach and important role in civic discourse. “No matter the political atmosphere, YouTube will continue to enable free expression on its platform, particularly as it relates to issues subject to political debate,” the letter read. Read Article

National: How do we build public trust in elections? | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Public trust in elections is the key to turning out voters — and to accepting the results when an election is done. So how do you build it? Votebeat this week sat down with election expert and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Charles Stewart; Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein; and Karen Brinson Bell, the former executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections to talk about the factors that drive trust in elections. The conversation and online forum were moderated by Votebeat Editorial Director Jessica Huseman. Read Article

National: The People Who Are Still Convinced Kamala Won | David A. Graham/The Atlantic

Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: Partisan claims of fraud in the presidential election. Elaborate statistical analyses. Reports of shadowy, closed-door doings. All of this, they say, points to one conclusion: The results were compromised, and the real winner was kept out of the White House. That sounds like the aftermath of the 2020 election, but it’s also what’s happening right now. Kamala Harris’s loss in last November’s presidential election produced few prominent claims of fraud, and nothing like the concerted effort, using both lawsuits and force, to keep President Donald Trump in office that followed his defeat nearly five years ago. In the past few months, however, spurious allegations that fraud helped Trump win back the White House have been flourishing more online, elections experts told me, though why they’re so popular right now—other than the left’s compounding anger with the Trump administration—is not clear. Read Article

California Governor Gavin Newsom says he fears ‘we will not have an election in 2028’ | Sudiksha Kochi/USA Today

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he is worried there will not be a presidential election in a little more than three years, calling the Trump administration’s actions “authoritarian.” “I fear that we will not have an election in 2028. I really mean that in the core of my soul − unless we wake up to the code red, what’s happening in this country, and we wake up soberly to how serious this moment is,” Newsom said during a Sept. 23 appearance on “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert. One of the Democratic party’s most forceful critics of President Donald Trump and a prospective candidate for the next White House race, Newsom blasted the Republican administration for taking “authoritarian actions” amid a nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown. Read Article’

Colorado officials from both parties push back on Trump’s criticism of mail-in voting | Western Colorado | Nathan Deal/Grand Junction Sentinel

At the start of September, President Donald Trump announced the relocation of Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama, seeing through his original plan from early 2021 in his first term. In the Oval Office, Trump made it clear that one of the reasons Colorado would be losing Space Command is its mail-in voting system. In light of Trump’s remarks, The Daily Sentinel contacted political figures on both sides of the spectrum for their response to the president’s criticism of Colorado’s elections. The responses were unanimous in defending the state. Read Article

Georgia election officials press lawmakers for swift funding action | Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat

Lawmakers who want to overhaul the way Georgians vote heard a consistent message Thursday from election chiefs. Hurry up! And give us money. A law backed by Republicans in the General Assembly outlaws the Quick Response (QR) codes that the state’s voting machines use to transfer voter intent into each polling place’s database. Poll workers will have to use a different method starting July 1, and the legislature has yet to identify it — or pay for it. Local election chiefs and poll workers told a House study committee that convened at Savannah Technical College Thursday that they will need months to train workers. Read Article

Maryland: Clean bill of health for Annapolis hand-count primary audit | Katharine Wilson/The Baltimore Sun.

The hand-count audit Thursday of the entire Annapolis Democratic primary found no mistakes in the official vote count in any race. The audit was conducted following the discovery of a transcription error in the Ward 6 unofficial in-person tallies. The audit was ordered because Anne Arundel County Board of Elections staff made a transcription error on the unofficial in-person tallies on Sept. 16, switching the figures for Diesha Contee and Craig Cussimanio. The initial report listed Cussimanio as leading when Contee led in in-person votes. The error was not noticed until a week later, when election staff was conducting the official canvass Tuesday. Contee eventually won the majority of total ballots. Read Article

Michigan: Poll worker pay can vary widely by community | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Across the state, pay for election inspectors — the workers who check in voters and keep precincts running — can range from less than $175 a day to more than $300. That means two people doing the same job just a few miles apart might take home dramatically different paychecks. State law only requires that election officials “receive reasonable compensation,” leaving the exact amount up to local officials. But for poll workers, where they choose to do the job is almost entirely up to them. Votebeat surveyed more than 60 communities to see what clerks offer their poll workers. The results show wide gaps not only in pay but also in benefits, from free meals to same-day paychecks — and reveal how those differences shape the pool of workers each community can attract and keep. Read Article

Nebraska: Voting advocacy group sues to block state from giving voter data to feds | Juan Salinas II/Nebraska Examiner

A voting advocacy group has sued to block Nebraska’s secretary of state from sharing voter registration data with the U.S. Department of Justice. The lawsuit from Common Cause Nebraska seeks an injunction to stop Secretary of State Bob Evnen from providing data to the DOJ. Federal officials have asked states for names, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, saying they want the information to ensure accurate voter registration rolls. Common Cause asked a Lancaster County District Court to find that the DOJ request violates Nebraska law protecting data privacy. It aims to prohibit the Secretary of State from providing the voter data to the DOJ or to limit the types of data shared. Read Article

Nevada’s election system stayed up during massive statewide cyberattack. Here’s why. | Kiara Adams/The Nevada Independent

The recent statewide cyberattack took down many critical state websites and services, but at least one system was not affected: Nevada’s voter registration and backend election system. That’s thanks to a 2021 law mandating that the secretary of state’s office move to a top-down voter registration system, a centralized database that collects and stores voter preregistration and registration information and is used by all 17 county clerks. The state previously had a bottom-up system, where each county individually tracked and recorded voter information, but it was long criticized for inefficiency. Several years and millions of dollars in state funding later, the new system is up and running. State officials and cybersecurity experts say the adoption follows best practices by keeping election and voter information separate from other systems. Read Article

Nevada elections official raises alarm over DOJ demand for voter data | Jessica Hill/Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar sounded the alarm Monday on the Justice Department’s request for Nevada voter information. In a media briefing Tuesday with the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, Aguilar, a Democrat, and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson claimed the Justice Department’s requests for voter information include sensitive personal information data that the department has no authority to access. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter in June to Aguilar requesting Nevada provide voter roll data and other election-related information, such as Nevada’s current voter registration list. It sent similar letters to about two dozen states. Read Article

New Hampshire: Several new voter laws go into effect with changes to absentee voting, hand-counting ballots | Margie Cullen/USA Today

Several new voting laws in New Hampshire are going into effect this month, making changes to rules concerning absentee ballots to electioneering. The new laws follow other restrictions made in 2024, like a strict ID law currently being challenged in court that requires identification to vote without exceptions. HB 154, which will go into effect on Sept. 30, allows voters to request that their ballot be hand-counted if they live in a town or ward that uses an electronic machine to count ballots. If a voter requests their ballot be hand counted, the election official manning the machine must place the ballot in the side-pocket or in a properly labeled ballot box to be hand-counted after the polls close. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Fight over mail-ballot date requirement approaches the endgame – Carter Walker/Votebeat

When Pennsylvania’s highest court gathered in Philadelphia on Sept. 10 to hear arguments on whether voters must write the date on their mail ballot return envelopes, a lawyer for Republican groups told justices that eliminating the requirement could prompt a flood of election law challenges. It’s probably a little late to worry about that. Election litigation hit unprecedented heights across the country during the 2024 election cycle, according to an expert who tracks it, a sign that courts are increasingly being asked to settle partisan battles over election administration. And Pennsylvania’s mail ballot dating requirement could very well be the most litigated of all. Read Article

South Carolina election agency fires 2nd official, confirms hidden recorder | John Monk/The State

The South Carolina State Election Commission fired its second top official on Tuesday and confirmed that the State Law Enforcement Division found a hidden recording device in the agency’s meeting room. Agency Deputy Director Paige Salonich was terminated as of Tuesday for a variety of offenses including placing an “unauhorized device in the Election Commission training room, a clear violation of state and agency policy,” said a letter sent Tuesday to Salonich. She was making a salary of $141,788 a year. Salonich’s placing of the device, which sources told The State was a voice-activated digital recorder, was “recorded on agency security cameras,” the letter to her stated. Read Article

Texas counties struggle with new voter registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Darcy Hood mailed her voter registration application to the Tarrant County elections department in July, after she turned 18. Months later, her application still hasn’t been processed. And it’s unclear when it will be. With the Oct. 6 deadline to register to vote in November’s constitutional amendment election approaching, tens of thousands of Texans are in the same situation, waiting in suspense for their applications to go through, a process that normally takes a few days or weeks. In interviews, private conversations, and emails, county elections officials from across the state point the finger at the state’s voter registration system, known as TEAM, which has long had functionality problems. They say that after the software was overhauled in July, the problems began proliferating: Voters’ previous addresses override their new ones, their voting precincts don’t populate correctly, and sometimes the registration information doesn’t save at all. Read Article

Wisconsin bill would repeal ‘outdated’ ballot drawdown law and require risk-limiting audits | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin’s controversial practice of randomly removing ballots to resolve discrepancies between the number of ballots and the number of voters would be prohibited under new draft legislation that requires meticulous audits in every county. The draft proposal, obtained by Votebeat from Republican Rep. Scott Krug, will be formally released this week. Krug said the proposed ban on removing random ballots, known as drawdowns, was inspired largely by a Votebeat investigation highlighting election officials’ reluctance to use the practice and questions about its constitutionality. Wisconsin’s law allowing drawdowns is almost as old as the state, and it appears to be used most often in recounts. Other states have had similar laws, but most have repealed them. Read Article

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