Alaska Governor vetoes bipartisan elections reform bill | Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a bipartisan bill aimed at streamlining the state’s elections process on Thursday, just seven months ahead of high-stakes state and federal elections in November. Leaders with the multipartisan House Majority caucus said there will be a joint legislative veto override vote within the next few days. In a prepared statement announcing the veto, Dunleavy said while there are many provisions in the bills he supports, the bill contained “legal and operational challenges and could jeopardize the election process.” He told lawmakers his two main issues with the bill are related to when it would go into effect and voters’ signature verification. “The Division of Elections warns such changes would be extremely difficult if not impossible, to implement securely and reliably in advance of the 2026 elections,” he wrote in a transmittal letter to the Legislature. He said the Division needs sufficient time to make necessary changes. Read Article

Arizona: Judge thwarts Trump administration’s attempt to access voter rolls | Gabrielle Canon/The Guardian

An attempt by the Trump administration to gain access to Arizona’s detailed voter records was thwarted by the courts on Tuesday, when a federal judge dismissed the US justice department’s lawsuit against the state. The ruling marks the latest legal setback in an unprecedented nationwide effort by the administration before the midterm elections to collect sensitive information about tens of millions of Americans. The justice department has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking to force release of the data, which includes dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial social security numbers. The US district judge Susan Brnovich, a Trump appointee, ruled that Arizona’s statewide voter registration list was “not a document subject to request by the Attorney General” under federal law. The judge dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice because, she wrote, “amendment would be legally futile”. Read Article

Wyoming: Committee presents hand-count proposal to Weston County commissioners | Alexis Barker/Wyoming Tribune Eagle

Weston County commissioners were presented with a proposal to eliminate voting machines and move to a full hand-count system during a recent meeting, sparking an extended discussion about election integrity, costs and logistics. Members of the Weston County Republican Party’s election integrity committee said the recommendation is the result of roughly six months of research and community outreach. “We are here to address something that I believe is an issue and something that is great to voters as well,” Benjamin Roberts told the board, arguing that the change could restore trust in local elections. The committee, formed in late 2025 and chaired by Susan Love, was tasked with studying the feasibility of hand-counting ballots and presenting its findings to commissioners. Read Article

Georgia voting machine deadline leaves counties with no way to run the 2026 election | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

The state of Georgia’s elections right now is anything but peachy. In abouThe state of Georgia’s elections right now is anything but peachy. In about 10 weeks, county election officials are required to stop using their current voting system — but the state hasn’t told them what to replace it with. Right now, Georgia voters make their selections on touchscreen ballot-marking devices manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems (recently purchased and rebranded as Liberty Vote). Georgia rolled the machines out just before the 2020 election, as part of a sweeping and expensive statewide modernization effort — spurred in part by a 2019 federal court ruling that barred continued use of the paperless touchscreen systems the state had relied on since the early 2000s. The newer machines print a paper ballot listing the voter’s choices in plain English next to a QR code encoding the same choices. When ballots are tabulated, the scanners read the QR code — not the printed text beside it — to count the vote. That design has long drawn fire from both Republicans and Democrats, who argue voters can’t actually verify what a QR code says, only the text next to it. Read Article

North Carolina elections board considers new rules for photo ID, polling places | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

A new proposal would make it easier for North Carolina county boards of election to throw out ballots of people who don’t show photo ID when they vote. Under the proposal, county boards would no longer have to agree unanimously that voters lied about the reasons they didn’t have ID. A majority on the county boards, on which Republicans currently hold three of five seats, could determine that voters were lying and reject their ballots. The changes to the rejection threshold are part of a list of proposed election rules governing absentee ballots and conduct at polling places. The state Board of Elections took its first step Wednesday to advance the proposals, voting 3-2 to put them out for public comment. The board’s two Democratic members were opposed. After the 60-day comment period, the board would vote on any revisions. The Rules Review Commission would have to approve. Read Article

National: Election Officials Have Been Preparing for AI Cyberattacks | Derek Tisler/Brennan Center for Justice

Since ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence systems first became widely available, the Brennan Center and other experts have warned that this technology may lead to more cyberattacks on elections and other critical infrastructure. Reports that Anthropic’s new AI model, Claude Mythos, can pinpoint software vulnerabilities that even the most experienced human experts would miss underline the urgency of those risks. Fortunately, election officials have been preparing for cyberattacks and have made significant progress in securing their systems over the past decade, incorporating improved cybersecurity practices at every step of the election process. Anthropic claims that its new model can autonomously scan for vulnerabilities in software more effectively than even expert security researchers. If given access to this new model, amateurs would theoretically be capable of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in a way that previously only sophisticated actors, such as nation-states, could do. For this reason, Anthropic chose not to release the Mythos model publicly. Instead, under an initiative Anthropic is calling Project Glasswing, it has offered access to Mythos to a number of high-profile tech firms and critical infrastructure operators so that these companies can proactively identify and address vulnerabilities in their own systems. Although Anthropic is currently controlling access to its model to prevent misuse, experts believe it is only a matter of time before tools advertising similar capabilities are broadly available. Election Officials Have Been Preparing for AI Cyberattacks | Brennan Center for Justice

Texas appeals court rejects Dallas County Republican’s move to force precincts in runoff | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

One month before the primary runoff, a Texas appeals court has rejected a Republican precinct chair’s emergency effort to force the Dallas County elections chief to reinstate precinct-based voting. he ruling leaves countywide voting in place for the May 26 runoff, but the conflict may not be over, with GOP leaders weighing next legal steps as Democrats cheered the decision as a win for voter access. In a petition filed last week, Barry Wernick alleged that former Dallas County Republican chair Allen West’s amendment to the party’s contract with the county that scrapped precincts for the runoff was invalid because he did not have authorization from the party’s executive committee. Texas appeals court rejects to intervene in Dallas County runoff

National: ‘I have the right to vote.’ States and the DOJ are fighting over personal data | Bart Jansen/USA Today

Dozens of legal battles are being waged nationwide over federal access to personal information about voters, as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to weed out immigrants who are in the country illegally, while civil rights advocates fight for privacy. By determining who gets dropped from voter registration lists, the results of the cases will help determine who casts ballots in November midterm elections that will decide who leads the narrowly divided Congress. The Department of Justice has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for voter lists, which include driver’s license and Social Security numbers, in the hunt for fraud by ineligible voters. The department has argued that courts shouldn’t second-guess the reasons for searching the voter rolls. DOJ, states battle over federal access to personal info on voter lists

California election officials face false choice: count votes quickly or count them right | Maya C. Miller/CalMatters

Political persecution, threats of violence and the seizure of sensitive documents might sound like a plot line for a heist or thriller movie. For California election officials tasked with enabling participatory democracy, these are now everyday realities — from Riverside County, where Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots from his own county’s registrar of voters, to Shasta County, where threats of violence forced the longtime registrar to retire early. The integrity of the state’s voting systems will be under intense scrutiny this year with control of the U.S. House on the line, as Californians could play a decisive role in which party wins the majority. Yet while timely and decisive results are more crucial than ever, California is famous for its ploddingly slow vote count. That lengthy wait has increasingly sown distrust in the accuracy of California’s results, especially among Republicans, and particularly in races where a candidate leading on election day falls behind as more ballots are processed in subsequent days. California verifies the vote slowly, fueling mistrust

Michigan court tosses Republican suit challenging overseas voting for military spouses and children | Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance

Michigan Court of Claims Judge Sima Patel on Wednesday dismissed a challenge to Michigan election law brought by the Republican National Committee and the Michigan Republican Party against Michigan’s secretary of state and director of elections. While the suit aimed to invalidate a state law that allowed the spouses and dependents of Michigan voters who are living abroad to cast a ballot in Michigan elections, Patel concluded that the law remains in line with the Michigan Constitution. The suit was one of many cases that Republicans have filed against Benson, with the Michigan Court of Appeals rejecting a similar case in 2025, centered on the same rules within the state Election Officials Manual. While the law does not require a servicemember’s spouse or child to have lived in Michigan in order to cast their ballot there, the RNC argued that the law stood at odds with language in the state’s governing document that states, “every citizen of the United States who has attained the age of 21 years, who has resided in this state six months, and who meets the requirements of local residence provided by law, shall be an elector and qualified to vote in any election except as otherwise provided in this constitution.” Read Article

National: How Trump is moving to control U.S. elections, one state at a time | Ned Parker and Peter Eisler/Reuters

In January, the Franklin County Board of Elections in Ohio received a surprising call. The man on the line said he was an agent at the Department of Homeland Security – and he needed immediate access to voter records. Franklin County has a large population of Democrats and has long been a focal point of Republican skepticism about urban voting centers in Ohio. In the weeks that followed, the requests multiplied. According to emails reviewed by Reuters, the agent asked for voter registration forms and voting histories for dozens of voters – records that include driver’s license numbers and other confidential data. He pressed for information about local voter‑registration groups, describing the request as an “investigation” and “very time sensitive.” But he offered no explanation for what prompted his probe or where it was headed. The requests were a bolt from the blue for Franklin County election officials. Under the U.S. Constitution, elections – even for national offices such as the presidency – are run by states, not the federal government. Adding to the confusion, DHS’s mission has traditionally focused largely on counterterrorism, border security and immigration enforcement. Read Article

Montana: Even after reminder, voters struggling with new law requiring birth year on ballot envelope | Darrell Ehrlick/Daily Montanan

Even as election officials throughout the state reminded residents last month of changes to Montana’s election laws and how ballots should be marked, Montana’s largest county, Yellowstone, said that it is working with nearly 1,000 residents to fix rejected ballots before the school board elections on May 5. On Monday afternoon, Yellowstone County Elections Administrator Dayna Causby said that 960 ballots had been rejected largely because most failed to include the elector’s birth year, which is now required by state law. That new requirement caused a higher percentage of Montana ballots to be rejected in 2025, but election officials are worried because there are several different elections in 2026, including primaries in June as well as the general election in November. Read Article

Pennsylvania court grants public access to voting data in dispute from 2020 election’s aftermath | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

Pennsylvania’s high court ruled Tuesday that spreadsheets of raw data associated with every ballot are public records, providing access to the “cast vote records” that had been requested by an election researcher hired by the Trump Administration last year. The Democratic-majority Supreme Court said its unanimous decision was a way to “satisfy the voting public that our elections are safe, secure and accurate” while preserving the state constitution’s requirement that votes remain secret. The Lycoming County elections director in Williamsport had denied Heather Honey’s request for digital copies from the 2020 presidential election, saying that would amount to letting her review the contents of a ballot box, one vote at a time. Cast vote records are created when a voter’s choices are made electronically or scanned. Read Article

National: Federal drawdown of election support ‘destroyed’ ongoing relationships, experts say | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

Efforts under President Donald Trump to scale back the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its election security resources have strained relationships with state and local officials, raising concerns that jurisdictions may be far less prepared to counter threats to the November midterms, officials in Michigan and Georgia said Tuesday. The warnings, delivered by state officials and other experts at a hearing hosted by Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee, come as the Trump administration has sought to expand the federal role in election administration through executive orders and the growing involvement of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in election-related matters, including an FBI raid on a Fulton County, Georgia elections office. The drawdown of CISA election resources over the last year has “been very damaging,” said Aghogho Edevbie, Michigan’s deputy secretary of state. Read Article

Opinion: The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Just Issued the Worst Ruling in a Century | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

Wednesday’s 6–3 party-line decision in Louisiana v. Callais will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the past century. All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the act. This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation. It gives the green light to further partisan gerrymandering. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters. It’s a disaster for American democracy. Read Article

In Texas political parties choose how to run their primaries. Here’s how that causes headaches for voters. | Natalia Contreras/Dallas Free Press

By all accounts, the administration of the 2026 primary election in Williamson County was calamitous. Voters did not know where to vote. Lines were long and chaotic. Election workers made errors and misplaced ballots. Nearly everyone seems to agree on who’s to blame: the Williamson County Republican Party, which last fall decided to eliminate countywide voting and, for the first time in more than a decade, force all voters to cast ballots at assigned precincts instead. Republicans in Dallas and Eastland counties made the same decision. The moves set off a chain reaction of problems. “It was a mess, and I’m not going to deny that it was a mess,” said Michelle Evans, the chair of the Williamson County GOP, at a county commissioners court meeting days after the March election, though she said Republicans weren’t the only ones responsible. The meeting, inside the county courthouse in downtown Georgetown, an affluent suburb of Austin, was packed with upset voters and poll workers, who applauded a line of unhappy speakers. Read Article

National: Voters Can Be Disenfranchised Now – Just Say It’s Because They’re Democrats | Adam Serwer/The Atlantic

For the conservative editor and columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick, the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation was an atrocity. Brown v. Board of Education, he wrote in the 1950s, was a “revolutionary act by a judicial junta which simply seized power.” He warned in 1963 that the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would destroy “the whole basis of individual liberty.” And in a 1965 National Review cover story, he argued that in order to “give the Negro the vote,” the Voting Rights Act would repeal the Constitution. Kilpatrick did not hide the basis of his beliefs: In an article that was spiked after the 1963 Birmingham Baptist Church bombing, titled “The Hell He Is Equal,” he insisted that “the Negro race, as a race, is in fact an inferior race.” As the historian Nancy MacLean wrote in Freedom Is Not Enough, by the 1970s, this segregationist had refashioned himself as an opponent of racial discrimination, a champion of color-blindness. Liberal egalitarians supporting race-conscious remedies, he argued, were “worse racists—much worse racists—than the old Southern bigots.” His transformation was so complete, he joked, that he was like the convert who “became more Catholic than the Pope.” Read Aticle

Wisconsin orders Madison, Mequon to revise election tallies over disputed ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday overruled controversial ballot-counting decisions in Mequon and Madison, ordering the cities to revise final tallies in their Wisconsin Supreme Court election results. Madison counted 23 late-arriving ballots that the commission voted should not have been included, while Mequon threw out five ballots the commission said should have been counted. The commission voted 6-0 to investigate both city clerks’ offices and ordered changes to the counts — voting 5-1 to require Madison and Dane County to exclude the 23 ballots, and 6-0 to require Mequon and Ozaukee County to count the five. The deadline for the state to certify the election is May 15, but some commissioners acknowledged the likelihood that lawsuits over today’s decisions could come before then. Read Article

National: Might Donald Trump try to rig the midterms? | The Economist

“Basically we just sort of rack our brains,” says Joe Morelle. “What would happen if this happened? Usually the answer is, well, that’s never happened before—but this is what we would do.” Mr Morelle is the top-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on House Administration. In normal times his team oversees matters of great importance to Congress, such as who gets a parking permit in the House garage. This being an election year, he is preoccupied with an even more existential question. What if Donald Trump tries to steal the midterms? Mr Morelle’s committee is in charge of adjudicating disputed elections in the House of Representatives. He has spent months doing tabletop exercises and dreaming up worst-case scenarios. His list of finagles that Mr Trump might attempt is 150 items long. His what-ifs include the president ordering immigration agents to the polls, declaring that postal votes are invalid and seizing ballot boxes. “I’m looking at things that are high, medium and low probability and then asking what’s the impact” and what is the Democrats’ response, says Mr Morelle. It is a group effort: he has been conferring with lawyers across the country, state attorneys-general and secretaries of state (ie, the top election officials in each state). Come November, Mr Morelle and his colleagues will have been war-gaming for more than a year.Read Article

National: Preparing for Law Enforcement Demands for Election Materials | Gary Restaino/Brennan Center for Justice

Already this year, law enforcement agencies have demanded sensitive election materials in at least four jurisdictions. In January, the FBI seized materials related to the 2020 federal election from Fulton County, Georgia. In February, the sheriff of Riverside County, California, seized ballots from the special redistricting election the state held last year. In March, the FBI served a federal grand jury subpoena to the president of the Arizona Senate, requiring records from independent contractor Cyber Ninjas’ discredited “audit” of the 2020 federal election. And this month, the Justice Department demanded 2024 ballots and other materials from Wayne County, Michigan. Using criminal investigative tools to challenge election results is unprecedented in America, and it appears to be part of this administration’s campaign to undermine elections. This pattern is troubling for democracy and diminishes voters’ confidence in elections. It is also inconsistent with the professional standards expected of law enforcement. Election officials, grand jurors, law enforcement, and judges should be prepared to keep sensitive materials secure in the face of any improper demands for election materials, and they should carefully scrutinize warrants and subpoenas that intrude on election security. Read Article

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