National: Trump official tried to ban half of US voting machines, citing conspiracy theories | Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay and Alexandra Alper/Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump’s election-security czar last year sought to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states by asking whether the Commerce Department could declare their components national-security risks, according to two people ​with direct knowledge of the matter. White House adviser Kurt Olsen, a lawyer Trump has tasked with proving widely debunked election-rigging conspiracy theories, pushed the plan to target Dominion Voting Systems machines. The idea emerged, the sources said, as Olsen and other officials brainstormed about how ‌the federal government could take control over elections from U.S. states, an idea Trump publicly aired. Olsen wanted a national system of hand-counted paper ballots, the sources said, a frequent Trump demand some election-security experts say would be less accurate and potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper trails that almost all cities and states use. The plan to exclude the machines, reported here first, got far enough that in September, Commerce Department officials began exploring what grounds could be invoked to execute it, three additional sources said. It eventually collapsed, however, because Olsen and other administration staffers working with him failed to provide evidence to justify such a move, two of the sources said. The episode is part of a far-reaching Trump ​administration push to encroach on state and local governments’ authority to run elections – which is granted to them in the U.S. Constitution to prevent the executive branch from seizing power.Read Article

National: Election Officials Warn of Rising Threats As Security Funding Declines Ahead of Midterms | Kaitlin Bender-Thomas/The Fulcrum

Election officials warned lawmakers on Wednesday that threats against election workers and voting systems are escalating even as federal funding for election security remains far below 2020 levels, posing risks ahead of the 2026 midterms. In 2020, Congress allocated $425 million for election security grants, compared to $15 million in 2025 and $45 million this year. The Trump administration has also proposed a $707 million cut to the CyberSecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s fiscal 2027 budget and ended the agency’s election security support for state and local governments. These concerns were raised during a House Subcommittee on Elections hearing on election security. Thomas Hicks, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal funds to states and territories to improve election administration, said election workers across the country have faced phishing attacks, bomb threats, and swatting incidents — false emergency reports intended to trigger large police responses at polling locations. Read Article

National: Judge refuses to block Trump executive order that limits mail voting | Nicholas Riccarddi/Associated Press

A federal judge has declined to halt President Donald Trump’s executive order creating a federal voter list and limiting mail voting, clearing the way for potential sweeping changes in how American elections are run shortly before this year’s midterm elections. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, late Wednesday rejected the request by Democrats and civil rights groups that had argued Trump’s order would likely be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. Nichols agreed with the Republican Trump administration’s contention that it was too early to block the order because it has yet to be implemented. Nichols’ ruling leaves the door open for further challenges when the Trump administration moves to implement the president’s directive. A separate lawsuit seeking to block the executive order is underway in Boston. No matter how rapidly the administration acts, no voting changes are expected during primary elections, which continue into next month. Read Article

National: OpenAI heralds cybersecurity, election interference safeguard plans for 2026 midterms | Tim Sparks/CyberScoop

OpenAI on Wednesday hailed its plans to safeguard information and aid cybersecurity defenders in the 2026 midterm elections, including work to combat deepfakes and other forms of artificial intelligence misuse. The announcement builds on commitments from major tech companies in 2024, including OpenAI, to protect elections from AI-infused election interference — efforts that some thought weren’t enough. Government agencies, non-governmental institutes and others have increasingly warned about AI’s ability to have a negative impact on elections even as they advertise its potential for good. OpenAI’s plan has five planks: spreading reliable information about voting and election results, helping with cybersecurity, watermarking deepfakes, enforcing policies that ban users from deploying its tools for election interference, and weeding out political bias in its models. Read Article

Opinion: Were the Constitution’s Authors a Little Too Optiistic? | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

The men who drafted the Constitution knew they were playing with fire when they created a novel and powerful new office: the president of the United States. “The first man put at the helm will be a good one,” Benjamin Franklin said at the Constitutional Convention in June 1787, referring to George Washington. “No body knows what sort may come afterward. The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.” The framers were not blind to the danger that they were creating a new kind of king, and the Constitution they adopted a few months later tried to strike a balance in inventing what was then a wholly novel office. They wanted a president who was decisive, responsive and responsible. But they also sought to establish a constitutional structure able to constrain a president who aspired to be a monarch. Read Article

Opinion: The ‘greatest threat’ to rule of law in decades. That’s how lawyers, judges see Trump | Mark Z. Barabak/Los Angeles Times

Sometimes it seems as though the only thing that stands between a functioning democracy and a full-on Trump autocracy is a thin, black-robed line.Although the Supreme Court, in general, and conservative appellate courts, in particular, have bowed and granted President Trump permission to do pretty much anything he wants, they haven’t thoroughly capitulated to his endless grasping for ever more power. (The way invertebrate congressional Republicans have.)At the lower-court level, judges have repeatedly ruled in ways intended to check Trump, most notably when it comes to violating civil and constitutional rights in pursuit of his indiscriminate immigration dragnet.The tendency to slow-walk his administration’s response to those rulings — and ignore others that Trump thinks he can safely snub — only contribute to the perception of presidential lawlessness and a sense that our judicial system is being strained to something approaching a breaking point.Go ahead, if you’d like, and dismiss those concerns as just so much overwrought hand-wringing, or the mindless anti-Trump blathering of your friendly political columnist. A new survey of legal experts — including federal judges, top-tier lawyers and scores of professors from some of the country’s leading law schools — finds widespread concern about the brittle state of our legal system. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County recorder threatens felony charges over ‘unauthorized’ drop boxes ahead of primary election | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

A messy and longstanding feud between Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors over control of the key swing county’s elections has spilled over into a new arena. On Wednesday, Heap sent a letter to the board asserting his office’s authority over ballot drop boxes and warning that election workers who handle ballots deposited in “unauthorized” receptacles could face criminal penalties. The letter, written by Heap’s attorney, arrived hours before county supervisors were set to take up a routine vote on drop box locations for the July 21 primary. It set the stage for a lengthy and fiery meeting that put the divisions between the county’s mostly GOP officials on full display. The spiraling saga is amplifying questions about how effectively top county officials will be able to administer this year’s midterm election. Read Article

California tries to block Trump involvement in election procedures | Laurel Rosenhall/The New York Times

Six days before the California primary, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Wednesday intended to safeguard elections after federal officials and local sheriffs took unusual steps in the last year to seize ballots from election offices.The new law, which takes effect immediately, would not stop officials who have a warrant. But Newsom described it as a way “to address the legitimate anxiety” over election security amid attempts by the Trump administration and the president’s allies to tamper with results and sow doubt in the mechanics of democracy.The governor, a Democrat whose popularity has soared as he’s taken a more combative stance against President Donald Trump, listed various actions taken by Trump to explain the need for the bill. Read Article

California’s overseas voters face new barriers after Trump administration cut key program | Sara DiNatale/San Francisco Chronicle

It’s never been easy to cast an absentee ballot from inside a military submarine. But now that the Trump administration has eliminated a crucial mechanism to return absentee ballots, overseas voting requires even more of a herculean effort. It’s an archaic reality: California’s absentee voter laws rely heavily on fax machines and the U.S. Postal Service. For military members in far-flung deployments or at sea, where the Postal Service is unreliable to nonexistent, the Department of Defense’s free email-to-fax service was a lifeline to democracy for the last 36 years. The Department of Defense in August announced, without explanation, it was cutting the fax service as the administration axed federal programs it said constituted wasteful spending. The voters who used the program are now facing their first election cycle without it. “We’re thinking of the military voters who will no longer be able to cast their ballots in time,” said Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, who is attempting to reform state absentee voting law in the Legislature. “We want to make sure we aren’t abandoning Californians who are deployed abroad or serving overseas.” Read Article

Colorado county clerks from both parties feel abandoned by Governor for letting felon Peters out of jail early | David O. Williams/The Aspen Times

Gov. Jared Polis thinks his decision to commute the prison sentence of 2020 election denier, convicted felon and former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters will someday be viewed in the same light as former Beaver Creek resident and President Gerald Ford’s pardon of President Richard Nixon: An act of national “reconciliation and healing.” For many Democrats and some Republicans in Colorado, that day will never arrive. While his own party calls for the censure or even impeachment of Polis for essentially ending Peters’ nearly nine-year sentence for breaching her own election systems in support of President Donald Trump’s widely debunked 2020 election claims, current and former Colorado clerks from both sides of the aisle say something much larger than the governor’s legacy is at stake. “We are furious, disgusted, and deeply disappointed by the Governor’s decision,” the Colorado County Clerk’s Association (CCCA) wrote in a statement. “At a time when election officials need strong support, this decision abandons them and supports the attack on the legitimacy of American elections.” County clerks from both parties feel abandoned by Polis for letting felon Peters out of jail early | AspenTimes.com

Maryland: Vendor error causes mass redo of mail-in ballots | Racquel Bazos/The Baltimore Sun

The Maryland State Board of Elections is sending new mail-in ballots to every voter who requested one after a vendor error mixed up some voters’ party affiliations, elections officials said Friday. Though it’s possible that not every mail-in ballot was incorrect, according to the State Board, election integrity and security demands resending all the ballots. Only voters who got their mail-in ballots before May 14 might be impacted, the board wrote. “We are diligently working to address this error and provide clear instructions to those affected as quickly as possible,” Jared DeMarinis, state administrator of elections, said in the Friday announcement. “The State and Local Boards of Elections remain committed to running an election that is verified, secure and accurate. Mail-in voting is an integral facet of the electoral process. With over 500,000 voters requesting mail-in ballots, we want to eliminate any doubt in its integrity or accuracy that is why I have arranged the sending of replacement ballots,” he said.. Read Article

Michigan state police investigate Antrim County Clerk’s husband’s access to office, computer | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s husband was alone in a secure area of the clerk’s office and using the clerk’s computer, according to a report by the Michigan State Police, which investigated the incident. According to the police report, a county maintenance worker saw Randy Bishop alone in the clerk’s office on Feb. 19, watching a video stream of a county board of commissioners meeting that Victoria Bishop was attending. Randy Bishop is a conservative talk radio host who goes by “Trucker Randy” and has claimed to have evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Votebeat obtained the report from a local resident who received it in response to a public records request, and confirmed the report’s authenticity with the state police. The report itself, which is partially redacted, says the case is currently pending review by the Antrim County prosecutor’s office, though that office said its understanding is that the matter was being referred to the state attorney general, whose office did not respond to a request for comment. Read Article

South Dakota: Snowbirds allege poll workers changed them to federal voters without instruction to prove residency | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight

A couple who spend winters in Arizona and the rest of the year in South Dakota said they were given a federal-only ballot and denied a state-local ballot when they tried to vote in person last week at the Minnehaha County administration building. Instead of retaining their Hartford home when they retired and started traveling south for the winter, Steve Nolte and Kelly Stewart sold their home four years ago, bought a recreational vehicle, and parked it year-round at a South Dakota lakeside resort. They use a mail-forwarding service in Sioux Falls, and they’re registered to vote in Minnehaha County. Since January, state law requires that anyone who lists only a mail forwarding address or post office box — without describing where they actually live — be registered as a federal-only voter when they register or request an absentee ballot. That means the person can only vote in federal contests such as presidential and congressional races — not other statewide, legislative, county, city or local races or ballot questions. The law was motivated partly by some legislators’ opposition to full-time RVers voting in local and state races. Read Article

Texas: Calm, not chaos, as Dallas County voters cast ballots in runoff with countywide system | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

Voting unfolded slowly but smoothly in Dallas County’s runoff on Tuesday, a change from the chaos that took place during the March 3 primary election. After the county Republican Party forced a switch to precinct-based voting, thousands of confused voters from both parties, accustomed to the vote-anywhere system, were turned away from polls and redirected to their neighborhood voting sites. Making matters worse, some voters were sent to the wrong polls by incorrect maps on the Secretary of State’s website and others received bad information from navigators stationed at voting sites. It prompted former Republican Party Chair Allen West to amend the GOP’s contract with the county to revert to the countywide system for the runoff, citing a fear of being sued for voter disenfranchisement. Because county officials control early voting in Texas, the Republicans’ push for precincts applied only to the primary and runoff election days. Read Article

Texas using DPS records to confirm citizenship of voters flagged by federal database | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribine

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office is now checking whether 2,724 registered voters it flagged as potential noncitizens may have already provided proof of citizenship to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Christina Adkins, elections division director, said during a meeting with county election administrators earlier this month. That check comes after county elections officials found the federal database used to generate the list flagged some voters who had already given citizenship documentation to DPS when they registered to vote. Texas officials in October sent counties the list of potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s roll of more than 18 million registered voters against a federal database used to verify citizenship. County election officials have since confirmed some of the flagged voters were citizens, though a total number was not immediately available. In addition, they found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through DPS, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file. Read Article

Wisconsin: Lawsuit seeks to require election officials to let absentee voters cure their ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin is challenging the state’s law governing voters’ ability to fix missing information on their absentee ballots, alleging that the law violates the Wisconsin Constitution by giving clerks a vast amount of discretion over whether to reject ballots. The group is asking a Dane County judge to require all clerks to provide voters notice when an absentee ballot certificate is lacking necessary information — such as a signature or the address of a voter or the person who witnessed the ballot’s casting — and give them an opportunity to add that information before rejecting the ballot, a process known as “curing” the ballot. Right now, the law tells clerks that they “may” return incomplete absentee ballots to voters. That results in some municipal clerks sending voters prompt notice about faulty ballots, while other clerks put those ballots in the rejected pile without informing the voter at all, the lawsuit states. Municipalities also treat absentee ballots differently depending on when they receive them, the lawsuit alleges, and those that arrive closer to Election Day often have a lesser chance of getting cured. Read Article

National: Trump so far failing in quest for power over elections as midterms approach | Jonathan Shorman/News From The States

AAs President Donald Trump tries to assert power over U.S. elections, he has raged on social media, cajoled Republican lawmakers and unleashed the Department of Justice on his political enemies. What has he accomplished with all that effort? Not a lot. Six months before the November midterm elections, the Trump administration’s quest to exercise authority over the contests and impose sweeping restrictions on voters has proved largely unsuccessful. The aggressive campaign — separate from Trump’s more effective foray into redistricting fights — has been stymied by the courts, rebuffed by many state election officials and opposed by key Republican senators. “I think there’s many out there who are worried about the constant drumbeat of what the administration is trying to do and what they might do in the future. I hear this from voters, I hear this from election officials,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. “And what I see is that there is a vast chasm between wanting to do something and trying to do something and actually successfully doing it.” Read Article

GOP redistricting confuses voters and burdens election officials | John Hanna and Jack Brook/Associated Press

Thousands of Louisiana voters have already cast early ballots for congressional candidates in what soon could be the wrong districts. Alabama’s primaries are a week away, but the state plans a do-over for voting on U.S. House races. A new congressional map in Tennessee upended races that had been underway for months. Republicans’ rush to gerrymander congressional districts across several Southern states after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling hollowed out the Voting Rights Act is confusing voters and creating logistical headaches for local election officials. The changes are hitting while primary season is in progress. The chaotic upheaval to an election season that could determine which party controls the U.S. House is the latest fallout from an intensely partisan gerrymandering battle initiated by President Donald Trump last year to protect Republicans’ slim majority. Read Article

National: Republicans who denied 2020 election results could be governors next year | Dan Merica, Patrick Marley and Clara Ence Morse/The Washington Post

Political figures who took leading roles in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election appear on track to win the Republican Party’s nomination for governor in several of the country’s biggest battleground states, including Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Their prominence shows how President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen have become an article of faith within the Republican Party, more than five years after he lost to Joe Biden. And it means victories in this year’s midterm elections would give Trump supporters who were central to his efforts to overturn the election key oversight roles in the 2028 presidential election, for which states hold main authority. The GOP fields for governor include activists who took vocal, and sometimes official, actions in support of Trump’s efforts to claim victory in 2020, a sheriff who recently seized ballots in California, and members of Congress who voted to reverse the 2020 results and backed a lawsuit seeking to do the same. Read Article

National: Lawyers aim to block Trump order that would create eligible voter list | Michael Kunzelman and Nicholas Riccadi/Associated Press

President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he issued an executive order to restrict voters’ ability to cast ballots by mail, attorneys for Democrats and civil rights groups told a federal judge on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols didn’t rule from the bench on the plaintiffs’ request for an order blocking officials from implementing Trump’s March 31 order, his second related to elections since winning his second term in the White House. The case is one of multiple lawsuits filed to block the order on the grounds that only states and Congress, and not the president, are given power under the Constitution to decide how elections are run. Trump’s initial executive order to revamp elections by requiring documentary proof of citizenship, issued last year, was largely halted by multiplefederal judges on similar grounds. He issued his latest order only after the voting bill he backed stalled in Congress. The current legal fight comes as the country is in the midst of primary elections and election officials are preparing for the intricacies of holding the fall’s midterm elections. Read Article

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