National: Judge Blocks FEMA From Tying Antiterrorism Grants to Election Changes | Scott Dance/The New York Times

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from conditioning annual counterterrorism and emergency preparedness grants on states altering their voting procedures. U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali ruled that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) exceeded its legal authority when it warned local governments that up to 20 percent of their $1 billion in annual preparedness funding would be withheld unless they moved toward paper ballots or implemented citizenship verification checks. Prompted by a lawsuit from local governments in Tennessee, Texas, and Ohio, the court ordered FEMA to strike the election-related prerequisites from its grant application process, rejecting the administration’s attempt to use counterterrorism funding to compel local election changes aligned with President Trump’s voter fraud claims. nytimes.com

National: Democrats sue over Pentagon’s changes to voter forms for Americans overseas | Maegan Vazquez/The Washington Post

The Democratic National Committee has filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget over last-minute, emergency changes to the primary voter-registration form used by service members and citizens living abroad. The lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s sudden removal of a key registration option for overseas citizens who have never resided in the U.S., such as adult children of American expats, which forces them off the standardized federal form and onto state-specific application processes. Voting rights advocates and election administrators condemned the administration for manufacturing a fake “emergency” to bypass public comment periods and push restrictive ID updates weeks before the midterms, warning that altering the Federal Post Card Application on such short notice will trigger severe confusion and disenfranchise eligible voters overseas.Read Article

National: Renewed CISA support comes too late for midterm prep, some election officials say | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

State and local election officials are warning that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) newly renewed election security offerings are arriving too late to meaningfully assist with midterm preparations. Following drastic staff cutbacks and budget slashes driven by Trump administration spending cuts and long-standing political grievances over the agency’s 2020 anti-disinformation efforts, local administrators say crucial advisory relationships were severed and cannot simply be rebooted weeks before voting begins. Read Article

National: The Untold Origins of Trump’s Plan to Sharply Restrict Mail-In Voting | Jen Fifield and Peter Elkind/ProPublica

A behind-the-scenes White House pressure campaign sought to restrict mail-in voting by leveraging the United States Postal Service. For nearly a year, White House officials pressed the postal agency to implement strict regulatory conditions, including a proposal to reject mail ballots from states that refuse to share their complete voter registration files with federal authorities. While postal leadership initially resisted acting as an enforcement mechanism for state election laws, warning that filtering mail exceeded the agency’s core operational mission, executive negotiations ultimately produced modified regulations. Although federal court actions halted the rules ahead of the midterm elections, postal labor representatives and legal experts criticized agency leadership for failing to reject the executive pressure more forcefully, leaving a framework that could be revived in future election cycles. Read Article

National: Inside Trump’s plan for the ‘biggest DOJ election observer effort in history’ | Gabe Cohen and Tierney Sneed/CNN

CNN reports that President Donald Trump and his allies inside and outside his administration are aiming to blanket polling places with an expanding network of party and federal election monitors this November, intensifying scrutiny of the nuts and bolts of voting as Trump hunts for what he claims, without evidence, is widespread cheating and fraud in US elections. The Justice Department plans to dispatch over 1,000 monitors including newly hired political appointees who previously helped challenge Trump’s 2020 election defeat or, in one case, pleaded guilty to illeagally accessing a county election website. Concurrently, secret RNC training materials reveal a nationwide pilot program deploying “special monitors” specifically instructed to inspect voting machine serial numbers, photograph results tapes, and feed potential discrepancies directly to a legal hotline. Election administrators and voting rights advocates warn that aggressive federal and partisan surveillance is designed to amplify minor technical errors into grounds for contesting unfavorable election results. Read Article

National: Judge finds law criminalizing noncitizen voting unconstitutional | Tom Hals/Reuters

A Federal jusdge has dismissed a federal criminal case against a Jamaican national accused of voting illegally in 2020, ruling that the 1996 federal law criminalizing noncitizen voting is unconstitutional. The decision delivered a direct setback to the Trump administration’s DOJ crackdown on noncitizen voting, which has served as a centerpiece of its campaign messaging heading into the midterms. While the ruling applies strictly to the specific case, defence lawyers argued that regulating noncitizen qualifications remains a state responsibility rather than a federal crime. Legal observers note that the opinion could prove persuasive in approximately 45 similar federal prosecutions pending nationwide as judges evaluate whether Congress exceeded its authority under the statute. Read Article

National: Second Prosecutor Quits Trump’s ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Senior prosecutor Kurt Olsen has resigned from the Justice Department’s “grand conspiracy” investigation, marking the second high-profile prosecutor to quit the probe in less than a month. Olsen, a Trump loyalist with no prior prosecutorial experience who previously pushed to overturn the 2020 election results, stepped down following security clearance complications that hindered his access to classified materials relevant to the inquiry. His departure follows the sudden exit three weeks prior of lead prosecutor Joseph diGenova, who resigned after DOJ leadership grew impatient with his delay in bringing charges, as well as the departure of a lead FBI investigator and the earlier removal of a career prosecutor who found insufficient evidence for charges. Read Article

National: This White House Plan Threatens Funding for Disabled Voters | Lisa Song/ProPublica

A proposed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rule would prohibit organizations from using federal grant money for voter registration drives or related non-partisan registration activities. Spearheaded by OMB Director Russell Vought, the administrative policy change targets federal grants, including accessibility funding awarded under the Help America Vote Act that non-profit advocacy groups rely on to assist disabled and elderly voters at nursing homes and care facilities. Read Article

National: As AI images become common, the threat to elections draws alarm: ‘How will voters know what’s true?’ | George Chidi/The Guardian

Political strategists, advocates, and lawmakers warn that the proliferation of hyper-realistic digital fabrications is fostering a pervasive environment of skepticism where voters struggle to distinguish authentic news from computer-generated disinformation. Compounding the challenge, patchwork state regulations governing AI disclaimers face serious enforcement hurdles and First Amendment legal challenges, such as a federal judge halting Montana’s deepfake law, leaving federal regulatory vacuums that allow deceptive campaign materials to spread across digital platforms virtually unchecked. Read Article

A California sheriff seized ballots. The court ruling shutting the probe will resonate nationwide | Jeremy Herb and Tierney Sneed/CNN

The California Supreme Court has halted Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s unlawful seizure of 650,000 ballots, setting a major judicial precedent aimed at protecting chain-of-custody protocols ahead of November. The court ruled that allowing law enforcement unfettered, secret access to count ballots poses a direct threat to election integrity, ordering Bianco to return the seized materials from a 2025 referendum. Driven by concerns over similar law enforcement interference, including an earlier FBI seizure of 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, California and other states have enacted strict new notification requirements and criminal penalties for illegal ballot seizures, while legal scholars work to educate magistrates on chain-of-custody safeguards when evaluating warrants targeting voting materials. Read Article

Colorado voters could see more poll monitors during the midterm election | Sara Wilson/Colorado Newsline

Common Cause Colorado and its partners are preparing to expand a longstanding, nonpartisan election protection program during the midterm election with around 1,000 volunteer poll monitors, up from around 300 in 2024. “These are neighbors and folks of all political affiliations who are united around one purpose: to support their neighbors to vote, to watchdog the process, keep the vibes positive and ensure that voters have the help they need at the polls,” Aly Belknap, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, said. “The function of a poll monitor is to provide a culture of safety and support at the polls, and this is all part of preventing intimidation and political violence,” she said. Read Article

Georgia election board pushes back on GOP plan to fix voting system flaw | Sudhin Thanawala/Associated Press

The Georgia State Election Board has pushed back on an emergency proposal by the Republican National Committee and state GOP to reconfigure election software just weeks before early voting begins. Two Republican board members on the board spoke out against their party’s last-minute plan to address ballot-privacy flaws, warning that rushing through software changes on the eve of the midterms would “do more harm than good” and trigger administrative chaos. Consequently, the board adjourned without taking a vote, halting the GOP’s effort to force an immediate overhaul of the state’s voting system. Read Article

Louisiana has no records backing $100M voting-machine estimate | Nolan McKendry/The Center Square

Louisiana election officials have told lawmakers that replacing the state’s 35-year-old voting machines will cost about $100 million, but the Secretary of State’s Office has admitted to possessing no documentation or records to substantiate its estimate. Legislative fiscal analysts noted that the true final cost remains unknown until a specific vendor and security framework are selected to replace the current direct-recording electronic machines. While state officials plan to fund the overhaul using the Voting Technology Fund alongside federal grants, the absence of line-item documentation behind the high-profile price tag has raised fresh questions among state leaders as Louisiana attempts to finalize a vendor selection. Read Article

Michigan: Effort to recall Antrim County Clerk accused of changing voters’ registration statuses gets go-ahead from state board | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has approved recall petition language against Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop, giving organizers the green light to begin gathering signatures to force a recall vote. The approved petition stems from allegations that Bishop overstepped her statutory authority by making unauthorized changes to the state’s Qualified Voter File, which led the Michigan Bureau of Elections to suspend her system access earlier this year. Read Article

North Carolina: Mail-in ballot dispute scheduled for Oct. 14 federal court hearing | The Carolina Journal

A U.S. District judge has scheduled an October 14 federal court hearing in Winston-Salem to hear arguments on a preliminary injunction challenging North Carolina’s newly implemented mail-in ballot regulations. The lawsuit alleges that the State Board of Elections’ new Republican majority rushed through eleventh-hour rules on September 4 without public input. Plaintiffs argue that the new guidelines, which mandate the rejection of absentee ballots submitted in unsealed inner envelopes without an opportunity to cure and permit standardless signature matching across county boards, violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act by threatening to arbitrarily disenfranchise thousands of voters. Read Article

Texas officials knew of issues with its voter registration web portal in March, records show | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Texas state officials were warned as early as March 2026 about severe defects in the Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) online voter registration portal, long before a massive backlog of at least 500,000 delayed voter records was dumped on local county election administrators right before the November midterm election. Despite DPS’s assurances in March that a programming error had been resolved, warnings from voting rights groups continued through the summer, revealing that software updates to DPS systems were dropping critical registration data and leaving many voters unknowingly unregistered when they attempted to cast ballots. With county officials now scrambling to manually process the backlogged records to avoid forcing affected voters onto provisional ballots, state lawmakers from both parties are launching inquiries into the communication breakdowns and lack of system testing between DPS and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. Read Article

National: Election officials across the country prepare to fight any Trump administration interference in the 2026 midterms | Carter Walker and Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

Each year, election officials prepare for the worst: A bomb threat at a polling place, power outages, natural disasters. But this year, they are wrestling a potential threat they have never before considered: the possibility that the federal government might disrupt the administration of November’s elections. It’s not clear what action, if any, the Trump administration may take to interfere with the 2026 midterms, but election officials from jurisdictions large and small are preparing for everything from immigration officers at the polls to federal attempts to seize ballots. They’re also acknowledging that most standoffs with the federal government would likely end in court, and they’re talking to lawyers and preparing legal filings in case they prove necessary. Read Article

National: Russia Aims to Inject Chaos Into Elections, U.S. Intelligence Finds | Dustin Volz, Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

The Russian government has been targeting Americans with covert online disinformation operations seeking to undermine public confidence in November’s midterm elections, using a familiar playbook in an attempt to inject chaos into the voting season, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Classified U.S. intelligence assessments from recent months have determined that the Kremlin has again authorized a digital influence campaign to peddle content across social media in hopes of seeding or amplifying domestic divisions around the election season, the officials said. The assessments did not find evidence of attempts to take aim at voting machinery in a way that could compromise the actual voting process, the officials added. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified information, did not specify the efforts to influence attitudes online. But experts in Russian disinformation have spotted some social media campaigns in recent weeks that use artificial intelligence to create fake videos of Hollywood celebrities talking about key battleground Senate races. Read Article

National: Civil Rights Groups Sue to Keep Armed Agents Away From Voting Sites | Amy Qin/The New York Times

Civil rights groups and labor unions sued the Trump administration on Friday, asserting that its aggressive immigration enforcement and suggestions that it could send armed agents to polling sites amounted to voter intimidation and violated the Voting Rights Act. Brought by a coalition of Black, Asian and Latino civil rights groups and unions, including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Service Employees International Union, the lawsuit seeks to block any effort by the Trump administration to deploy federal agents at voting locations, which the groups contend can deter citizens trying to legally vote. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that President Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and other members of the administration had created a climate in which “voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.” The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent on Friday morning. But in the past, Mr. Mullin has said that opponents were fear-mongering and that ICE was not patrolling polling places. “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place,” he said, “or we’re serving a warrant.” Read Article

National: 40 days to midterms, election officials say new US cyber plan comes too late | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

The nation’s cybersecurity agency on Thursday released an election infrastructure security plan 40 days before November’s midterms, laying out potential threats to election systems and listing services it would offer to election officials to protect the vote. Election officials said the plan is both inadequate and belated after the administration gutted the agency’s election security work last year, prompting the officials to pay for private services to ensure they were prepared for the upcoming elections. “For them to come in five weeks before the election, yeah, nice effort,” said Nevada’s Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who added that he would have liked to see the federal government provide more funding for cybersecurity, rather than Nevada taxpayers having to pay for it. Read Article

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