National: With threats to midterms, states say Trump administration isn’t helping | Joshua Yang and Warren P. Strobel/The Washington Post

U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that while foreign adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran continue digital disinformation efforts to undermine public confidence, there is no evidence of direct interference with voting machines or vote counts. However, state election administrators report significant communication and resource gaps due to federal structural changes, including staff layoffs at CISA, the dissolution of the Foreign Malign Influence Center, and leadership vacancies on the Election Assistance Commission. While CISA recently issued an updated security plan for the midterms, former officials and state administrators argue that late-stage federal guidance offers limited utility with voting already underway. Consequently, state leaders—including several Republican election officials—express growing frustration with federal posture, noting that administrative friction and lack of timely intelligence sharing present greater operational hurdles than foreign cyber threats. Read Article

National: Election officials push voters to ‘use the drop box rather than the mailbox’ | Jeremy Herb and Gabe Cohen/CNN

Election officials across the country are actively encouraging voters to return mail ballots via designated drop boxes rather than traditional postal mail to avoid potential delivery delays. Operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service, including reduced local transit trips and centralized postmarking hubs, have contributed to a noticeable rise in late-arriving ballots during recent primary contests. In response, local election offices have invested heavily in retrofitting drop boxes with advanced heat sensors, automatic fire suppression devices, physical tamper resistance, and digital audit tracking. Despite these infrastructure enhancements, drop box availability remains politically polarized, with several states imposing strict bans or limits while others expand drop box networks to ensure timely ballot returns. Read Article

National: Trump administration sued over plans to send election monitors to voting sites | Adam Gabbatt/The Guardian

The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice over plans to deploy roughly 1,000 federal election monitors to polling places across all 50 states during the upcoming midterm elections. The complaint targets Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon and seeks to compel the immediate release of Freedom of Information Act records regarding the monitors’ deployment. Civil rights advocates argue that the unannounced, aggressive presence of federal personnel, exemplified by an August incident where monitors attempted to inspect voting machines during Wyoming’s primary, lacks statutory authority and threatens voter intimidation. Read Article

National: Lawmakers Want Colleagues to Promise They Will Accept Midterm Election Results | Louise Radnofsky/Wall Street Journal

A bipartisan coalition led by Representatives Don Bacon and Josh Gottheimer is circulating a public commitment letter calling on House leadership and colleagues to respect state election certifications for the upcoming midterms. The pledge directly opposes parliamentary maneuvers aimed at refusing or delaying the seating of certified members-elect when the 120th Congress convenes in January. The effort emerges amid heightened concerns that conservative groups and party leadership might attempt to invoke Article I powers to judge member qualifications as a pretext to deny representation to states with contested voting procedures or absent voter identification laws. Read Article

National: Are Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen losing steam? | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

An analysis from States United Action indicates that candidate embrace of false claims regarding the 2020 election has declined significantly, dropping nearly 30% among congressional and statewide contenders since 2022. Historical trends show that fewer than a quarter of statewide candidates running on election denial platforms have prevailed in recent cycles, suggesting that such rhetoric continues to prove electorally disadvantageous. Nevertheless, dozens of candidates who questioned past election results remain on the ballot across critical swing states for positions overseeing election administration, including secretary of state contests in Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Read Article

National: Election deniers stoke Trump-driven ballot security fears before midterms | Ariana Baio/The Guardian

Prominent election deniers and conservative figures are amplifying claims of election vulnerabilities across media outlets to justify expanding federal oversight of state voting procedures ahead of the midterm elections. High-profile activists have cited technical privacy concerns with voting machine barcode tabulations in Georgia, alleged foreign supply-chain compromises in voting hardware, and dismissed polls showing potential Democratic gains as psychological operations meant to depress conservative turnout. Read Article

Opinion: How Trump can—and cannot—still mess with the midterms | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

A year ago, I warned that President Donald Trump was poised to marshal federal government forces to subvert the 2026 midterm elections, just as he attempted to do after losing the 2020 U.S. presidential election to Joe Biden. True to form, Trump and his administration have since been relentless in attacking election integrity. He directed the United States Postal Service to issue a rule that would have completely shut down mail balloting nationwide for the 2026 midterm elections. His former national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, ordered government seizure of Dominion voting machines from Puerto Rico in an apparent gambit to concoct a new election-rigging conspiracy theory. Trump’s Department of Justice seized Fulton County, Georgia’s 2020 presidential election ballots, sued 30 states and D.C. to obtain their unredacted lists of voter information, and threatened election officials with federal prosecution if they did not hunt for voter fraud to the administration’s satisfaction. Read Article

Arizona: More than 3,000 Maricopa County voters got this year’s ballot early | Morgan Fischer/Phoenix New Times

Election vendor Runbeck Election Services inadvertently mailed more than 3,100 early ballots to Maricopa County voters six days prior to Arizona’s official October 7 early voting start date. Following consultation with county legal counsel, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office confirmed that the premature release was strictly a logistical timing error, affirming that all delivered ballots are valid and sent to the correct registered voters. Election officials assured the public that affected voters may complete and return their ballots normally, with any early returns remaining securely stored until official processing begins. The vendor accepted full responsibility for the staging mistake and committed to additional procedural safeguards ahead of the primary mail distribution. Read Article

California: Shasta County election chief lost, then he padlocked the ballots and called the FBI | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

Clint Curtis thinks something doesn’t smell right in Shasta County. Literally. As the registrar of voters for this Northern California community, Curtis was both election administrator and candidate this summer. After he lost, he certified the results as “full, true and correct.” He nonetheless harbored doubts. Some ballots smelled too inky, he said. Some seemed too heavy. Some felt too rough. He stashed the ballots in a storage room, slapped a padlock on the door, ordered subordinates to destroy the keys and reported his suspicions to President Donald Trump’s administration. In another place or era, Curtis’s concerns would be dismissed as kooky. But in Shasta County in 2026, they have been taken seriously enough to spur FBI agents to show up with bolt cutters so they could take a look. Read Article

Colorado counties will reconfigure voting systems to count only eligible passenger rail votes | Taylor Dolven/The Colorado Sun

Colorado election officials face a complex administrative challenge after roughly 800,000 voters received printed ballots containing Ballot Issue 7A, a sales tax measure for the Front Range Passenger Rail District, despite living outside the district’s boundaries. State lawmakers narrowed the district’s tax boundaries earlier in the year, but local county clerks were not informed of the revisions prior to ballot distribution. To resolve the discrepancy without reissuing hundreds of thousands of mail ballots, state election directors instructed Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, and Weld counties to reconfigure their tabulators to exclude 7A selections from ineligible ballots. In split-eligibility precincts, election workers will perform manual hand reviews to ensure only valid district votes are tallied, adding technical validation steps to the post-election canvass. Read Article

Georgia: Proposal to require election workers to ‘shuffle’ ballots at the polls fails to find support | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

Georgia’s State Election Board rejected an emergency proposal that would have required poll workers to collect ballots in secure boxes and manually shuffle them before scanning, aiming to protect voter secrecy ahead of the upcoming midterms. Proponents argued the rule was necessary after a researcher used artificial intelligence on public ballot records to link voters to specific ballots, but board members and local administrators warned the last-minute change would spark widespread confusion, increase costs, and drive away poll workers. Read Article

A top Michigan clerk is quitting. She can’t take the voting lies anymore | Ron French/Bridge Michigan

Persistent election conspiracy theories and public hostility are fueling a clerk retention crisis across Michigan’s local jurisdictions. Despite managing highly secure, multi-step processes like mandatory public tabulator accuracy tests, township clerks face ongoing harassment, accusatory phone calls, and false claims of vote manipulation. The resulting strain has led award-winning local administrators to resign and contributed to a statewide candidate shortage, leaving ten township clerk positions completely vacant on the November ballot. Read Article

Montana state judge strikes down ballot envelope birth year requirement | Tom Lutey/Montana Free Press

A Lewis and Clark County District Court judge has struck down a 2025 statute requiring absentee voters to write their four-digit birth year on return envelopes, ruling the requirement unconstitutional. The rule led to nearly 6,000 discarded ballots across recent election cycles and caused a tenfold spike in ballot rejections in certain counties. In his ruling, the judge noted that the state failed to produce evidence that the birth year mandate deterred fraud, finding instead that discarding lawful votes over minor omissions directly eroded public trust. Read Article

Pennsylvania voting advocates prep for ICE to disrupt 2026 election | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

Concerns over federal law enforcement presence at polling locations have prompted legislative action and civil rights litigation ahead of the midterm elections. In Pennsylvania, legislation has been introduced to broaden the state’s existing 100-foot polling place perimeter ban from police officers to all law enforcement, explicitly aiming to prevent federal agents, including ICE, from stationing near voting sites. The legislative effort follows mixed signals from federal officials regarding potential immigration enforcement actions near polls, which advocates warn could intimidate naturalized citizens and immigrant communities. Read Article

Texas election officials work to clear voter registration backlog, say Texas TEAM system makes that harder | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Texas election administrators are struggling to process a massive backlog of voter registration applications just weeks before the midterm registration deadline, following a state software glitch at the Department of Public Safety. To make matters worse, county clerks report frequent system crashes, unhandled errors, and interface delays in the upgraded statewide voter registration database, known as TEAM. While larger, better-funded jurisdictions have hired external software vendors to navigate the administrative surge, smaller counties remain reliant on manual workarounds and overtime hours, raising fears that unverified voter applications could result in disenfranchisement or administrative confusion at polling locations. Read Article

Utah’s top election chief says Trump admin’s ‘gamesmanship’ with voting keeps her up at night | Katie McKellar/Utah News Dispatch

Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson is facing a federal Department of Justice investigation after refusing to turn over private voter rolls, joining dozens of state courts in finding the federal mandate unlawful. As the chief election official in a solidly Republican state, she has repeatedly pushed back against executive attempts to overhaul mail-in balloting through Postal Service restrictions, warning that last-minute administrative rules risk massive operational disruption and voter disenfranchisement. Reflecting on political pressure surrounding voting rules, Henderson stated that “politics should not be messing around with the rules of the game to benefit one side or another,” adding that “that gamesmanship keeps me up at night”. Read Article

Wisconsin: Hundreds of towns fall short of cybersecurity best practices | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Approximately one-third of municipal clerks in Wisconsin continue to rely on commercial email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail for official election operations, exposing small-town jurisdictions to heightened spoofing and phishing risks. A state analysis reveals a stark technological divide between well-funded, larger municipalities using secure government domains and rural towns of fewer than 5,000 residents operating on minimal IT budgets. While registering a official government domain is free, the recurring costs of hosting, technical management, and cybersecurity protections—often running thousands of dollars annually—pose a barrier for small jurisdictions as federal grant funding dwindles. Read Article

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

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