Philadelphia’s Ballot-Counting Livestream Is the Only Thing Worth Watching Today | Brian Barrett/WIRED

It is possible that watching hours of inconclusive election results deep into the night has poisoned your brain. It happens! Fortunately, that same vote-tallying vortex also offers an antidote: the gentle zen of the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ ballot-counting livestream. Yes, things are stressful right now, especially as President Donald Trump embraces a scorched-earth path to keeping his office. (All the more surprising given that he still has a chance of winning legitimately, without lies and spurious lawsuits.) But no matter your political preference, you should be able to find some comfort in this live view of Philly’s election workers moving ballots through the system. And get comfortable: As of 4 am East Coast time on Wednesday, the state had at least 1.4 million ballots still to be counted, with hundreds of thousands of those in Philadelphia alone. As long as they were postmarked by November 3, incoming ballots can continue to be processed through Friday. For all the conspiratorial talk about rigged elections—there’s no evidence of that, and it would be easy to spot if there were—there’s something reassuring about watching the process unfold. There’s no grifting here, no ballots materializing out of thin air or being dumped into a river. There’s no comment section, no sound. There’s just the plodding, methodical machinations of democracy at work. In fact, closer observation reveals almost every step of how a ballot becomes a vote, although an apparent shift system means that not every gear is turning at the same time.

Full Article: Philly’s Ballot-Counting Livestream Is the Only Thing Worth Watching Today | WIRED

Voter Check-In Systems Slow Down Voting and Results Across U.S. | Kartikay Mehrotra and Margaret Newkirk/Bloomberg

The system voters use across the country to identify themselves at polling places may be yet another reason for delayed results on Election Day, after digital poll books failed at local voting jurisdictions in at least four states. Voters in parts of Georgia, Ohio and Texas all experienced various levels of system disruption with their ePollbooks provided by the vendor, KnowInk. In Nevada, voters in some Clark County precincts had to wait for their digital poll books to access their voter records before polls could open. DeKalb County in Georgia, population 760,000 and heavily Democratic, is allowing two polling places to stay open an additional 40 to 45 minutes because of “inability to operate the poll pads as designed, preventing voters from casting their ballots,” county Superior Court Judge Courtney L. Johnson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Franklin County, Ohio ditched their ePollbooks for paper records at 5:30 a.m. after election officials couldn’t determine why they were malfunctioning, said Ed Leonard, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, adding that the move to paper could slow tabulation of results in the Columbus region.

Full Article: Election News: Digital Poll Books Cause Voting and Results Delays in Some States – Bloomberg

As Counting Begins, a Flood of Mail Ballots Complicates Vote Tallies | Stephanie Saul and Danny Hakim/The New York Times

Voters returned nearly 64 million mail-in ballots before Election Day, a pandemic-driven record that is certain to make for a more complicated vote count this year but could also reshape American elections for years to come. Today, the counting begins. But there will be major differences among battleground states in how that plays out, and potential legal challenges — particularly from the Trump campaign — are likely to further complicate the process. Some battleground states, like North Carolina, have been processing ballots for weeks. Elections officials there expect at least 97 percent of votes to be counted on Tuesday night. But in one of the most hotly contested states, Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign and Republican allies blocked counties from processing votes ahead of the election. Mail-in balloting this year doubled from 2016, and for many voters, the shift has been a revelation.

Full Article: As Counting Begins, a Flood of Mail Ballots Complicates Vote Tallies – The New York Times

National: Election Day Issues Reported Across U.S. as Voters Find Broken Machines, Locked Doors, Absent Officials | Sophia Waterfield/CNN

Problems at polling stations such as technical issues with polling machines and absentee officials, including head precinct judges, are being reported across the U.S. on Election Day.Twitter user @PJeffC, who writes from the Bronx in New York, said that an election site didn’t have working scanners. “Disappointed with election site at CS 150 on Fox Street. After waiting in line since 5:30 AM and filling out ballots after they opened up tardy, we were informed that the scanners were not working. Very disorganized.” In Florida, News8 reporter Josh Navarro reports that a polling location in Grace Church in Rochester was having technical issues with voting machines. “An elections inspector on scene told me off-camera it has been two hours they are trying to troubleshoot it. No ETA when it’ll be back online.” In Buffalo, Erie County, New York, long lines were reported by news anchor Dave Greber. He said: “There was a power cord issues here when the polls opened at 6 am. The issue has been resolved, and all 314 precincts in @ErieCountyNY are open and operating.”

Full Article: Election Day Issues Reported Across U.S. as Voters Find Broken Machines, Locked Doors, Absent Officials

National: Crush of mail-in ballots slows count in key states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin still counting | Jeremy Herb and Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Four key battleground states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia — began Wednesday with tens of thousands of absentee ballots uncounted, leaving the White House race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden up in the air. Election officials in some states called it a night and planned to resume the count in the morning, while some counties in Pennsylvania weren’t even to start tabulating their mail-in votes until later Wednesday morning. The mail-in ballots, which smashed records this year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, are expected to favor Biden, whose campaign encouraged Democrats to vote early, while in-person votes on Election Day may have given Trump an advantage. Trump and his allies have repeatedly called for results to be tallied quickly so that a winner could be declared on election night, though officials technically have days or weeks to complete official counts before state totals are certified. But in three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — election officials were not allowed to begin processing absentee ballots until on or just before Election Day, after Republican-led state legislatures successfully opposed changing laws to allow earlier preparations like other states.

Full Article: Mail-in ballots: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin still counting – CNNPolitics

National: Voters battle lines, malfunctioning machines, misinformation at some polling sites | Erik Ortiz and Caroline Radnofsky/NBC

Long lines dominated polling sites across the country on Election Day, as some voters saw hiccups with election machines and infrastructure Tuesday morning, but no major reports of widespread problems for what is expected to be an historic turnout. Particular attention is being given to key battleground states, such as Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden are vying for votes in what is largely viewed as one of the most bitterly divisive presidential elections in recent memory and coming amid a backdrop of a raging pandemic that has killed more than 232,000 in the United States. “Thought we would be smart getting here early,” Becca McCormick, 35, said in a video as she waited on a line 100 people deep just before 7 a.m. in Roxborough, a Philadelphia neighborhood. “But turns out so did everyone else.” In the swing state of North Carolina, several polling places were reporting technical issues when polls opened at 6:30 a.m., including a site in the capital city of Raleigh. Voters in Franklin County, Ohio, and Spalding County, Georgia, were instructed to use paper ballots after technical glitches with machines. The issues in Spalding County were resolved later in the morning.

Full Article: Voters battle lines, malfunctioning machines, misinformation at some polling sites

National: Election Day voting sees some lines, scattered glitches and ample anxiety across the nation | Amy Gardner, Elise Viebeck and Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

Americans jittery about the integrity of U.S. elections and the risk of coronavirus infection contended with scattered equipment outages and sporadic crowds as they lined up for the election season’s final day of voting Tuesday. But as the polls began closing across the country, a portrait emerged of a far smoother Election Day than the nation had braced for amid a pandemic that upended how Americans cast ballots and a bitter presidential race that played out against a backdrop of social unrest and racial divisions. Nearly 102 million people had cast ballots in person or by mail before voting began on Election Day, a stunning figure that put the country on a path to the highest voter turnout in more than a century. On Tuesday, voting was largely brisk and steady, with election administrators and voters alike marveling at the relative ease with which the day unfolded after a spring and summer of chaotic primaries, Postal Service delays and multiple legal battles between Republicans and Democrats over how the election should be run.

Full Article: Election Day voting sees some lines, scattered glitches and ample anxiety across the nation – The Washington Post

National: An Expert on Voting Machines Explains How They Work | Sophie Bushwick/Scientific American

Serious political tensions and fears of COVID-19 have led record-breaking numbers of Americans to vote early this year, either by mail or in person. Now the process of counting these votes—whether in states that did so on a rolling basis as they came in or those that waited until Election Day—relies on machines that vary a great deal from state to state and even from county to county. Although the technology used in voting continues to evolve, it remains vulnerable to both malicious and unintentional errors. To protect the systems against both, explains Douglas W. Jones, a computer scientist at the University of Iowa and co-author of the book Broken Ballots, election officials need to be able to check and double-check the election’s results. “There’s a nice dictum that that [computer scientist and electronic-voting-security researcher] David Dill came up with at Stanford University: if we do it right, the Devil himself could build the voting machines, and we could hold an honest election,” Jones says. “And doing it right means having genuinely auditable technology—with ballots where the average voter knows that the marks they made on their ballot express their real intent.” Scientific American spoke with Jones about how voting machines work, their vulnerabilities, and what to expect on and after Election Day.

Full Article: An Expert on Voting Machines Explains How They Work – Scientific American

USPS disregards court order to conduct ballot sweeps in 12 postal districts after more than 300,000 ballots cannot be traced | acob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham/The Washington Post

The U.S. Postal Service turned down a federal judge’s order late Tuesday afternoon to sweep mail processing facilities serving 15 states, saying instead it would stick to its own inspection schedule. The judge’s order came after the agency disclosed that more than 300,000 ballots nationwide could not be traced. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the District of Columbia had given the mail agency until 3:30 p.m. to conduct the “all clear” checks to ensure there would be enough time to get any found ballots to election officials before polls closed. His order affected 12 postal districts spanning 15 states. But in a filing sent to the court just before 5 p.m., Justice Department attorneys representing the Postal Service said the agency would not abide by the order to better accommodate inspector’s schedules. “This daily review process, however, occurs at different times every day,” DOJ attorney John Robinson wrote. “Specifically, on Election Night, it is scheduled to occur from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., a time period developed by Postal Service Management and the Postal Inspection Service in order to ensure that Inspectors are on site to ensure compliance at the critical period before the polls close. Given the time constraints set by this Court’s order, and the fact that Postal Inspectors operate on a nationwide basis, Defendants were unable to accelerate the daily review process to run from 12:30pm to 3:00pm without significantly disrupting preexisting activities on the day of the Election, something which Defendants did not understand the Court to invite or require.

Source: Judge orders USPS to conduct ballot sweep in 12 districts covering 15 states – The Washington Post

National: Russian internet trolls are amplifying election fraud claims, researchers say | heera Frenkel/The New York Times

Social media accounts tied to a group of Russian trolls are amplifying claims of election fraud, according to researchers at the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of misinformation experts. “Assets linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) have been promoting unverified or false claims of massive ballot tampering, often with lurid, hyper-partisan headlines,” according to the report the coalition published Tuesday. The Russian agency was linked by federal officials to a wide-ranging disinformation campaign during the 2016 election. The false information being amplified was first shared by U.S. citizens, and Russian-linked trolls were sharing it across a number of fringe social media sites popular in right-wing circles, like Gab and Parler, the report said. The claims being made, including that ballots were being thrown away or shredded, have been widely debunked. Researchers at the Election Integrity Partnership tied I.R.A.-linked social media accounts to two websites, USA Really and The Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens. USA Really was launched by the Federal News Agency, a Russian outlet funded by the Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who also founded the I.R.A. The Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens, a Hungary-based outlet, was exposed in early October as a Russian asset. Both entities were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in December 2018 under the heading of “attempted election interference.”

Full Article: Russian internet trolls are amplifying election fraud claims, researchers say. – The New York Times

Georgia: Fulton County election results delayed after pipe bursts in room with ballots | Ben Brasch/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A broken water pipe at the ballot processing site at State Farm arena caused a delay in Fulton County’s ability to process thousands of absentee-by-mail votes Tuesday night.Despite the broken pipe, which did not lead to any ballots being damaged, elections officials said they performed better than the disastrous June 9 primary, which made national headlines as voters waited hours in line to cast their ballots.Still, the Tuesday’s delayed tallies for the presidential contest and for key congressional races with consequences that could ripple across the nation.Fulton Commission Chairman Robb Pitts told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday evening that the pipe burst at 6:07 a.m. and was repaired within two hours. The burst pipe wasn’t mentioned by county officials during a 10 a.m. press conference. Elections officials were still expecting results from the majority of ballots cast to be counted Tuesday night — including the roughly 315,000 early in-person votes, which represent the most popular way of voting this cycle. As of 10:15 p.m., Fulton was displaying the results of more than 170,000 votes. There are 800,000 registered Fulton voters.

Full Article: Fulton County election results delayed after pipe bursts in room with ballots

Michigan: Election robocall campaigns target Michigan, tell voters nationwide to ‘stay home’ | Tony Romm and Isaac Stanley-Becker/The Washington Post

A wave of suspicious robocalls and texts bombarded voters as they began to cast their ballots on Tuesday, sparking fresh concerns about the extent to which malicious actors might harness Americans’ smartphones to scare people from the polls. Across the country, voters have received an estimated 10 million automated, spam calls in recent days telling them to “stay safe and stay home,” according to experts who track the telecom industry. In Michigan, meanwhile, government officials on Tuesday sounded early alarms about additional attempts to deceive the state’s voters, including one robocall campaign targeting the city of Flint that told people to vote tomorrow if they hoped to avoid long lines today. The origins of the each of the calls and texts remain unclear, reflecting the sophisticated tactics that robocallers typically deploy in order to reach Americans en masse across a wide array of devices and services. State election officials have scrambled to reassure voters in response, with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pledging Tuesday to “work quickly to stamp out misinformation” — and federal officials indicating they are investigating the matter. The reach and timing of the “stay home” calls caught the attention of YouMail, a tech company that offers a robocall-blocking app for smartphones, as well as some of the country’s top telecom carriers, which determined from an investigation that the calls may be foreign in origin. Data prepared for The Washington Post by YouMail shows that the calls have reached 280 of the country’s 317 area codes since the campaign began in the summer.

Source: Election robocall campaigns target Michigan, tell voters nationwide to ‘stay home’ – The Washington Post

Nevada Supreme Court rejects Trump campaign emergency request to limit mail ballot counting in Clark County | Riley Snyder/Nevada Independent

The Nevada Supreme Court has denied an emergency request by President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and the state Republican Party to immediately order Clark County election officials to stop processing mail ballots. The appeal, filed Tuesday in the state Supreme Court, was a last-minute request for the state’s highest court to block Clark County’s mail ballot process. Carson City District Court Judge James Wilson on Monday issued an order flatly rejecting all of the requests to modify the county’s mail ballot processing plan as lacking standing to warrant last-minute judicial intervention in the state’s election process. The order, signed by all seven members of the court, stated that the appeal failed to demonstrate a “sufficient likelihood of success to merit a stay or injunction” and that the request failed to identify any “mandatory statutory duty” or “manifest abuse of discretion” that would warrant judicial intervention at this point on Election Day. “Appellants motion, on its face, does not identify any mandatory statutory duty that respondents appear to have ignored,” Justice Kristina Pickering wrote in the order. “Further, appellants fail to address the district court’s conclusion that they lack standing to pursue this relief.” The order did set an expedited briefing schedule, with the Trump campaign and state Republican Party given until Thursday to file a formal brief and the defendants given until Monday, Nov. 9, to file a response.

Full Article: Nevada Supreme Court rejects Trump campaign emergency request to limit mail ballot counting in Clark County

New Jersey: Paper ballots, hand sanitizer and plenty of confusion: Scenes from New Jersey’s polling sites | Kelly Heyboer and Ted Sherman/NJ.com

As New Jersey enters the final hours of voting on the most unusual Election Day in its history, state and local officials say in-person voting has gone smoothly — though not perfectly — at polls across the state. Some polling sites, including several in Newark and Paterson, opened late Tuesday, leading to longer-than-expected lines. At other polling places, some confused voters objected when they were handed provisional ballots instead of casting their votes on the machines they’ve used in the past.And some people trying to drop off their mail-in ballots found the official county collection boxes full. But, for the most part, things have gone smoothly, said Jesse Burns, executive director of the League of Women Voters. “New Jersey voting right advocates are fielding a large number of calls today from voters reporting delayed openings, long lines, lack of proper signage at polling locations, as well as general voting questions,” Burns said. “The majority of issues are being resolved quickly and voters should not be deterred from voting.”

Full Article: Paper ballots, hand sanitizer and plenty of confusion: Scenes from N.J.’s polling sites – nj.com

Ohio: Franklin County moves to paper pollbooks, leading to voting delays | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Franklin County has shifted to paper pollbooks for Election Day in a move that could make the voting process slower in Ohio’s largest county. The county has for years been using electronic pollbooks, which allow poll workers to quickly check in voters at their precinct polling location, but problems uploading the most recent data overnight prompted the Franklin County Board of Elections to make the change. An updated electronic file containing data about who voted early was too large — a product of an unprecedented level of early voting in Franklin County — and could not be synced with the electronic poll books, said Ed Leonard, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections. At the close of early voting, 350,982 people had cast early votes in Franklin County, either in person or via returned mail-in ballots. The county has about 833,000 registered voters. “We can’t guarantee all the data would be there for all the most recent absentee activity,” Leonard said.

Full Article: Franklin County moves to paper pollbooks, leading to voting delays

Pennsylvania: GOP Sues To Throw Out Corrected Mail-In Ballots | Alison Durkee/Forbes

A Republican congressional candidate in Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against election officials in Montgomery County over officials’ decision to let voters correct their mail-in ballots if they have obvious deficiencies, asking the court to throw out the “cured” ballots and potentially threatening mail-in ballots in an essential battleground state. Kathy Barnette, who’s running to represent Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District in the House, and voter Clay D. Breece allege that Montgomery County officials’ decision to inspect sealed ballots for any obvious defects—like “naked ballots” that lack a secrecy envelope or not signing the outside of the envelope—ahead of Election Day violates Pennsylvania’s ban on processing and counting ballots before 7:00 a.m. on Election Day. Pennsylvania left it up to counties to determine how or if to contact voters to correct their mail-in ballots, which the Philadelphia Inquirer previously reported resulted in a “patchwork of policies” across the state regarding how and whether voters will be contacted to correct their ballots.

Full Article: GOP Sues To Throw Out Corrected Mail-In Ballots In Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania: Republicans seek to sideline mail-in ballots that voters were allowed to fix | PennLive.com

Inside the spacious exhibition center at the York Fairgrounds, dozens of county employees on Tuesday sorted through thousands of mail ballots in the lead-up to the close of polls. If they came across “naked ballots,” or ballots that lacked a secrecy envelope, they alerted the political parties. The parties could then contact voters, tell them there was a problem, and urge them to fix it. But in neighboring Dauphin and Lancaster Counties, voters who mailed in naked ballots, or made some other error, will never get the chance to fix them, because officials there believe the law does not allow them to do anything but reject ballots that contain mistakes. As Pennsylvania’s 67 counties began the painstaking process of processing and counting more than 2.5 million mail ballots, whether or not voters were given a chance to fix errors and ensure their votes were counted depended largely on where they lived. That inconsistency is now at the heart of an eleventh-hour lawsuit filed Tuesday by a group of Republican candidates and voters seeking for counties to set aside any ballots that voters were allowed to fix.

Full Article: Republicans seek to sideline Pa. mail-in ballots that voters were allowed to fix – pennlive.com

Wisconsin: Influx of absentee ballots means election results won’t come early | Local Government | Briana Reilly/The Cap Times

Four years ago, the Associated Press didn’t call a winner in the presidential contest in Wisconsin until well after midnight, a determination that led the news agency to declare Republican Donald Trump as the president-elect. This time, with more than 1.8 million absentee ballots cast and COVID-19 cases surging in this key battleground state, all bets are off as to when Wisconsin and broader U.S. will know whether Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden is victorious.Because so many are voting by absentee ballot this fall, election workers will face longer-than-normal processing times as they move to accurately count votes throughout the day Tuesday — work that, by state law, can’t start until 7 a.m., when polls open.Wisconsin is one of just four states that can’t begin processing ballots until Tuesday, according to a New York Times roundup. While there was some bipartisan support for changing that law or making other adjustments, nothing was enacted, making it unlikely that unofficial statewide results will be known here Tuesday. Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe predicted observers will have to wait until Wednesday for an indication of the state’s unofficial election results. “It doesn’t mean something went wrong — it means election officials are doing their jobs and making sure every legitimate ballot gets counted,” she said in a statement Monday.

Full Article: Don’t wait up: Influx of absentee ballots means Wisconsin election results won’t come early | Local Government | madison.com