Nevada Secretary of State: No evidence of ‘wide-spread fraud’ in 2020 election | Riley Snyder/Nevada Independent

Nevada Secretary of State ’s office announced Friday evening that it has “yet to see any evidence of wide-spread fraud” in the state’s 2020 election, an indirect rebuke of unsupported claims of mass voter fraud made by President Donald Trump and Nevada Republicans. In a “Facts vs. Myths” document posted to the secretary of state’s website late Friday, Cegavske’s office wrote that it is pursuing several “isolated” cases of voter fraud, but has not seen evidence of any large-scale fraud that would meaningfully affect Trump’s 33,596-vote loss in the state. Electors cast Nevada’s six electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden on Monday. Publication of the document comes two days after President Trump tweeted that “Nevada must be flipped” based on testimony presented by a Trump campaign attorney, Jesse Binnall, during a U.S. Senate hearing on election security on Wednesday. A Binnall-led lawsuit by the Trump campaign to grant the president the six electors tied to Biden, or withdraw Nevada entirely from Electoral College proceedings, failed in early December. The purported evidence presented about the alleged fraud in Nevada’s 2020 election has been roundly rejected by courts in the state, including by a District Court judge as offering “little to no value” and failing to establish that any illegal votes were cast in the election. Judge James Russell’s order called into question data analyses provided by the Trump campaign, saying their methodology was questionable or that witnesses were unable to verify data or identify its origins.

Full Article: Secretary of State: No evidence of ‘wide-spread fraud’ in Nevada’s 2020 election

New York: Tenney leads Brindisi by 19 votes after count of Chenango County ballots | Mark Weiner/Syracuse Post-Standard

Former Rep. Claudia Tenney expanded her lead from 12 to 19 votes over Rep. Anthony Brindisi today after three counties reported corrected vote totals in the undecided 22nd Congressional District election. For now, Tenney leads Brindisi 155,519 to 155,500, according to unofficial returns from the eight counties in the district. Those totals are likely to change again after Oneida County finishes its review of disputed ballots ahead of a court-ordered review of disputed ballots from all eight counties next week. The biggest change Friday occurred in Chenango County where election officials counted 44 affidavit ballots and two absentee ballots that had not been previously included in their vote totals. After election officials counted the ballots today, Tenney picked up 25 votes and Brindisi 17 votes, said Carol Franklin, a Chenango County elections commissioner. An additional four ballots left the line for Congress blank. State Supreme Court Justice Scott J. DelConte had ordered Chenango County to count the 44 valid affidavit ballots after they were found by election officials in their office on Dec. 1, almost a month after the election. The ballots were cast during the state’s early voting period.

Full Article: Tenney leads Brindisi by 19 votes after count of Chenango County ballots – syracuse.com

Pennsylvania: Trump wants US Supreme Court to overturn election results | Jill Colvin and Marc Levy/Associated Press

Undeterred by dismissals and admonitions from judges, President Donald Trump’s campaign continued with its unprecedented efforts to overturn the results of the Nov 3. election Sunday, saying it had filed a new petition with the Supreme Court. The petition seeks to reverse a trio of Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases having to do with mail-in ballots and asks the court to reject voters’ will and allow the Pennsylvania General Assembly to pick its own slate of electors. While the prospect of the highest court in the land throwing out the results of a democratic election based on unfounded charges of voter fraud is extraordinary unlikely, it wouldn’t change the outcome. President-elect Joe Biden would still be the winner even without Pennsylvania because of his wide margin of victory in the Electoral College. “The petition seeks all appropriate remedies, including vacating the appointment of electors committed to Joseph Biden and allowing the Pennsylvania General Assembly to select their replacements,” Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a statement. He is asking the court to move swiftly so it can rule before Congress meets on Jan. 6 to tally the vote of the Electoral College, which decisively confirmed Biden’s win with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. But the justices are not scheduled to meet again, even privately, until Jan 8, two days after Congress counts votes. Pennsylvania last month certified Biden as the winner of the state’s 20 Electoral College votes after three weeks of vote counting and a string of failed legal challenges.

Full Article: Trump wants Supreme Court to overturn Pa. election results

Pennsylvania: 10,000 votes are in limbo. They won’t change the outcome. They could still have a huge impact. | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

About 10,000 Pennsylvania votes are still sitting in purgatory. And they’ll remain there for weeks or even longer, until the U.S. Supreme Court tells the state what to do with the mail ballots that arrived after Election Day last month. The justices will decide Jan. 8 whether to take up cases challenging those ballots, the court said Wednesday. The outcome could have major implications for election policy in the future. For now, the ballots remain excluded from Pennsylvania’s certified presidential and congressional vote tallies, and are not reflected in Joe Biden’s 81,000-vote victory in the state. (They were counted for state races.) Given that Democrats voted by mail far more than Republicans, they are presumably mostly Biden votes. Responding to concerns about an overwhelming crush of ballots being mailed days before the election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in September ordered counties to honor and count any mail ballot that was postmarked by Election Day — the deadline to cast a vote set by state law — but arrived sometime after 8 p.m. that day and within the ensuing three days. Republicans appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Justice Samuel Alito ordered the late-arriving ballots separated from the rest until the court could decide what to do. For weeks, Democrats feared that a post-Election Day disqualification of those ballots could cost Biden the state, and the presidency. But an urgent campaign to get voters to return their ballots by the original deadline ended with only about 10,000 arriving during the grace period.

Full Article: Fate of Pennsylvania mail ballots that arrived late could have future election implications

Utah: Mitt Romney calls Trump’s attempts to overturn election loss ‘sad’ and ‘embarrassing’ | Bryan Schott/Salt Lake Tribune

Sen. Mitt Romney did not mince words when asked about President Donald Trump’s continuing efforts to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. “It’s really sad and in a lot of respects embarrassing,” said Romney, R-Utah, who made the rounds on the Sunday morning political talk show circuit. “He’s leaving Washington with a whole series of conspiracy theories and things that are so nutty and loopy that people are shaking their heads, wondering what in the world has gotten into this man.” Romney was a guest on CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Meet the Press” on NBC Sunday morning, where he discussed a range of pressing political issues. Romney, who has clashed frequently with the president on a range of issues, said he thinks Trump’s influence on the GOP will endure even after he leaves office but Romney remains hopeful the party will eventually return to its roots. “The party has taken a different course than the one I knew when I was a younger person,” he said. “The party I knew was very concerned about Russia and Putin and Kim Jong Un and North Korea. We were a party concerned about balancing the budget. We believed in trade with other nations. We were happy to play a leadership role on the world stage. We believed character was essential. We’ve strayed from that and I don’t see us returning to that for a long time.”

Full Article: Mitt Romney calls Trump’s attempts to overturn election loss ‘sad’ and ‘embarrassing’

Wisconsin: A Conservative Justice in Says He Followed the Law, Not the Politics | Reid J. Epstein/The New York Times

Justice Brian Hagedorn of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a veteran of the last decade’s fiercest partisan wars. As chief legal counsel of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, Justice Hagedorn helped write the 2011 law that stripped public-sector labor unions of their collective bargaining rights. Then in 2019, he won a narrow election to a 10-year term on the Supreme Court with backing from the state’s Republican media and grass-roots networks. But Justice Hagedorn, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, who in 2016 founded a private school that forbids same-sex relationships among its employees and students, is no longer a darling of the right. In a series of 4-3 decisions in recent months, he sided with the court’s three liberal justices to stop an effort to purge 130,000 people from the Wisconsin voter rolls, block the Green Party candidate and Kanye West from the general election presidential ballot and, on two separate occasions, reject President Trump’s effort to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in Wisconsin. Justice Hagedorn has in recent days found himself at odds not just with his political base but with his fellow conservative justices, who have spared little expense in showing their anger at him in judicial dissents defending Mr. Trump’s case.

Full Article: A Conservative Justice in Wisconsin Says He Followed the Law, Not the Politics – The New York Times

National: Dominion Voting Systems demands pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell retract ‘defamatory’ accusations | Jonathan Easley/The Hill

Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems sent a letter to Sidney Powell, a onetime member of President Trump’s legal team, demanding she retract her claims that the voting machine company helped rig the 2020 election. The letter, from the Alexandria, Va.-based law firm Clare Locke, warns Powell that she will expose both herself and the Trump campaign to “substantial legal risk for defamation” if she refuses to publicly recant the many unsubstantiated claims she has made about the company. “As a result of your false accusations, Dominion has suffered enormous harm, and its employees have been stalked, have been harassed, and have received death threats,” the letter states. “We demand that you immediately and publicly retract your false accusations and set the record straight. If you refuse to do so and instead choose to stand by your defamatory falsehoods, that will be viewed as additional evidence of actual malice.” Powell has been among the most vocal and active proponents of allegations — none of which have held up in court — that the election was stolen from Trump through widespread fraud and corruption. Powell has claimed that Dominion used an algorithm to flip some votes from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden. She has also claimed that Dominion paid kickbacks to GOP officials in Georgia and elsewhere to keep quiet about the scheme, among many other allegations.

Full Article: Dominion voting machines demands pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell retract ‘defamatory’ accusations | TheHill

National: Democrats and Republicans are ending 2020 as far apart as ever on election security | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Any chance of Congress burying old gripes and working together on election security took a serious blow during 2020’s final hearing on the topic. That hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee pitted Christopher Krebs, the former cybersecurity chief fired for affirming the integrity of the election, against allies of President Trump who repeated many of the same debunked election fraud claims already tossed out in dozens of court cases. Republican senators repeatedly asserted the election result was compromised, even though no court has upheld those claims in more than 50 legal cases. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) declared “the election in many ways was stolen,” a claim that has not been endorsed by a single top state election official, Republican or Democrat. Republicans also repeatedly attacked Democrats for expressing concerns about the integrity of the 2016 election, but not the 2020 contest — ignoring the fact that Russian interference in the 2016 election was confirmed by U.S. intelligence agencies and a unanimous report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, while leading state and federal officials have declared there was no such interference in 2020. At one point the hearing even devolved into a shouting match between Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), over unrelated investigations into Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joe Biden. Johnson said Peters “lied repeatedly in the press, that I was spreading Russian disinformation,” while Peters replied: “This is not about airing your grievances. … I don’t know what rabbit hole you’re running down.” Nor did Republicans acknowledge reforms that Democrats and election security experts have been pushing for years aimed at raising confidence in future elections. They include ensuring there are paper ballots in all counties that lack them, increasing post-election audits and mandating more transparency by voting-machine vendors.

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Democrats and Republicans are ending 2020 as far apart as ever on election security – The Washington Post

National: Biden and lawmakers raise alarms over cyber breach amid Trump silence | Anne Gearan, Karoun Demirjian, Mike DeBonis and Annie Linskey/The Washington Post

Democrats and some Republicans raised the alarm Thursday about a massive and growing cybersecurity breach that many experts blame on Russia, with President-elect Joe Biden implicitly criticizing the Trump administration for allowing the hacking attack to occur. “We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement. “Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.” President Trump, by contrast, has said nothing about the hack affecting numerous federal agencies as well as U.S. companies. U.S. national security agencies are still assessing the scope and severity of the breach, which was discovered by a commercial firm. The president’s silence about an organized attack on the U.S. government marks the latest example of his persistent reluctance to criticize Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of interfering in the 2016 election to help Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump has contradicted his own government’s findings about 2016 election hacking and disinformation efforts, and he has publicly accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word that Moscow was blameless.

Full Article: Biden and lawmakers raise alarms over cyber breach amid Trump silence – The Washington Post

National: Federal investigators find evidence of previously unknown tactics used to penetrate government networks | Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima/The Washington Post

Federal investigators reported Thursday on evidence of previously unknown tactics for penetrating government computer networks, a development that underscores the disastrous reach of Russia’s recent intrusions and the logistical nightmare facing federal officials trying to purge intruders from key systems. For days it has been clear that compromised software patches distributed by a Texas-based company, SolarWinds, were central to Russian efforts to gain access into U.S. government computer systems. But Thursday’s alert from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency at the Department of Homeland Security said evidence suggested there was other malware used to initiate what the alert described as “a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.” While many details remained unclear, the revelation about new modes of attack raises fresh questions about the access that Russian hackers were able to gain in government and corporate systems worldwide. “This adversary has demonstrated an ability to exploit software supply chains and shown significant knowledge of Windows networks,” the alert said. “It is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that have not yet been discovered.”

Full Article: Federal investigators find evidence of previously unknown tactics used to penetrate government networks – The Washington Post

National: Pence prepares to oversee Trump’s loss — and then leave town | Gabby Ohr and Nahal Toosi/Politico

On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence will oversee final confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Then he’ll likely skip town. As vice president, Pence has the awkward but unavoidable duty of presiding over the session of Congress that will formalize Biden’s Electoral College victory — a development that is likely to expose him and other Republicans to the wrath of GOP voters who believe President Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him. But Pence could dodge their ire by leaving Washington immediately for the Middle East and Europe. According to three U.S. officials familiar with the planning, the vice president is eyeing a foreign trip that would take him overseas for nearly a week, starting on Jan. 6. Though Pence aides declined to confirm details of the trip, which remains tentative, a U.S. government document seen by POLITICO shows the vice president is due to travel to Bahrain, Israel and Poland, with the possibility of more stops being added. A pre-advance team of Pence aides and other U.S. officials left earlier this week to visit the planned stops in preparation for the multicountry tour, which would be Pence’s first trip abroad since last January, when he traveled to Rome and Jerusalem on a whirlwind two-day sojourn.

Full Article: Pence prepares to oversee Trump’s loss — and then leave town – POLITICO

National: Voting machine firm demands pro-Trump attorney retract bogus claims about 2020 election | Olivia Rubin and Matthew Mosk/ABC

The Colorado voting machine company that fringe pro-Trump forces have targeted with dark conspiracy theories of a rigged 2020 election is demanding that conservative lawyer Sidney Powell retract the “wild, knowingly baseless, and false” allegations she has made against them. Dominion Voting Systems made their demands in a letter to Powell, who has taken a central role in pushing the debunked theory that dark forces rigged Dominion machines to flip votes from Trump to former Vice President Joe Biden. The company’s letter represents its most aggressive posture to date, and signals the early stages of what could become heavy and costly pushback against the lawyers who have led a post-election campaign to discredit the 2020 election results. Pro-Trump attorneys have filed more than 60 lawsuits as part of the effort, nearly all of which have been dismissed, often with sharply-worded rulings. Despite having been repeatedly disputed by the company and disproven by federal election officials, the bogus conspiracy theory has spread fast and wide on social media and in conservative media outlets.

Full Article: Voting machine firm demands pro-Trump attorney retract bogus claims about 2020 election – ABC News

National: Lawmakers Scrap $500 Million in State Election Security Grants | Billy House/Bloomberg

Congressional negotiators have eliminated $500 million in election security grants to the states from a final version of a measure to fund the U.S. government into 2021, a top House Democrat says. That development comes as President Donald Trump and his allies continue to promote unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election, even though their allegations have been rejected by courts and state election officials. Mike Quigley, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, said Wednesday he’d been told that the omnibus funding package being worked out with Senate negotiators “zeros out” the state assistance money. Quigley, who also serves on the House Intelligence Committee and is an enthusiastic proponent of the grants, called the move short-sighted and the timing “inexplicable,” especially given the threat of cyber attacks and other vulnerabilities faced by voting systems. Evan Hollander, a spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey of New York, declined to confirm that the money was not included. The chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Ben Hovland, said in an interview Wednesday night that he had not been told officially of the fate of the $500 million and that, “it’s not done until it’s done.”

Full Article: Lawmakers Scrap $500 Million in State Election Security Grants – Bloomberg

Editorial: No, Congress’s Jan. 6 count isn’t another chance for Trump to reverse his loss | Trevor Potter/The Washington Post

Jan. 6 is not another Election Day. Don’t let President Trump convince you it is. What will happen then — a joint session of Congress to receive the presidential and vice-presidential election results transmitted by the states — typically occurs every four years in relative obscurity. But this election cycle has been anything but typical. While there’s no realistic chance of anything happening Jan. 6 to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power consistent with the will of America’s voters and Monday’s electoral college votes, there is still a good chance Trump will try to make the day a super spreader event for the election disinformation with which he is relentlessly trying to infect American democracy. Foreknowledge is, however, a form of inoculation here. By understanding exactly what does and doesn’t happen Jan. 6, all of us can contribute to making that day a reaffirmation of our democratic process rather than part of a continued assault on it. As required by the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment, the House and Senate will gather in a joint session presided over by Vice President Pence. There, the slates of electors for president and vice president from the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, received by Congress from the state governments and accompanied by certificates from the governors, will be read out, and the vote totals will be counted. This is usually a routine process — as it should be, because federal law urges any disputes over such slates to be resolved in the states by Dec. 8, ahead of the electoral college meeting Dec. 14. That is to say any disputes (which are rare to begin with) are meant to be disposed of well before Congress gathers to count the electoral votes. It’s “really a formality,” as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) has rightly called the coming session. But it is at least possible for members of Congress to raise objections to one or more slates of electors as they’re read aloud. Under a 130-year-old law called the Electoral Count Act, if one representative and one senator jointly object to a slate, then the whole process pauses while the House and Senate separately debate the objection, then vote on whether to sustain it.

Full Article: No, Congress’s Jan. 6 count isn’t another chance for Trump to reverse his loss – The Washington Post

Georgia GOP Senators Lose Bid to Alter Mail-in Ballot Rules | Erik Larson/Bloomberg

A federal judge in Georgia rejected a lawsuit by the state’s two Republican senators seeking to change the mail-in ballot signature verification rules for their Jan. 5 runoff election, calling their worries about voter fraud “far too speculative.” U.S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross in Atlanta on Thursday granted the state’s motion to dismiss the suit brought by the Georgia Republican Party and the campaigns of Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, whose races will determine control of the U.S. Senate. Lawyers for Georgia’s embattled Republican elections chief, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, argued at a Thursday hearing that the suit was filed far too late given that the current rules for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots were put in place months ago. Charlene McGowan, a lawyer for Attorney General Chris Carr, also a Republican, argued that the campaigns failed to provide evidence that any mail-in ballots had been cast fraudulently under the current rules, or even that they might be. She also accused the GOP of cherry-picking data about mail-in ballot rejection rates to falsely suggest Georgia rejected too few of them.

Full Article: GOP Georgia Senators Lose Bid to Alter Mail-in Ballot Rules – Bloomberg

Georgia: Judges dismiss two GOP lawsuit challenging absentee ballot rules | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Federal judges Thursday dismissed two Republican lawsuits that sought to change the rules for absentee voting in Georgia amid the hotly contested Jan. 5 runoff election. In the first case, a federal judge in Augusta rejected a Twelfth Congressional District Republican Committee lawsuit that, among other things, sought to eliminate the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in Georgia. In the second, a judge in Atlanta dismissed a request by the state’s two Republican incumbent U.S. senators – Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue – for more scrutiny of signature matching for absentee ballots. The lawsuits are part of an extraordinary effort by Republicans to ask courts to change the rules for absentee ballots amid the runoff election that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Through Wednesday, more than 423,000 Georgians had already cast absentee ballots for the runoff. Early in-person voting began Monday. “We are not even on the eve of an election,” J. Randal Hall, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Augusta, said in rejecting one of the lawsuits. “We are, as it relates to this particular election, closing in on halftime.”

Full Article: Judges dismiss two GOP lawsuit challenging Georgia’s absentee ballot rules

Georgia: An outraged Kemp blasts pro-Trump conspiracy theorists harassing his family | Greg Bluestein/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gov. Brian Kemp is fed up with the unrelenting attacks from conspiracy theorists calling on him to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia. But he’s even more enraged that some of those peddlers of false claims are targeting his wife and three daughters. “It has gotten ridiculous — from death threats, (claims of) bribes from China, the social media posts that my children are getting,” he said. “We have the ‘no crying in politics rule’ in the Kemp house. But this is stuff that, if I said it, I would be taken to the woodshed and would never see the light of day.” The Republican singled out the invective targeting his daughter Lucy, who has received hate-filled messages about inane false conspiracies about the death of her longtime boyfriend, Harrison Deal, who was killed in a traffic accident this month in Savannah. “I can assure you I can handle myself. And if they’re brave enough to come out from underneath that keyboard or behind it, we can have a little conversation if they would like to.” Kemp, speaking to reporters shortly after a vaccine-related event at Grady Memorial, did not blame President Donald Trump for the wrath he’s facing from Republicans, even though the president has stoked the fury by blasting Kemp for refusing to illegally reverse his defeat in Georgia. “As far as I know, my relationship with the president is fine. I know he’s frustrated, and I’ve disagreed on things with him before,” he said, adding: “Look, at the end of the day, I’ve got to follow the laws and the Constitution and the Constitution of this state.” Trump has repeatedly vented his outrage at Kemp, and has called him a “clown,” predicted he would lose the 2022 Republican primary and said he was “ashamed” for endorsing him in 2018. At his rally in Valdosta, Trump encouraged U.S. Rep. Doug Collins to run against Kemp in two years. State elections officials say there is no evidence of systemic irregularities, and courts at every level have tossed out every complaint.

Full Article: An outraged Kemp blasts pro-Trump conspiracy theorists harassing his family

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul falsely claims presidential election was ‘stolen’ | Morgan Watkins/Louisville Courier Journal

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul continues to falsely claim — without proof — voter fraud played a role in the election of President-elect Joe Biden. The Kentucky Republican said during a Wednesday congressional hearing the election “in many ways was stolen.” Paul made that baseless comment during a meeting of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held in Washington, D.C., two days after the Electoral College met nationwide and formally awarded Biden 306 electoral votes versus Trump’s 232 electoral votes, based on the certified November election results. The Electoral College’s vote Monday affirmed Biden’s victory. In light of that, Kentucky’s other Republican senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, finally acknowledged Biden as the president-elect on Tuesday. “The Electoral College has spoken,” he said that morning. But Paul, who has represented Kentucky in Congress since 2011, still refuses to recognize Biden’s defeat of President Donald Trump. Similarly, Trump himself continues to falsely claim, without evidence, the election was compromised by voter fraud. He has lost numerous legal challenges over the election results in court over the past several weeks.

Full Article: Sen. Rand Paul falsely claims presidential election was ‘stolen’

Michigan Antrim County Hand Recount Confirms Accuracy of Machine Recount, with 12-Vote Gain for Trump | Beth LeBlanc/The Detroit News

An audit of Antrim County election results Thursday gave President Donald Trump a net gain of 12 votes from the certified results in the northern Michigan county, a small gain in light of unsubstantiated allegations of mass fraud targeting the county’s election software. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s total decreased by one vote, from 5,960 to 5,959, while Trump’s increased 11 votes, from 9,748 to 9,759, according to preliminary results from the county’s more than seven-hour, livestreamed audit. Biden won the state of Michigan by more than 154,000 votes on Nov. 3, according to certified results. Third-party presidential candidates in Antrim County were off by zero to one vote compared with certified results. “This is very typical of what we find in a hand-count of ballots,” said Lori Bourbonais, with the Michigan Department of State. “It is normal to find one or two votes in a precinct that differ between a hand tally and machine count.” Earlier this month, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced a zero-margin risk-limiting audit of the presidential election in Antrim County. The audit includes a hand-tally of every ballot and compares that tally with machine-tabulated results. Among those assisting with the audit were staff from the Michigan Bureau of Elections; Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy, a Republican; Rochester Hills Clerk Tina Barton, a Republican, and Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope, a Democrat.

Full Article: Antrim County audit shows 12-vote gain for Trump

Michigan: Benson refuses to testify at House, says committee ‘wounding our democracy’ | Dave Boucher/Detroit Free Press

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has refused an invitation to testify before a House legislative committee, arguing the committee’s previous hearings with Rudy Giuliani and others show lawmakers are focused more on politics and undermining election integrity than on earnest reforms. On Wednesday, Benson tweeted a copy of the letter sent to House Oversight Committee Chairman Matt Hall, R-Emmett Township. In a statement Wednesday, Hall said Benson was “playing cheap political games.” Hall’s committee received international attention after Giuliani essentially commandeered portions of the more than four-hour proceeding, questioning his own witnesses while lawmakers largely watched. He used the misleading and inaccurate information provided during the hearing to argue state lawmakers must intervene in Michigan’s ultimate election outcome and give the state to President Donald Trump. Noting some of this testimony, Benson argued the committee has the duty to publicly state the Michigan election was conducted fairly in order to combat misinformation spread during previous committee hearings. “This is the truth, as certified by our State Board of Canvassers, and it is important that every leader acknowledge this is in order for us to move forward and solve many of the critical issues ahead of us,” Benson wrote in the letter, dated Tuesday.

Full Article: Benson refuses to testify at House, says committee ‘wounding our democracy’

Ohio: Franklin County examines 2020 Election, looks to future changes | Catherine Ross/WCMH

With the 2020 election in the rearview, the Franklin County Board of Elections is bracing for several changes in 2021. Thursday, the board was conducting its post-election audit to make sure all equipment and procedures worked properly. It was one of the final loose ends to tie on the election cycle. “It’s been an incredible year. We’re certainly glad it’s been completed and we’re putting it to a bookend,” said public information officer Aaron Sellers. Tuesday, the Board of Commissioners approved $2.5 million in funding for the Board of Elections to cover the costs of several things, including replacing the voter registration database and eventually replacing the county’s poll pads. Sellers explained the current voter registration system is 15 years old and increasingly costly to maintain. The board will be rolling out a new database ahead of the May 2021 Primary Election. On Election Day 2020, some polling locations experienced long lines when the electronic poll pads, used to scan voters’ IDs and find their voter information, were unable to download the large file. “The reason why we went to paper the morning of the election was associated with the inability to manage the amount of data that was associated with unprecedented voting activity,” explained Franklin County administrator Kenneth Wilson.

Full Article: Franklin County examines 2020 Election, looks to future changes | NBC4 WCMH-TV

Republican lawmakers hold up Wisconsin recount funds as counties finalize costs | Briana Reilly and Abigail Becker/The Capital Times

The Legislature’s powerful budget committee is, for now, refusing to reimburse Dane and Milwaukee county officials for their work in conducting the election recount President Donald Trump requested and paid for following his loss in Wisconsin. The panel, controlled by Republicans, officially paused the process last Friday after one member raised an objection to the ask, meaning the full Joint Finance Committee may have to meet before the dollars are passed on. The state already has $3 million from Trump’s campaign to cover what the counties’ estimated costs were for the recount. The identity of the lawmaker who raised the objection is unknown, but the offices of the committee’s co-chairs say it came about because only the initial estimate of the costs is available, while the final figures haven’t yet been completed or shared. “The committee simply needs more information,” co-chair Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, said in a statement. “At the time the request was before the committee, and still today, we do not know the actual costs of the recount. Once those counties submit their receipts, we will have more information.” On Monday, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said in an email that the county is working through the billing process to determine a final cost for the recount. He had been waiting on a bill from the Madison Police Department, which he expected to be “significant.”

Full Article: Republican lawmakers hold up Wisconsin recount funds as counties finalize costs | Local Government | madison.com

Wisconsin Senate leader wants bill by July to allow absentee counting before Election Day | Molly Beck and Alison Durr/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The incoming leader of the state Senate is pushing legislation to allow election officials to count absentee ballots before Election Day — a change some election officials have sought for years. Republican state Sen. Devin LeMahieu, who will begin the new legislative session as Senate Majority Leader, said he wants the Legislature to expand the amount of time absentee ballots may be counted by July, according to the Associated Press. “I have no idea where my caucus would be at on that but I would think (it would pass),” LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, told the AP. “As long as it’s secure, I would think we could get there.” The proposal, which LeMahieu has previously pushed for unsuccessfully, comes in the wake of the November presidential election during which a massive influx of absentee ballots forced election officials in Milwaukee and elsewhere to count absentee ballots well after midnight because of a state law that requires election officials to wait until Election Day to begin counting.

Full Article: Senate leader wants bill by July to allow absentee counting before Election Day

Australia: Cyber attacks on elections growing amid concern for political parties | Anthony Galloway/Sydney Morning Herald

State actors are increasingly launching cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns to interfere in elections, as one Australian MP calls for political parties to be considered “critical infrastructure” so they can better fend off the attacks. New research says Russia is the most prolific state actor engaging in online interference against democratic elections, followed by China, which has significantly increased its cyber arsenal over the past two years, while Iran and North Korea are also offenders. All four countries have tried to interfere in the 2020 United States presidential election, using a combination of cyber attacks and online disinformation campaigns. Australian intelligence agencies found China was responsible for a cyber attack on Federal Parliament and its three main political parties last year, but kept the finding secret to avoid souring trade relations with Beijing. The Australian government also suspects China was probably behind a series of cyber raids this year on all levels of government, industry and critical infrastructure, including hospitals, local councils and state-owned utilities. New research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has identified 41 elections and seven referendums around the world between January 2010 and October 2020 where cyber-enabled foreign interference was identified, finding there has been a significant uptick over the past three years.

Full Article: Cyber attacks on elections growing amid concern for Australia’s political parties

Bulgaria’s election watchdog shortlists six bidders in voting machines tender | The Sofia Globe

Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission (CEC) said late on December 16 that it shortlisted six of the eight bidders in the tender to purchase 9600 voting machines, worth 36 million leva, or about 18.4 million euro. The other two bidders were disqualified on the grounds that they represented the same consortium, which breached the terms of the tender, CEC said. The CEC will open the bids on December 18 but gave no deadline for picking the winner of the tender. In addition to the physical delivery, the contract includes the software used by the voting machines and its source code, so that it can be “modified for all types of elections envisioned in the Electoral Code, without the supplier’s input,” the CEC said earlier, when it announced the tender. Also included in the tender is servicing the voting machines for the parliamentary elections, due in spring 2021, and training elections officials in the use of the machines. Bulgaria’s rollout of machine voting has been plagued by repeated delays – after the CEC was unable to secure 13 000 machines ahead of the 2017 parliamentary elections, the National Assembly legislated that the number of voting machines used would increase with each election. About 3000 machines were used in the 2019 European Parliament election, but an Electoral Code provision that called for 6000 machines to be deployed in the local elections later that year was scrapped, on the grounds that it would complicate the electoral process.

Full Article: Bulgaria’s election watchdog shortlists six bidders in voting machines tender | The Sofia Globe

Philippines: Biometric election solution providers pitch on remote online voting systems | Heart Castañeda/Manila News

Biometric technology providers Voatz and Smartmatic will pitch their remote online voting systems as two of four companies being considered by the Philippines government in a four-day set of consultations, the Philippine Canadian Inquirer reports. Meetings between the Office for Overseas Voting (OFOV), the Commission on Elections (Comelec), and the four companies, which also include Dominion Voting Systems and Indra, are expected to wrap up this week. “The purpose of the consultation is to be able to gather enough information on online voting that can be presented to Congress for its consideration,” Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said, according to the Inquirer. “If and when such a system is eventually put into action depends on Congress.” Jimenez also said the solutions may not be in place for the upcoming elections in 2022. The Philippines began automating its election system in 2010, and utilized vote counting machines in 2019.

Full Article: Biometric election solution providers pitch Philippines on remote online voting systems – Manila News

National: Former CISA Director Krebs again defends election security efforts | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

Chris Krebs, who was fired last month as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by President Donald Trump after saying that the 2020 presidential election was “the most secure” in U.S. history, repeated that message as a private citizen Wednesday to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Speaking during a session that the panel’s chairman, Ron Johnson, R-Wis., convened for the purposes of “examining irregularities” with the Nov. 3 election, Krebs held up the work done by his former agency and by state and local election officials who spent nearly four years replacing voting equipment, refining security practices and ensuring that nearly every ballot cast was recorded on paper. “There are a number of different computers, systems, machines involved in the entirety of the election process from registration to ballot design to ballot printing to actual voting, to tabulation,” Krebs said in response to Johnson asking about technologies used in the voting process. “But election officials are very careful that technology is not a single point of failure and that there are security controls before, during and after the process. As long as you have the paper — you can’t hack paper — you can run that process.” While Johnson and some of his fellow Republican members — as well as other witnesses, including some of the attorneys who’ve represented Trump in his unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn his electoral loss — brought up evidence-free claims of fraud, much of the hearing focused on the misinformation about the voting process that’s flooded social media in the weeks since Election Day, as well as the threats and harassment received by election officials. Krebs said that while it’s “pretty straightforward” to debunk the claims, often promoted by the outgoing president and his supporters, that equipment manufactured by certain vendors switched people’s votes, their ongoing prevalence has had deleterious effects on democracy and on the people who conduct the election process. “We’re past the point where we need to be having conversations about the outcome of this election,” Krebs said. “I think continued assaults on democracy, and the outcome of this election, is ultimately corrosive to the institutions that support elections.”

Full Article: Former CISA Director Krebs again defends election security efforts

National: The key to future election security starts with a roll of the dice | Patrick Howell O’Neill/MIT Technology Review

We’re now six weeks past Election Day, and electors in every state followed the will of the voters and confirmed the victory of Joe Biden. But while the Electoral College made the results official, President Donald Trump is continuing to protest them, despite having lost dozens of court cases within the past month. In any case, Congress is slated to complete the process of electing Biden on January 6. President Trump’s attack on American elections accelerated a problem that already existed in the United States: the public doesn’t trust the vote. So how can we help more Americans believe in the most important function of our democracy? One of the states with the most contentious states votes in 2020 might have something to tell us. Georgia’s election was close. When it turned out that were only 12,000 votes separating Joe Biden from Donald Trump, the world turned its attention to the count there. The state’s election processes have changed significantly in just the last year, including a switch to more secure paper ballots and a law requiring a post-election audit, which was then used to examine this year’s tight presidential race. An audit is not a recount. Instead, it is a routine check of a portion of ballots, using statistical tests to root out anomalies. This is meant to increase everyone’s confidence that the outcome is correct. Georgia’s secretary of state, a Republican, ran the audit this year: it discovered and corrected a relatively small number of counting errors. That process was open and transparent, and the changes were too few to affect the results. In the end, it reaffirmed Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.

Full Article: The key to future election security starts with a roll of the dice | MIT Technology Review

National: Senate hearing elevates baseless claims of election fraud | Christina A. Cassidy and Mary Clare Jalonek/Associated Press

Republican senators on Wednesday further perpetuated President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, two days after Democrat Joe Biden’s victory was sealed by the Electoral College. Lawmakers bickered heatedly at times during a committee hearing as Democrats pushed back against the unfounded allegations and a former federal cybersecurity official who oversaw election security said continued attempts to undermine confidence in the process were corrosive to democracy. The session, held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee over Democratic protests, elevated the groundless claims of fraud to the highest levels of government and provided two of Trump’s lawyers with one more public opportunity to make the false assertions after repeatedly losing in court. The hearing mimicked those held in some battleground states with local lawmakers, where Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani led some Republicans in airing their election grievances without any proof. Those hearings were held after consistent legal defeats. GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the committee chairman and one of Trump’s fiercest defenders, said his goal was to have a bipartisan hearing to examine the election. But he repeated Trump’s assertions without evidence and focused heavily on the claims being made by the president’s team. There was no testimony from state or local election officials who conducted extensive checks to ensure the accuracy of the election before certifying the results. Those officials have said there was no indication of any widespread fraud.

Full Article: Senate hearing elevates baseless claims of election fraud

National: ‘Conspiracy theories and lies’: Democrats cry foul as GOP airs unsupported election claims | Kyle Cheney/Politico

A Republican-led Senate panel provided a three-hour platform for allies of President Donald Trump to dispute the results of the 2020 election, with the hearing at one point devolving into a shouting match between the top Republican and Democrat on the committee. Throughout the partisan clash, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Ron Johnson argued the forum was simply to evaluate information, while Democrats like Gary Peters countered it was giving oxygen to conspiracy theories undermining U.S. democracy. GOP-called witnesses, including two Trump campaign lawyers described rampant fraud in Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, some of which had been considered and scrapped in court, others of which had no basis. The one witness called by Democrats, the Trump administration’s former top election security official Christopher Krebs, served as a counterweight. He urged Americans to put baseless election disputes behind them and warned that false conspiracy claims had fueled violent threats to election officials — including himself. “I think we’re past the point where we need to be having conversations about the outcome of this election,” said Krebs, who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency until Trump fired him last month. The attacks from Trump and his GOP allies on the election, he said, are “ultimately corrosive to the institutions that support elections.”

Full Article: ‘Conspiracy theories and lies’: Dems cry foul as GOP airs unsupported election claims – POLITICO