New Hampshire auditors see no sign of fraud — as Trump claims otherwise | Sara Murray/CNN

Outside a nondescript building, guarded 24/7 by state troopers, the leaders of Windham’s election audit field questions on the type of tape they’re using to seal boxes, why the livestream briefly failed and whether any ballot boxes have gone missing. Unlike audits of 2020 election results that have popped up in Arizona and Georgia, New Hampshire’s audit arose from a tangible gap in vote tallies in a race for state representative. Auditors have said their early assessment reveals no sign of fraud and instead points to human errors that they don’t believe are pervasive statewide. Even so, the bipartisan audit has become a flashpoint in this small town. And some conservatives are clinging to claims that the issue in Windham could point to broader election integrity problems throughout New Hampshire or even beyond. Harri Hursti, an expert in electronic voting security and part of the three-man team leading the audit, said he’s been surprised at the level of “malicious misinformation” swirling around the audit. “I’m a little bit surprised at the level of confusion and the level of deliberate trolling,” Hursti said. “The level of this is more than I expected. Nevertheless, we have to get the truth out. We have to make sure that people have the facts.” While the Windham audit wraps up this week, the 2020 election conspiracy theories are sure to persist. Among those amplifying them: former President Donald Trump and his allies. In a statement Monday night, Trump seized on the errors auditors are uncovering in New Hampshire and then claimed — without any supporting evidence — that Democrats were somehow behind it.

Full Article: New Hampshire auditors see no sign of fraud — as Trump claims otherwise – CNNPolitics

Post-Election Audits Are Normal. What’s Happening In Arizona Is Anything But. | Kaleigh Rogers/FiveThirtyEight

The day after the November 2020 election, the chairs of the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties of Maricopa County, Arizona, initiated a routine but important process to safeguard our democracy: a post-election audit. Per state law, after almost every countywide election in Arizona,1 a multiparty audit board must conduct a hand count of ballots from a sample of randomly selected voting precincts and compare them with the results from voting machines. The hand counts in Arizona’s most populous county, home to Phoenix, started the Saturday after the election and wrapped up two days later. Not a single discrepancy was found. Six-plus months later, Maricopa County’s ballots are still being counted — but by another group entirely. For the past five weeks, workers from Cyber Ninjas, a small private cybersecurity company based in Sarasota, Florida, have gathered in an arena to re-recount all the ballots — nearly 2.1 million — at the behest of the state’s Republican senators. Auditors have reportedly scanned ballots with UV lights to look for secret watermarks that conspiracy theorists believe then-President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security placed on legitimate ballots to differentiate them from fraudulent ones; they’ve also inspected ballots for traces of bamboo to determine if they were imported from Asia. The process was supposed to be completed by May 14, but workers were unable to finish the count in time, so the state Senate has extended its lease at the arena through the end of June. Audits and recounts are an essential part of our voting system, but what’s happening in Arizona isn’t. The state Senate that ordered the process is calling it an audit, and all the ballots are being recounted, but it’s not really an audit or a recount — it’s a partisan inquisition. Conducted by a company founded by an election-fraud conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter, the process is funded mostly by Trump loyalists and fails to meet any of the standards required for official recounts or audits by state law. The process indulges the fantasies of the most extreme political fringe while ignoring the fact that there is zero evidence of any election fraud to warrant such intense scrutiny. The result will almost certainly not be the greater transparency Republican state senators claim they seek. The review — and others like it — may instead further erode trust in our elections.

Full Article: Post-Election Audits Are Normal. What’s Happening In Arizona Is Anything But. | FiveThirtyEight

National: When it comes to ad hoc election investigations as in Arizona and Wisconsin, elevating doubt is the point | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

You are by now certainly familiar with the QAnon extremist ideology. It holds, in its more extreme iterations, that there is a secret group of prominent celebrities and Democratic politicians who engage in child abuse and cannibalism as part of their adherence to Satanism. It is, in short, as obviously extreme a conspiracy theory as can be imagined and one for which there is no evidence that doesn’t involve investigatory techniques such as picking every third letter off the back of a Cheerios box or interpreting a senator’s greeting of “hello” as being his attempt to say the word “hell.” Despite how extreme and obviously ludicrous the above formulation is, millions of Americans say they believe it. New polling from the Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core finds that 15 percent of Americans claim to believe specifically that a Satan-worshipping pedophile ring controls the world, with more than a fifth of Republicans somehow expressing that opinion. Perhaps those numbers are overstated, but that’s still a lot of people willing to publicly express confidence in one of the more demented ideas that’s ever emerged. So how do we combat the spread of this idea, one that’s already led to multiple acts of violence? Well, one way is to do our best to avoid treating it as in any way serious or legitimate or, ideally, to avoid giving it any oxygen at all. That is tricky for news organizations, for obvious reasons. Perhaps the worst way to combat what QAnon adherents say is to treat it as something falsifiable. That is, we wouldn’t want to simply assume it’s true or has obviously true components that we then work to validate or discredit. There’s no reason to believe it’s true, and even just launching an investigation suggesting that it might be lends it credence.

Full Article: When it comes to ad hoc election investigations as in Arizona and Wisconsin, elevating doubt is the point – The Washington Post

National: On Voting Rights, Biden Prefers to Negotiate. This Time, It Might Not Be Possible. | Katie Rogers/The New York Times

As President Biden confronts intense Republican opposition to the broad voting rights bill that Democrats have made a top priority this year, he might remember back to 1982 and an earlier partisan clash over the issue, one of a number across the years that shaped his views on deal making — and its limits. A key provision of the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting states from denying the vote to people on the basis of race, was facing a high-profile Senate debate over its extension. The Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel handling the legislation, was led by Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, but aware of the optics of having a former segregationist as their public face for negotiations, Republicans instead chose Senator Bob Dole of Kansas to lead them in talks about a deal. Representing the other side was Mr. Biden, then in his second term as a senator from Delaware. Mr. Biden was not as well known as another Democrat on the committee, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, but he did have one advantage: Republicans tended to listen to him. “He wanted to do the right thing, but he wanted to do it in a way that built consensus,” Sheila Bair, who served as a longtime counsel to Mr. Dole, said in an interview. “Biden recognized that if you want this to be lasting, we needed a big margin.”

Full Article: On Voting Rights, Biden Prefers to Negotiate. This Time, It Might Not Be Possible. – The New York Times

National: Democratic state legislators form voting rights council amid GOP push for restrictions | Tal Axelrod/The Hill

Democratic state legislators from across the country are forming a voting rights council as the party searches for ways to fight back against a wave of GOP-led states codifying restrictions to the ballot box. The council, which is being convened under the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), will “convene legislators to strategize about fighting GOP voter suppression — legislatively or judicially — and access national resources in the fight to preserve Americans’ political freedoms.” “Republicans’ embrace of voter suppression is an existential threat to the future of our democracy,” said DLCC President Jessica Post. “As we’ve seen before, Republicans are so terrified of being held accountable by the voters that they’ll stop at nothing to strengthen their grip on power. Our country was founded on the principle that Americans should have a say in how they’re governed, and state Democrats are ready to stand up and fight for the right to vote.” Nevada Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson and Michigan Senate Democratic Leader Jim Ananich will serve as co-chairs on the council. Members include North Carolina Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue, Georgia House Democratic Leader James Beverly and Arizona House Democratic Leader Reginald Bolding, among others.

Full Article: Democratic state legislators form voting rights council amid GOP push for restrictions | TheHill

National: Cozy Bear revisits one of its greatest hits, researchers say: election skulduggery | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

It looks like the Russian government-linked hacking group Cozy Bear is back in the election trickery business. The security firm Volexity publicized a spearphishing campaign on Thursday that it identified only days ago, a scheme that uses an election fraud document as a lure. The emails purport to be from the the United States Agency for International Development, with targets including government agencies, research institutions and nongovernmental organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Volexity said it had concluded, with moderate confidence, that Cozy Bear — the group also known as APT29 or the Dukes — was behind the emails. If true, it would be a return to an old favorite subject for Cozy Bear, which the U.S. government and others implicated in the 2016 hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, among other election interference efforts.

Full Article: Cozy Bear revisits one of its greatest hits, researchers say: election skulduggery

Editorial: Democrats are wasting time pursuing their dream elections reform bill. Here’s a better path. | Edward B. Foley/The Washington Post

It’s become increasingly clear that Democrats lack the votes in the Senate to pass their dream elections bill, the behemoth known as S. 1. Before time runs out, they would be wise to come up with a backup plan that would not do as much but could still achieve significant progress in protecting the right to vote. Frankly, it’s less important what specific election reforms Democrats can negotiate than that the Democrats find some common ground with Republicans. What the country needs now is a genuinely bipartisan statement of shared commitments on how electoral competition is supposed to operate. Is it possible for a measure to attract the support of 10 Republicans? That’s a tall order in the current environment. But the universe includes the five who are retiring — Roy Blunt (Mo.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Richard C. Shelby (Ala.) and Patrick J. Toomey (Penn.) — plus Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Ben Sasse (Neb.).

Full Article: Opinion | Democrats are wasting time pursuing their dream elections reform bill. Here’s a better path. – The Washington Post

Alaska: Election officials faced ‘unprecedented harassment’ during Anchorage mayor’s runoff, report says | Emily Goodykoontz/Anchorage Daily News

A new report from Anchorage’s city clerk describes the runoff election for mayor as rife with “intense scrutiny,” “unprecedented harassment of election officials” and the “dissemination of disinformation to sow distrust among voters.” The Anchorage Assembly certified the results of the runoff on Tuesday, affirming Dave Bronson as the mayor-elect. Bronson beat opponent and Assembly member Forrest Dunbar by 45,937 to 44,744 votes, or 50.66% to 49.34%. Bronson takes office on July 1. Before the certification of any Anchorage city election, the municipal clerk’s office provides the Assembly with a report on the results and the operations of the election. In the report, presented Tuesday, the clerk’s office portrays an election as run successfully by city officials and election workers. But it also describes incidents including “disrespectful, harassing and threatening behavior” toward election officials from some campaign observers and members of the public. Supporters of Bronson — in comments made on social media, during public testimony at Assembly meetings and in comments on a conservative website — have criticized the city clerk’s handling of the election and Anchorage’s vote-by-mail system. Public records of the challenges filed during the election by Bronson’s observers show a number of the incidents described in the report involved Bronson’s observers and supporters. The majority of the registered observers were with Bronson.

Full Article: Election officials faced ‘unprecedented harassment’ during Anchorage mayor’s runoff, report says – Anchorage Daily News

Arizona: Wake TSI, the company leading the hand-recount, left the Maricopa audit team | Jeremy Duda/Arizona Mirror

Wake Technology Services, Inc., the company that has been in charge of recounting ballots as part of Senate President Karen Fann’s election audit, has left the audit team. Audit spokesman Randy Pullen told the Arizona Republic that Wake TSI’s contract ended on May 14, when the Senate’s contract with Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the audit is taking place, was originally scheduled to end. Pullen said Wake chose not to renew its contract. “They were done,” Pullen told the Republic, which first reported Wake TSI’s departure. “They didn’t want to come back.” The Pennsylvania-based digital forensics company had been in charge of hand counting 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County during the 2020 general election. Wake has been replaced by StratTech Solutions, a Scottsdale-based IT company. It’s unclear why Cyber Ninjas and the Senate chose StratTech Solutions or whether the company has any experience working with election-related matters. It’s also unknown if the auditors solicited other companies to replace Wake TSI. Pullen told the Republic that many of the people who worked under Wake TSI during the audit will continue that work for StratTech, and that StratTech will use the policies and procedures already in place. An employee for StratTech declined to comment to the Arizona Mirror and referred questions to a public relations representative for Cyber Ninjas, who couldn’t be reached for comment. Wake TSI co-founder Gene Kern could not be reached for comment, either. When Fann announced her audit team in late March, Wake TSI stood out as the only company that appeared to have any experience with election work. Cyber Ninjas said Wake TSI had conducted “hand-count audits” in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, and in New Mexico from the 2020 election, and that members of the company’s team had assisted the FBI with an election fraud investigation in 1994.

Full Article: Wake TSI, the company leading the hand-recount, left the Arizona audit team

On California’s Central Coast, anti-Asian bias and the Big Lie | Marak Barabak/Los Angeles Times

The Big Lie — the fiction that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, costing President Trump a second term — has spread like a cancer. In Phoenix, Republican state lawmakers caved to the GOP’s lunatic wing and approved a harebrained canvass of Maricopa County ballots. Emboldened Trump backers are now challenging election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. (Not that it will change anything.) In California, the nuttiness has spread to San Luis Obispo County, the midpoint between San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the denialism took an ugly, racist turn. President Biden easily defeated Trump in the county, 55% to 42%, a margin of nearly 21,000 votes. That’s no cliffhanger. “Joe Biden won the election,” county Supervisor John Peschong states without equivocation. He’s no Democratic shill. His Republican credentials include service in the Reagan White House and decades as a GOP campaign strategist. Biden’s victory was also confirmed by a partial hand recount, a standard practice under California law. Still, at a board of supervisors Zoom meeting in early May, nearly 150 people pressed baseless assertions of fraud and questioned the use of Dominion voting machines. The technology firm has faced some of the more fantastical claims by Trump and his sympathizers. Many protesters expressed doubt their votes were counted, or claimed balloting machines were manipulated to change results.

Full Article: Racism and Trump’s election lie on California Central Coast – Los Angeles Times

Georgia: What Is Happening With Fulton County’s Absentee Ballots? | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

A meeting to discuss logistical plans for a conspiracy theorist and other voters to review copies of Fulton’s 147,000 absentee ballots for evidence of fraud has been canceled after the defendants filed motions to dismiss the underlying lawsuit. Fulton County, the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections and the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts all filed motions to dismiss Wednesday night and Thursday morning arguing the plaintiffs failed to properly serve them notice of the suit. The filings also allege plaintiffs sued the wrong people, the defendants are protected under sovereign immunity and that plaintiffs failed to state a claim that entitles them to court action. A new hearing in front of Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero on these motions is scheduled for June 21 at 9 a.m. This lawsuit into Georgia’s election has continued despite three previous counts of the vote, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation examination of absentee ballot envelopes and every Georgia election being certified. Amero granted a motion to unseal the ballots in a hearing last week as part of the discovery process in a larger case alleging Georgia’s most populous county mishandled ballots and allowed fraudulent votes to be counted. (There is no evidence of substantial widespread fraud.) The primary plaintiff is Garland Favorito of the group VoterGA, who has fought against Georgia’s elections infrastructure for more than a decade, including a failed lawsuit against Georgia’s old direct-recording electronic machines. Favorito has also questioned the authenticity of events surrounding 9/11, pushed conspiracy theories about former President Bill Clinton and the assassination of John F. Kennedy and is now serving as the latest vessel for false claims of fraud with the 2020 election.

Full Article: What Is Happening With Fulton County’s Absentee Ballots? | Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia ballot inspection seeks elusive proof of fraud in election | Mark Niesse and David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Aided by a treasure hunter, the tea party and an unshakable belief that the presidential election was rigged, a group of skeptics may soon inspect Georgia absentee ballots in an attempt to find counterfeits. The court-ordered review is the latest attempt to question results that have repeatedly withstood scrutiny, with no evidence of widespread fraud. Georgia election officials counted ballots three times, audited voter signatures, opened dozens of investigations and certified Democrat Joe Biden’s 12,000-vote win over Republican Donald Trump. But prior investigations didn’t go far enough, according to the plaintiffs and many other Georgians who doubt the integrity of the election after Trump lost and blamed “fraud.” They say malfeasance hasn’t been proven because the government hasn’t looked hard enough. The upcoming review of about 147,000 absentee ballots in Fulton County could put concerns to rest — or fuel more suspicions by those who refuse to believe Trump lost. No matter its outcome, the ballot review won’t change last year’s election results. A judge had planned to consider procedures for the ballot inspection on Friday, but the meeting was postponed as he considers motions by Fulton County to dismiss the case.

Full Article: Georgia ballot review seeks evidence of counterfeit absentee votes in 2020 presidential election

Michigan elections director says Cheboygan County board can’t require access to voting machines | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

A county commission in rural northern Michigan can’t require local election officials to provide access to their voting equipment for a so-called “forensic audit,” says a letter from the state’s election director, Jonathan Brater. The letter dated last week comes as the Republican-controlled Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners contemplates whether to allow an outside group to audit the county’s voting machines amid an ongoing push by supporters of former President Donald Trump to question the results of the 2020 election. “The Michigan election law entrusts clerks with choosing and maintaining their voting systems and does not provide any authority for county commissions to take control of this equipment,” Brater wrote Cheboygan County Clerk Karen Brewster on Thursday. Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in November, but the former president and his backers have levied unsubstantiated claims that there was widespread fraud as they’ve sought to overturn and undermine the result. Biden won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points. A series of court rulings and reviews of the votes have upheld the results.

Full Article: County board can’t require access to voting machines, Michigan says

Nevada bill for permanent mail-in voting advances in Legislature | John Sadler/Las Vegas Sun

Extensive election reform bills supported by Nevada Democrats passed out of their second committee Tuesday night, inching forward as the end of the legislative session looms large. Bills that would make Nevada the first presidential primary in the country, make permanent many of the voting changes put into place during the COVID-19 pandemic, and make changes to the state’s voter registration system were passed out of the money-focused Assembly Committee on Ways and Means on Tuesday. Lawmakers spent the majority of the hearing debating the cost of the measures. Assembly Bill 321, which would automatically send mail-in ballots to active, registered voters in Nevada, received the most debate over cost. Fiscal notes from the secretary of state’s office claimed the bill would cost $5.7 million more each fiscal year, a number that bill sponsor and Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, took umbrage with. The total cost for the 2020 election, including expanded mail-in voting was $3.9 million, Frierson said. “When we open up these issues, I think there’s a tendency for folks to look for the ideal and say, ‘Well, since we’re opening up anyway, let’s find an ideal way to do all of this,’ which is not always necessary or practical,” Frierson said.

Full Article: Nevada bill for permanent mail-in voting advances in Legislature – Las Vegas Sun Newspaper

New Hampshire: Windham audit finds no fraud or evidence voting machines were tampered with | Kevin Landrigan/New Hampshire Union Leader

A forensic audit of automated vote counting machines in Windham revealed no evidence of fraud or tampering with those devices, officials said Thursday. The work of the first-ever audit of a New Hampshire election ended Thursday with the team standing by its initial finding that folds made in paper ballots were the major contributor to a wide discrepancy between results that were reported on election night and a hand recount done nine days later in local House races. On Tuesday, audit team member Harri Hursti began the process of examining in detail the four AccuVote machines used to process ballots in the town. “All the machines were matched. The content was exactly the same,” Hursti said. The state law ordering the audit required that the team’s initial work be completed by Thursday. State officials moved the boxes of paper ballots Thursday from the Cross Training Center on the New Hampshire National Guard campus in Pembroke to the New Hampshire State Archives Building in Concord.

Full Artifcle: Windham audit finds no fraud or evidence voting machines were tampered with | Voters First | unionleader.com

New York State Board of Elections Approves Software To Tabulate Ranked-Choice Primary Results | Brigid Bergin/Gothamist

It may take until mid-July to know who has won all the New York City primary contests, but at least elections officials won’t need to hand count tens of thousands of ballots. The New York State Board of Elections finally issued its unanimous approval on Tuesday for the city to use software to tabulate the ranked-choice vote results. The approval comes after more than 18 months of back and forth between the city and state over the process required to test and implement the Universal Ranked-Choice Voting Tabulator, the software selected by the city which was developed by a non-partisan non-profit called The Ranked Choice Resource Center. It wasn’t until January of this year that state officials finally agreed to allow the mandatory testing and certification to take place. The reluctance from state officials stemmed in part from a position, echoed by the State Board’s Republican co-chair Peter Kosinki at the meeting Tuesday, that the city was exceeding its authority when it enacted ranked-choice voting in the first place. He argued that the system conflicts with state election law. “I think they have overstepped,” he said, warning that New York City could be setting a precedent for other localities when it comes to changing the processes used to select their local representatives. Democratic co-chair Douglas Kellner countered that the state constitution already grants localities this authority and cited case law supporting the city’s ability to select its local representatives with this system. Kellner also noted that courts have ruled against the only lawsuit that sought to block the use of ranked-choice voting. The state did identify a handful of issues with the URC tabulator, which was submitted for certification testing in March. The one outstanding issue is related to the security protocols the city BOE needs to establish.

Full Article: State Board of Elections Approves Software To Tabulate Ranked-Choice Primary Results – Gothamist

Ohio: Stark County commissioners approve purchase of Dominion voting machines | Robert Wang/The Canton Repository

Stark County commissioners on Wednesday approved an agreement with the Ohio secretary of state that will allow the Stark County Board of Elections to purchase Dominion voting machines. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Monday that state law required the commissioners to approve funding for the voting system, which the elections board had previously agreed to buy. The board plans to purchase 1,450 Dominion ImageCast X touch-screen voting machines, ballot scanners and other equipment. The elections board intends to test the equipment and train poll workers in time for it to be used in the Nov. 2 general election. The three-member Board of Commissioners had refused to fund the purchase in March. They said the Board of Elections failed to get the best value for taxpayers, failed to aggressively negotiate enough with Dominion Voting Systems and didn’t thoroughly consider the offerings of other vendors such as Election Systems & Software. Also dozens to more than 100 people, at least some influenced by unsubstantiated claims that hacked Dominion voting machines had cost former President Donald Trump re-election, had contacted the commissioners to urge more scrutiny of the purchase. After the application by Dominion of a trade-in credit, the county’s share is about $1.48 million, plus about $331,000 a year to cover the cost of software support, maintenance and warranties. The state is covering $3.27 million of the cost.

Full Article: Stark commissioners approve purchase of Dominion voting machines

Pennsylvania primary showed that running elections is complicated — and so is changing election law | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Elections are complex. Running them is hard. And Pennsylvania is still building its system. That was clear in last week’s primary, when more than 2.2 million voters participated in the first non-presidential election since the state dramatically expanded mail voting. It was a test of a still-new system, and there were points of clear failure or acute stress — pointing to both new and long-standing challenges. Philadelphia had problems using its ballot extractor machines. Lancaster County’s mail ballots were printed in the wrong order. Luzerne County’s voting machines read “Democratic” at the top of the screen for Republican voters. Delaware and York Counties, among others, ran out of paper ballots in some precincts. Those problems call for narrow, specific solutions, elections officials and voting rights advocates said. But some Republicans in Harrisburg, who made overhauling the state’s election law a top priority following Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen, painted the problems as evidence of a need for systemic change. Many local officials said that sweeping focus could leave unaddressed the narrower problems. “We have to be able to walk before we can run,” said Lisa Schaefer, the head of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. “It’s really looking at what we have in front of us and making sure that what we have works well.” Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature are preparing to introduce legislation that could include major election changes. Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), chair of the House State Government Committee, has the support of Republican leaders as he drafts legislation to be introduced in the next few weeks. Republicans hope to have changes in place before next year’s elections, when Pennsylvania will have open races for governor and U.S. Senate.

Full Article: Pennsylvania primary election reveals small problems, and Republican calls for big changes

Virginia Election officials begin $20-29M project to replace voter system | By Graham Moomaw/Virginia Mercury

For years, local officials have been complaining that Virginia’s all-encompassing election software — which powers everything from voter registration to absentee ballots to list maintenance to transmission of results — is slow and hard to use. A 2018 report from state auditors verified those frustrations, concluding the Virginia Election and Registration Information System, or VERIS, was “not sufficiently functional or reliable.” Election administrators are planning to fix that by by replacing the IT system, a project estimated to cost between $20 million and $29 million. Though voters may not notice a major change, officials said, the workers assisting them will hopefully have a much smoother time calling up information in the new system and making changes to a voter’s status. “From an administrative point of view, it’s going to be a huge change. And a positive one,” said elections Commissioner Chris Piper. “If we can have a better system for them to maneuver through, it will ensure that voters have a safe and secure experience when they go to cast their ballot.” The state recently solicited bids from companies interested in providing a replacement IT system and expects to award the contract in the fall. The new system and VERIS are expected to run “concurrently” for the 2022 elections, Piper said, with the new system going fully operational in 2023.

Full Article: Election officials begin $20-29M project to replace Virginia’s voter system – Virginia Mercury

Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hires ex-cops to investigate November election | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is hiring retired police officers to investigate aspects of the November election, joining with Republicans from around the country who have questioned President Joe Biden’s victory. Vos, of Rochester, said he recognizes Biden narrowly won Wisconsin and is not trying to change the results with his taxpayer-funded investigation. He said he hopes the investigators can get to the bottom of issues Republicans have raised unsuccessfully in court, such as how the state’s largest cities used more than $6 million in grants from a private group to run their elections. Vos in a Wednesday interview said he was giving the investigators a broad mandate to spend about three months reviewing all tips and following up on the most credible ones. In addition to the grant spending, he said they may look into claims of double voting and review how clerks fixed absentee ballot credentials. “Is there a whole lot of smoke or is there actual fire? We just don’t know yet,” Vos said. Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who leads the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said she was worried the investigation would undermine confidence in an election that was conducted properly.

Full Article: Wisconsin Republican Robin Vos hires ex-cops to investigate election