Pennsylvania election results will stay delayed after Republican lawmaker rules out pre-canvassing | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Long waits for Pennsylvania election results are here to stay. The point person on election issues for state House Republicans says he’s done considering election legislation until 2023, after Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf last week vetoed the bill he wrote. “It is over until we get a new governor,” Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), chair of the House State Government Committee and author of the proposed Republican election overhaul, said in an interview late last week. That would leave the state’s election system effectively unchanged for next year’s nationally watched open-seat races for governor and U.S. Senate. And it leaves local elections officials in both parties across Pennsylvania without the two things they have consistently pleaded for: earlier processing of mail ballots, which would avoid prolonged vote counts as the world saw last year, and an extension of tight mail-ballot deadlines that don’t align with Postal Service standards and leave thousands of voters unable to return them on time. “We’ll still be in the same boat. We’ll just use the same paddles to row further,” said Karen Barsoum, the Chester County elections director. “It’s unfortunate that there were clear areas that could have been improved upon, that we had basically the whole year to prepare for the next big election.”

Full Article: Pennsylvania election results will stay delayed after Republican lawmaker rules out pre-canvassing

Pennsylvania Governor says Matriano’s election audit plan a ‘disgrace to democracy’ | Associated Press

Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday said it is a “disgrace to democracy” that a Republican state lawmaker is trying to launch what he calls a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election, similar to what is happening in Arizona. Wolf, a Democrat, said on Twitter that the “sham election audit” being attempted by Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano is also a “profound waste of time and taxpayer money,” in addition to being a disgrace. Meanwhile on Thursday, Wolf’s administration issued a directive to counties, warning that they should not provide access for third parties to copy or examine state-certified electronic voting systems and election management systems or components. Wolf’s administration told counties that it would decertify any election equipment that is subject to any such third-party access, rendering it useless in an election, and that the state would not reimburse a county for the cost to replace the equipment.

Full Article: Election audit plan a ‘disgrace to democracy,’ governor says

Texas GOP begins hurried second try at thwarted voting laws | Paul J. Weber and Acacia Coronado/Associated Press

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday began a hurried second attempt to toughen election laws in Texas, weeks after Democrats’ dramatic walkout from the state Capitol thwarted one of America’s most restrictive voting measures. He demanded no specific voting changes to reach his desk this summer, but Republicans who fumbled their first try at passing a sweeping overhaul of Texas elections at the last minute in May are already promising to work fast, saying hearings will start this weekend. The haste reflects the usual time crunch of a normal special legislative session in Texas — which last just 30 days — but also the GOP’s eagerness to put behind them a rare and highly public defeat in America’s biggest red state over what has been a priority for the party since the November elections. Abbott, who is up for reelection in 2022, has already shifted his focus toward picking up Donald Trump’s mantle on immigration since the May walkout. Republicans are also backing away from the two most contentious issues that fueled Democrats’ dramatic quorum break just before a midnight deadline over the Memorial Day weekend. Still, Republicans are expecting many of the sunken bill’s provisions to return once the special session begins Thursday. “The Senate and the House are both eager to work on this issue and get it done,” said Republican state Rep. Jacey Jetton, who helped negotiate the final version of the sweeping elections bill that Democrats blocked.

Full Article: Texas GOP begins hurried second try at thwarted voting laws

National: After a Nightmare Year, Election Officials Are Quitting | Michael Wines/The New York Times

In November, Roxanna Moritz won her fourth term unopposed as the chief election officer in metro Davenport, Iowa, with more votes than any other candidate on the ballot. Five months later, she quit. “I emotionally couldn’t take the stress anymore,” she said in an interview. For Ms. Moritz, a Democrat, the initial trigger was a Republican-led investigation into her decision to give hazard pay to poll workers who had braved the coronavirus pandemic last fall. But what sealed her decision was a new law enacted by the Iowa legislature in February that made voting harder — and imposed fines and criminal penalties on election officials for errors like her failure to seek approval for $9,400 in extra pay. “I could be charged with a felony. I could lose my voting rights,” she said. “So I decided to leave.” Ms. Moritz is one casualty of a year in which election officials were repeatedly threatened, scapegoated and left exhausted — all while managing a historically bitter presidential vote during a pandemic. She has company. In 14 southwestern Ohio counties, one in four directors or deputy auditors of elections has left. One in four election officials in Kansas either quit or lost re-election in November. Twenty-one directors or deputies have left or will leave election posts in Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, according to a tally by the reporting consortiums Spotlight PA and Votebeat. Some of those represent ordinary churn in a job where many appointees are nearing retirement, and others are subject to the vagaries of elections. In a survey of some 850 election officials by Reed College and the Democracy Fund in April, more than one in six said they planned to retire before the 2024 election.

Full Article: 2020 Election Spurs Resignations and Retirements of Officials – The New York Times

National: What’s keeping democracy experts up most at night? An overturned election | Benjy Sarlin/NBC

Congress is just beginning a new investigation into the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, but the movement behind it remains as active as ever. Former President Donald Trump is frequently repeating false claims of victory, plotting revenge against politicians who opposed his efforts to overturn the election, attacking key Republicans who refuse to back him up now and hinting at a return to power, either through another presidential run or some other means. There’s no legal avenue for Trump to reverse the 2020 results. But a half-dozen scholars who study democracy and election laws told NBC News they are increasingly worried that 2024 could be a repeat of 2020, only with a party further remade in the former president’s image and better equipped to sow disorder during the process and even potentially overturn the results. “Obviously the insurrection was horrific in its violence and assault on democracy, but it didn’t disrupt the true winner of the election,” said Edward B. Foley, a professor at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University who researches election law. “What you don’t want is it to have been a rehearsal.”

Full Article: What’s keeping democracy experts up most at night? An overturned election

National: They kept the wheels on democracy as Trump tried to steal an election. Now they’re paying the price | Jess Bidgood/The Boston Globe

Bill Gates, a Republican member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, never used to feel like persona non grata in the party that’s long been his political home. A nuts-and-bolts functionary who can expound upon issues like air quality and animal control, he has a 10th-floor office adorned with mementos that show his many years of devotion to the GOP, including a taxidermied “jackalope” given to him by a Koch brothers-backed organization, and a framed photograph of him greeting George W. Bush in front of Air Force One. But then he and his colleagues on the board certified the 2020 election in their county, performing their ministerial function over the screams of angry Donald Trump supporters outside. Since then, Gates’s once-mundane job has taken a nightmare turn. He has been deluged with violent threats, named in Trump’s and his allies’ lawsuits and called by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, asking him to “get this thing fixed up.” He even found himself and his colleagues one vote short of being held in contempt by the state Senate — an outcome he feared could lead his most unhinged detractors to detain him. He wants to keep his job, hard as it’s been, and run for reelection in 2024. But he knows his decision to defy his party’s leaders and stand by the election results could doom his chances. “You’re like, OK, is there a place for me? Is there a place for someone who does — who tries to do — the right thing? Who speaks truth, who isn’t willing to follow the current Republican talking points?” Gates asked last month. “It’s just not what I believe in,” he said. “I don’t believe in the big lie.”

Full Article: They kept the wheels on democracy as Trump tried to steal an election. Now they’re paying the price – The Boston Globe

National: In ramp-up to 2022 midterms, Republican candidates center pitches on Trump’s false election claims | Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

A candidate to be Arizona’s top elections official said recently he hopes a review of 2020 ballots underway in his state will lead to the reversal of former president Donald Trump’s defeat there. In Georgia, a member of Congress who used to focus primarily on culturally conservative causes such as opposing same-sex marriage has made Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen a central element of his bid to try to unseat the current secretary of state. And in Virginia last month, a political novice who joined Trump’s legal team to try to overturn his 2020 loss in court mounted a fierce primary challenge — and won — after attacking a Republican state House member who said he had seen no evidence of widespread fraud in the election. “He wasn’t doing anything — squat, diddly,” Wren Williams said in an interview about his primary opponent. “He wasn’t taking election integrity seriously. I’m sitting here fighting for election integrity in the courts, and he’s my elected representative who can legislate and he’s not.”

Full Article: In ramp-up to 2022 midterms, Republican candidates center pitches on Trump’s false election claims – The Washington Post

Editorial: The Supreme Court clearly won’t protect voting rights. But Congress can. | Sean Morales-Doyle/The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a severe blow to a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement and the nation’s best defense against racially discriminatory voting laws, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The court’s ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee makes it substantially harder for voters to challenge such laws, hacking away at federal courts’ powers to protect Americans from efforts to impede their access to the ballot box. It’s the latest sign that if the voting rights of all Americans are to be defended, Congress, not the nation’s highest court, will have to provide that defense. The case concerns two provisions of Arizona’s voting laws under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. One of these said that someone who cast their vote at the wrong precinct would have their entire ballot tossed out, even for races such as president or governor, where precinct would not be a factor. The other restricted the circumstances under which vote-by-mail ballots could be turned in on behalf of a nonrelative neighbor or friend. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found both policies to be discriminatory because of the way they interact with the real-life conditions for minority voters in the state. For example, a brief filed by the Navajo Nation noted: “Arizona’s ballot collection law criminalizes ways in which Navajos historically participated in early voting by mail. Due to the remoteness of the Nation and lack of transportation, it is not uncommon for Navajos to ask their neighbors or clan members to deliver their mail.”

Full Article: The Supreme Court clearly won’t protect voting rights. But Congress can. – The Washington Post

Editorial: What sham audit information are the Cyber Ninjas and the Arizona Senate trying to hide? | EJ Montini/Arizona Republic

When Republican Arizona Senate President Karen Fann gave the go ahead for the sham audit of Maricopa County votes, she said the process would be conducted professionally and transparently. She’s 0 for 2. Professionally? HA! That went out the window with the hiring of the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas to conduct the audit. Not only had the company not done such a thing before, but the CEO, Doug Logan, is a confirmed conspiracy kook who spread unproven election fraud claims and has appeared in a film claiming the CIA or former members of the intelligence agency are involved in some nutty “disinformation” campaign concerning election fraud. Then, there is the transparent part. The audits already conducted by the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, and the two certified firms who also were hired to check the election process, were open to the public and transparent. They found no fraud. This audit, too, was to be that way. Supposedly. Logan said of his audit, “The big question should not be, ‘Am I biased,’ but ‘Will this audit be transparent, truthful and accurate?’ The answer to the latter question is a resounding ‘Yes.’ ” Except, it’s not. If it was, The Arizona Republic would not be going to court and asking a judge to have the Senate and Cyber Ninjas turn over records the public has every right to see.

Full Article: What are Cyber Ninjas and the Arizona Senate trying to hide?

How California could recall its governor | Michael R. Blood/Associated Press

 California will hold a recall election Sept. 14 that could remove first-term Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office. The date was set by Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat and Newsom ally, after election officials certified that enough valid petition signatures had been turned in to qualify the election for the ballot. Republicans are hoping for an upset in a heavily Democratic state where the GOP hasn’t won a statewide election since 2006. The election will be watched nationally as a barometer of the public mood heading toward the 2022 elections, when a closely divided Congress again will be in play. Here’s how it works. California is one of 20 states that have provisions to remove a sitting governor in a recall, 19 of them through elections. The state law establishing the rules goes back to 1911 and was intended to place more power directly in the hands of voters by allowing them to recall elected officials and repeal or pass laws by placing them on the ballot. Recall attempts are common in the state, but they rarely get on the ballot and even fewer succeed. However, in 2003, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was recalled and replaced by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Full Article: EXPLAINER: How California could recall its governor

Editorial: The real, on-the-ground effects of Florida’s new voting law | Alex Berrios/South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Since Senate Bill 90 was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 6, the state has been hit with four federal lawsuits over the controversial new elections law. Proponents of this legislation have justified its restrictions on mail-in voting by citing election security concerns and preventing voter fraud. However, SB 90 presents a much more alarming reality, politicizing the act of voting to disenfranchise thousands of Floridians from participating in future elections. I am a Florida native invested in the state’s politics since birth and professionally since 2017. In 2020, I cofounded Mi Vecino, a Florida-based nonprofit dedicated to engaging and empowering Black, brown and first-time voters across the state. This first-hand experience has given me insight into the real impact of SB 90. The new law makes the following changes to voting by mail: Voters must enroll in vote-by-mail every two years; enrollment requirements have expanded to include the last four digits of a registered voter’s SSN or driver’s license number; and voters have to use the same form of ID across both in-person and vote-by-mail registrations. These new requirements will force every voter without vote-by-mail registration to re-register. In my years of political organizing, most people don’t remember which form of ID they used to register to vote, with some having registered decades ago. Those most likely to use vote-by-mail — students attending college out of state, seniors, voters with disabilities and voters who work multiple jobs or have families and other responsibilities — will be forced to stand in line on Election Day using time they cannot spare, or not vote at all.

Full Article: The real, on-the-ground effects of Florida’s new voting law | Opinion – South Florida Sun Sentinel – South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Arizona: Trump Is Said to Have Called Official After Election Loss | Michael Wines and Reid J. Epstein/The New York Times

President Donald J. Trump twice sought to talk on the phone with the Republican leader of Arizona’s most populous county last winter as the Trump campaign and its allies tried unsuccessfully to reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s narrow victory in the state’s presidential contest, according to the Republican official and records obtained by The Arizona Republic, a Phoenix newspaper. But the leader, Clint Hickman, then the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview on Friday that he let the calls — made in late December and early January — go to voice mail and did not return them. “I told people, ‘Please don’t have the president call me,’” he said. At the time, Mr. Hickman was being pressed by the state Republican Party chairwoman and Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to investigate claims of fraud in the county’s election, which Mr. Biden had won by about 45,000 votes. Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement that “it’s no surprise Maricopa County election officials had no desire to look into significant irregularities during the election,” though there is no evidence of widespread problems with Arizona’s election. She did not directly address the calls reportedly made by Mr. Trump. Two former campaign aides said they knew nothing about the outreach to the Maricopa County official.

Full Article: Trump Is Said to Have Called Arizona Official After Election Loss – The New York Times

Georgia: How Pro-Trump Local News Sites Keep Pushing 2020 Election Misinformation | Stephen Fowler/GPB

If you don’t follow politics in Georgia closely — or even if you do — you might be forgiven for not knowing much about The Georgia Star News. Founded just after the November election when President Biden narrowly flipped the state by about 12,000 votes, it looks like a regular news website with a lifestyle section, a widget for the weather and stories about local and national goings-on. But the site is more than just a local news outlet. It’s part of the Star News Network — an expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida. Steve Bannon, a former strategist for former President Donald Trump, described The Georgia Star News in a radio interview as content “you can’t get anywhere else.” “We’re not Conservative Inc.,” he said. “It’s very populist, it’s very nationalist, it’s very MAGA, it’s very American First.”

Full Article: How Pro-Trump Local News Sites Keep Pushing 2020 Election Misinformation – capradio.org

Louisiana Governor signs bill moving state to paper-based elections | Matt Doyle/Louisiana Radio Network

Governor Edwards signs legislation that will begin the process of shifting Louisiana from an electronic voting system to a paper-based system. Under a paper system, voters will receive a paper ballot that they can look at to make sure their vote was tabulated correctly, and that can be later audited by hand should the need arise. Slidell Senator Sharon Hewitt said her bill will further strengthen the integrity of our elections. “What is great about a paper-based system is that it is auditable, it is secure, and it is significantly cheaper than our 30-year-old outdated machines,” said Hewitt. “With an electronic system you push a button to cast a vote and that is it, so there is no way at the end to audit the result.”

Full Article: Governor signs bill moving state to paper-based elections | louisianaradionetwork.com

Michigan sheriff sought to seize voting machines amid Trump claims | Jonathan Oosting/Bridge Michigan

Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf last year tried to enlist fellow “constitutional sheriffs” to seize Dominion voting machines at the heart of an election conspiracy theory promoted by then-President Donald Trump, Bridge Michigan has learned. A trove of emails obtained by Bridge through the Freedom of Information Act indicate Trump had at least some law enforcement support in his bid to overturn the 2020 election won by Democratic President Joe Biden. Bridge obtained emails from Leaf that detail his unsuccessful efforts to obtain voting machines and inspect them. The records indicate that Leaf’s attorney provided updates on the effort to Trump allies including attorney Sidney Powell and a contact for former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Leaf told Bridge in a brief interview that he worked with other Michigan sheriffs on what he called an “ongoing” matter after the election, but would not divulge specifics.

Full Article: Emails: Michigan sheriff sought to seize voting machines amid Trump claims | Bridge Michigan

Montana: How G.O.P. Laws Could Complicate Voting for Native Americans | Maggie Astor/The New York Times

 One week before the 2020 election, Laura Roundine had emergency open-heart surgery. She returned to her home on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation with blunt instructions: Don’t go anywhere while you recover, because if you get Covid-19, you’ll probably die. That meant Ms. Roundine, 59, couldn’t vote in person as planned. Neither could her husband, lest he risk bringing the virus home. It wasn’t safe to go to the post office to vote by mail, and there is no home delivery here in Starr School — or on much of the reservation in northwestern Montana. The couple’s saving grace was Renee LaPlant, a Blackfeet community organizer for the Native American advocacy group Western Native Voice, who ensured that their votes would count by shuttling applications and ballots back and forth between their home and a satellite election office in Browning, one of two on the roughly 2,300-square-mile reservation. But under H.B. 530, a law passed this spring by the Republican-controlled State Legislature, that would not have been allowed. Western Native Voice pays its organizers, and paid ballot collection is now banned. “It’s taking their rights from them, and they still have the right to vote,” Ms. Roundine said of fellow Blackfeet voters who can’t leave their homes. “I wouldn’t have wanted that to be taken from me.”

Full Article: How G.O.P. Laws in Montana Could Complicate Voting for Native Americans – The New York Times

New York City’s Needless Election Fiasco | Eric Lach/The New Yorker

Even in a state that has long been considered, by those who keep track of such things, one of the worst in the country when it comes to election administration—the basic civic business of collecting and counting votes—New York City stands out. For decades, its Board of Elections, ten commissioners and hundreds of employees appointed by local political-party leaders, has been accused of mismanagement, corruption, nepotism, and outright incompetence. In 1971, the Times’ editorial page described the board as being “at best a semi‐functioning anachronism.” The description still applies. This week, the whole country found out why. On Tuesday, the board released partial results of the Democratic Party’s mayoral primary. The numbers revealed a tight race between Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Kathryn Garcia, the longtime city bureaucrat. But something was off. On Election Night, the board had released even-more-partial results, which showed that eight hundred thousand New Yorkers had voted in person during the primary. This week, the numbers showed that some nine hundred and forty thousand had. Hours of confusion followed. Eventually, the board took down the results from its Web site and issued a statement resembling an explanation. A hundred and thirty five thousand “ballot images used for testing” had not been “cleared” from the computer program used to crunch the numbers, and had been accidentally included in the results when the “cast vote records were extracted,” the statement said. “The Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported.”

Full Article: New York City’s Needless Election Fiasco | The New Yorker

New York’s ‘head-swirling’ mistake puts harsh spotlight on ranked-choice voting | Maya King and Zach Montellaro/Politico

Ranked-choice voting was having a moment. Then came New York City’s mayoral election debacle. Even though last week’s fumble by the city Board of Elections — in which it released incorrect vote tallies before fixing the totals 24 hours later — was not specifically related to the ranked-choice system, the complex way of choosing candidates is drawing new scrutiny as New Yorkers are going on two weeks waiting to learn the identity of the city’s likely next mayor. Advocates of ranked-choice voting are desperate to maintain their momentum: Within the past decade, ranked-choice voting has expanded from a mostly overseas phenomenon to the system under which the mayor of the nation’s largest city, and senators and members of Congress from two states, are now elected. And more change is on the way, they say, so long as last week’s snafu doesn’t sour potential converts to the reform cause. “My concern is that New York’s experience will give ranked-choice voting a black eye,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said. Despite New York’s struggles, elections officials and practiced ranked-choice voting experts say they’re still confident in the system. The source of last week’s faux pas — forgetting to erase test ballots from the system — could have happened in a conventional election, they insist.

Full Article: New York’s ‘head-swirling’ mistake puts harsh spotlight on ranked-choice voting – POLITICO

Pennsylvania: Trump ally raises 2020 election audit plan | Mark Levy and Mark Scolford/Associated Press

Following in the footsteps of Arizona’s Senate Republicans, Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Senate is considering an investigation into how last year’s presidential election was conducted, a quest fueled by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that fraud was behind his loss in the battleground state. Any Senate-issued subpoenas for an Arizona-style “election audit” will face strident opposition from Democrats, legal questions and almost certainly challenges in Pennsylvania’s courts, as battles over election laws rage through swing states and Congress, spurred on by Trump’s falsehoods. Senate Republicans have been mostly silent about their internal deliberations. Sen. Doug Mastriano, a rising force in Pennsylvania’s ultra-conservative circles who has talked of his desire to bring an Arizona-style audit to Pennsylvania, led a private briefing Wednesday for Republican senators on his plan. In Arizona, the state Senate used its subpoena power to take possession of more than 2 million ballots and the machines that counted them, along with computer data. Mastriano also solicited legal advice from a Philadelphia-based law firm about the Senate Republican caucus using private money to finance consultants and lawyers. The law firm’s response letter, dated Tuesday, was obtained by The Associated Press. In the letter, the law firm discussed the legality of using money from a private, nonprofit organization “to pay expenses for vendors, including a consultant and counsel” as part of an “oversight investigation” of the 2020 election led by the low-profile committee that Mastriano chairs.

Full Article: Trump ally in Pennsylvania raises 2020 election audit plan

Texans with disabilities fear voting obstacles under proposed GOP restrictions | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

It took Nancy Crowther three hours, four public bus rides and an impressive amount of gumption to make sure her vote counted in the 2020 election. She’s hoping Texas lawmakers don’t make it even harder the next time. With Texas Republicans determined to enact additional voting restrictions in the upcoming special legislative session, much of the uproar has focused on changes that could make it harder for people of color to cast ballots. Less attention has fallen on another group of voters bracing for what could happen to them under the GOP’s renewed push to further tighten the state’s voting procedures — people with disabilities, for whom the voting process is already lined with potential obstacles. Among them are people like Crowther, a 64-year-old retiree, who could have been shut out from voting last November had it not been for her own tenacious determination. Immunocompromised because of a neuromuscular disease, Crowther chose to forgo her usual trip to a nearby polling place and instead turned to mail-in voting in hopes of safeguarding her health during the pandemic. But as Election Day neared — and after experiencing interruptions in her mail service — she began to worry her ballot wouldn’t make it back to the county in time.

Full Article: Texans with disabilities fear voting obstacles under proposed GOP restrictions | The Texas Tribune

Wisconsin man is scanning ballots in his own review of 2020 election | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Republican lawmakers aren’t the only ones examining Wisconsin’s presidential election. A New London man has been making copies of ballots in some communities as he conducts his own review of an election Joe Biden narrowly won. “Our intention is to have true and honest elections. You hear all kinds of rumors and we want to dispel some of those if they’re not true,” Peter Bernegger said when asked about his endeavor. Bernegger declined to say what his plans are but said he would announce them in the coming weeks. Recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties and more than a half dozen lawsuits upheld Biden’s victory. Bernegger’s push to inspect ballots comes as Republican lawmakers ramp up their own review of the election. They have hired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman and former law enforcement officers at taxpayer expense to conduct their review as they decide whether to pass more election-related legislation. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester has acknowledged Biden won the election. That has won him enmity from former President Donald Trump, who has said Vos, Senate President Chris Kapenga of Delafield and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu of Oostburg haven’t done enough to investigate the election.

Full Article: Wisconsin man is scanning ballots in his own review of 2020 election

A Michigan Republican Senator spent eight months searching for evidence of election fraud, but all he found was lies. | Tim Alberta/The Atlantic

Right around the time Donald Trump was flexing his conspiratorial muscles on Saturday night, recycling old ruses and inventing new boogeymen in his first public speech since inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol in January, a dairy farmer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sat down to supper. It had been a trying day. The farmer, Ed McBroom, battled sidewinding rain while working his 320 acres, loading feed and breeding livestock and at one point delivering a distressed calf backwards from its mother’s womb, before hanging the newborn animal by its hind legs for respiratory drainage. Now, having slipped off his manure-caked rubber boots, McBroom groaned as he leaned into his home-grown meal of unpasteurized milk and spaghetti with hamburger sauce. He would dine peacefully at his banquet-length antique table, surrounded by his family of 15, unaware that in nearby Ohio, the former president was accusing him—thankfully, this time not by name—of covering up the greatest crime in American history. A few days earlier, McBroom, a Republican state senator who chairs the Oversight Committee, had released a report detailing his eight-month-long investigation into the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The stakes could hardly have been higher. Against a backdrop of confusion and suspicion and frightening civic friction—with Trump claiming he’d been cheated out of victory, and anecdotes about fraud coursing through every corner of the state—McBroom had led an exhaustive probe of Michigan’s electoral integrity. His committee interviewed scores of witnesses, subpoenaed and reviewed thousands of pages of documents, dissected the procedural mechanics of Michigan’s highly decentralized elections system, and scrutinized the most trafficked claims about corruption at the state’s ballot box in November. McBroom’s conclusion hit Lansing like a meteor: It was all a bunch of nonsense.

Full Article: The Michigan Republican Who Decided to Tell the Truth – The Atlantic

Election security could be set back by the partisan audit in Arizona | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Election security experts are waiting with a mixture of resignation and dread for the results of a hyperpartisan audit that’s wrapping up in Maricopa County, Ariz. The counting phase of that audit ended Friday after weeks of serious security flubs including workers failing to track ballots from one location to another, using unvetted equipment and leaving laptops and other technology unattended. The audit is being conducted by a Florida firm called Cyber Ninjas with no history or expertise in the area and whose CEO Doug Logan has endorsed wild conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from former president Donald Trump. Auditors have chased unhinged and unfounded claims about secret watermarks on ballots and traces of bamboo in ballots that were secretly flown in from Asia.  Cyber Ninjas’s final report is expected in the next few weeks. But election security analysts are already warning the results will be untrustworthy and could further undermine public faith in what intelligence and law enforcement leaders have called the most secure election in history.  “This endeavor has been a flawed and really failed effort from the very beginning,” Liz Howard, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at New York University’s Brennan Center and an official observer of the Maricopa audit, told me. “I assume whatever they put out will be riddled with errors, incomplete and will not provide an accurate assessment of the election.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Election security could be set back by the partisan audit in Arizona – The Washington Post

National: Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave states new latitude to impose restrictions on voting, using a ruling in a case from Arizona to signal that challenges to laws being passed by Republican legislatures that make it harder for minority groups to vote would face a hostile reception from a majority of the justices. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The decision was among the most consequential in decades on voting rights, and it was the first time the court had considered how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to restrictions that have a particular impact on people of color. The six conservative justices in the majority concluded that the relevant part of the act can be used to strike down voting restrictions only when they impose substantial and disproportionate burdens on minority voters, effectively blocking their ability to cast a ballot — a standard suggesting that the Supreme Court would not be inclined to overturn many of the measures Republicans have pursued or approved around the country.

Full Article: Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions – The New York Times

National: Trump audit excitement meets with fear from election officials Zach Montellaro/Politico

A monthslong examination of all the ballots from the 2020 election in Arizona’s most populous county may be winding down soon. But now the state is spreading the “audit” playbook across the country. Supporters of former President Donald Trump — fueled by Trump’s false claim that he did not lose the 2020 election — are behind a new push to review the results in states including Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The new drive is worrying state election administrators, who say the efforts will further inflame conspiracy theories and erode faith in the American democratic system. The burden of these reviews could fall on the shoulders of state and local election officials, further complicating a field where many are worried about a brain drain due to exhaustion and threats workers faced in the aftermath of the 2020 election. “We’re wasting a lot of taxpayer money. We’re wasting a lot of people’s time,” said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections administrator and consultant who served as a nonpartisan observer for the Arizona secretary of state during the Arizona review. “We’re sucking a lot of energy from the folks that need to be preparing and working on the next election.”

Full Article: Trump audit excitement meets with fear from election officials – POLITICO

National: Voting rights ruling increases pressure on Democrats to act | Bryan Slodisko and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Congressional Democrats are facing renewed pressure to pass legislation that would protect voting rights after a Supreme Court ruling Thursday made it harder to challenge Republican efforts to limit ballot access in many states. The 6-3 ruling on a case out of Arizona was the second time in a decade that conservatives on the Supreme Court have weakened components of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark Civil Rights-era law. But this opinion was released in a much different political climate, in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s lie that last year’s election was stolen. Trump’s fabrications spurred Republicans in states such as Georgia and Florida to pass tougher rules on voting under the cloak of election integrity. Democrats on Capitol Hill have already tried to respond with a sweeping voting and elections bill that Senate Republicans united to block last week. A separate bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore sections of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court previously weakened, has been similarly dismissed by most Republicans. Those setbacks, combined with the Supreme Court’s decision, have fueled a sense of urgency among Democrats to act while they still have narrow majorities in the House and Senate. But passing voting legislation at this point would almost certainly require changes to the filibuster, allowing Democrats to act without GOP support.

Full Article: Voting rights ruling increases pressure on Democrats to act

National: Giuliani’s Messages With Fox Sought by Dominion in Election Suit | Erik Larson/Bloomberg

Rudy Giuliani, already being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. over his debunked election-conspiracy claims, has been issued a subpoena in a similar lawsuit the company filed against Fox News Network. The former New York mayor and Donald Trump’s personal lawyer was asked to hand over all documents stemming from his appearances on Fox starting in 2016 as well as all communications with the network related to the 2020 presidential election and Dominion, according to a June 28 filing in state court in Delaware. The subpoena also seeks Giuliani’s communications concerning the “truth or falsity” of the claims he made about Dominion while appearing on Fox, plus documents about the nature of his relationship with the network, “whether formal or informal, compensated or uncompensated.” Giuliani is fighting to dismiss the defamation suit filed against him by Dominion in Washington, as are former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and MyPillow Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mike Lindell. All three repeatedly claimed without evidence that Dominion and its employees were at the center of a plot to flip millions of votes away from Trump, with help from foreign hackers, corrupt Democrats and “communist money.”

Full Article: Allen Weisselberg, Trump Organization CFO, Surrenders to Authorities in NY – Bloomberg

National: Threats Against Election Officials Are a Threat to Democracy | Sue Halpern/The New Yorker

For Tina Barton, the death threats began a few days after last November’s general election. At the time, Barton was in her eighth year as the clerk of Rochester Hills, a city of seventy-five thousand people in southeastern Michigan, where her many responsibilities included administering elections. On the evening of November 3rd, after the city’s election results were transmitted to a central tabulator, it looked like the absentee ballots for some precincts had not been included, so Barton and her crew resubmitted them. The next morning, when they realized that these ballots had, in fact, been transmitted the first time, the mistake was fixed. Barton assumed that was the end of it. Within days, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, held a press conference in nearby Bloomfield Hills. Although Barton was appointed by a nonpartisan city council, she is a Republican and considered McDaniel an ally. “I was never called by them to say, ‘Hey, Tina, what happened there?’ ” Barton said. “There was never, like, let’s check the facts.” Instead, at the press conference, McDaniel falsely claimed that two thousand votes for Trump had gone to Biden. “It was a complete mischaracterization,” Barton told me. “They needed language to support the agenda that they were pushing, and they used me, specifically, for the shock factor, because I was a Republican. I think they were trying to make the case that, if it could happen in Rochester Hills, it could happen anywhere.” Barton posted an explanatory video on Twitter, which quickly amassed more than a million views. A torrent of death threats followed, left on her office voice mail and sent via Facebook Messenger. “To have someone say you deserve a knife to your throat, that you should be executed, that they are going to eff up your family, shakes you,” she said. “And I’m fortunate. My husband is a sheriff’s deputy. That added a layer of security a lot of election officials don’t have.” Barton is now a senior adviser to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (E.A.C.), where she works with election administrators all over the country. “These are true public servants,” she said. “They are in it because they have a passion for democracy. And now they are asking themselves if they are willing to put themselves and their families at risk to do this job.”

Full Article: Threats Against Election Officials Are a Threat to Democracy | The New Yorker

Editorial: The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk | Richard L. Hasen/The New York Times

In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court’s term, the court’s six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy. In one case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court has weakened the last remaining legal tool for protecting minority voters in federal courts from a new wave of legislation seeking to suppress the vote that is emanating from Republican-controlled states. In the other, Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta, the court has laid the groundwork for lower courts to strike down campaign finance disclosure laws and laws that limit campaign contributions to federal, state and local candidates. The court is putting our democratic form of government at risk not only in these two decisions but in its overall course over the past few decades. Let’s begin with voting rights. In Brnovich, the court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, held that two Arizona rules — one that does not count votes for any office cast by a voter in the wrong precinct and another that prevents third-party collection of absentee ballots (sometimes pejoratively referred to by Donald Trump and his allies as ballot harvesting) — do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Full Article: Opinion | The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk – The New York Times

Arizona: Maricopa County will obtain new voting machines after 2020 audit concludes | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Arizona’s most populous county is scrapping its voting machines and procuring new ones in the wake of the conspiracy-soaked Republican audit of last year’s ballots. In December, Arizona Senate Republicans subpoenaed nearly 400 of Maricopa County’s machines, along with ballots cast by voters, for an unusual audit of the 2020 election results. The GOP hired private firms, led by the Florida-based cybersecurity company Cyber Ninjas, to do the work, delivering the election machines and ballots to them this year. But as the audit — and its procedures, which have alarmed and confused election experts — continued this spring and summer, concerns about the machines grew. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told the county Board of Supervisors last month that she believed the security of the county’s election machines had been compromised by Cyber Ninjas’ work and would consider decertifying the machines if Maricopa sought to reuse them. In Arizona, the secretary of state can decertify machinery in consultation with the state’s election equipment certification committee, a three-person panel appointed by Hobbs.

Full Article: Maricopa County will obtain new voting machines after 2020 audit concludes