National: Former top officials warn democracy in ‘jeopardy’ without Congressional action on election security | Maggie Miller/The Hill

A bipartisan group of almost 100 former national security officials is urging Congress to take steps to secure elections ahead of next year, warning that without action, the nation’s democratic institutions are in “severe jeopardy.” “We write to express our alarm at ongoing efforts to destabilize and subvert our elections, both through active disinformation campaigns and the related efforts to inject partisan interference into our professionally administered election process,” the officials wrote in an open letter published Tuesday. “We believe these efforts are profoundly damaging to our national security, including by making our elections more vulnerable to foreign interference and possible manipulation.” “We call on Congress to confront these threats and safeguard our democratic process as we look ahead to the 2022 elections and beyond,” they wrote. Signatories of the letter included former officials who worked for administrations on both sides of the aisle, including former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, former Defense Secretary William Cohen and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. They also included former ambassadors, top officials at the CIA and former top cybersecurity officials, including former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs and Michael Daniel, the former White House cybersecurity coordinator under President Obama.

Full Article: Former top officials warn democracy in ‘jeopardy’ without Congressional action on election security | TheHill

Reuters unmasks Trump supporters terrifying U.S. election officials Linda So and Jason Szep/Reuters

In Arizona, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Lyft driver told the state’s chief election officer she would hang for treason. In Utah, a youth treatment center staffer warned Colorado’s election chief that he knew where she lived and watched her as she slept. In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die. “This might be a good time to put a f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pistol in your f‑‑‑‑‑‑ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f‑‑‑‑‑‑ numbered.” The three had much in common. All described themselves as patriots fighting a conspiracy that robbed Donald Trump of the 2020 election. They are regular consumers of far-right websites that embrace Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods. And none have been charged with a crime by the law enforcement agencies alerted to their threats. They were among nine people who told Reuters in interviews that they made threats or left other hostile messages to election workers. In all, they are responsible for nearly two dozen harassing communications to six election officials in four states. Seven made threats explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the U.S. federal standard for criminal prosecution, according to four legal experts who reviewed their messages at Reuters’ request.

Full Article: Reuters unmasks Trump supporters terrifying U.S. election officials

National: 2022 races will put election integrity to the test | Kate Ackley/Roll Call

The 2022 midterm elections, one year from now, won’t just decide control of the House and Senate but will also provide the first major test of Americans’ confidence in the integrity of their electoral system since the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. People who study campaigns, from academics to operatives, have sounded the alarm about voters’ faith in future U.S. elections given that former President Donald Trump has carried on with his false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, long after a “Stop the Steal” rally in support of him turned deadly. Last week’s elections pointed to potential political upheaval in the midterms, but they may also have offered small solace to those worried about faith in democracy because losing candidates mostly conceded swiftly. And even in New Jersey, where the Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli has not admitted defeat, he has discouraged supporters from believing internet conspiracies and pledged that after all votes were counted, the result would be “legal and fair.” Still, some of the ensuing political rhetoric offers cause for concern. Many GOP congressional candidates and incumbents have sided with Trump over his 2020 election charge, even as he lost repeated legal challenges. Senate and House Democrats, meanwhile, have intensified their messaging that the political system is rigged and that new state laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures are designed to suppress voters.

Full Article: 2022 races will put election integrity to the test – Roll Call

National: Cyber agency beefing up disinformation, misinformation team | Maggie Miller/The Hill

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is beefing up its disinformation and misinformation team in the wake of a divisive presidential election that saw a proliferation of misleading information online. “I am actually going to grow and strengthen my misinformation and disinformation team,” CISA Director Jen Easterly said during virtual remarks at the RE:WIRED conference on Wednesday. Easterly noted that earlier this week she had a meeting with “six of the nation’s experts” in the disinformation and misinformation space. She stressed her concerns around this being a top threat for CISA, which is charged with securing critical infrastructure, to confront. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” Easterly said. “We are going to work with our partners in the private sector and throughout the rest of the government and at the department to continue to ensure that the American people have the facts that they need to help protect our critical infrastructure,” she added. Easterly’s comments came a year after CISA came under fire by President Trump for its efforts to push back against election misinformation and disinformation, primarily through setting up a “rumor control” website. Trump fired former CISA Director Chris Krebs, and several other top CISA officials were forced to resign in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election, largely as a result of this effort.

Full Article: Cyber agency beefing up disinformation, misinformation team | TheHill

National: Trump cannot shield White House records from Jan. 6 committee, judge rules | Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein/Politico

A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s effort to block Jan. 6 investigators from accessing White House records related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, determining that he has no authority to overrule President Joe Biden’s decision to waive executive privilege and release the materials to Congress. “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in her ruling. Trump immediately appealed the decision. The National Archives, which houses the White House records, has indicated it plans to hand over the sensitive documents by Friday afternoon unless a court intervenes. The decision is a crucial victory for the Jan. 6 committee in the House, albeit one that may ring hollow if an appeals court — or, potentially, the U.S. Supreme Court — steps in to slow the process down. The documents Trump is seeking to block from investigators include files drawn from former chief of staff Mark Meadows, adviser Stephen Miller and White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin, as well as call and visitor logs.

Full Article: Trump cannot shield White House records from Jan. 6 committee, judge rules – POLITICO

National: No ballot boxes for 100 miles: How a bill aims to make voting easier for Native Americans | Vanessa Misciagna/The Denver Channel

Beneath Window Rock in Navajo Nation, a memorial is dedicated to the “code talkers” of World War II, a group of Navajo soldiers who used their native tongue to create a secret code. “If it wasn’t for the Navajo code talkers, we would have not won World War II,” said President of Navajo Nation, Jonathan Nez. Nez is proud of everything his people have contributed to the United States, despite everything that’s been taken away. That is why he believes it’s only right to make sure the voices of the Navajo and the other 574 Native tribes are heard. “We need the federal government, once again, to fulfill their obligation and to protect the rights of indigenous people in this country and that includes voting. It should be easier,” he said. Located in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, Navajo Nation is more than 27,000 square miles and is the largest Native American reservation in the country. Getting around, in general, can be difficult but navigating to a ballot box for many is nearly impossible.

Full Article: A bill aims to make voting easier for Native Americans

National: Election Officials Have Another Year to Fight Disinformation | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

After a year of election-related lies and disinformation, voters in 32 states went to the polls this month with few major technical errors, lines or delays in results. But election officials and voting rights advocates caution there is still considerable work to do ahead of next year’s midterms to boost lagging confidence in the democratic process, especially among the three-quarters of Republicans who believe former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was rigged. “Despite all of the threats, despite distractions, despite harassment, despite frivolous subpoenas, despite the pandemic and a continued lack of resources, election officials once again did what we have seen them do repeatedly: They facilitated democracy,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a D.C.-based nonpartisan nonprofit. “But we are not out of the woods. I am more concerned today than I was a year ago.” While the election went well, Becker said, Congress still has not acted on threats to voting access, and the lies of the 2020 election have not receded. In Virginia, where a record number of voters elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor, county election officials were able to stave off major delays in reporting results because of the state’s reliance on paper ballots, said Chris Piper, commissioner of the state Department of Elections.

Full Article: Election Officials Have Another Year to Fight Disinformation | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Flynn and Eastman, Scrutinizing Election Plot | Luke Broadwater/The New York Times

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued new subpoenas on Monday for a half-dozen allies of former President Donald J. Trump, including his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, as it moved its focus to an orchestrated effort to overturn the 2020 election. The subpoenas reflect an effort to go beyond the events of the Capitol riot and delve deeper into what committee investigators believe gave rise to it: a concerted campaign by Mr. Trump and his network of advisers to promote false claims of voter fraud as a way to keep him in power. One of the people summoned on Monday was John Eastman, a lawyer who drafted a memo laying out how Mr. Trump could use the vice president and Congress to try to invalidate the election results. In demanding records and testimony from the six Trump allies, the House panel is widening its scrutiny of the mob attack to encompass the former president’s attempt to enlist his own government, state legislators around the country and Congress in his push to overturn the election. Mr. Flynn discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers after the election. Mr. Eastman wrote a memo to Mr. Trump suggesting that Vice President Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states during Congress’s count of Electoral College votes to deny Joseph R. Biden Jr. a majority. And Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who was also subpoenaed, participated in a planning meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington on Jan. 5 after backing baseless litigation and “Stop the Steal” efforts around the country to push the lie of a stolen election. “In the days before the Jan. 6 attack, the former president’s closest allies and advisers drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee chairman, said in a statement. “The select committee needs to know every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress, what connections they had with rallies that escalated into a riot and who paid for it all.”

Full Article: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Flynn and Eastman, Scrutinizing Election Plot – The New York Times

Editorial: We must protect our elections now. National security is at stake. | James R. Clapper and Michael Hayden/The Washington Post

By now, it is well documented that in 2020 a sitting president and his allies tried to overturn the results of an election, triggering the worst political violence this country has seen in living memory. It is also clear that this attempt to undermine our democracy did not end with the transition to a new president, but continues with active efforts to make sure the next sabotage succeeds where the last one failed. What is less widely understood — and what keeps us up at night — is how great a threat these activities pose to our national security. This looming crisis is why we, along with nearly 100 other former national security and military officials, issued a statement urging Congress to prioritize protecting election integrity. We both served at the highest levels of our country’s intelligence community, under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, and we know that our foreign adversaries and other bad actors are licking their chops as they watch efforts to destabilize our elections. At the heart of the attack is a homegrown disinformation campaign meant to sow doubt in the U.S. voting system. Unfortunately, it is working — poll after poll shows declining trust in our elections and declining belief in the concept of democracy, particularly among Republicans. And these effects will not be contained to our borders. We have personally seen the lengths to which our foreign adversaries will go to take advantage of any cracks in the foundation of our democracy. One of us was director of national intelligence during the period leading up to the 2016 presidential vote and saw firsthand how Russia used social media to exploit disinformation, polarization and divisiveness. The Russians’ objective was to breed discord, and they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Now others have gone to school on the Russian example and will seek to prey on our country’s state of affairs in just the same way.

Full Article: Opinion | James Clapper and Michael Hayden: We must protect our elections now. National security is at stake. – The Washington Post

Arizona: Election experts warn Chandler not to adopt mobile voting because it’s ‘dangerously insecure’ | Ben Giles/KJZZ

As Chandler runs a mock election using blockchain technology for mobile voting, an election advocacy group urged the city not to adopt what they called a “dangerously insecure” voting method. Verified Voting, a non-partisan organization that advocates for paper ballots, issued a statement warning that “there is simply no secure way to electronically return voted ballots while protecting voter privacy, maintaining ballot secrecy and still providing a verifiable record of the voter’s intent.” … C.Jay Coles, a senior policy analyst with Verified Voting, doesn’t deny that blockchain tech is designed to keep information secure. But there’s no way of knowing whether the voter’s personal device — in this case, a cellphone — is secure. “So is there anything on the voter’s device that is malicious, that can alter what the voter is inputting in their own device before it is entered into the blockchain?” Coles said. Once the vote has been cast and is secured using blockchain, “the voter has no idea if it was entered correctly, and the elections office has no way of knowing whether or not the voter’s intent is accurately captured in that record, because you can’t go back to the voter and ask them because that violates the right of a secret ballot,” Coles added.

Full Article: Officials warn Chandler not to adopt mobile voting | KJZZ

Colorado: Mesa County fires employee tied to Tina Peters scandal | Marianne Goodland/Colorado Politics

Mesa County’s elections office has fired an employee allegedly involved in a security breach that later led to a court barring Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters and a deputy clerk from participating in the recently-concluded November elections. The county’s Election Director, Brandi Bantz, terminated Sandra Brown, a manager in the Elections Division. An email Tuesday from the Tina Peters Legal Defense Fund revealed Brown’s firing. The email also accused Secretary of State Jena Griswold of orchestrating Brown’s firing. Bantz confirmed to Colorado Politics that Brown was terminated. According to the Peters news release, Brown intends to sue for unidentified civil rights violations. While the Peters release didn’t identify a reason for Brown’s firing, a lawsuit filed Aug. 30 by Griswold claimed Brown and Peters “facilitated the improper presence of the individual identified as Gerald Wood at the May 25 trusted build.”

Full Article: Mesa County fires employee tied to Tina Peters scandal | News | coloradopolitics.com

Florida: Orange County elections supervisor foils fake ballot in Orlando’s election | Ryan Gillespie/Orlando Sentinel

Of more than 12,000 ballots cast in Orlando’s city council elections last week, one vote caught the attention of the Supervisor of Elections office when it was rejected by a vote-counting machine. Upon further review, it mostly looked like any other ballot. It was marked with a number identifying it as being from the Rock Lake Community Center precinct. It was laid out identically to official ballots with correct fonts and spellings and listed the names of current candidates. What it did not have were exact matching bar codes that line the perimeter of an official ballot. The combination of lines and black boxes unique to each election tells a voting machine how to scan an official ballot. This particular ballot, deemed fake by Supervisor of Election Bill Cowles’ office, had incorrect markings, and only on the top and bottom instead of all four sides. It also was printed on lighter-weight paper, Cowles confirmed with the company that does the office’s printing. The canvassing board tasked with certifying the election, decided not to allow the single ballot to be counted in the District 5 race, determining it was an impostor, he said this week. “I’ve never seen somebody go out and create a ballot to the extent that this one looks like a regular ballot,” said Cowles, who has overseen elections in Orange County since 1996.

Full Article: Orange elections supervisor foils fake ballot in Orlando’s election – Orlando Sentinel

Georgia Grand Jury Looms in Trump Election Interference Investigation | Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset/The New York Times

As the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot fights to extract testimony and documents from Donald J. Trump’s White House, an Atlanta district attorney is moving toward convening a special grand jury in her criminal investigation of election interference by the former president and his allies, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations. The prosecutor, Fani Willis of Fulton County, opened her inquiry in February and her office has been consulting with the House committee, whose evidence could be of considerable value to her investigation. But her progress has been slowed in part by the delays in the panel’s fact gathering. By convening a grand jury dedicated solely to the allegations of election tampering, Ms. Willis, a Democrat, would be indicating that her own investigation is ramping up. Her inquiry is seen by legal experts as potentially perilous for the former president, given the myriad interactions he and his allies had with Georgia officials, most notably Mr. Trump’s January call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find 11,780 votes” — enough to reverse the state’s election result. The Georgia case is one of two active criminal investigations known to touch on the former president and his circle; the other is the examination of his financial dealings by the Manhattan district attorney.

Full Article: In Trump Election Interference Investigation, Grand Jury Looms – The New York Times

Michigan GOP voting initiative would eliminate 20% of polling places, creating ‘panic’ among clerks, study says | Steve Neavling/Detroit Metro Times

A controversial, Republican-led petition drive to restrict voting access would eliminate 20% of all polling locations, a new report found. The Secure MI Vote petition would ban clerks from accepting donated spaces such as churches, schools, and senior centers for polling locations. In Michigan, one of every five polling locations is a church, according to Secure MI Vote: Creating Insecurity for Community Polling Places, a study by Progress Michigan, a progressive nonprofit that advocates for voting rights. “This ban on donated polling locations will cause confusion and disruption for voters, leading to voter disenfranchisement, create challenges for clerks, who would have to find new polling locations or reduce the number of polling locations available, and would increase costs for election administration,” Sam Inglot, deputy director of Progress Michigan, said Wednesday. The study found that nearly half of the counties in Michigan use at least one church or other place of worship as a polling location, and churches account for all of the polling places in 28 cities and townships. In 11 cities and townships, places of worship account for at least 50% of polling locations. In some rural townships, including Hazelton in Shiawassee County and Mussey Township in St. Clair County, the only polling location is a church. In Wayne County, 109 of the 471 polling locations are inside a church or other place of worship, the most in the state.

Full Article: Michigan GOP voting initiative would eliminate 20% of polling places, creating ‘panic’ among clerks, study says | News Hits

Montana election officials worry Secretary of State is rushing new election system | Sam Wilson/Helena Independent Record

Election officials in Montana are ringing alarm bells that the Secretary of State’s plan to move forward with new election software at the start of 2022 could leave them with a largely untested, unworkable system for next year’s federal elections. Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen is planning to replace a statewide election database system that tracks voter registrations and interacts with nearly all levels of running elections, from updating precincts to printing and accepting ballots, by January 2022. Her predecessor, Corey Stapleton, had previously begun the process of switching from the current system, “Montana Votes,” with a new system known as “electMT.” But during a meeting of the Legislature’s State Administration and Veterans Affairs Interim Committee last week, the top county election officials from Cascade and Ravalli counties said that months of delays and a missed deadline for a major test during this year’s general elections has created the need to push back that switch-over date. They also indicated Jacobsen’s office has been unresponsive to their concerns.

Full Article: Election officials worry Secretary of State is rushing new election system | 406 Politics | helenair.com

Oregon: A year after the 2020 election, county clerks still fighting back fraud allegations | Julia Shumway/Malheur Enterprise

A week before this November’s Linn County special election over a tax increase to fund law enforcement, a man walked into the election office and asked to see the county clerk. Steve Druckenmiller walked over and asked how he could help, but the man didn’t want assistance. “I just wanted to see the enemy of my country and the enemy of my God,” Druckenmiller recalled him saying. “And then he started talking in tongues.” Druckenmiller heard the man out, then asked him to leave. It was the first in a series of encounters this election cycle with voters who were supposed to drop off their ballots or fix mismatched signatures on ballot envelopes but instead wanted to criticize Druckenmiller for how his office ran an election a year ago. “This last election, he was the first one, and then on Election Day, I had people come in and they wanted to argue about everything,” Druckenmiller said. “I don’t mind if they want to talk to me like that, but some of these people start with my staff.” It’s been just over a year since more than 159 million Americans, and more than 2.4 million Oregonians, cast their ballots in the 2020 general election and elected Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. In the intervening months, Oregon election officials have run elections for school boards, new local taxes and other ballot propositions.

Full Article: A year after the 2020 election, Oregon county clerks still fighting back fraud allegations | Malheur Enterprise

Pennsylvania judge race with narrow margin will get recount | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

The results of a tight race for a seat on the statewide Commonwealth Court will be recounted because two candidates finished within a half-percentage point of each other in last week’s election, the Pennsylvania Department of State announced Wednesday. The race pits Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Lori Dumas, the Democrat, against former Pennsylvania Senate Republican aide Drew Crompton, who was appointed last year to fill a Commonwealth Court vacancy until a replacement could be elected. Commonwealth Court handles cases involving state government and local governments. Two seats on Commonwealth Court were on the ballot, both held most recently by Republicans. The lead vote-getter last week, McKean County Republican lawyer Stacy Wallace, is deemed to have secured one of them, the department said. For the second seat, unofficial returns have Dumas leading Crompton by nearly 17,000 votes, well within the margin for a government-paid recount. Those unofficial returns show Dumas with 1.29 million votes, or 25.36%, and Crompton with 1.27 million votes, or 25.03%.

Full Article: Pennsylvania judge race with narrow margin will get recount

Wisconsin judge orders Republicans to turn over records related to election review | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Dane County judge on Friday ordered Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to turn over records within 10 days about a secretive review of the 2020 election that Republicans have been conducting since this summer. Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn ruled the Rochester Republican and Assembly Chief Clerk Ted Blazel were required to release calendars, e-mails, internal reports and other documents maintained by the team conducting the election review. Bailey-Rihn accused Vos of trying to hide records by conducting a “shell game” that changed who was technically responsible for the records. She ordered Vos to turn over records that were created between May and late August. She suggested he’d given up his opportunity to argue he could withhold a subset of the documents because of attorney-client privilege or other reasons. She said he’d likely waited too long to make such arguments. “These need to be produced unless there is a darn good reason why not and I don’t see one at this point,” Bailey-Rihn said. The team reviewing the election has a taxpayer funded budget of $676,000 and is headed by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who claimed without evidence last year that the presidential election was stolen. Courts have repeatedly upheld Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Full Article: Dane County judge orders GOP to turn over election review records

Wisconsin election audit errors feed partisan spin — Michael Haas and Maribeth Witzel-Behl/Wisconsin State Journal

For decades, Wisconsin’s Legislative Audit Bureau served as an important check and balance, keeping politicians honest and financial books clean. It prides itself on being nonpartisan, independent and accurate. But the bureau’s recent “Election Administration” report fails to live up to that mission. Its erroneous analysis and consistent failure to include the complete story was a disservice to both election officials and the Legislature. The flawed report also predictably encouraged overreaction from legislators intent on continuing to sow unfounded doubt about the integrity of Wisconsin elections. The LAB’s errors and this overreaction can be largely traced to one fact. For the first time since the Audit Bureau’s creation in 1965, it did not allow the state agency which was audited — the Wisconsin Elections Commission — to review and provide feedback on the report before it was released. As a result, the audit contains embarrassing errors that could have easily been corrected. It also mischaracterizes Wisconsin’s election administration in dangerous ways. Its analysis and recommendations feed public perception and are likely to become the basis of misguided legislative proposals that are not connected to the facts.

Full Article: Election audit errors feed partisan spin — Michael Haas and Maribeth Witzel-Behl | Column | madison.com