National: Jan. 6 select committee to open investigation amid political chaos and controversy | Karoun Demirjian/The Washington Post

The House select committee envisioned to be the ultimate arbiter of what led President Donald Trump’s supporters to invade the U.S. Capitol in January is scheduled to begin its work this week under a cloud of controversy that threatens to compromise the investigation from the outset. Republican leaders, who declared a boycott after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week rejected two of their picks for the panel, have signaled to the GOP’s rank and file that there could be consequences for anyone who participates. As of Sunday, two have agreed to do so anyway, and Pelosi has hinted that there could be others. It’s unclear when a roster may be finalized, and Democrats running the committee have yet to articulate specific plans or timelines for their investigation. Nevertheless, on Tuesday, four police officers — two from the Capitol’s protection squad and two from D.C. police — are set to provide the first public testimony before the select committee. They are expected to testify about their experiences of both physical and verbal abuse on Jan. 6, as they tried to protect the Capitol from a swelling horde of demonstrators determined to stop Congress’s efforts to certify the 2020 electoral college results and declare Joe Biden the next president. Their stories will be familiar to those who have followed the riot’s fallout via related congressional investigations, ongoing federal court cases and Trump’s second impeachment trial. All four have given interviews about their experience. Some were even involved in lobbying members of Congress to create an independent commission to examine the attack — an effort that failed this spring, when the Senate fell shy of a filibuster-proof majority needed to impanel what was supposed to be bipartisan group of outside experts.

Full Article: Jan. 6 select committee to open investigation amid political chaos and controversy – The Washington Post

National: Republicans poised to rig the next election by gerrymandering electoral maps | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Ten years ago, Republicans pulled off what would later be described as “the most audacious political heist of modern times”. It wasn’t particularly complicated. Every 10 years, the US constitution requires states to redraw the maps for both congressional and state legislative seats. The constitution entrusts state lawmakers with the power to draw those districts. Looking at the political map in 2010, Republicans realized that by winning just a few state legislative seats in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, they could draw maps that would be in place for the next decade, distorting them to guarantee Republican control for years to come. Republicans executed the plan, called Project Redmap, nearly perfectly and took control of 20 legislative bodies, including ones in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Then, Republicans set to work drawing maps that cemented their control on power for the next decade. Working behind closed doors, they were brazen in their efforts. In Wisconsin, lawmakers signed secrecy agreements and then drew maps that were so rigged that Republicans could nearly hold on to a supermajority of seats with a minority of the vote. In Michigan, a Republican operative bragged about cramming “Dem garbage” into certain districts as they drew a congressional map that advantaged Republicans 9-5. In Ohio, GOP operatives worked secretly from a hotel room called “the bunker”, as they tweaked a congressional map that gave Republicans a 12-4 advantage. In North Carolina, a state lawmaker publicly said he was proposing a map that would elect 10 Republicans to Congress because he did not think it was possible to draw one that would elect 11.

 

Full Article: Republicans poised to rig the next election by gerrymandering electoral maps | US voting rights | The Guardian

National: One-third of states have passed restrictive voting laws this year | Reid Wilson/TheHill

One in every three states across the nation have passed new laws restricting access to the ballot in the wake of the 2020 elections, a torrid pace that showcases the national battle over election reform. Voting rights experts and advocates say they have never seen such an explosion of election overhauls: Legislatures in 18 states have passed 30 bills that would in some way curtail a voter’s access, according to a tally maintained by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a voting rights advocacy organization. “What is clear is that there is a wave of state laws that make it harder for Americans to vote, and in a really unprecedented manner. We haven’t seen the volume of these bills at all in a year,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, counsel to the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “This is reflecting a real concerted effort in states across the country to make it harder for Americans to vote, to carve Americans out of the electorate rather than politicians trying to win over those voters.” The overhauls vary widely by state. Six states have shortened the time period during which a voter can request a mail-in ballot. Four states have limited the number or availability of mail ballot drop boxes. Seven states have given election administrators more leeway or new requirements in purging inactive voters from the rolls. Six states have limited the help someone can offer a voter in returning their ballot. The measures have sharply divided the two parties: Every new restriction has been passed in states where Republicans own total control of the legislature. All but four of the states where new restrictions have passed are also run by Republican governors, with the exception of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada and Kansas.

 

Full Article: One-third of states have passed restrictive voting laws this year | TheHill

Editorial: Trust in U.S. Elections Is Slipping. It’s Time to Go on Offense. | William P. Crowell and Gregory A. Miller/Barron’s

The 2020 election was a wake-up call. Nearly half of voters expressed concern and even distrust in the voting process, due in no small part to the looming threat of foreign (and domestic) interference. That trust won’t come back on its own. We need to act to restore faith in election infrastructure and arm our election administrators for far better defense. Our election infrastructure includes the people who run elections, the people who oversee and validate the processes, and the technology that are used to conduct voting. The integrity of that infrastructure is critical to the functioning of our democracy. And yet, in many parts of this country, we have been witnessing attacks on the election system for decades. Some of the attacks are obviously politically motivated and intended to favor one political party or another. At the nonprofit OSET Institute, for 16 years we have focused most of our activities on developing new technology solutions that increase confidence in elections and their outcomes. We are deeply involved in the rethinking of the hardware, software, standards, and verification systems for election machines and processes. It would appear that is not enough. A robust campaign to strengthen our election infrastructure will require us to, first, disrupt and impede the spread of misinformation and disinformation about our election systems. The Internet has become the channel of choice for amplifying false information about voting, elections, candidates, and election integrity. Today we operate against offensive disinformation primarily using only defensive tools in cyberspace. A defense-only approach to disinformation is doomed to failure. Imagine if our military forces fought battles strictly by staying in their foxholes and never venturing out to engage the enemy. It would result in only one outcome: defeat. We need to balance our defensive efforts with offensive efforts that take advantage of the attackers’ weaknesses. We can use active means to counter false information. We can strike at the sources with cyber means of diminishing their outbursts.

 

Full Article: Restoring Trust in U.S. Elections Will Require Going on Offense | Barron’s

Arizona GOP Audit Director Barred From Recount After Sharing Data Supporting Trump Loss | Jason Lemon/Newsweek

The Republican overseeing the controversial GOP-backed election audit in Arizona has reportedly been banned from entering the building where the recount process is ongoing, after he shared some data with experts that showed the results match the officially certified numbers in Maricopa County. The Arizona Republic reported on Friday evening that Ken Bennett, Arizona’s former Secretary of State who has been described as the audit’s “director,” was barred from entering the building on the state fairgrounds where the audit is moving forward. The newspaper reported that Bennett had shared some of the audit data with outside experts showing that the ballot recount was tracking “very closely” with Maricopa County’s certified results. Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company conducting the audit on behalf of the state’s Senate Republicans, told the publication that state Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, made the decision to block Bennett from the building. Newsweek reached out to Fann for further comment but did not immediately receive a response. Ryan Randazzo, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, summed up the situation in a Friday evening tweet: “The liaison for the Arizona election audit gave some data to outside experts who want to check the Cyber Ninjas’ work, and then he was locked out of the audit. Also it looks like the ninjas miscounted and the roof on the budget building is leaking.”

Full Article: Arizona GOP Audit Director Barred From Recount After Sharing Data Supporting Trump Loss

Arizona: Maricopa County weighs subpoena response, unlikely to turn over routers | Kevin Stone/KTAR

Maricopa County officials are weighing their response to a new subpoena from Arizona Senate Republican leaders over items related to the 2020 election, but it appears they will resist handing over network routers. “We just received this late yesterday,” Supervisor Bill Gates, one of four Republicans on the five-member board that governs the county, told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Morning News in his first of two Tuesday morning interviews with the station. “So we’ll convene as a body, will meet with our attorneys, go over this. If there are reasonable requests in here, of course we will turn those over.” The supervisors will meet with legal advisers Wednesday behind closed doors in an executive session that starts at 9 a.m. Monday’s Senate subpoena gave the county one week to produce certain items the Cyber Ninjas and other contractors hired to review the Phoenix-area general election say are needed to complete their final audit report.

 

Full Article: Maricopa County weighs subpoena response, unlikely to turn over routers – KTAR.com

Arizona Senate issues new subpoena for 2020 election audit | Jonathan J. Cooper/Associated Press

Two top Republicans in the Arizona Senate issued two new subpoenas late Monday for materials from the 2020 election as they look to continue their unprecedented review of former President Donald Trump’s loss in Maricopa County. The subpoenas issued by Senate President Karen Fann and Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen set up a new confrontation with the Republican leaders of Maricopa County, who have vowed to stop producing materials for the Senate’s review. They say the review is being run by incompetent grifters, and they’ve already provided everything needed to review the 2020 vote count. Fann and Petersen also, for the first time, sent a subpoena to Dominion Voting Systems Inc., which manufactured Maricopa County’s voting machines and has been the target of false conspiracy theories suggesting its machines were tainted by foreign interference. The new demands come days after Trump spoke to thousands of supporters in downtown Phoenix, using the Senate’s review to make a number of debunked claims to bolster his false narrative that President Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate. Fann first issued a subpoena late last year as Trump and his allies were looking for materials to support their false claims of election irregularities before President Joe Biden’s victory was formally certified on Jan. 6. The subpoena was reissued early this year, and after a judge ruled it was valid, Maricopa County turned over 2.1 million ballots, hundreds of counting machines and terabytes worth of data. The materials were given to contractors hired by Fann for a sweeping audit of the election, which Trump narrowly lost. Fann says her goal is not to overturn the 2020 election but to see whether changes to state law are needed going forward. But the audit is being led by an inexperienced firm, Cyber Ninjas, led by a Trump supporter who has promoted conspiracy theories about the election. It’s become an obsession for many Trump supporters who hope it will turn up evidence supporting claims of fraud.

 

Full Article: Arizona Senate issues new subpoena for 2020 election audit

Florida: GOP state lawmaker demands forensic voting audit | Jake Dima/Yahoo News

A GOP lawmaker called for a forensic voting audit in Florida on Monday as he cited “significant irregularities” in similar inquiries in Georgia and Arizona. State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, demanded the Florida secretary of state and local election authorities investigate the five most populous counties: Hillsborough, Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Orange. He also urged top leaders in the state Legislature to pass a bill allowing top authorities “any tools they need to ensure that audits are thoroughly conducted.” “A full forensic audit of the five counties must be done immediately,” Sabatini said. “Florida voters’ confidence in our elections is at an all-time low. Disturbing revelations in Arizona, Georgia and other states make clear that the Secretary of State needs to do more than attempt to secure future elections. They must also look back and ensure that laws already on the books were followed in previous elections.” “This is not a partisan issue and is a necessary step in ensuring voter confidence in future elections,” he continued, adding that “it’s about time” election officials “start showing some transparency.”

 

Full Article: GOP state lawmaker demands forensic voting audit in Florida

Georgia study finds 49% of voters checked printed-out paper ballots | Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia added paper ballots to in-person voting last year. Less than half of voters checked them for accuracy. That’s according to a study commissioned by the secretary of state’s office, which found that 49% of Election Day voters spent at least one second looking at their printed-out paper ballots, a feature of Georgia’s $133 million voting system. In the previous 18 years, votes in Georgia were stored on memory cards, with no paper ballots for recounts or audits. The findings show both the value and limits of voting touchscreens, called ballot-marking devices, which are connected to printers to create paper ballots. While paper ballots can help voters detect errors and the possibility of tampering, many Georgians didn’t bother looking at them. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained the study by requesting it through the Georgia Open Records Act. “The more voters checking their ballots, the better. It would be good if that percentage kept going up,” said Trey Hood, a University of Georgia political science professor who co-wrote the study. “Half of any group is a large percentage, but it also shows you that there’s a whole other half who aren’t checking their ballots.”

 

Full Article: Georgia study finds 49% of voters checked printed-out paper ballots

Michigan: Lawyers cite Trump’s election ‘suspicions’ in fight against sanctions | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

Six lawyers facing sanctions in Michigan over their attempt to reverse the state’s 2020 presidential election say “suspicions” about the vote in “the highest levels” of government are among the reasons they should not be penalized. Southfield attorney Donald Campbell, who’s representing Sidney Powell and other lawyers in Detroit U.S. district court, filed a brief Monday, levying a variety of arguments for why Judge Linda Parker should deny motions for sanctions. The document came two weeks after the judge in Michigan’s Eastern District held a high-profile, six-hour hearing on the subject. “In this case, the attorneys didn’t just have suspicions based merely on their own beliefs,” Campbell wrote Monday. “They had evidence that those working at the highest levels of the United States government shared their suspicions. “That context makes this case exceptional — and it is a reason for the court to deny their defendants’ and intervenors’ requests for sanctions.” Much of the debate has focused on whether the legal team that sought to have Trump named Michigan’s winner properly vetted affidavits from individuals who claimed they witnessed wrongdoing in the election and other analyses they submitted to try to bolster their effort. Trump lost Michigan to Democrat Joe Biden by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points. Despite unsubstantiated claims of fraud, a series of court rulings, dozens of audits by election officials and bipartisan boards of canvassers as well as an investigation by state Senate Republicans have reinforced the outcome.

 

Full Article: Lawyers cite Trump’s election ‘suspicions’ in fight against sanctions

North Carolina: Records suit against elections board over federal voter fraud probe can continue | Tyler Dukes/Raleigh News & Observer

A North Carolina judge ruled Monday that a nearly two-year-old lawsuit by a coalition of media organizations against state election officials over records connected to a secretive Trump administration voter fraud probe can continue — at least for now. The public origins of the case date back to the summer of 2018, when the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina dropped a set of sweeping subpoenas on state and county election boards demanding documents on every registered voter in the state going back years. Complying with the subpoenas would have required election officials to turn over millions of pages of records just days before the midterm election. Amid pushback, the U.S. Attorney’s Office quickly agreed to extend the deadline for production. But the demand also narrowed in scope with little explanation. Months later, the State Board of Elections quietly issued guidance to county boards to produce a much smaller trove of documents — this time focusing on about 800 specific voters. Voter registration data is public in North Carolina. But when a reporter requested the documents that election officials eventually turned over to federal investigators, the state refused to release them. They also refused to say why, noting they were “prohibited from providing a reason.” Agencies are required under North Carolina law to cite specific exemptions when denying requests for public records. So in September 2019, a coalition of media organizations, including The News & Observer, WRAL News and The Washington Post, filed suit against the State Board of Elections and their counterparts in Wake County, arguing they were “knowingly and intentionally” violating the state’s open records law.

 

Full Article: Secret Trump voter fraud probe: Records suit can continue | Raleigh News & Observer

Tennessee: Shelby County Election Commission chairman says County Commission not cooperating on voting machines | Bill Dries/Daily Memphian

The chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission says county commissioners waited until after he left their meeting Monday, July 26, to approve what amounts to an end run around the Election Commission in picking a new voting system. Brent Taylor told The Daily Memphian he will discuss with other election commissioners the move by county commissioners to take proposals on a new voting system on their own. “It was our hope to work with the County Commission to resolve this in the best interest of Shelby Countians,” Taylor said the day after the vote. “However, adding an item to the agenda, which effectively bypasses the Shelby County Election Commission in conducting elections after the members of the Election Commission have left the building, doesn’t indicate a willingness to work cooperatively for Shelby County voters.” That could mean the Election Commission takes the County Commission to Chancery Court in a lawsuit over which body gets to pick the county’s new voting system with 2022 elections less than a year away. County Commission Chairman Eddie Jones introduced the add-on item near the end of Monday’s agenda with no notice or discussion of the move in committee sessions last week. The resolution instructs the county purchasing department to begin taking proposals on a new voting system for local elections that are based in hand-marked paper ballots. “This is just to start that process up so we don’t get caught by other things happening,” Jones said. “If we do this now and start the process, it could be done by close to the end of September for what the majority of this body voted for. Earlier in Monday’s County Commission meeting, the body voted down a $3.9 million contract brought by the Election Commission for a new voting system that would have used updated touch screen machines like those used in local elections for the past 16 years.

Full Article: Election Commission chairman says County Commission not cooperating on voting machines – Memphis Local, Sports, Business & Food News | Daily Memphian

Texas: In one quote, the core of the effort to undermine the 2020 election is revealed | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

It’s probably safe to assume that Donald Trump isn’t terribly concerned about undermining the results of the presidential election in Texas. After all, he won the state by six points and, so far, his flailing attempts to raise questions about his loss have centered on the states where he actually did. But Texas state Rep. Steve Toth (R) has very much taken his party’s rhetoric about voter fraud to heart. So the legislator from suburban Houston is proposing that there be a “forensic audit” of the results of the 2020 contest in his state. That science-ish-sounding term is very much in vogue at the moment, and we’ll come back to it. Toth’s proposal, though, is accompanied by a very important asterisk: It would only require investigation by counties with more than 415,000 people, as The Washington Post’s Eva Ruth Moravec reported on Thursday. There are 13 such counties in the state, 10 of which voted for President Biden last year. The 13th-most populous county, Cameron County, preferred Biden by a 13-point margin. If you kept going down the ranks of most-populous counties, incidentally, the next five most populous counties all preferred Trump. Convenient place to stop the review! But Toth is not shy about the convenience at play. Moravec spoke with him and he explained his thinking.

[W]hile Toth said he would support a statewide effort, he also argued the undertaking would be too expensive and time-consuming. Asked if he would consider including some smaller counties, Toth replied, “What’s the point? I mean, all the small counties are red.”

And that, right there, is the crux of the issue. No one in the United States has done more to undermine confidence in elections than Trump. But he didn’t invent the idea. That there is rampant fraudulent voting in the country attributable to Democratic criminals is a long-standing assumption on the right. Trump internalized and leveraged this line of rhetoric because it offered him a convenient defense against twice losing the presidential popular vote. It wasn’t that American voters preferred Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, it was that Democrats cheated, to the tune of 3 million and 7 million votes, respectively.

 

Full Article: In one quote, the core of the effort to undermine the 2020 election is revealed – The Washington Post

Wisconsin Republican vows ‘forensic examination’ of ballots despite no evidence of widespread fraud | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

The Republican head of the Wisconsin Assembly elections committee said Monday she will ensure there is a “comprehensive, forensic examination” of ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election at the same time the state’s nonpartisan audit bureau conducts a review. The broadened investigation comes amid pressure from former President Donald Trump and other national Republicans to take a closer look in Wisconsin, a state President Joe Biden won by just over 20,000 votes. There is no evidence of widespread fraud and courts rejected numerous lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies attempting to overturn the outcome. Democrats have derided calls for more investigations as feeding into conspiracy theories and lies that Trump actually won the state. One of the loudest critics of how the election was run is Rep. Janel Brandtjen, chair of the Assembly elections committee. She said in a statement Monday that her committee will request additional materials to conduct a deeper review. The committee’s investigation is in addition to a review ordered by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, being done by three retired police detectives and overseen by a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, and the independent review by the audit committee. Another separate, independent investigation is being done by several individuals convinced there was widespread fraud in Wisconsin, despite no evidence. That effort is being led by Peter Bernegger, who was convicted of mail fraud and bank fraud in federal court in Mississippi in 2009.

Full Article: Wisconsin Republican promises forensic election audit

National: Personal threats, election lies and punishing new laws rattle election officials, raising fears of a mass exodus | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Maribeth Witzel-Behl had run elections in Madison, Wisconsin, for 15 years when the 2020 election arrived, bringing challenges like no other: a global pandemic, a crushing workload, lawsuits and a recount. Then the threats started. Wisconsin rules require the initials of the municipal clerk to appear on absentee ballots, but during a recount last November, people noticed her initials and seized on them as a sign that some kind of mischief must have occurred. An online discussion thread began weighing the weapons and ammunition to use against her, Witzel-Behl said. There was also discussion of lynching. So, when it came time to renew her employment contract, she struggled. “Every day for over a year, I just kept going back and forth,” the 47-year-old said recently. “Is it worth it? Is it time to do something else where there is less stress, more reasonable work hours and certainly no death threats?” Last month, Witzel-Behl decided to commit to another five years in her post. But her dilemma underscores the difficult choices election supervisors face as they increasingly become political targets in an era of widespread falsehoods about election fraud. Experts in the field fear a massive exodus of administrators that would change how elections are run — and threaten democracy itself. In all, more than 8,000 local officials oversee US elections, according to the Elections and Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. There’s no central tally of departures, but researchers see warning signs.

Full Article: Personal threats, election lies and punishing new laws rattle election officials, raising fears of a mass exodus – CNNPolitics

Pennsylvania state department decertifies Fulton County voting machines after third-party audit | Nathan Layne/Reuters

Pennsylvania’s top election official has decertified the voting equipment of a rural county that participated in an audit of the 2020 election requested by a Republican state lawmaker and staunch ally of former President Donald Trump. Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid said on Wednesday that Fulton County violated the state election code by giving a third party access to its election databases and other certified equipment in an audit of the 2020 results. The audit was conducted in December at the request of Republican state Senators Doug Mastriano and Judy Ward, who asked county officials to allow Wake Technology Services Inc to probe the county’s results, according to media reports. Degraffenreid’s announcement was the latest salvo in a battle between Mastriano, a promoter of Trump’s false stolen-election claims who is now waging an effort to conduct a wider “forensic investigation” into Trump’s loss in the state, and the administration of Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. “These actions were taken in a manner that was not transparent,” Degraffenreid said. “As a result of the access granted to Wake TSI, Fulton County’s certified system has been compromised.”

Full Article: Pennsylvania decertifies county’s voting machines after 2020 audit | Reuters

National: Eighteen states have enacted new laws that make it harder to vote | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Eighteen states have enacted 30 new laws that make it harder to vote, according to a new tally by the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice that tracks state activity through July 14. Among the most common provisions, according to Brennan’s researchers: Measures in seven states that either expand officials’ ability to purge voters from the registration rolls or put voters at risk at having their names improperly removed. Those laws were enacted in Arizona, Iowa, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas and Utah, the center found. Three of the 18 states with new voting restrictions have passed sweeping, omnibus bills that cover a broad range of voting activity: Florida, Georgia and Iowa. Republican attempts to pass an omnibus bill in Texas have been thwarted by Democratic state lawmakers who fled the state to deny Republican lawmakers from obtaining the quorum needed to conduct business. But their departure is likely to only delay action. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has promised to call more special sessions to advance Republicans’ election proposals. Brennan’s tally of individual statutes that restrict voting shows Arkansas and Montana leading the way, with four new laws apiece. Arizona was in second place with three new laws, including one that makes it harder to remain on the state’s absentee voting list.

Full Article: Voting rights: Eighteen states have enacted new laws that make it harder to vote – CNNPolitics

National: Sparse Voter-Fraud Cases Undercut Claims of Widespread Abuses | Blomberg Law

Prosecutors across the country found evidence of voter fraud compelling enough to take to court about 200 times since the November 2018 elections, according to a 50-state Bloomberg canvass of state officials. Republican and Democratic election and law enforcement officials contacted in 23 of the states were unable to point to any criminal voting fraud prosecutions since the November 2018 midterm elections. Despite the escalating claims from former President Donald Trump of rampant misdeeds, nearly all of the instances found by state officials were insignificant infractions during a timeframe when hundreds of millions of people participated in thousands of elections around the country. Yet, misinformation about the topic has become a driving force of political debate. Fabricated claims of fraud damages confidence in elections and can encourage partisans to demand that vote totals be changed to the outcome they want, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University Moritz College of Law professor who studies disputed elections. If losing political parties feel emboldened to pressure elected officials to undo fair outcomes, then “we have to worry about the capacity to count votes honestly,” he said in an interview. The danger, he said, is “not that there will be any infinitesimal amount of dishonest ballots cast. The real risk is that due to partisan motivations people won’t count them honestly.”

Full Article: Sparse Voter-Fraud Cases Undercut Claims of Widespread Abuses

National: Tabletop exercise tests election security | GCN

Federal, state, local and officials recently participated in tabletop election security exercise with private-sector partners, working through hypothetical scenarios that might impact election operations and sharing best practices around cyber and physical incident planning, preparedness, identification, response and recovery and information coordination. The fourth annual Tabletop the Vote event, hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in coordination with the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, drew more than 1,000 participants. Attendees learned how to plan, prepare and respond to various situations through modules that helped them identify their election processes’ strengths and weaknesses.

 

Full Article: Tabletop exercise tests election security — GCN

Editorial: Bad-faith election audits are sabotaging democracy across the nation | Matthew Germer and Gowri Ramachandran/The Hill

When Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the states as “laboratories of democracy” almost a century ago, he was looking at the way reforms can be tested in individual states, and the effective ones can spread throughout the country state-by-state. Unfortunately, when bad ideas spread in this fashion, they can be used to undercut democracy itself. Take, for example, the so-called “election audit” in Maricopa County, Arizona. While this partisan review of election results drags on, the effort to unearth nonexistent evidence of widespread voter fraud is spreading to other parts of the country. Under the guise of ensuring “election integrity,” Republican activists doggedly pursue new evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. They continue to contort science and logic on the taxpayer’s dime, even as we approach the Biden administration’s seventh month in office. This is madness. And it must stop. Yet recently, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) announced plans to conduct a Maricopa-style election review of his state’s 2020 election results, requesting access to ballots and election equipment from three counties, including Philadelphia. In fact, this would be the Senator’s second such partisan review this year. Just after the election, Mastriano hired Wake TSI, a company with no verifiable elections auditing experience, to review the ballots of Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Rather than proving election fraud, the investigation — funded by a group led by notorious Trump-affiliate Sidney Powell — found that the election was “well run.” Further, the so-called “auditors” mishandled the election equipment and taxpayers may now need to pay for new voting machines.

Full Article: Bad-faith election audits are sabotaging democracy across the nation | TheHill

Arizona’s vote ‘audit’ is based on ignorance and dishonesty | The Washington Post

Last week, the contractors conducting the Republican Arizona Senate’s 2020 presidential vote “audit” teased their preliminary findings. The discrepancies they described sounded damning. Former president Donald Trump and his acolytes embraced them as proof of major voting problems in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous. In fact, they illustrate that the Arizona Senate and its contractors have premised their audit on ignorance, dishonesty or, most likely, some toxic combination of the two. In that, they match Republicans throughout the country who are undermining faith in the nation’s system of government for partisan gain. “We have 74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent,” declared Doug Logan, the pro-Trump conspiracy theorist who heads Cyber Ninjas, the Florida firm with no apparent expertise in election auditing whom the Arizona Senate Republican majority hired to examine Maricopa’s ballots. Election experts immediately pointed out that this number represents the in-person early ballots that voters cast, which Maricopa County counts in its submitted ballot tally. Similarly, Mr. Logan’s claim that 11,326 people suddenly showed up on the voting rolls after Election Day reflects provisional voters, whose ballots only counted if they demonstrate after Election Day that they were eligible. Instead of publicly revealing any of these alleged discrepancies, Mr. Logan should have consulted someone with a rudimentary knowledge of election procedures. Nevertheless, Mr. Logan said that he might need to send inquisitors door-to-door asking people about their ballots, without explaining how households would be picked, a move the Justice Department previously warned might amount to voter intimidation.

Full Article: Opinion | Arizona’s vote ‘audit’ is based on ignorance and dishonesty – The Washington Post

California: Election officials ‘fast and furious’ as recall plans condense a year of prep into 70 days | Andie Judson/ABC10

Less than a year ago, the world waited with baited breath for the results of the 2020 presidential election. Now, just 10 months later, California is back in election season. And while it may feel all to familiar, this  special election is one of few and far between. “We have not had a gubernatorial recall since 2003,” said Sacramento County spokesperson Janna Haynes. “That’s the only one we’ve had in the history of California.” 18 years later, Sacramento County is prepping for our state’s second recall election. “Normally at this time of the year, we’d already be preparing for our June Primary in 2022,” Haynes said. “So, we are working fast and furious.” Compared to a general election, California election’s offices have had a very short time to prepare since the recall was announced. Haynes said they traditionally take more than a year for election prep, but for this recall, they have 70 days. Between preparing ballots, filler pages, envelopes, voter files and logistics, it’s a heavy lift. But the two things that are making it simpler for Sacramento’s Elections Office is that there will only be around 30 in-person vote centers compared to the 84 last November. That means less staff and overall workflow for elections officials.

Full Article: California Governor Recall: Elections officials prepping for race | abc10.com

Colorado: Judge in Denver-based Trump case denies lawyers another hearing on sanctions | Premium | Joey Bunch/The Gazette

A pair of local lawyers scolded by a federal magistrate over their lack of evidence of a stolen presidential election last Friday asked for and were denied another hearing Wednesday afternoon. “To be blunt, that train left the station last Friday,” U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter said in his order denying the request. “The sanctions motions have been argued and submitted.” A class-action lawsuit filed in December by Denver lawyers Gary D. Fielder and Ernest J. Walker sought $1,000 a voter for more about 160 million voters, a total of roughly $160 billion, against Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook and elected officials in four states, as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, on the list of 18 defendants plus “Does 1 to 10,000,” meaning yet unnamed defendants. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of conspiring to cost President Donald Trump last November’s election. Neureiter dismissed the original lawsuit in April, less than 24 hours after hearing arguments, citing the same procedural problem as dozens of similar failed voting integrity lawsuits: none of the plaintiffs could demonstrate how they were harmed, a dilemma lawyers call standing.

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Full Article: Judge in Denver-based Trump case denies lawyers another hearing on sanctions | Premium | gazette.com

Kansas altered software to hide election records, lawsuit claims | Roxanna Hegeman/Associated Press

A judge is considering whether Kansas’ Republican secretary of state ran afoul of the state’s open records law by ordering the removal of an election database function that generates a statewide report showing which provisional ballots were not counted — a decision civil rights advocates say will have far-reaching implications for government transparency. Shawnee County District Judge Teresa Watson heard arguments last week in a lawsuit filed by voting rights activist Davis Hammet, who is the president of Loud Light, a nonprofit that strives to increase voter turnout. The group helps voters fix any issues that led them to cast provisional ballots so that their votes are counted. Voters are given provisional ballots if they don’t appear to be registered, if they fail to present the required identification or if they are trying to vote at the wrong polling place. “We know there are deficiencies… where they aren’t counting votes that they should be counting and I think on some level there may be a resistance from the secretary of state to provide that data because it means we can highlight these deficiencies,” Hammet said in a phone interview Wednesday. “We can prove how there are votes that should have been counted that are not being counted.” That information can raise public awareness about problems in the elections system, leading to changes in state law. He noted the political outcry over the hundreds of discarded mail-in ballots statewide in the 2018 primary led to legislation a year later that requires election officials to notify voters before their mail-in ballots are thrown out because of problems with signatures.

Full Article: Lawsuit: Kansas altered software to hide election records

New Hampshire: The Price Tag to Audit Windham’s Election: $123,000 And Counting | Casey McDermott/New Hampshire Public Radio

The recent effort to investigate a nearly 400-vote discrepancy in Windham’s 2020 election results is poised to cost the state at least $123,000. But it’s not entirely clear how those and other outstanding expenses will be paid for, since the law authorizing the audit didn’t include any funding. “We knew it was going to be expensive,” Associate Attorney General Anne Edwards said. “We didn’t know what the total was going to be, and we still don’t know what the total is.” The $123,000 total so far includes broadcasting, security and facility expenses related to a three-week, in-person audit hosted at a New Hampshire National Guard facility in May. It doesn’t yet factor in any payments to three outside auditors who oversaw that process. It also doesn’t include other lingering technology and personnel expenses, so the final bill could be even higher. Once all of the invoices are in, Edwards said the Attorney General’s office plans to submit requests to the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee and the Executive Council to cover the costs. “When you’re hiring three experts to do this kind of work and you’re spending essentially three weeks in a facility with people working from eight o’clock in the morning until six, six-thirty, seven o’clock at night, that’s going to add up quickly,” Edwards said.

Full Article: The Price Tag to Audit Windham’s Election: $123,000 And Counting | New Hampshire Public Radio

Ohio: New Dominion voting machines start arriving in Stark County | Robert Wang/The Canton Repository

Stark County’s new touchscreen voting machines are rolling into the Board of Elections. The past couple of weeks, warehouse managers have been accepting shipments of the Dominion Voting Systems ImageCast X machines – which have been a point of controversy in the county. Workers have been opening the boxes, inspecting the machines for damage and testing them. Travis Secrest, an administrative assistant for the Board of Elections, said the equipment so far has passed all of the tests. Many of the machines still had plastic film on their touchscreens as of last week. All 1,450 are expected to arrive by the end of August. They’re scheduled to be used for the Nov. 2 general election and during the in-person early-voting period. It’s been a major ordeal for the county to buy the equipment – including a legal fight between the elections board and county commissioners. In May, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled commissioners were required to fund the purchase. Dominion quoted a retail cost for the new voting equipment of $6.17 million upfront, plus $331,550 a year to cover the software license, the hardware warranty and some ballot printing. The state covered $3.27 million. Dominion extended a trade-in credit of $1.7 million, reducing Stark County’s upfront cost to $1.48 million.

Full Article: Stark workers are testing the new Dominion voting machines now

Pennsylvania: Threats rattle county targeted in election audit | Nathan Layne/Reuters

One of the Pennsylvania counties targeted in a Republican lawmaker’s “forensic investigation” into the 2020 election has beefed up security around its courthouse following threatening posts on social media, one of its commissioners told Reuters. The incendiary Facebook posts appeared targeted at members of Tioga County’s all-Republican board of commissioners after they decided not to comply with the lawmaker’s request to turn over their voting machines, Commissioner Erick Coolidge said. One individual, in an apparent reference to the county’s three commissioners, called them traitors and said there were “plenty of trees” in a nearby gorge to “hang ropes from,” according to a post viewed by Reuters on a Facebook page. In response, the law enforcement presence was strengthened around their offices at the courthourse in the town of Wellsboro, Coolidge said, without providing details. The Tioga County sheriff’s office did not reply to a request for comment. “We’ve kind of beefed up security around the courthouse,” Coolidge said. “I’m more concerned about our personnel than myself.” Pennsylvania has already conducted a so-called risk-limiting audit of the November election, and all counties also audited a sample of their votes as mandated by law. Neither effort turned up widespread fraud to put in question Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the state by 81,000 votes.

Full Article: Threats rattle Pennsylvania county targeted in election audit | Reuters

Rhode Island Election Security Legislation Stalls | Alex Malm/Newport This Week

Legislation that would authorize the Secretary of State and the Board of Elections to conduct an extensive cybersecurity assessment of the state’s election systems and facilities, and establish a cybersecurity review board, was introduced by Rep. Deborah Ruggiero this year. The legislation also creates a cybersecurity incident response group to adopt protocols in the event of any breaches of cybersecurity. “There is no finish line when it comes to cybersecurity; a recent Gallop poll shows that Americans rank cybersecurity as a top threat facing our country, with 98 percent saying it’s a critical issue,” said Ruggiero. “ Our world is very different today than it was five years ago. We saw firsthand in the 2016 elections how the democratic process and governance came under attack through social media and technology and how it perpetuated divisiveness amongst people.” After unanimously passing the Rhode Island House of Representatives, the legislation was sent to the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee last month. The committee didn’t vote it out of committee. Rep. Barbara Ann Fenton Fung, a Republican, sponsored the legislation. “If we learned anything from 2020, it’s that improving trust in the mechanics of our election process is so very important right now,” said Fenton-Fung. “This bill raises our game in terms of improving our cybersecurity infrastructure, and creates a comprehensive review and response team that includes the well-respected Rhode Island National Guard and Rhode Island State Police.

Full Article: Ruggiero Election Security Legislation Stalls | Newport This Week

Texas Democrats face hurdles as they hope Congress passes voting bill | Abby Livingston/The Texas Tribune

Texas Democrats slipped out of the state 10 days ago because they were out of options back home, powerless to stop the Republican majority in the Legislature from passing its priority voting bill. With Gov. Greg Abbott committing to call more special sessions until the legislation is passed, Democrats have said they’re pinning their hopes on Congress to take action to block the attempts to restrict voting access. Now in their second week hunkered down in the nation’s capital, the Democrats’ primetime TV interviews are slowing down and their meetings with members of Congress are spacing out. They are getting a crash course in Washington dysfunction and confronting the reality that their issues are not immune to legislative paralysis. “We are astute about Texas politics and the way Texas government works, but it’s been a learning curve to understand how things work in Washington,” said Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin. The options ahead are fairly grim. “To state the obvious, Senate action on an elections bill would require some sort of waiver of the filibuster rule,” wrote Rich Cohen, the chief author of the Almanac of American Politics and a longtime congressional observer, in an email. “In itself, that likely will take additional time. With the Senate seemingly focused on infrastructure legislation for at least the next couple of weeks — and even with the prospect of some legislative work days in August—it’s hard to see that Democrats would come together on limiting the filibuster without pursuing extended internal discussions.” Last month, Republicans blocked the For the People Act, a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s elections, in the Democrat-controlled Senate thanks to a Republican filibuster.

Full Article: Texas Democrats face hurdles as they hope Congress passes voting bill | The Texas Tribune

Texas Republican lawmaker proposes forensic audit of 2020 election, but only in big counties that mostly backed Biden | Eva Ruth Moravec/The Washington Post

Support is growing among Texas Republicans for a push to audit the results of the 2020 election in a state that former president Donald Trump won handily. But the proposal, introduced in the House earlier this month, would only re-examine votes in Texas’s largest counties, most of which went for President Biden. The legislation, House Bill 241, calls for an independent third party appointed by the state’s top GOP officials to conduct a forensic audit of results in counties with more than 415,000 people. Of the 13 counties that meet that criteria, 10 voted for Biden last year. The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Steve Toth, said earlier this week that his constituents are concerned about fraud in the election. In an interview, Toth added that he also became convinced an audit was needed after a meeting earlier this year with U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), who claimed to have evidence of vote fraud in a 2018 race that he lost. “No amount of fraud should be acceptable in our election system,” Toth said. “I think it’s important that we get to the bottom of this and make sure that people start to believe in their voting system.” But Democrats and some election officials say there is no need for an audit, pointing out that Republicans have not demonstrated any evidence of widespread fraud in the state. “We’re chasing ghosts. It has been proven, time and again, that there was no major election fraud. P.S.: Trump won Texas,” said Lorena Perez McGill, a Democrat who lost to Toth in the November election. “So I don’t understand what he seeks to accomplish with this.” For now, the bill is stalled as House Democrats continue to wait out a 30-day special session in Washington, D.C., denying Republicans a quorum to continue. But the effort is the latest attempt by state lawmakers across the country clamoring for audits following Trump’s false claims of mass voting fraud after his loss.

Full Article: Texas Republican lawmaker proposes forensic audit of 2020 election, but only in big counties that mostly backed Biden – The Washington Post