A Colorado judge on Tuesday ruled that Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R), a supporter of former president Donald Trump who has embraced election-fraud conspiracy theories, is barred from overseeing elections in her home county because of her indictment for allegedly tampering with voting equipment. Peters, who is running for the GOP nomination for secretary of state in Colorado, had already been prohibited by a judge from overseeing last year’s local elections. Mesa County District Judge Valerie Robison ruled on a lawsuit brought this year by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) that called for Peters and deputy Belinda Knisley to be barred from overseeing this year’s midterm elections and the upcoming Mesa County primary. The embattled clerk is facing multiple investigations, and 10 felony and misdemeanor counts from a grand jury indictment, stemming from allegations of election equipment security breach and campaign finance violations. Knisley was also indicted by the grand jury and suspended from her county position last year. “Based on the circumstances of this case … the Court determines that the Petitioners have met the burden of showing that Peters and Knisley have committed a neglect of duty and are unable to perform the duties of the Mesa County Designated Election Official,” Robison wrote in her ruling.
Paper Ballots Helped Secure the 2020 Election — What Will 2022 Look Like? | Derek Tisler and urquoise Baker/Brennan Center for Justice
Even with unprecedented challenges and historic turnout in 2020, election officials across the country administered an election that the federal government’s cybersecurity agency called the “most secure in American history.” Many factors led to this result, from close coordination and preparation between federal, state, and local agencies, to the expansion of voting options that reduced stress on election systems. But one of the most significant was the rapid transition in recent years to voting on paper ballots, a trend that is set to continue into the 2022 and 2024 elections. Experts widely recognize paper ballots as one of the most important security measures that states can adopt. When selections are recorded on paper, voters can easily verify that their ballot accurately reflects their choices. Paper ballots also facilitate post-election audits, where election workers can check the paper records against electronic vote totals to confirm that voting machines are working as intended. For example, by replacing paperless voting machines before the 2020 election, Georgia was able to conduct a hand-count of every ballot cast, confirming the presidential election outcome and dispelling conspiracy theories about the state’s voting machines. This would not have been possible in Georgia as recently as 2018. Full Article: Paper Ballots Helped Secure the 2020 Election — What Will 2022 Look Like? | Brennan Center for JusticeNational: U.S. groups urge social media companies to fight ‘Big Lie,” election disinformation | Reuters
Social media companies including Facebook (FB.O), Twitter , YouTube and TikTok must act now to blunt the effect of false information - including Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud - in this year's U.S. midterm congressional elections, rights groups said on Thursday. Social media platforms backed away from policies designed to fight election disinformation after the 2020 presidential race won by Democratic President Joe Biden, more than 100 advocacy groups, led by Common Cause, said in a letter to social media executives. A surge of disinformation then led to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Trump and that disinformation continues to multiply, they said, citing research and public reporting. "High-profile disinformation spreaders and other bad actors are continuing to use social media platforms to disseminate messages that undermine trust in elections," read a letter sent to chief executives and signed by more than 100 groups lead by Common Cause.
Full Article: U.S. groups urge social media companies to fight 'Big Lie," election disinformation | ReutersNational: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy | Luke Broadwater and Emily Cochrane/The New York Times
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued subpoenas on Thursday to five Republican members of Congress, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, a significant escalation as it digs deeper into the role Republicans played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The panel’s move was an extraordinary step in the annals of congressional investigations — a committee targeting sitting lawmakers, including a top party leader, who have refused to cooperate in a major inquiry into the largest attack on the Capitol in centuries. It reflected the belief among investigators that a group of Republican members of Congress loyal to former President Donald J. Trump had played crucial roles in the events that led to the assault on their own institution, and may have hidden what they know about Mr. Trump’s intentions and actions before, during and after the attack. Mr. McCarthy, the Californian who is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House majority in November, had a heated phone call with Mr. Trump during the riot, in which he implored the president to call off the mob invading the Capitol in his name. When Mr. Trump declined, according to Representative Jaime Herrera Buetler, a Washington Republican who has said Mr. McCarthy recounted the exchange to her, Mr. Trump sided with the rioters, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
Full Article: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy - The New York TimesArizona justices to decide if public has right to see Cyber Ninja election audit records | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service
The Arizona Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over whether the state Senate has the authority to conceal records from an audit of the 2020 presidential election. American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed suit in 2021 after Arizona Republicans contracted the private firm Cyber Ninjas to audit the results of the 2020 election. The now-defunct Cyber Ninjas found President Joe Biden was lawfully elected but identified what it considered to be 53,304 questionable ballots. Maricopa County investigated the authenticity of those ballots and determined that only 37 may have been illegally cast. The case landed before the Arizona Supreme Court after the Arizona Court of Appeals and a trial judge rejected the state Senate’s assertion that legislative privilege granted some documents protection against disclosure. The state’s high court has barred the court-ordered release of the records while it considers the case. Andy Gaona of Coppersmith Brockelman, representing American Oversight before the court Tuesday, argued that legislative privilege is not a political tool to hide information. “[Legislative] privilege is not intended to benefit individual legislators; it is not intended to protect them from embarrassment,” Gaona said. “It is not intended to allow them to shield communications as they see fit. What it’s intended to do is to benefit the public by ensuring that their elected representatives — and this is what Appeals says — are not held either criminally or civilly liable for their actions.” Full Article: Arizona justices to decide if public has right to see Cyber Ninja election audit records | Courthouse News ServiceColorado passes election security bill inspired by clerk accused of tampering | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop
Legislators in Colorado on Tuesday passed a bill aimed at stopping insider threats against election administration, particularly the technology used to process and certify ballots. The bill, which passed with bipartisan support, makes several changes to how county election offices safeguard and provide access to their systems, including requiring continuous video surveillance of all voting systems components, and installing key-card access to rooms where equipment is kept. It also prohibits the unauthorized copying of ballot-machine hard drives, and makes it a felony to tamper with voting systems, publish devices’ passwords online or give unauthorized individuals access to any election equipment. The legislation, which now goes to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk, was inspired directly by the case of Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder of votes in Mesa County who is currently under indictment for several of those exact offenses. Peters, who has openly embraced lies promoted by former President Donald Trump and others about the 2020 election, was accused last year of allowing an unauthorized individual to observe a secure software update on her county’s ballot-processing machines, and letting that person make copies of hard drives and passwords, images of which were displayed a few months later at a conspiracy-theorist conference hosted by pillow manufacturer Mike Lindell. Full Article: Colorado passes election security bill inspired by clerk accused of tamperingColorado: Adams County clerk wears bulletproof vest due to increase in threats | Pattrik Perez/The Denver Channel
Following the 2020 presidential election, Adams County's top elections official says he's had to adopt additional security measures because of threats from conspiracy theorists. "When I left the Marine Corps, I thought that was the last time that I was going to be wearing body armor," said Adams County Clerk and Recorder Josh Zygielbaum. "And here I am again, almost 15 years later and not as nearly as good a shape as I was then, but, you know, still wearing body armor." As first reported by ABC News, Zygielbaum says the decision to wear a bulletproof vest was made because of increasing threats, both direct and indirect, from election deniers, which concerns him and his staff. "I think the worst one that we've received was somebody telling us that they would see us on a battlefield and they would walk away from it," Zygielbaum said. Some of the security improvements he's implementing include a remodel to his elections office, which will better protect his employees from the public once complete. Full Article: Adams County clerk wears bulletproof vest due to increase in threatsGeorgia: Judge says Perdue’s election fraud claims are ‘conjecture and paranoia’ | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Fulton County judge has rejected former U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s request to inspect ballots from the November 2020 election, saying his evidence of voting fraud amounts to “conjecture and paranoia.” Perdue’s lawsuit claimed fraud had cost him a chance to defeat Democrat Jon Ossoff in November 2020. The two candidates advanced to a January 2021 runoff, which Ossoff won. Perdue’s lawsuit cited some of the same discredited allegations of fraud that former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said allowed Joe Biden to win the presidential election in Georgia. On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney dismissed the lawsuit and Perdue’s request for a “forensic inspection” of absentee ballots. The judge said Perdue’s claims consisted of “speculation, conjecture and paranoia — sufficient fodder for talk shows, op-ed pieces and social media platforms, but far short of what would legally justify a court taking such action.” Perdue issued a statement criticizing the ruling. “Today’s ruling is another example of how the establishment continues to cover up what happened in 2020, and we will vigorously appeal the decision,” he said. “Courts across the country have been dismissing cases not based on evidence, but because of procedural nonsense.”
Michigan: How a political activist convinced 3 people to tamper with voting machine | Francis X. Donnelly/The Detroit News
It began with a phone call to the wrong person last year. It ended with three residents seizing the voting machine of a tiny northern Michigan town. They were recruited by a political activist who, among other things, said she believed a satellite owned by the Vatican contained evidence that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, according to her interview with police. The men disassembled the vote tabulator but couldn’t reach its software and, even if they had, it didn’t have any information. It had long been given to the county elections office. b“I can’t believe anything this ridiculous would happen in Cross Village,” said Diana Keller, the township clerk. “There were some idiots who didn’t know what they were doing, or knew but didn’t care.” The ringleader, Tera Jackson, 56, who wasn't present when the men handled the machine, was arrested and pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of creating a disturbance. She received a delayed sentence in February. The three men, who police believe were duped by Jackson, weren’t charged. Neither Jackson nor the men would comment for this story. The outcome left few people happy. Keller’s brother, Steve, who is the town supervisor, said Jackson was barely punished and more people should have been charged.
Full Article: Political activist convinced 3 people to tamper with Michigan voting machineMichigan authorities expand probe into voting machine access | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News
The Michigan State Police have seized a tabulator in a township in Barry County as part of an ongoing investigation into unauthorized access to voting machines. Jamie Knight, the supervisor in Irving Township, disclosed the seizure in a Thursday statement in which she said authorities, including Attorney General Dana Nessel's office, had obtained a search warrant and executed it on April 29. ... Investigators had "expanded" a probe that began with a complaint in Roscommon County "to other counties," said Lt. Derrick Carroll, a spokesman for the Michigan State Police. "This is an open investigation, and we will continue to investigate allegations of unauthorized access to tabulation machines until we have exhausted all leads," Carroll said in a statement. "This alleged unauthorized access did not, in any way, affect the 2020 election." Carroll didn't specify how many counties were now entangled in the investigation or why the probe had expanded. n February, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson asked the Attorney General's office and the Michigan State Police to investigate reports that an "unnamed third party" was granted access to voting technology in Roscommon County.
Full Article: Michigan authorities expand probe into voting machine accessNevada: Nye County’s planned switch to hand-counted paper ballots for general election raises alarms | Michael Lyle/Nevada Current
Nye County is poised to appoint a new county clerk in August and pave the way for hand-counting paper ballots in the 2022 general election, a move election watchers worry could create a logistical nightmare that could spill over to a congressional race and even statewide elections. Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant helped convince Nye commissioners to make the switch, even as Nye County Clerk Sandra Merlino decried a hand-counting method as prone to error. Marchant blamed his defeat for the 2020 race in fourth congressional district, an area that includes Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln counties, on unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. Kristopher Dahir, a Republican running against Marchant in the 2022 primary for secretary of state, criticized Marchant for creating “chaos” adding that it “almost seems like they want an insurrection instead of an election.” “I don’t believe he lost because of fraud. I think he lost because he lost,” Dahir said. “I think when it comes to what we are doing now, I think he’s doing it to try to get elected. He’s doing this to show, ‘I’m the fighter, I’m the guy.’ I don’t believe we tear this place apart to try to fix something.” Full Article: Nye's planned switch to hand-counted paper ballots for general election raises alarms - Nevada CurrentNorth Carolina: Partisan attacks are undermining the efforts of election workers | Rusty Jacobs/North Carolina Public Radio
Annie Risku thought she had a lot to celebrate on election night, back in 2020. She had just taken over as Wayne County's director of elections that July. And despite a pandemic, the state experienced historic voter turnout. In Wayne County, Risku's office successfully processed more than 10 times the typical number of absentee-by-mail ballots. "We were so focused on COVID, preparing for the pandemic, keeping the voters safe, keeping their hands clean, keeping them from breathing on one another," Risku said with a wry laugh during a recent interview in her downtown Goldsboro office. Then came the wave of intense skepticism about the elections process, including from voters in this county that Donald Trump carried. She says it caught her a little off-guard. "We had, after 2020, a lot of individuals who didn't trust that we had actually counted all the votes," Risku explained. One woman demanded to enter her office to watch Risku count ballots, even though no such thing was happening or ever happens. Ballot counting is conducted according to state law in a prescribed manner and in public view. For example, county boards begin processing mail-in ballots at weekly meetings starting five weeks before Primary and General Election Day. And county boards hold public meetings to process ballots during the 10-day canvas period after Election Day, which culminates in the certification of official results. Full Article: Partisan attacks are undermining the efforts of North Carolina's election workers | WUNCOregon: Two-thirds of Clackamas County ballots will need to be duplicated by hand due to printing error | Jamie Goldberg/The Oregonian
The vast majority of ballots that Clackamas County election officials sent to voters have defective barcodes making them unreadable by voting counting machines, an error that will cost the county extra money and delay election results. County Clerk Sherry Hall said Wednesday that about two-thirds of the ballots that have been returned to the county so far are marred by the error and require that the voter’s choice in each race be duplicated by hand. The county is preparing for a similar percentage of ballots returned in the coming days to have the same issue, she said. Election officials didn’t notice the error before ballots were sent out. Hall said those ballots will still be counted, but the process of tallying those votes will take extra time and money. At least two election workers registered with different political parties will participate in the copying of votes to new ballots, Hall said. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan incorrectly assured reporters multiple times Wednesday that the county would be able to use a machine to transfer the votes onto new ballots and wouldn’t have to do the job by hand. Her office issued a correction Thursday.
Full Article: Two-thirds of Clackamas County ballots will need to be duplicated by hand due to printing error - oregonlive.comSouth Carolina: Early voting coming after lawmakers reach deal on election board oversight | Zak Koeske/The State
True early voting in South Carolina appears likely to become a reality this year. Both the House and Senate on Wednesday approved elections bills that add two weeks of early in-person voting, establish a set number of early voting sites in each county and authorize election officials to begin examining and tabulating absentee votes prior to Election Day. The popular legislation had appeared dead just a few weeks ago due to the Senate’s insistence on including a provision giving the body say-so over the governor’s appointments to the state elections board, which the House and Gov. Henry McMaster would not entertain. Senators late Wednesday dropped that demand, settling instead for confirmation of the state election director and a process for removing the elections board or its executive director if they fail to enforce and defend or publicly discredit state elections laws. “In a way, what we have here is better than advice and consent on the board,” said Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, the amended election bill’s sponsor. Campsen explained that while senators may not be able to deny board nominees up front, they now have a process for removing them once they’re seated, if need be. Full Article: No-excuse early SC voting could be in place by 2022 primaries | The StateTexas: Crystal Mason’s illegal voting conviction must be reconsidered, court says | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has told a lower appeals court to take another look at the controversial illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while she was on supervised release for a federal conviction. The state’s court of last resort for criminal matters on Wednesday ruled a lower appeals court had wrongly upheld Mason’s conviction by concluding that it was “irrelevant” to Mason’s prosecution that she did not know she was ineligible to cast a ballot. The ruling opens the door for Mason’s conviction to ultimately be overturned. Mason’s lawyers turned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals found that her knowledge that she was on supervised release, and therefore ineligible to vote, was sufficient for an illegal voting conviction. Mason has said she did not know she was ineligible to vote and wouldn’t have knowingly risked her freedom. On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the lower court had “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release.” They sent the case back down with instructions for the lower court to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason. “I am pleased that the court acknowledged issues with my conviction, and am ready to defend myself against these cruel charges,” Mason said in a statement released Wednesday. “My life has been upended for what was, at worst, an innocent misunderstanding of casting a provisional ballot that was never even counted. I have been called to this fight for voting rights and will continue to serve my community.”
Full Article: Crystal Mason’s illegal voting conviction must be reconsidered, court says | The Texas TribuneWisconsin: Michael Gableman’s vendetta over Wisconsin’s 2020 election must end | Barry C. Burden and Trey Grayson/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Last fall, we warned about the risks of a so-called investigation into the settled 2020 election led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman — a costly, bad-faith endeavor with no credibility or transparency. Remarkably, Gableman’s sham review and his partisan antics are still going on, with no end in sight. Just a few days ago, Gableman was campaigning at a rally with hyper-partisan actors in Wisconsin, including conspiracy theorists and candidates running on disinformation and lies. As a majority of Wisconsin voters know, the 2020 election was free, fair, and accurate —and occurred more than 18 months ago. But the bill to Wisconsin taxpayers for Gableman’s “investigation” of that election will be at least $676,000. This review is more than a waste of money. It’s dangerous. As the nearly 2,000 clerks in Wisconsin prepare for the mid-term elections, a more pernicious risk of the sham election review is emerging: that Gableman’s charade erodes confidence in our elections and the officials who make them run smoothly. It’s time for the so-called investigation to end, before Gableman does even more long-term damage in Wisconsin.
Full Article: Michael Gableman's vendetta over Wisconsin's 2020 election must endDeSantis taps Cord Byrd, self-described ‘Florida gun lawyer,’ to oversee elections | Steve Contorno/CNN
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has put in charge of the state's election systems a deeply conservative state lawmaker who has championed legislation to ban so-called sanctuary cities and calls himself the "Florida gun lawyer." DeSantis announced on Friday the appointment of state Rep. Cord Byrd as the next secretary of state, a day after the current officeholder, Laurel Lee, announced she was resigning. Byrd takes over the Florida Department of State at a critical juncture in the agency's history: For the first time, the office will oversee a new election security force with unprecedented authority to hunt for election and voting violations in the state. The new election force was a top priority for DeSantis, who signed a law to create the Office of Election Crimes and Security earlier this year. "Under the leadership of Governor DeSantis, Florida has led the way on election security and preserving freedom for its residents," Byrd said in a statement. "As Secretary of State, I will make sure Florida continues to have secure elections and that we protect the freedom of our citizens in the face of big-tech censorship and ever-growing cybersecurity threats." The change in leadership comes amid a busy midterm election cycle where DeSantis will be on the ballot, and with the Department of State embroiled in multiple lawsuits over Florida's new congressional map and a 2021 law that put new restrictions on mail-in voting and other election measures. On Thursday, a state judge called the new DeSantis-backed congressional boundaries unconstitutional because they diminish the power of Black voters in northern Florida, but an appellate court on Friday stayed the lower court's ruling.