National: Cameras, Plexiglass, Fireproofing: Election Officials Beef Up Security | Neil Vigdor/The New York Times
In Wisconsin, one of the nation’s key swing states, cameras and plexiglass now fortify the reception area of a county election office in Madison, the capital, after a man wearing camouflage and a mask tried to open locked doors during an election in April.In another bellwether area, Maricopa County, Ariz., where beleaguered election workers had to be escorted through a scrum of election deniers to reach their cars in 2020, a security fence was added to protect the perimeter of a vote tabulation center.And in Colorado, the state’s top election official, Jena Griswold, the secretary of state and a Democrat, resorted to paying for private security out of her budget after a stream of threats.As the nation hurtles closer to the midterm elections, those who will oversee them are taking a range of steps to beef up security for themselves, their employees, polling places and even drop boxes, tapping state and federal funding for a new set of defenses. The heightened vigilance comes as violent rhetoric from the right intensifies and as efforts to intimidate election officials by those who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election become commonplace.Discussing security in a recent interview with The Times, Ms. Griswold, 37, said that threats of violence had kept her and her aides up late at night as they combed through comments on social media. Full Article: Before Midterms, Election Officials Increase Security Over Threats - The New York TimesNational: Election activists are seeking the “cast vote record” from 2020. Here’s what it is and why they want it. | Rachel Leingang/Votebeat
Elections departments across the country are getting tons of near-identical requests for an obscure document generated by ballot-counting machines, spurred by people who insist this record could help detect fraudulent voting patterns that show former President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election. It is the latest example of the endless, fruitless quest for a smoking gun that has so far yielded no proof of wrongdoing affecting the election results. But the document, called a “cast vote record,” can’t be used to detect these kinds of patterns, nor is it particularly useful to people who aren’t researchers or auditors, experts say. And the sheer number of requests is overwhelming elections offices as they prepare for this year’s general election. “The remarkable thing is that there’s really a lot less here than it might seem in both directions. It’s way less ominous than it could be, but it’s also way less useful,” said Max Hailperin, a retired computer science professor who has researched election technology. Put simply, a cast vote record is the electronic representation of how voters voted. These lines of data appear in a spreadsheet full of zeros and ones to indicate the votes an anonymous ballot contained. Whether the resulting records can be made public varies around the country, and the exact definition and appearance of what’s included in a cast vote record also varies, depending on the jurisdiction and the voting technology it uses. Full Article: What is a cast vote record? Election activists seek obscure document from ballot tabulators. - Votebeat Arizona - Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and votingNational: Election conspiracies find fertile ground in conferences | Margery A. Beck and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press
On a quiet Saturday in an Omaha hotel, about 50 people gathered in a ballroom to learn about elections. The subject wasn’t voter registration drives or poll worker volunteer training. Instead, they paid $25 each to listen to panelists lay out conspiracy theories about voting machines and rigged election results. In language that sometimes leaned into violent imagery, some panelists called on those attending to join what they framed as a battle between good and evil. Among those in the audience was Melissa Sauder, who drove nearly 350 miles from the small western Nebraska town of Grant with her 13-year-old daughter. After years of combing internet sites, listening to podcasts and reading conservative media reports, Sauder wanted to learn more about what she believes are serious problems with the integrity of U.S. elections. She can’t shake the belief that voting machines are being manipulated even in her home county, where then-President Donald Trump won 85% of the vote in 2020. “I just don’t know the truth because it’s not open and apparent, and it’s not transparent to us,” said Sauder, 38. “We are trusting people who are trusting the wrong people.” It’s a sentiment now shared by millions of people in the United States after relentless attacks on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by Trump and his allies. Nearly two years after that election, no evidence has emerged to suggest widespread fraud or manipulation while reviews in state after state have upheld the results showing President Joe Biden won. Full Article: US election conspiracies find fertile ground in conferences | AP NewsNational: An ex-professor spreads election myths across the U.S., one town at a time | Annie Gowen/The Washington Post
One recent still summer night in this tiny city on the Nebraska prairie, more than 60 people showed up at a senior citizens center to hear attorney David Clements warn of an epidemic of purported election fraud. For two hours, Clements — who has the rumpled look of an academic, though he lost his business school professor’s job last fall for refusing to wear a mask in class — spoke of breached voting machines, voter roll manipulation and ballot stuffing that he falsely claims cost former president Donald Trump victory in 2020. The audience, which included a local minister, a bank teller and farmers in their overalls, gasped in horror or whispered “wow” with each new claim. “We’ve never experienced a national coup,” he told the crowd, standing before red, white and blue signs strung up alongside a bingo board. “And that’s what we had.” Clements, who has no formal training or background in election systems, spent months crisscrossing the back roads in his home state of New Mexico in a battered Buick, trying to convince local leaders not to certify election results. His words had an impact: In June, officials in three New Mexico counties where he made his case either delayed or voted against certification of this year’s primary results, even though there was no credible evidence of problems with the vote. Full Article: An ex-professor spreads election myths across the U.S., one town at a time - The Washington PostNational: Election Officials Have Been Largely Successful in Deterring Cyber Threats, CISA Official Says | Edward Graham/Nextgov
Increased coordination between federal agencies, election officials, and private sector election vendors has helped deter an influx of cyber threats directed at U.S. voting systems, an election official from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said on Thursday during an event hosted by the Election Assistance Commission and Pepperdine University. Mona Harrington, the acting assistant director of CISA’s National Risk Management Center—which includes the agency’s election security team—said that since election systems were designated as critical infrastructure in 2017, “the attacks have become much more sophisticated and the volume of attacks has certainly increased.” But with the partnerships that CISA and election officials have built, along with the products and services currently being used to mitigate potential risks, election officials have many of the tools needed to deter both nation state actors and non-nation state adversaries. Harrington noted that all 50 states have deployed CISA-funded or state-funded intrusion detection sensors in their systems, known as Albert sensors, and that hundreds of election officials and private sector election infrastructure partners have signed up for a range of CISA’s cybersecurity services, from recurring scanning of their systems for known vulnerabilities on internet-connected infrastructure to more in-depth penetration testing. Source: Election Officials Have Been Largely Successful in Deterring Cyber Threats, CISA Official Says - NextgovEditorial: Congress’s first job right now: Safeguarding democracy | The Washington Post
Congress has a lot on its to-do list ahead of November’s midterm elections — confirming circuit-court judges, funding the government and possibly enshrining same-sex marriage protections along the way. But at least as important is a piece of business getting less attention: passing the Electoral Count Reform Act. The bipartisan bill would mend and modernize the archaic 1887 law that governs the counting and certifying of votes in presidential elections — the same law that President Donald Trump and his allies tried to exploit to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election results. Reform would protect the democratic process from future attacks from unprincipled politicians who would manipulate the system to install their favored candidates in the White House, regardless of the voters’ will. The reform bill was introduced to some fanfare over the summer, after months of negotiations led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). It’s essential that the measure not lose steam this fall, amid competing priorities and political tumult. The packed Senate schedule that Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his party must navigate is only one problem. Another is naysaying from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, which might soon issue its own recommendations. Certainly, tweaks to the bill — some of them under discussion as part of the Rules Committee’s work-up — would strengthen the proposal. Some of them are easy to make and should be uncontroversial. Others, sensible or not, could imperil the entire enterprise. These should be approached with caution. Full Article: Opinion | Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act, now - The Washington PostCalifornia: ‘This cannot continue’: MAGA influencers are creating hell for elections offices | Eric Ting/San Francisco Chronicle
Natalie Adona, the clerk-recorder and registrar of voters in California’s Nevada County, is having a bad week. For almost two years now, her inbox has been inundated with public records requests from people who falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen. Thanks to a handful of online conspiracy theorists, though, this has been the worst week yet — not just for Adona, but for many election officials around the state. “The requests are growing exponentially,” she said. “There is some comfort in knowing that it’s not just us.” Every one of the requests, which are often copy/pasted from templates distributed by influencers peddling falsehoods about the 2020 election, must be carefully reviewed and responded to. Several counties have had to hire outside assistance to sort through the swarm, which officials told SFGATE is a labor-intensive distraction from their work preparing for the upcoming elections this year. Full Article: MAGA influencers creating hell for Calif. elections officesCalifornia: Election skeptics renew fraud claims, flood Shasta County official with records requests | David Benda/Redding Record Searchlight
For some in Shasta County, there are still questions to be answered about the 2020 presidential election. In a county where former President Donald Trump received nearly two-thirds of the vote, a vocal contingent of residents continues to voice grievances and parrot Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged. It all played out during the Aug. 30 Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting when emotions ran high during the public comment period. Many who spoke demanded that an audit of the 2020 election be conducted, the county stop using Dominion voting machines to count votes and all the data be preserved rather than destroyed or recycled, which is allowed 22 months after the election, according to the U.S. election code. They also called for the elimination of electronic voting and the ability to vote by mail. Ninety percent of the people in Shasta County who voted in the June 7 primary did not do so at a polling place, Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen said.
Full Article: Election skeptics renew fraud claims at raucous Shasta County meetingHandling of Georgia election breach investigation questioned | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A recording first surfaced six months ago claiming that a team copied “every piece of equipment” in Coffee County’s elections office after the 2020 election, but it wasn’t Georgia investigators who confirmed that confidential voting data had been taken. Instead, it took a lawsuit by private citizens to find documents showing that allies of then-President Donald Trump and their computer experts gained access to sensitive files in the rural South Georgia county. Critics of Georgia election officials say the secretary of state’s office has been slow-walking the breach investigation as it fights a court case alleging that equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems is vulnerable to insider attacks and hacks. The investigation has been pending for months, and few witnesses have been questioned. State election officials disagree, saying they’re still gathering evidence and there’s little threat to Georgia’s voting system after several people working for Sidney Powell, an attorney for Trump, copied election files on Jan. 7, 2021. They then distributed the data to conspiracy theorists who deny the results of the presidential election, which Trump lost. Similar incidents have resulted in indictments in Colorado and an attorney general’s investigation in Michigan. While the Georgia secretary of state’s office says it’s investigating, prosecutors in Fulton County moved quickly after the GBI opened a criminal investigation on Aug. 15. Full Article: Handling of Georgia election breach investigation questionedGeorgia: Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into elections office before voting machine breach | Zachary Cohen and Jason Morris/CNN
A Republican county official in Georgia escorted two operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump into the county’s election offices on the same day a voting system there was breached, newly obtained video shows. The breach is now under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and is of interest to the Fulton County District Attorney, who is conducting a wider criminal probe of interference in the 2020 election. The video sheds more light on how an effort spearheaded by lawyers and others around Trump to seek evidence of voter fraud was executed on the ground from Georgia to Michigan to Colorado, often with the assistance of sympathetic local officials. In the surveillance video, which was obtained by CNN, Cathy Latham, a former GOP chairwoman of Coffee County who is under criminal investigation for posing as a fake elector in 2020, escorts a team of pro-Trump operatives to the county’s elections office on January 7, 2021, the same day a voting system there is known to have been breached. The two men seen in the video with Latham, Scott Hall and Paul Maggio, have acknowledged that they successfully gained access to a voting machine in Coffee County at the behest of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. Text messages, emails and witness testimony filed as part of a long-running civil suit into the security of Georgia’s voting systems show Latham communicated directly with the then-Coffee County elections supervisor about getting access to the office, both before and after the breach. One text message, according to the court document, shows Latham coordinating the arrival and whereabouts of a team “led by Paul Maggio” that traveled to Coffee County at the direction of Powell. Full Article: Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into Georgia county's elections office before voting machine breach | CNN PoliticsGeorgia’s biggest county can’t find a top elections official | Matthew Brown/The Washington Post
It is in many ways an ideal job for a public servant with a passion for democracy — the chance to facilitate voting in Georgia’s most populous county, the electoral center of one of the most important political battlegrounds in the nation. Yet for 10 months, local leaders have been unable to hire a permanent director to run the Department of Registration and Elections in Fulton County, home to Atlanta. The previous director resigned in November and left the position in April, after pressure from local lawmakers and the turmoil of the 2020 election, when county staff endured death threats, baseless conspiracy theories, high-stakes audits and harassment from former president Donald Trump and his allies. Now, with Georgia in another highly charged campaign season and poised to play a pivotal role in the next presidential election, many here think the toxic swirl of state politics, national scrutiny, ongoing harassment and long-standing logistical issues has turned off potentially strong candidates and cast a shadow over the office itself. Full Article: Georgia's biggest county can’t find a top elections official - The Washington PostFormer Hawaii residents now living in US territories barred from voting in federal elections | Mary Pahlke/Courthouse News Service
A federal judge in Hawaii ruled Tuesday that prior residence in Hawaii doesn't give U.S. citizens the right to cast absentee ballots for the state in federal elections. “This case is not about the denial or deprivation of the right to vote, but about whether a failure to extend voting rights that do not otherwise exist violates the Equal Protection Clause. The statutes are not unconstitutional merely because they do not grant plaintiffs a right given to others, especially when plaintiffs’ fellow territorial residents lack such a right,” Otake wrote in the ruling. The case was first brought against the United States and the state of Hawaii two years ago, one month before the 2020 presidential elections. The plaintiffs claimed the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) and Hawaii’s corresponding Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act (UMOVA) unconstitutionally contribute to the disenfranchisement of residents in the territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and American Samoa. Although residents of U.S. territories can vote in primary elections, they are barred from voting in the general presidential and congressional elections. Activists have long decried the situation, pointing out that while residents can't have their voices heard, territories are still subject to the results of these elections. Full Article: Former Hawaii residents now living in US territories barred from voting in federal elections | Courthouse News ServiceKansas: “We’ve got to find soebody”: Johnson County Sheriff appears to lack probable cause in election inquiry | Jonathan Shorman/The Kansas City Star
Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden, who has spent months promoting a criminal investigation into elections, told a gathering of residents last week that “we’ve got to find somebody” who knows election rigging is happening. But the Republican sheriff appeared to acknowledge he doesn’t have probable cause, the legal standard required to seek a search or arrest warrant, after the investigation helped foster baseless suspicions of voter fraud. He also said he launched the inquiry to force the preservation of 2020 election records. The comments came during a nearly two-hour meeting inside a Johnson County Sheriff’s Office facility. Video of the meeting, which took place Aug. 30, was posted on Friday on Rumble, a video sharing platform popular among the right-wing politicians and supporters. Hayden’s remarks offer additional insight into an investigation that hasn’t led to any charges or arrests but has helped build his profile among election deniers. At the meeting, Hayden appeared to lay the groundwork to explain why his amorphous investigation hasn’t progressed. He told the audience that he has “tons of reasonable suspicion” but says he needs probable cause for a search warrant “to swear I know a crime has been committed.” He also alluded to baseless conspiracy theories that allege China stole the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump. Some Trump supporters, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, have promoted the baseless idea.
Source: Kansas sheriff: Election investigation started over records | The Kansas City Star