National: Security officials worry about homegrown election threats | Zeba Siddiqui and Christopher Bing/Reuters

Domestic disinformation campaigns and homegrown threats to poll workers are emerging as bigger concerns ahead of the Nov. 8 U.S. congressional elections than foreign interference, according to U.S. cybersecurity and law enforcement officials. Russia and Iran, accused of meddling in past U.S. elections using disinformation campaigns, are enmeshed in their own crises - the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Iranian mass protests - and have not yet been found to have targeted this election, said two senior U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. According to information disclosed as part of criminal cases, Russian and Iranian intelligence units deployed hackers and fake social media accounts in recent U.S. elections to try to influence the vote and sow discord. Election integrity has been a contentious issue in the United States, particularly in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Republican former President Donald Trump continues to make false claims that the election was stolen from him by Democrat Joe Biden through widespread voting fraud. Full Article: U.S. security officials worry about homegrown election threats | Reuters

It’s Hard To Run Elections These Days. Just Ask Nevada’s Election Officials. | Kaleigh Rogers/FiveThirtyEight

“We’ve had the death threats,” Stacie Wilke-McCulloch said. “We’ve had the, ‘We know where you live,’ and all that.” As a trustee on the school board for Carson City, Nevada, for the past 14 years, Wilke-McCulloch is no stranger to harassment, particularly as school boards bore the brunt of criticism over controversial curricula and school closures related to COVID-19. As a result, she’s gained a thick skin that may serve her well in what she hopes will be her next job: Carson City County Clerk-Recorder. Once occupying a low-profile, largely bureaucratic position, county clerks are increasingly the target of intense public vitriol. Typically the chief election official for their communities, county clerks and other local election workers have faced harassment from voters convinced the 2020 election was fraudulent, thanks to former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. As a result, some election officials are leaving their posts — and in some places, election deniers are signing up to replace them. But that’s only one part of the story. Across the country, many local election officials are staying put with the support of their communities. And in Nevada, where county clerks are up for election this fall, the full spectrum of local election administration is on display: the good, the bad and the conspiracy-riddled. Full Article: It’s Hard To Run Elections These Days. Just Ask Nevada’s Election Officials. | FiveThirtyEight

National: Some Republicans Want to Count Votes by Hand. Bad Idea, Experts Say. | Maggie Astor/The New York Times

Over the past two years, Republicans have pursued an array of changes to how Americans vote. The past few weeks have drawn attention to a particularly drastic idea: counting all ballots by hand. Officials in Cochise County, Ariz., recently pushed to do that in next month’s election, and whether or not they go through with it, the efforts may spread. Republicans in at least six states introduced bills this year that would have banned machine tabulation, and several candidates for statewide offices have expressed support, including Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the party’s nominees for Arizona’s governor and secretary of state, and Jim Marchant, its nominee for Nevada’s secretary of state. The New York Times spoke with six experts in election administration, and all said the same thing: While hand counting is an important tool for recounts and audits, tallying entire elections by hand in any but the smallest jurisdictions would cause chaos and make results less accurate, not more. “People who think they would have greater confidence in this process think so because they haven’t seen it,” said Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization focused on election technology. “The process in real life would not inspire confidence at all on this scale.” Full Article: Some Republicans Want to Count Votes by Hand. Bad Idea, Experts Say. - The New York Times

National: How America casts and counts its votes | Reuters

Misinformation online and false claims of election fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies have sharply eroded public trust in the integrity of U.S. elections. How Americans vote — and the equipment they use — varies widely, and some methods are more vulnerable to efforts to shake that trust. Heading into the 2022 midterms, election experts say the move in most states to hybrid voting systems – paper ballots tallied by electronic machines – could give voters greater confidence. The United States invested hugely in paperless electronic voting machines after the contested presidential election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush in 2000 shook election officials’ confidence in paper ballots. By 2006, the share of registered voters using paperless machines had surged, though hand-marked paper ballots that are later scanned by electronic tabulators remained the most popular. For the next decade, about a third of all votes were cast on direct recording electronic machines. Full Article: Explainer: U.S. midterm elections: How America casts and counts its votes | Reuters

National: Election deniers in charge of some county election offices are continuing to sow mistrust in the electoral system | Bob Ortega, Audrey Ash, Curt Devine and Scott Bronstein/CNN

Pop into a meeting of the Board of Elections in Spalding County, Georgia, and it may appear like any other eye-glazing gathering of bureaucrats being led by a no-nonsense chair. “We hang our political hats at the door when we come in and do the people’s work,” Board Chairman Ben Johnson said at one meeting earlier this year. “There ain’t no room for politics in elections.” But Johnson’s stated beliefs don’t appear to be so easily left at the door. An election-conspiracy believer, Johnson has authored a social media post to “fellow insurrectionists” and proclaimed that Joe Biden “is an illegitimate president.” On social media, he has called for banning electronic voting machines, early voting and mail-in voting; echoed debunked claims about “ballot trafficking;” and proudly posted a photo with MyPillow founder and election conspiracist Mike Lindell. Among other actions since taking office, Johnson has voted not to renew the county’s maintenance contract with Dominion Voting Systems – a frequent target of election conspiracy theories. As chairman, Johnson will have charge of the county board’s certification of the November midterm results – and his actions and continuing claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent have raised concerns over how he and the Republican-controlled board will handle the upcoming election. Full Article: Election deniers in charge of some county election offices are continuing to sow mistrust in the electoral system | CNN Politics

National: Pro-Trump conspiracy theorists hound election officials out of office | Linda So, Joseph Tanfani and Jason Szep/Reuters

Businessman Robert Beadles claimed he had found evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Then he went on the attack, targeting a 48-year-old woman who runs elections in Nevada’s Washoe County. “Now, let’s talk about treason. That’s right, treason,” Beadles told a Feb. 22 county commissioners’ meeting in Washoe, the second-largest county in this election battleground state. The Republican activist falsely accused the registrar of voters, Deanna Spikula, of counting fraudulent votes and told commissioners to “either fire her or lock her up.” After the meeting, Spikula’s office was flooded with hostile and harassing calls from people convinced she was part of a conspiracy to rig the election against former U.S. President Donald Trump. On March 2, a caller threatened to bring 100 people to the county building to “put this to bed today.” Spikula, under severe stress, stopped coming into the office. A post on Beadles’ website said she was “rumored to be in rehab.” That was false, she said; she was at home, working on a state elections manual. By late June, fearing for her family’s safety, she’d had enough and submitted her resignation. Beadles’ campaign in Washoe is part of a wave of efforts by pro-Trump activists to gain control of voting administration by replacing county government leaders with election conspiracy theorists. Some are spending big money. In Nevada, Beadles has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaigns targeting opponents of Trump’s false rigged-election claims and backing Republicans who believe them. Full Article: Pro-Trump conspiracy theorists hound election officials out of office

National: Right-Wing Leaders Mobilize Corps of Election Activists | Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

On the eve of a primary runoff election in June, a Republican candidate for secretary of state of South Carolina sent out a message to his supporters. “For all of you on the team tomorrow observing the polls, Good Hunting,” Keith Blandford, a candidate who promoted the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump, wrote on the social media app Telegram. “You know what you are looking for. We have the enemy on their back foot, press the attack.” The next day, activists fanned out to polling places in Charleston, S.C., demanding to inspect election equipment and to take photographs and video. When election workers denied their requests, some returned with police officers to file reports about broken or missing seals on the machines, according to emails from local officials to the state election commission. There were no broken or missing seals. After Mr. Blandford lost, the activists posted online a list of more than 60 “anomalies” they observed, enough to have changed the outcome of races, they said. They called the operation a “pilot program.” The episode is one of many that have election officials on alert as voting begins for midterm elections, the biggest test of the American election system since Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 results launched an assault on the democratic process. Full Article: Right-Wing Leaders Mobilize Corps of Election Activists - The New York Times

National: Voting and vote-counting concerns grow ahead of midterms | Rick Klein, Averi Harper, and Alisa Wiersema/ABC

Almost 2 million people have already voted in this year's general election -- a level of participation reached earlier than ever in a midterm cycle, according to the University of Florida's U.S. Elections Project. With 22 days -- and what may be more than 100 million more ballots -- to go before Nov. 8, the pace of voting is set to pick up even as questions grow around almost every aspect of voting: access to ballots, manpower running elections, the pace and integrity of vote counting and, of course, whether results will be accepted by losing Republicans up and down the ballot. Early voting starts Monday in Georgia, a state at the center of so many of 2020's political storms and where additional voting restrictions have been imposed since then. Monday night's debate between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams is likely to surface questions about 2022 in a high-profile way. Other key states, meanwhile, are already warning that vote counting could take days after Election Day to complete -- and that if that happens, it doesn't indicate there's automatically something to mistrust about the results. Full Article: Voting and vote-counting concerns grow ahead of midterms: The Note - ABC News

National: Poll Shows Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority | Nick Corasaniti, Michael C. Bender, Ruth Igielnik and Kristen Bayrakdarian/The New York Times

Voters overwhelmingly believe American democracy is under threat, but seem remarkably apathetic about that danger, with few calling it the nation’s most pressing problem, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. In fact, more than a third of independent voters and a smaller but noteworthy contingent of Democrats said they were open to supporting candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as they assigned greater urgency to their concerns about the economy than to fears about the fate of the country’s political system. The doubts about elections that have infected American politics since the 2020 contest show every sign of persisting well into the future, the poll suggested: Twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 41 percent of Republicans, said they had little to no faith in the accuracy of this year’s midterm elections. Political disagreements appear to be seeping into the fabric of everyday life. Fourteen percent of voters said political views revealed a lot about whether someone is a good person, while 34 percent said it revealed a little. Nearly one in five said political disagreements had hurt relationships with friends or family. “I do agree that the biggest threat is survival of our democracy, but it’s the divisiveness that is creating this threat,” said Ben Johnson, 33, a filmmaker from New Orleans and a Democrat. “It feels like on both sides, people aren’t agreeing on facts anymore. We can’t meet in the middle if we can’t agree on simple facts. You’re not going to be able to move forward and continue as a country if you can’t agree on facts.” Full Article: Poll Shows Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority - The New York Times

Editorial: The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has. | Jamelle Bouie/The New York Times

The move from democracy to autocracy isn’t a sudden shift. It is not a switch that flips from light to dark with nothing in between. But it’s also not quite right to call the path to authoritarianism a journey. To use a metaphor of travel or distance is to suggest something external, removed, foreign. It is better, in the U.S. context at least, to think of authoritarianism as something like a contradiction nestled within the American democratic tradition. It is part of the whole, a reflection of the fact that American notions of freedom and liberty are deeply informed by both the experience of slaveholding and the drive to seize land and expel its previous inhabitants. As the historian Edmund Morgan once wrote of the Virginians who helped lead the fight for Anglo-American independence, “The presence of men and women who were, in law at least, almost totally subject to the will of other men gave to those in control of them an immediate experience of what it could mean to be at the mercy of a tyrant.” Virginians, he continued, “may have had a special appreciation of the freedom dear to republicans, because they saw every day what life without it could be like.” Full Article: Opinion | The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has. - The New York Times

Arizona: Early voters in midterms report harassment by poll watchers | Rachel Leingang/The Guardian

A voter in Maricopa county, Arizona, claims a group of people watching a ballot drop box photographed and followed the voter and their wife after they deposited their ballots at the box, accusing them of being “mules”. The voter filed a complaint with the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the US Department of Justice and the Arizona attorney general’s office for investigation, according to Sophia Solis, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office. The incident allegedly occurred at a Mesa, Arizona, outdoor drop box on the evening of 17 October. Early voting, both in person and via mailed ballots, began on 12 October ahead of the midterm elections. “There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot drop box filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the drop box and accusing us of being a mule. They took a photographs [sic] of our license plate and of us and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film,” the voter wrote in the complaint. In Arizona, voters can only drop off ballots for themselves, people in their households or families, or people they’re providing care for. Other states don’t ban so-called ballot harvesting. The practice became illegal in Arizona in 2016. Full Article: Early voters in Arizona midterms report harassment by poll watchers | US midterm elections 2022 | The Guardian

Colorado Secretary of State appoints election supervisor in Elbert County, where Republican clerk copied voting machine hard drives | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold has appointed a supervisor to help oversee elections in Elbert County, the second such order she’s issued this week. On Monday, she appointed a supervisor in Pueblo County. In each case, Griswold cited mistakes made by the clerks. Both will still be involved with running the upcoming midterm elections in their respective counties but with additional oversight. Griswold said her decision to issue an order in Elbert County is due to the ongoing investigation into the actions taken by the Republican clerk Dallas Schroeder when he made copies of the county’s voting machine server. While it’s not illegal to capture an image of the hard drive, Schroeder told state investigators that he made copies with two county employees present and two outside people guiding them by phone, and then gave the duplicates to two attorneys. “The decision to appoint a Supervisor in Elbert County follows a 2021 election security protocol breach where Republican Clerk Dallas Schroeder violated Colorado Elections Rules by giving unauthorized individuals copies of images of the county’s voting system hard drives,” said a statement from Griswold’s office. Full Article: Secretary of State appoints election supervisor in Elbert County, where Republican clerk copied voting machine hard drives | Colorado Public Radio

Georgia: Judge: Trump knew his voting fraud stats were inaccurate | avid Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Then-President Donald Trump knew claims that thousands of people voted illegally in Georgia were inaccurate when he included them in a lawsuit that sought to overturn Joe Biden’s victory here, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. In a December 2020 lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court, Trump claimed 10,315 dead people, 2,560 felons and 2,423 registered voters cast ballots illegally in the presidential election. He later incorporated those claims when he contested the Fulton County proceedings in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. But correspondence among his attorneys shows Trump knew the statistics were false by the time he vouched for them in the federal lawsuit. In Wednesday’s ruling, a federal judge in California found that Trump’s false verification of the voting fraud statistics in Georgia was part of an effort to delay the Jan. 6, 2021, congressional certification of Biden’s victory. He made the determination after reviewing hundreds of emails that a Trump attorney sought to withhold from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. And he ordered some of the emails to be released to the committee. “The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter wrote. “The court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” Full Article: Judge: Trump knew his Georgia voting fraud stats were inaccurate

Michigan GOP scores victory in election challenger lawsuit | Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press

With the midterm election just weeks away, a Michigan judge issued an order Thursday invalidating new instructions for election challengers created by the Bureau of Elections. The order from Michigan Court of Claims Judge Brock Swartzle marks a legal victory for the Michigan GOP and Republican National Committee which brought the lawsuit challenging the legality of the election challenger manual issued by the Bureau of Elections this year. Swartzle's order bars election officials from using the manual and requires Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Michigan elections director Jonathan Brater to rescind the manual or revise it to comply with Michigan election law. Swartzle found that some of the provisions in the manual such as a ban on the use of electronic devices at absentee counting boards were at odds with the law or failed to undergo the proper rule-making procedure with input from the public and state lawmakers. Full Article: Michigan GOP scores victory in election challenger lawsuit

Nevada ACLU takes ballot-counting lawsuit to State Supreme Court | Associated Press

The Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency petition to the state Supreme Court on Monday challenging Nye County and its interim clerk's plan to count election votes by both hand and machine, a method crafted by elected officials and candidates acting on false claims of election fraud. The complaint is nearly identical to the ACLU lawsuit that was recently dismissed in Nye County District Court due to technicalities. The district judge there did not receive a record of the publicly available county commission meeting referenced in the petition from the ACLU. She said it was unreasonable for the court to go through a 7 1/2-hour meeting, among other issues. The ACLU asked the court to rule by Friday, five days before Nye County officials plan to start early hand-counting of mail-in ballots and one day before early in-person voting starts statewide. In an email, Nye County's interim clerk Mark Kampf declined to comment on the lawsuit. “Instead, the County is devoting its limited time and resources to furthering its obligations to the voters of Nye County,” Kampf said, adding that the county is still finalizing the physical setup of polling places. They will offer tours of its facilities prior to the start of early voting, he added. The ACLU said the plan to start counting mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day risks public release of early voting results. It alleges that county officials' method of using a touch-screen tabulator for people with “special needs” illegally allows election workers to ask about a voter’s disability or turn away otherwise eligible voters based on “arbitrary decision making,” and that Nye County’s wording of “special needs” is ambiguous. Full Article: ACLU takes ballot-counting lawsuit to Nevada Supreme Court

New Mexico braces for confrontational poll watchers | Morgan Lee/Associated Press

New Mexico’s top elections regulator said Wednesday that precautions are being taken to guard against the possibility of deliberate disruptions by party-appointed poll challengers and watchers in the ongoing general election. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said at a news briefing that she is aware of efforts to recruit poll challengers by people who believe the election process is rigged and may want to interfere. “Maybe they feel like at the end of the day, even if they ultimately get removed, that they’ve been able to slow down the process, cause folks to get discouraged,” Toulouse Oliver said. “As long as a challenger is following the rules and not obstructing the election process and not interposing challenges in bad faith, they can stay there the entire process. But when we start seeing this other behavior, that’s when they have to go.” At the same time, Toulouse Oliver has encouraged people with concerns about the integrity of elections to volunteer and work at the polls under oath. She said hundreds of new poll workers have responded. Poll challengers and watchers have traditionally functioned as an essential element of electoral transparency at polling locations, acting as the eyes and ears of major political parties to help ensure that the mechanics of voting are administered fairly and accurately. Full Article: New Mexico braces for confrontational poll watchers | AP News

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia might scale back a process for catching double votes — because of GOP ‘election integrity’ rules | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia elections officials are poised to remove or significantly scale back a procedure meant to catch double votes. Ironically, it’s because of rules Republicans imposed on “election integrity grants.” Otherwise, the city risks losing millions of dollars. The procedure, known as poll book reconciliation, compares mail ballots with poll books from Election Day. If a person is listed in the poll books as voting in person but the city also receives a mail ballot from the same voter, the mail ballot is rejected to ensure only one vote per person counts. The process caught dozens of accidental double votes in 2020, but none in the last three elections. But poll book reconciliation temporarily stops the vote count, sometimes for a day or more. And that appears to conflict with a new state law known as Act 88, which provides state election funding with conditions, including that counting “continue without interruption.” Now local officials have to decide whether to risk millions of dollars by keeping the procedure in place to catch double votes — or expose anew a vulnerability that was addressed in previous elections. Full Article: Philadelphia catches double votes. Republican 'election integrity' rules make it harder.

Texas County Asks for U.S. Election Monitors as State Plans to Send Inspectors | eil Vigdor/The New York Times

Officials from Harris County in Texas on Thursday requested federal election monitors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division after the State of Texas confirmed this week that it would send a contingent of election inspectors there during the midterms in November. The state’s move added a layer of scrutiny tied to an active examination of vote counts from 2020 that former President Donald J. Trump had sought. But that step quickly drew criticism from some officials in Harris, Texas’ most populous county, which includes Houston. They accused the state of meddling in the county’s election activities as early in-person voting is about to begin on Monday in Texas. Christian D. Menefee, the county’s attorney, said in a statement on Thursday that the state’s postelection review was politically driven and initiated by Mr. Trump. Still, he said, the county would cooperate with the inspectors. “We’re going to grant them the access the law requires, but we know state leaders in Austin cannot be trusted to be an honest broker in our elections, especially an attorney general who filed a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Menefee said. “We cannot allow unwarranted disruptions in our election process to intimidate our election workers or erode voters’ trust in the election process.” Full Article: Texas County Asks for U.S. Election Monitors as State Plans to Send Inspectors - The New York Times

Texas election administrators are under attack. Here’s what that means for the midterms. | Jerey Schwartz/The Texas Tribune

With the 2022 midterms less than a month away, election administrators in Texas and elsewhere continue to face a level of harassment and threats that experts say had never been experienced before the November 2020 presidential election. In August, the entire staff of the elections office in Gillespie County, about 80 miles west of Austin, resigned, citing threats, “dangerous misinformation” and a lack of resources. The same month, Bexar County elections administrator Jacque Callanen told KSAT, a San Antonio news station, that her department was confronting similar challenges. “We’re under attack,” Callanen said.“Threats, meanness, ugliness.” She added that staff members were drowning in frivolous open-records requests for mail ballots and applications. Texas is one of several states targeted by right-wing activists who are seeking to throw out voter registrations and ballots, according to The New York Times. Last month, angry activists disrupted a routine event in which officials publicly test voting equipment outside of Austin, swarming the Hays County elections administrator and Texas Secretary of State John Scott, a Republican, while alleging unproven election law violations. Full Article: How harassment of election administrators could impact the midterms | The Texas Tribune

Wisconsin: Who’s behind all the election administration lawsuits? | Elizabeth Pierson and Nicole Safar/Wisconsin Examiner

Over the past few weeks, months, and even years, dozens of challenges have been mounted to Wisconsin’s election laws and how our clerks run elections. A close look reveals that a small handful of conspiracy theorists and right-wing movement lawyers are driving these lawsuits and administrative complaints. These actors have clearly defined, antidemocratic interests that are not aligned with what most Wisconsinites want from their government. Who are these people so determined to block the will of the people and reshape our elections, and what do they want? ... These right-wing lawyers and their funders have a clear agenda: if their public policies and candidates cannot win the contest of ideas in free and fair elections, they will stop at nothing to undermine free and fair elections. Their tactics are particularly bold considering that conservative Republican lawmakers actually built our election administration system. The Wisconsin Elections Commission was created under one-party Republican rule in 2015. In 2016, when then-candidate Donald Trump won the presidential election in Wisconsin, nobody from WILL or the St. Thomas More Society had any problem with the absentee voting process—the same process in place in 2018, 2020, and now 2022. Fast-forward to 2020 and then-Vice President Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin, and suddenly, the right-wing agenda favored by WILL and the St. Thomas More Society was in danger. So, they began to attack the very systems their allies had created. Full Article: Who’s behind all the election administration lawsuits?   - Wisconsin Examiner