Editorial: American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic | Louis Menand/The New Yorker

To look on the bright side for a moment, one effect of the Republican assault on elections—which takes the form, naturally, of the very thing Republicans accuse Democrats of doing: rigging the system—might be to open our eyes to how undemocratic our democracy is. Strictly speaking, American government has never been a government “by the people.” This is so despite the fact that more Americans are voting than ever before. In 2020, sixty-seven per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot for President. That was the highest turnout since 1900, a year when few, if any, women, people under twenty-one, Asian immigrants (who could not become citizens), Native Americans (who were treated as foreigners), or Black Americans living in the South (who were openly disenfranchised) could vote. Eighteen per cent of the total population voted in that election. In 2020, forty-eight per cent voted. Some members of the loser’s party have concluded that a sixty-seven-per-cent turnout was too high. They apparently calculate that, if fewer people had voted, Donald Trump might have carried their states. Last year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, legislatures in nineteen states passed thirty-four laws imposing voting restrictions. (Trump and his allies had filed more than sixty lawsuits challenging the election results and lost all but one of them.) In Florida, it is now illegal to offer water to someone standing in line to vote. Georgia is allowing counties to eliminate voting on Sundays. In 2020, Texas limited the number of ballot-drop-off locations to one per county, insuring that Loving County, the home of fifty-seven people, has the same number of drop-off locations as Harris County, which includes Houston and has 4.7 million people.

Full Article: American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic | The New Yorker

The Arizona Republican Party’s Anti-Democracy Experiment | Robert Draper/The New York Times

R​​ose Sperry, a state committeewoman for Arizona’s G.O.P., answered immediately when I asked her to name the first Republican leader she admired. “I grew up during the time that Joe McCarthy was doing his talking,” Sperry, an energetic 81-year-old, said of the Wisconsin senator who in the 1950s infamously claimed Communists had infiltrated the federal government. “I was young, but I was listening. If he were here today, I would say, ‘Get him in there as president!’” Sperry is part of a grass-roots movement that has pushed her state’s party far to the right in less than a decade. She had driven 37 miles the morning of July 16, from her home in the Northern Arizona town Cottonwood to the outskirts of Prescott, to attend the monthly meeting of a local conservative group called the Lions of Liberty, who, according to the group’s website, “are determined to correct the course of our country, which has been hijacked and undermined by global elites, communists, leftists, deep state bureaucrats and fake news.” That dismal view of America today was echoed by nearly every other conservative voter and group I encountered across the state over the past year. Arizona has become a bellwether for the rest of the nation, and not just because of its new status as a swing state and the first of these to be called for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. It was and has continued to be the nexus of efforts by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies to overturn the 2020 election results. At the same time, party figures from Trump down to Rose Sperry have sought to blacklist every Arizona G.O.P. official who maintained that the election was fairly won — from Gov. Doug Ducey to Rusty Bowers, speaker of the state’s House of Representatives. Such leaders have been condemned as RINOs, or Republicans in name only, today’s equivalent of the McCarthy era’s “fellow travelers.”

Full Article: The Arizona Republican Party’s Anti-Democracy Experiment – The New York Times

Georgia: Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target in Trump Election Inquiry | Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim/The New York Times

The legal pressures on Donald J. Trump and his closest allies intensified further on Monday, as prosecutors informed his former personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that Mr. Giuliani was a target in a wide-ranging criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia. The notification came on the same day that a federal judge rejected efforts by another key Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, to avoid giving testimony before the special grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Atlanta. One of Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers, Robert Costello, said in an interview that he was notified on Monday that his client was a target. Being so identified does not guarantee that a person will be indicted; rather, it usually means that prosecutors believe an indictment is possible, based on evidence they have seen up to that point. Mr. Giuliani, who as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer spearheaded efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, emerged in recent weeks as a central figure in the inquiry being conducted by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta. Earlier this summer, prosecutors questioned witnesses before the special grand jury about Mr. Giuliani’s appearances before state legislative panels in December 2020, when he spent hours peddling false conspiracy theories about secret suitcases of Democratic ballots and corrupted voting machines.

Full Article: Giuliani Is a Target in Georgia’s Trump Election Inquiry, Lawyer Says – The New York Times

Kansas to recount abortion vote by hand, despite big margin | John Hanna/Associated Press

Kansas’ elections director says the state will go along with a request for a hand recount of votes from every county after last week’s decisive statewide vote affirming abortion rights, even though there was a 165,000-vote difference and a recount won’t change the result. Melissa Leavitt, of Colby in far western Kansas, requested the recount and declined to comment to reporters Friday evening, citing work obligations. But she said on an online site raising funds for a recount that she had “seen data” about the election. Her post was not more specific, and there is no evidence of significant problems with the election. Baseless election conspiracies have circulated widely in the U.S., particularly among supporters of former President Donald Trump, who has repeated false claims that he lost the 2020 election through fraud. Kansas law requires Leavitt to post a bond to cover the entire cost of the recount. Bryan Caskey, state elections director for the Kansas secretary of state’s office, said it would be the first recount of the votes on a statewide ballot question in at least 30 years.

Full Article: Kansas to recount abortion vote by hand, despite big margin | AP News

Louisiana: Conspiracies complicate voting machine debate | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The need for Louisiana to replace its voting machines is not in dispute. They are badly outdated — deployed in 2006, the year after Hurricane Katrina struck — and do not produce paper ballots that are critical to ensuring election results are accurate. What to do about them is another story. The long-running drama includes previous allegations of bid-rigging, voting machine companies claiming favoritism and a secretary of state who is noncommittal about having a new system in place for the 2024 presidential election. Local election clerks also worry about the influence of conspiracy theorists who have peddled unfounded claims about voting equipment and have been welcomed into the debate over new machines. “It would be a travesty to let a minority of people who have little to no experience in election administration tear down an exceptional process that was painstakingly built over many, many years,” Calcasieu Parish Clerk of Court Lynn Jones told state officials in a meeting this summer. “And for us to throw it out of the window because of unfounded theories is mind-boggling.” The uncertainty is playing out against a backdrop of attacks on the integrity of elections, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and promoted by a web of his allies and supporters. Some of those same supporters have been trying to convince election officials across the country that they should ditch machines in favor of paper ballots and hand-counts.

Full Article: Conspiracies complicate voting machine debate in Louisiana | AP News

Michigan: Preprocessing, more funding among clerks’ asks for legislature | Ben Orner/MLive.com

Michigan’s primary election passed by last week with few bumps in the road. But with the most decentralized election system in America, local clerks from both parties are calling for critical changes, and they want state lawmakers’ attention. Election results are notoriously slow in Michigan, with the most finger-pointing directed toward mail-in ballot processing. State law doesn’t allow tabulation of absentee ballots – which numbered more than 1.1 million in last week’s election – until 7 a.m. on Election Day. Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum told MLive that things ran smoothly in her jurisdiction on Aug. 2, but it could be smoother. She said there is room for lawmakers to add absentee (also called AV) ballot preprocessing, while also give more funding to train more election officials.

Full Article: Preprocessing, more funding among Michigan clerks’ asks for legislature – mlive.com

Nevada: Voter groups object to proposed hand-counting rules | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

As officials in some parts of rural Nevada vow to bypass voting machines in favor of hand counting ballots this November, the Nevada secretary of state’s office is proposing statewide rules that would specify how to do it, including requiring bipartisan vote counters, room for observation and how many ballots to count at a time. On Friday, four voting rights groups came out against the proposal, calling it an “admirable attempt to ensure higher standards” for counting votes by hand, but urging the secretary of state to prohibit the practice outright, noting that the push for hand-counting stems from “unfounded speculation” about voting machines. “The regulations are not enough to address the underlying accuracy issues and remediate the legal deficiencies of hand count processes,” the groups Brennan Center, All Voting is Local, ACLU Nevada and Silver State Voices said in a statement Friday. Both voting rights groups and hand-count proponents spoke at an online hearing Friday, the first meeting convened to discuss the regulations. Voting rights groups lobbied to prohibit hand-counts, while voting machine skeptics, a majority of the speakers, said the proposed regulations were a power grab meant to sabotage hand-counting.

Full AQrticle: Voter groups object to proposed Nevada hand-counting rules | AP News

New Mexico: Election official says paper shortage won’t impact ballots | Dan Boyd/Albuquerque Journal

A global paper shortage has raised concerns around the nation about whether enough ballots can be printed – and obtained in time – to run this fall’s elections. But a top New Mexico elections administrator said the paper paucity should not cause problems for state county clerks. Specifically, Deputy Secretary of State Sharon Pino said the state’s two outside ballot vendors have assured state officials they have a sufficient paper supply to conduct the Nov. 8 general election. “We are fortunate here in New Mexico,” Pino told the Journal. The paper shortage is due to a decline in U.S. paper production in recent years and supply chain issues, according to a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. The report said paper orders that previously took days or weeks are now taking months to process, while costs have increased by 40% or more in some cases. Transportation issues have also played a role in the paper shortage, with the American Trucking Association predicting that an existing shortage of truck drivers will worsen over the next decade.

Full Article: Election official says paper shortage won’t impact NM ballots – Albuquerque Journal

North Carolina elections board seeks rule changes to reduce conflicts with observers | Paul Specht/WRAL

During the state’s primary elections a few months ago, election observers posed a problem to voters in Davidson County. There to monitor that votes were entered and tabulated properly, these private citizens hovered or moved awkwardly through polling places in an effort to make sure election workers were doing their jobs correctly. “There were several that weren’t aware of where they could and could not be in the polling place,” Andrew Richards, Davidson County’s director, recently told the state elections board. “While most were perfectly fine, several demanded to be behind the machines to watch people vote. When told they could not be behind the voting equipment several became argumentative.” Richards added: “Clearer rules rather than just legal language is needed.” Election officials around North Carolina are reporting similar instances, including heated confrontations between voters, observers and election officials. In response, North Carolina’s state election board is proposing temporary rule changes for election observers. It’s an attempt to reduce confusion over existing laws and prevent interference that some counties reported when conducting the May primaries.

Full Article: NC elections board seeks rule changes to reduce conflicts with observers :: WRAL.com

Pennsylvania: Voting machine maker moves to subpoena former secretary of state | Zach Hoopes/PennLive

Dominion Voting Systems expects to depose Pennsylvania’s former secretary of state as part of a subpoena in the voting machine maker’s defamation case against Fox News regarding the 2020 presidential election. Documents from the Dauphin County prothonotary’s office indicate that Dominion expects to serve a subpoena to the Pennsylvania Department of State for records that may be germane to its lawsuit. As part of that, Dominion’s attorneys plan to depose former Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar next month. The $1.6 billion defamation case is being heard in Delaware Superior Court, with Dauphin County records showing Dominion’s attorneys filed notice to serve the out-of-state subpoena and deposition notice. The Department of State is aware of and reviewing the subpoena, according to department press secretary Grace Griffaton. In the lawsuit, filed last year, Dominion accuses Fox News and its affiliates of knowingly spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about the security of Dominion’s machines and the election results they produced, despite the cable news network having information from other sources – including from federal and state election monitors like the Pennsylvania Department of State – proving that such claims of widespread voting fraud were impossible. The subpoena covers any documents or communications regarding the Department of State’s certification of Dominion’s voting machines, the integrity of the 2020 election generally, and any communications the department may have had with Fox News or with the campaign of former President Donald Trump.

Source: Voting machine maker moves to subpoena Pa.’s former secretary of state

Texas: Threats against election workers occurring across state | Brian Kirkpatrick/Texas Public Radio

Threats against election administrators and county clerks are occurring throughout Texas as the mid-term election on Nov. 8 draws near. The threats are fueled by a tight governor’s contest and congressional races laced with intense partisan rhetoric and voter fraud misinformation. Voter turnout is expected to be increased by calls for gun control in the wake of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde this past May. The topic of abortion rights is also expected to send more voters to the polls after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade this summer. Voters will be looking to support like-minded candidates on both issues. Gillespie Elections Administrator Anissa Hererra and other office staff have resigned due to threats on social media that began after the 2020 election. Her last day on the job is Tuesday, Aug. 16. Election officials blame misinformation about voter fraud spread on social media across the country in the wake of the 2020 presidential election as contributing to the problem. The immediate past-president of the Texas Association of Election Administrators Remi Garza said he wants any election administrator or county clerk and other election workers in the state’s 254 counites speak up if they are threatened. “I hope they will speak out, so that others are aware of this activity so some common threats can be identified and maybe a wider solution can be achieved either through the legislature or through law enforcement,” said Garza, the Cameron County Elections Administrator.

Full Article: Threats against election workers occurring across Texas | TPR

Texas: Gillespie County elections admin resigns over death threats | Gabriel Romero/San Antonio Express-News

A Gillespie County employee is resigning from her job after dealing with death threats over the 2020 election, but she is not the first to leave. Gillespie County elections administrator Anissa Herrera told the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post that she will be leaving her position on Tuesday, August 16. “The year 2020 was when I got the death threats,” Herrera said to the Standard-Radio Post. “It was enough that I reached out to our county attorney, and it was suggested that I forward it to FPD (Fredericksburg Police Department) and the sheriff’s office.” Herrera was an inaugural member of the elections office and was with Gillespie County for almost a decade, according to the report. She was the elections clerk under the county clerk’s office before she was named elections administrator in 2019. After the 2020 election, Herrera’s tenure took a turn for the worse. She told the Standard-Radio Post that she was threatened, stalked, and was called out on social media. According to the report, other people in the elections department have left for similar reasons.

Full Article: Gillespie County elections admin resigns over death threats

Wisconsin: Robin Vos fires Michael Gableman, ending a 2020 election review that’s cost taxpayers more than $1 million and produced no evidence of fraud | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos fired Michael Gableman on Friday, more than a year after he hired the former Supreme Court justice to probe the 2020 election and three days after Vos barely survived a primary challenge Gableman supported. Vos ended Gableman’s contract with the state that has provided a national platform and more than $100,000 in salary to Gableman over the last 14 months but has produced a review of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss that has promoted election conspiracy theories and revealed no evidence of significant voter fraud. The review has cost state taxpayers more than $1 million through costs for salaries and legal fees related to lawsuits filed against Gableman and Vos over ignored requests for public records. Vos did not respond to multiple requests from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for comment. He told WISN-12’s Matt Smith in an interview for UPFRONT that Gableman was sent a letter. “We did it through the process of the contract,” Vos said. “I really don’t think there’s any need to have a discussion. He did a good job last year, kind of got off the rails this year and now we’re going to end the investigation.”

Source: Vos fires Michael Gableman, ending $1 million review of 2020 election

Election lies pose physical threat to US poll workers, House report warns | Victoria Bekiempis/The Guardian

A sweeping US House oversight committee report has warned that lies and misinformation around the 2020 American presidential election present an “ongoing threat to representative democracy” and pose a grave physical danger to election officials. The 21-page report called for emergency funding to address increased security costs related to 2022 contests and warned that there was a much-heightened risk that conspiracy theorists could gain power over elections in the future. The report also detailed chilling threats against election administrators across the country. One Texas official received menacing messages targeting him and “threatening his children, saying, ‘I think we should end your bloodline.’” The messages against him came following “personal attacks on national media outlets”. Another threat included a social media call to “hang him when convicted for fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out of his mouth”. The committee started investigating the impact of lies surrounding election administration in early 2021. After former Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he falsely insisted that the election was stolen from him.

Full Article: Election lies pose physical threat to US poll workers, House report warns | US elections 2020 | The Guardian

Barcode Voting Machines: The Most Unnecessary Gap in US Election Security | Elise Kline/WhoWhatWhy

Election technology experts are warning that barcode ballot marking devices (BMDs) are vulnerable to bad actors capable of committing the perfect crime: changing the information on a ballot and getting away with it without the voter even realizing it happened. The use of barcodes is one of these machines’ biggest downsides. When people vote with these BMDs, they fill out their ballot on a screen; a printer then produces a paper ballot marked with a barcode. To cast their ballot, users feed this paper into a third device that scans the barcode to record the vote. And that’s a problem. “Voters can’t read barcodes,” said Alex Halderman, professor of computer science and director of the Center for Computer Security and Society at the University of Michigan. “The problem is that you’re putting a potentially compromised computer in between the voter and the permanent and only record of their ballot.” Their susceptibility to these types of attacks is not the only problem; BMDs are also difficult to adequately test and audit, according to a 2022 research report from the University of California, Berkeley. The report demonstrates that even a small percentage of votes changed in a cybersecurity attack can alter the overall margin of results. It found that changing the votes on just 1 percent of ballots in a jurisdiction can alter the margin of a contest jurisdiction-wide by 2 percent, even if there are no undervotes or invalid votes.

Full Article: Barcode Voting Machines: The Most Unnecessary Gap in US Election Security – WhoWhatWhy

National: After Mar-a-Lago search, users on pro-Trump forums agitate for ‘civil war’ — including a Jan. 6 rioter | Ben Collins and Ryan J. Reilly/NBC

Some users on pro-Trump internet forums told users to “lock and load,” agitated for civil war and urged protesters to head to Mar-a-Lago in the hours after news broke that the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida compound on Monday. One user posting about the “civil war” shortly after the search was Tyler Welsh Slaeker, a Washington state man awaiting sentencing for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to previous research and statements posted online. A report in December by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative group, found that Slaeker posted to the pro-Trump internet forum TheDonald under the username “bananaguard62.” On Monday night, the username “bananaguard62” posted the top reply to the “lock and load” post. “Are we not in a cold civil war at this point?” the account asked. Another user responded, “several points ago.” Another top reply to Slaeker quoted a notorious antisemitic Nazi rallying cry.

Full Article: After Mar-a-Lago search, users on pro-Trump forums agitate for ‘civil war’ — including a Jan. 6 rioter

National: Historians privately warn Biden that America’s democracy is teetering | Michael Scherer, Ashley Parker and Tyler Pager/The Washington Post

President Biden paused last week, during one of the busiest stretches of his presidency, for a nearly two-hour private history lesson from a group of academics who raised alarms about the dire condition of democracy at home and abroad. The conversation during a ferocious lightning storm on Aug. 4 unfolded as a sort of Socratic dialogue between the commander in chief and a select group of scholars, who painted the current moment as among the most perilous in modern history for democratic governance, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting. Comparisons were made to the years before the 1860 election when Abraham Lincoln warned that a “house divided against itself cannot stand” and the lead-up to the 1940 election, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt battled rising domestic sympathy for European fascism and resistance to the United States joining World War II. The diversion was, for Biden, part of a regular effort to use outside experts, in private White House meetings, to help him work through his approach to multiple crises facing his presidency. Former president Bill Clinton spoke with Biden in May about how to navigate inflation and the midterm elections. A group of foreign policy experts, including former Republican advisers, came to the White House in January to brief Biden before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Full Article: Historians privately warn Biden: America’s democracy is on the brink – The Washington Post

National: CISA publishes cyber toolkit for election officials ahead of midterms | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday released a guide to digital threats facing state and local election officials and recommendations on how to mitigate them in the run-up to November. The “Cybersecurity Toolkit to Protect Elections” aims to help election administrators and their staffs protect themselves against threats including phishing, ransomware, email scams, denial-of-service attacks and other vectors that could potentially disrupt the voting process or confuse voters. The guide notes, for instance, that election officials “are often required to open email attachments, which could contain malicious payloads,” to run processes like absentee ballot applications. It also warns that a ransomware attack against an election office could scramble or leak voter registration data or the software used to publish unofficial election results. The cyber toolkit is the latest output from CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, or JCDC — the year-old initiative borrows its name from the band AC/DC — and comes as CISA Director Jen Easterly and many election officials gather in Las Vegas for the Black Hat and DEF CON events. Easterly launched the JCDC effort in 2021 to build engagement between federal cyber authorities, the tech industry and state and local governments.

Full Article: CISA publishes cyber toolkit for election officials ahead of midterms

National: At least 10 Republican nominees for state elections chief have disputed the legitimacy of the 2020 election | Daniel Dale/CNN

In at least 10 states, the Republican nominee for the job of overseeing future elections is someone who has questioned, rejected or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Secretaries of state will play a critical role in managing and certifying the presidential election in 2024. The distinct possibility that some of these secretaries will be people with a history of election denial is a major challenge for American democracy — especially because former President Donald Trump, who is widely expected to run again in 2024, continues to pressure state officials to discard the will of voters. The Republican nominees for secretary of state in the November 2022 midterm elections include three swing-state candidates who have made efforts to overturn 2020 results in their states: Mark Finchem of Arizona, Kristina Karamo of Michigan and Jim Marchant of Nevada. The Republican nominee in Republican-dominated Alabama, Wes Allen, expressed support for a 2020 lawsuit that sought to get the Supreme Court to toss out Joe Biden’s victory. The Republican nominee in Republican-dominated Indiana, Diego Morales, has called the 2020 election a “scam,” the vote “tainted” and the outcome “questionable.”

Full Article: At least 10 Republican nominees for state elections chief have disputed the legitimacy of the 2020 election – CNNPolitics

National: Five States Will Decide If the 2024 Election Can Be Stolen | Ryan Teague Beckwith and Bill Allison/Bloomberg

Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden failed, but his loyalists have never stopped trying to turn the US election system into one that would return him to the White House in 2024—fairly or otherwise. In the last two years, Republicans have sought to remove state officials who wouldn’t manufacture votes and falsely declare him the winner. They changed the way elections are run in response to his conspiracy theories. Most importantly, they’ve nominated people who insist Trump won as candidates for US Congress and governor, and for offices that certify the outcome. Has it worked? To answer that question, a team of Bloomberg journalists set out to find which states are most vulnerable to political election interference—and what it means for elections this fall and in 2024, when the White House will once again be at stake. We dug into laws in all 50 states and scrutinized the thousands of election-related bills proposed nationwide since 2020. We consulted election-security experts, voting rights advocates, election lawyers, academics and current and former elections administrators as well as decades of political research to zero in on how elections work.

Full Article: Five States Will Decide If the 2024 Election Can Be Stolen

National: Hunting for Voter Fraud, Conspiracy Theorists Organize ‘Stakeouts’ | Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson/The New York Times

One night last month, on the recommendation of a man known online as Captain K, a small group gathered in an Arizona parking lot and waited in folding chairs, hoping to catch the people they believed were trying to destroy American democracy by submitting fake early voting ballots. Captain K — which is what Seth Keshel, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who espouses voting fraud conspiracy theories, calls himself — had set the plan in motion. In July, as states like Arizona were preparing for their primary elections, he posted a proposal on the messaging app Telegram: “All-night patriot tailgate parties for EVERY DROP BOX IN AMERICA.” The post received more than 70,000 views. Similar calls were galvanizing people in at least nine other states, signaling the latest outgrowth from rampant election fraud conspiracy theories coursing through the Republican Party. In the nearly two years since former President Donald J. Trump catapulted false claims of widespread voter fraud from the political fringes to the conservative mainstream, a constellation of his supporters have drifted from one theory to another in a frantic but unsuccessful search for evidence. Many are now focused on ballot drop boxes — where people can deposit their votes into secure and locked containers — under the unfounded belief that mysterious operatives, or so-called ballot mules, are stuffing them with fake ballots or otherwise tampering with them. And they are recruiting observers to monitor countless drop boxes across the country, tapping the millions of Americans who have been swayed by bogus election claims.

Full Article: Hunting for Voter Fraud, Conspiracy Theorists Organize ‘Stakeouts’ – The New York Times

Arizona county that saw election snafu to waive city costs | Bob Christie/Associated Press

An Arizona county where the Aug. 2 primary election was beset with multiple issues that led to the firing of its election director will waive the costs for running municipal elections in 11 cities and towns and plans to hire an outside election expert to review what went wrong. The five-member Pinal County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday to waive more than $100,000 in costs it planned to bill the cities and towns for running the local elections. Seven cities and towns had local races left off early ballots that required the county to mail about 63,000 supplemental ballots. And County Attorney Kent Volkmer told the board that four other municipalities were affected by Election Day missteps that led to ballot shortages at about 20 of the county’s 95 polling places. “As the county manager clearly indicated, we fell below the expectations of our customers,” Volkmer told the board. “So I believe if this board is so inclined, I think there is good cause to waive for all of the various entities that we serve the municipal and town elections for.” “I think that’s a good idea due to the issues at hand,” Board Chair Jeffrey McClure. Last week, McClure had called the election issues “a major screwup” and Elections Director David Frisk was fired the next day. He had just been hired in March.

Full Article: Arizona county that saw election snafu to waive city costs | AP News

Colorado: Fact Checking Claims About Dominion Voting Systems and the Recount | Khaya Himmelman/The Dispatch

A recent article from The Gateway Pundit, which has a history of promoting false voter conspiracy theories, claims that Dominion Voting System machines failed a logic and accuracy test in El Paso County, Colorado, “for the upcoming hand recount of the 2022 Primary election.” In Colorado’s March primary, Mesa County clerk Tina Peters lost her primary bid for the secretary of state nomination by 88,224 votes and state Senate candidate Lynda Zamora Wilson lost her race by 8,710 votes. According to the article, “The recount was ordered (and paid for) by some of the candidates, including Mesa Clerk Tina Peters and El Paso senate candidate Linda [sic] Zamora Wilson, who had her election inexplicably overturned AFTER it had been called by local news without any explanation.” The article also references a viral tweet, which similarly claims that “Dominion voting machines fail logic & accuracy test in El Paso County, CO recount. Almost 60% of test ballots sent to adjudication.”

Source: Fact Checking Claims About Dominion Voting Systems and the Colorado Recount

Georgia: Courtroom showdowns ahead for Atlanta-based grand jury examining Trump and 2020 election | Bill Rankin and Tamar Hallerman/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Courtroom showdowns and appearances involving high-profile figures are on deck this week as part of the ongoing Fulton County investigation into what happened in Georgia after the 2020 presidential election. Rudy Giuliani, who represented former President Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn the election results in a half-dozen swing states, is scheduled to appear Tuesday before the special purpose grand jury aiding the investigation. Attorneys for U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a key ally of Trump’s, will go to federal court on Wednesday to fight a grand jury subpoena. And two other lawyers connected to the Trump campaign are teeing up challenges of their own in New Mexico and Colorado. Giuliani will certainly be asked about his appearances before two state legislative panels in December 2020. During three hearings, the former New York City mayor claimed widespread fraud infected Georgia’s presidential election. Giuliani showed an edited tape of ballots being counted in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena that he said was a “powerful smoking gun.” Both state and federal investigators have said Giuliani’s claims were baseless. Yet Giuliani continued to repeat those falsehoods, his subpoena alleges.

Full Article: Courtroom showdowns ahead for Atlanta-based grand jury examining Trump and 2020 election

Michigan: Trump-backed attorney general candidate involved in voting-system breach, documents show | Nathan Layne/Nathan LayneReuters

The Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting equipment while hunting for evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false election-fraud claims, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and public records. The analysis shows that people working with Matthew DePerno – the Trump-endorsed nominee for the state’s top law-enforcement post – examined a vote tabulator from Richfield Township, a conservative stronghold of 3,600 people in northern Michigan’s Roscommon County. The Richfield security breach is one of four similar incidents being investigated by Michigan’s current attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel. Under state law, it is a felony to seek or provide unauthorized access to voting equipment. DePerno did not respond to a request for comment. The involvement of a Republican attorney general nominee in a voting-system breach comes amid a national effort by backers of Trump’s fraud falsehoods to win state offices that could prove critical in deciding any future contested elections.

Full Article: Exclusive: Trump-backed Michigan attorney general candidate involved in voting-system breach, documents show | Reuters

Michigan Attorney General says 9 people are focus of voting machine breach investigation. Who are they? | Clara Hendrickson and Dave Boucher/Detroit Free Press

Michigan GOP attorney general candidate Matt DePerno is not the only one in the national spotlight after state investigators accused him of participating in a conspiracy to access voting machines in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. DePerno was part of a nine-person team now at the center of the criminal probe, according to the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel’s Office, along with Michigan State Police, are investigating a plot “to unlawfully obtain access to voting machines” used in the 2020 presidential election and recently petitioned an independent arm of the attorney general’s office to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against those allegedly involved. The group includes those who seized ballot tabulators, broke into them and assisted in gaining unauthorized access to the machines, according to a petition from Nessel’s Office. The petition claims that DePerno, lawyer Stefanie Lambert Junttila and state Rep. Daire Rendon, R-Lake City, “orchestrated a coordinated plan to gain access to voting tabulators” from Roscommon County, Richfield Township, Irving Township and Lake City Township. A group of four subsequently handled the equipment to conduct its own election review, according to the petition from the attorney general’s office. That team included Ben Cotton, Jeff Lenberg, Doug Logan and James Penrose.

Full Article: Michigan voting investigation: The 9 people at the center of the probe

Nevada officials offer regulations as hand-counts gain steam | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

Hand-counting teams of four, not all from the same party. Table centers at least 10 feet apart. Ballots counted 20 at a time. Those are some of the regulations the Nevada secretary of state’s office is proposing for how counties can count paper ballots by hand amid a growing push for the method in some rural parts of the state where election misinformation including a distrust of voting machines has grown. Mark Wlaschin, deputy secretary of state for elections in Nevada, said the regulations have been in the works for nearly a year and don’t come in direct response to events in Nye County, where the county clerk responsible for administering elections resigned last month after election conspiracies led to a successful push to hand-count votes.  “It’s been kind of an ongoing discussion across the nation, really. And as election officials at the state and county level, we try to think ahead,” he said of the guidelines, which will be discussed in an online meeting Friday with the public for feedback. If approved later this month, would be in place for November’s election.

Full Article: Nevada officials offer regulations as hand-counts gain steam | AP News

Ohio elections officials being hit with requests for lots of records from the 2020 vote | Karen Kasler/Statehouse News Bureau

Despite no credible claims of problems with the November 2020 vote in Ohio, dozens of huge requests for voting records from that election are coming in to county elections officials, as they’re finishing up work on a second statewide primary and gearing up for this fall’s election. Delivering on those could mean more work and costs for those boards and obstacles for workers, who are already dealing with a challenging election year. Ohio Association of Elections Officials president Brian Sleeth directs the Warren County Board of Elections. In an interview for “The State of Ohio”, he said seven requests have come in for basically anything related to the 2020 vote, including copies of all ballots and the results tapes that voting machines recorded twice a day, which can be up to 70 feet long each. “There’d be significant cost and copying everything in our office, for example, all of our ballots. Providing two-sided copies would be a job in itself,” Sleeth said. “And then they’ve asked for voting machine tapes. And those are like just a little cash register tapes that you would get at your supermarket when you go grocery shopping. Those are about 60 to 70 feet long each twice a day in the morning and evening. And they’ve asked for copies of those tapes too.”

Full Article: Ohio elections officials being hit with requests for lots of records from the 2020 vote | The Statehouse News Bureau

Pennsylvania elections official blames spreadsheet for state’s mistake in certifying a county’s election results | Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

A top elections official said Monday that “human error” in tracking the results of the May 17 primary election led Pennsylvania to inadvertently certify a county’s vote counts that the state deems to be inaccurate. The embarrassing revelation came in a filing before Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court, where the state is seeking to break a standoff with three counties — Berks, Fayette, and Lancaster — that refuse to include undated mail ballots in their official totals in defiance of guidance from the Department of State. The department, which oversees elections, sued the counties last month, asking a judge to order them to do so. But in a court filing Monday, Jonathan Marks, the deputy elections secretary, acknowledged that a fourth county, Butler, had also refused to count those ballots — and that the county had notified the department three weeks before the lawsuit was filed. Marks apologized to the court for what he described as an oversight resulting from “a manual process” — a spreadsheet — the department had used to track which counties were counting undated ballots. Butler County was misclassified in the spreadsheet, he said, and from that point forward was left out of the state’s campaign to push counties that hadn’t included them. As a result, the state didn’t include Butler County in its lawsuit. It certified the county’s election results along with 63 other counties.

Full Article: Pa. elections official blames spreadsheet for state’s mistake in certifying a county’s election results

Texas election workers saw increased threats after 2020 voter fraud claims | Eric Neugeborn/The Texas Tribune

A rise in election-related misinformation has led to increased threats and intimidation of election workers in Texas and other states, according to a report released Thursday by a U.S. House committee. A Texas elections administrator from Tarrant County told the committee there was a social media call to “hang him when convicted for fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out of his mouth.” The official’s home address was leaked and he received messages threatening his children, including one that said “I think we should end your bloodline.” That official, Heider Garcia, was the target of a smear campaign by allies of former President Donald Trump and prominent right-wing media personalities, purporting a falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud. The claim of widespread voter fraud in the election has been repeatedly debunked, and several of Trump’s own aides have stated that the election was fair. “To this day, not a single person or entity has been held accountable for the impact this whole situation had on my family and myself,” Garcia wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year.

Full Article: Texas election workers saw increased threats after 2020 voter fraud claims | The Texas Tribune