New Hampshire: Effort to eliminate ballot-counting machines snags | Casey McDermott/Concord Monitor

A newly animated movement to eliminate ballot-counting machines in New Hampshire ran stalled out this week at the State House and in town elections, where the issue was on the ballot in about a dozen communities. On Wednesday, the House Election Law Committee unanimously voted against a bill that would have required all future elections in New Hampshire to be hand-counted. And the day before, voters across the state rejected similar mandates at the local level. Cities and towns can choose whether to count ballots by hand or by machine. Most opt to use the AccuVote, the only machine currently approved for use in New Hampshire, and hand-counting is largely limited to towns with 2,000 voters or less. Local activists and some Republican state lawmakers, spurred by mistrust in the outcome of the 2020 election, have been pushing to hand count all of New Hampshire’s future elections. In addition to rallying behind a bill to ban machines statewide, they also organized petition drives to put the issue before voters in a handful of communities this spring. House Election Law Committee Chairwoman Barbara Griffin, a Republican from Goffstown, said members of the panel waited to finalize their opinion on the statewide ban on vote-counting machines until voters had a chance to weigh in on the issue in Tuesday’s town elections. “There is no town that voted yesterday that supported the elimination of the counting devices that are currently used,” Griffin said. “So I think that to require this for every community in the state would not be appropriate.”

Full Article: Effort to eliminate ballot-counting machines snags

New Hampshire voters will weigh in on AccuVote ballot machines | Todd Bookman/NPR

Voters in the town of Milton, N.H., will this week be asked to weigh in on more than 30 different local issues, things like the school budget, the next fire chief and even the type of lightbulbs used in streetlamps. But another item on Milton’s town meeting ballot could reshape the town’s election process itself: Residents will decide whether election officials should continue using a ballot counting machine, known as the AccuVote, or revert to a hand count. Milton is one of more than a dozen New Hampshire communities voting on vote-counting this town meeting season, after activists who question the accuracy and security of the state’s ballot counting machines launched a campaign to ditch them. The activists behind the push to hand-count all ballots contend, without proof, that the machines can be hacked or rigged, and their effort follows baseless claims of widespread issues with the 2020 election. State and local election officials say the AccuVote — the only approved ballot counting machine in New Hampshire — has proven itself reliable at the polls and in an exhaustive outside audit held last spring.

Full Article: New Hampshire voters will weigh in on AccuVote ballot machines : NPR

Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law has its day in Supreme Court | Stephen Caruso/Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Roles were reversed in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday, as attorneys argued over the fate of the state’s three-year-old mail-in voting law, with lawyers for Gov. Tom Wolf arguing to protect legislative power, and lawyers for 14 dissident lawmakers arguing to undo a law that 11 of them had voted to approve. The law, known as Act 77, was declared unconstitutional in a 3-2 January decision by the state’s Commonwealth Court, as it ruled on two challenges to the law — one brought by the Republican lawmakers, as well as a separate one from Bradford County Commissioner Doug McClinko. Act 77 was approved in a deal between the GOP-controlled General Assembly and Democrat Wolf, in which the General Assembly passed no-excuse absentee ballots, and Wolf agreed to eliminate straight-ticket voting. The bill also provided funding to counties to replace decertified voting machines. It passed with near-unanimous Republican support. But a three-judge Commonwealth Court panel that initially invalidated the law ruled that universal mail-in balloting should have been passed as a constitutional amendment, which requires a referendum, rather than as a statute signed into law.

Source: Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law has its day in Supreme Court – Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Nevada: Nye County commissioners considering all paper elections, hand-counting ballots | Sean Golonka and Jacob Solis/The Nevada Independent

On Tuesday, Nye County commissioners will discuss a proposal to have the 2022 primary and general elections use only paper ballots and count those ballots by hand — the latest response by a rural Nevada county to greatly overhaul election administration in response to unproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Republican Commissioner Debra Strickland’s request for the agenda item points to “concerns about the integrity of the voting process” raised by many Nye County citizens and states that it “will help reassure voters that their voice is heard, and their votes are accurately recorded.” In November 2020, nearly 70 percent of Nye County voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump for President, a significantly larger percentage than the share of voters registered as Republicans in the county that month (48 percent). Strickland told The Nevada Independent in an interview Monday that the proposal would eliminate the use of the county’s Dominion Voting Systems electronic machines during the elections, if accepted by Nye County Clerk Sandra Merlino. The position of Nye County clerk is elected and not appointed, meaning jurisdictional issues prevent the county commission from ordering the clerk’s office to take a specific course of action. If Merlino accepts the request, her office would be responsible for hand-counting thousands of ballots in June and November this year — a time-consuming and costly process often mired by human error but that has gained widespread attention and support amid false narratives about the security of electronic vote tabulators.

Full Article: Nye commissioners considering all paper elections, hand-counting ballots – The Nevada Independent

Tennessee: Here’s why Williamson County is switching to new voting machines after state review | Cole Villena/Nashville Tennessean

Williamson County will use new voting machines in its 2022 election cycle following vote tabulation discrepancies found during the October election. The discrepancies did not affect the final vote tally of those elections, which were verified through a hand count. “The primary concern that we have at the Williamson County Election Commission is that elections are held with fidelity and transparency, and that voters would have confidence in the results,” said Election Commission Chair Jonathan Duda. “This process has demonstrated that we’re going to go to all efforts to ensure that occurs, and that’s precisely what we’re doing here.” The county will rent and use Electronic Systems & Software machines in the 2022 election cycle. The machines function similarly to the Dominion voting machines used in previous elections and will output vote tallies both on physical “tapes” — essentially printed receipts — and electronically. The Tennessee State Department and third-party analysts recommended the switch in a February letter to the Election Commission. Duda served on the Williamson County Election Commission during the 2021 election cycle and was recently named chair. Former chair Bob Brown left the role to serve as U.S. House candidate Beth Harwell’s campaign manager.

Full Article: Williamson County to ditch Dominion voting machines after state review

Texas: Harris County election chief resigns as political parties demand answers over fumbled vote count | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

With counting holdups and missed ballots marring what amounted to a low-turnout election,Harris County’s election administrator has announced she is resigning amid pressure from local leaders of both political parties to explain what went wrong in last week’s primary. Houston-area voters saw relatively few issues on election day, but days later the state’s largest county faced a 10,000 vote-sized problem. Over the weekend, Harris County election officials announced that thousands of mail-in ballots — 6,000 Democratic and 4,000 Republican — had been mistakenly left off the county’s vote tally. This came after unofficial results were significantly delayed in part because more than a thousand ballot sheets were damaged as voters tried out the county’s new voting machines. On Tuesday afternoon, the Houston Chronicle reported that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, said she wanted a change in leadership and intended to replace election administrator Isabel Longoria. Shortly after, Longoria announced she would step down on July 1. Her resignation came after Harris County Democrats called for a comprehensive post-election review, while Republicans — regular adversaries of the county’s Democratic leadership — simultaneously sued the county and demanded Longoria’s resignation.

Full Article: Parties seek answers after Harris County fumbles election vote count | The Texas Tribune

Wisconsin Elections Commission debates how electronic voting data is stored | Anthony Dabruzzi/Spectrum

Now that state lawmakers have wrapped up their legislative business, many will turn their focus to the campaign trail. As they do, the Wisconsin Elections Commission is continuing to work through its own changes for running elections. Commissioners put their focus on how electronic voting system data is currently stored, during a virtual meeting Wednesday. For every ballot cast in Wisconsin, there is a paper artifact, which is the first way to validate results. Hence, discussion of the issue isn’t really about tabulation, rather retention in case questions are ever raised. All across the state, data within electronic voting systems are being kept properly, according to a recent analysis by commission staff. However, the guidance for how information should be stored is 12 years old and doesn’t carry the force of law.

Full Article: WEC debates how electronic voting data is stored

National: GOP pushes for an ‘earthquake in American electoral power’ | Zach Montellaro/Politico

A legal argument lurking in two Supreme Court cases could give Republican legislators in battleground states sweeping control over election procedures, with ramifications that could include power over how states select presidential electors. Republicans from Pennsylvania and North Carolina challenged court-ordered redistricting plans in their states based on the “independent legislature” theory. It’s a reading of the Constitution, stemming from the 2000 election recount in Florida, that argues legislators have ultimate power over elections in their states and that state courts have a limited ability — or even none at all — to check it. The Supreme Court turned away the GOP redistricting challenges on Monday, largely on procedural grounds. But at least four justices embraced the “independent legislature” theory to some degree, which would consolidate power over election administration in key states with GOP-dominated state legislatures, from the ability to draw district lines unchallenged to passing new restrictions on voting. Taken to its extreme, some proponents of the theory argue it would give legislators power to override the choice of presidential electors after voting in their states. Even if five justices signed on to a version of the independent legislature theory, it is unclear how far reaching a ruling will be, said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine School of Law who does not support the theory. “There’s a lot of potential for nuance here,” he said. “Even if you had a majority of justices that agreed that there’s something to this theory, they might not agree that a particular state has violated it.”

Full Article: GOP pushes for an ‘earthquake in American electoral power’ – POLITICO

National: Replacing outdated voting equipment could cost $350M, researchers say | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

Jurisdictions in 23 states are using voting equipment that’s more than decade old and no longer manufactured, according to a report published Tuesday by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. And equipment designed to assist voters with physical disabilities to cast private ballots is still being used in parts or all of 26 states. All told, it could cost upward of $350 million to replace all the outmoded equipment, researchers concluded. The glimpse at assistive voting machines was one part of a now-biennial report the Brennan Center conducts on the state of election infrastructure across the United States. While state and local election officials nationwide have made significant upgrades to their voting technology in recent years — fueled in large part by $380 million in federal grants awarded in 2018 and private donations from the likes of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — tens of millions of voters still reside in jurisdictions where balloting devices are aged, no longer supported by their original vendors or both, the Brennan Center found. “Machines are aging past their projec­ted life cycle without being replaced, leav­ing juris­dic­tions with systems that are signi­fic­antly more than a decade old,” the report reads. “Many of these systems are no longer manu­fac­tured, which can make it diffi­cult or impossible to find replace­ment parts.” The 23 states where principal voting machines are no longer in production account for about 21 million registered voters, according to the Brennan Center. When including the states and territories where the assistive devices are also out-of-date — a group that includes Florida and New York — that figure approaches 40 million registered voters.

Full Article: Replacing outdated voting equipment could cost $350M, researchers say

Many Texas voting locations did not open because of staff shortages | Reese Oxner and Uriel J. Garcia/The Texas Tribune

Several voting locations throughout the state were unable to open Tuesday during the primary election because of election staff shortages, causing some to open later in the day and others to shut down completely. Locations in Dallas, Tarrant and Hidalgo counties reported missing either a Republican or Democratic Party election judge. These staff members are appointed by their respective parties to oversee polling sites. If one of the parties’ judges is absent, the polling site cannot operate. That’s because by state law, no polling site can serve only one party, Tarrant County elections administrator Heider Garcia told The Texas Tribune. Garcia said it was difficult to recruit polling staff this year, but he couldn’t say exactly why. “I honestly can’t tell you why people are not motivated,” he said. “Was it pay? Was it lack of interest? Was it stress over possible penalties? I mean, I don’t know. We need to reach out to the people who said no.” During last year’s legislative sessions, Texas lawmakers created new criminal penalties for election workers accused of interfering with poll watchers’ activities. The new rules were enacted after many Republican officials echoed former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, despite there being no evidence. Election officials and voting rights groups warned legislators that the new restrictions could have a potential chilling effect on election workers. James Slattery, a senior staff attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, pointed to the new voting laws, often referred to as Senate Bill 1, as a possible deterrent that kept election judges from participating in Tuesday’s elections.

Full Article: Many Texas voting locations did not open because of staff shortages | The Texas Tribune

National: Is the Supreme Court ready to upend the power of state courts in disputes over federal elections? | Ariane de Vogue/CNN

As the Supreme Court continues to mull major questions concerning the future of Roe v. Wade and the Second Amendment, Republicans in North Carolina are now asking the justices — on an emergency basis — to possibly change how US elections are decided. Election law experts are carefully watching the case, believing that the justices will ultimately reject a request from Republicans to freeze an opinion by the North Carolina Supreme Court that blocked a congressional map, drawn by the GOP-led legislature, that favors Republicans. Among other reasons, the justices may not want to step in with changes too close to election deadlines. But embedded in the case are arguments that have attracted some members of the court’s right wing in the past as they apply to setting election rules and played a role in the litigation surrounding then-President Donald Trump’s quest to use the courts to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. If a majority of the court were ever to adopt those arguments, it could profoundly change the landscape of election law.

Full Article: Is the Supreme Court ready to upend the power of state courts in disputes over federal elections? – CNNPolitics

National: Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump | Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result. In a court filing in a civil case in California, the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman and other allies could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people. The filing also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been stolen amounted to common law fraud. The filing disclosed only limited new evidence, and the committee asked the judge in the civil case to review the relevant material behind closed doors. In asserting the potential for criminality, the committee largely relied on the extensive and detailed accounts already made public of the actions Mr. Trump and his allies took to keep him in office after his defeat.

Full Article: Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump – The New York Times

National: New evidence shows Trump was told many times there was no voter fraud — but he kept saying it anyway | Rosalind S. Helderman, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger/The Washington Post

A data expert for former president Donald Trump’s campaign told him bluntly not long after polls closed in November 2020 that he was definitely going to lose his campaign for reelection. In the weeks that followed, multiple top officials at the Justice Department informed Trump that they had closely examined allegations of fraud that were being circulated by Trump’s close allies — and had found them simply untrue. And in the days leading up to the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, even Trump’s loyal vice president, Mike Pence, repeatedly conveyed to Trump that he did not believe the Constitution gave him the power to overturn the election as he presided over the counting of electoral college votes giving the presidency to Joe Biden. These and other new details were included in a legal brief filed late Wednesday by lawyers for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as they began to build a case that Trump was knowingly misleading his followers about the election and pressuring Pence to break the law in the weeks and hours before the assault. According to the panel and others, at least 11 aides and close confidants told Trump directly in the weeks after the election that there was no fraud and no legal way to overturn the result. The committee’s goal was to convince a federal judge there is a “good-faith basis” for concluding Trump and others engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to defraud the United States and obstruct Congress before the attack on the Capitol — and to prove that Trump was acting corruptly by continuing to spread lies about the election long after he had reason to know he had legitimately lost.

Full Article: New evidence shows Trump was told many times there was no voter fraud — but he kept saying it anyway – The Washington Post

National: Attacks from within seen as a growing threat to elections | Christia A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Election officials preparing for this year’s midterms have yet another security concern to add to an already long list that includes death threats, disinformation, ransomware and cyberattacks — threats from within. In a handful of states, authorities are investigating whether local officials directed or aided in suspected security breaches at their own election offices. At least some have expressed doubt about the 2020 presidential election, and information gleaned from the breaches has surfaced in conspiracy theories pushed by allies of former President Donald Trump. Adding to the concern is a wave of candidates for state and local election offices this year who parrot Trump’s false claims about his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. “Putting them in positions of authority over elections is akin to putting arsonists in charge of a fire department,” said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat and former law school dean who serves as Michigan’s top elections official. Experts say insider threats have always been a concern. But previously, the focus was mostly on what a volunteer poll worker or part-time employee could do to a polling place or county system, said Ryan Macias, who advises officials at the federal, state and local levels on election security. Now the potential harm extends to the very foundation of democracy — conducting fair elections.

Full Article: Attacks from within seen as a growing threat to elections | AP News

Arizona Republicans continue pushing voting restrictions, risking backfire | Kirk Ziegler/NPR

By last count at the Arizona State Capitol, close to a hundred voting bills have been introduced, part of a nationwide push by far-right Republican controlled legislatures to pass restrictive voting laws. The swing state of Arizona is front and center — home to 10% of all the proposed legislation — despite two audits showing no problems with the 2020 Presidential Election. One of those, done by the Florida firm, Cyber Ninjas, actually handed more votes to President Biden, who narrowly won Arizona. Critics of the so-called voter reform push see it as part of a slide toward authoritarianism. But State Rep. John Fillmore, an architect of some of the bills currently pending in Arizona, disputes claims that Republicans want to suppress votes. “I want every American to have the opportunity to vote,” Fillmore said one sunny morning on the plaza in front of the Arizona House of Representatives. Fillmore represents one of Arizona’s most conservative districts around Apache Junction, in the suburban desert east of Phoenix. The businessman often seen in a bolo tie says many of the proposed bills, which range from measures to require all ballots be hand counted to restrictions on ballot drop off boxes, are a response to concerns by his constituents.

Full Article: Arizona Republicans continue pushing voting restrictions, risking backfire : NPR

Colorado: Election conspiracy groups target county clerks, seeking access to voting equipment | Saja Hindi/The Denver Post

For an hour and a half, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman met with a small group of people that showed up at his office to talk about what they insisted were deep-rooted security and fraud problems within Colorado’s election systems. Problems that Broerman, a Republican, and other election officials have repeatedly said don’t exist. Among the visitors was 2020 election denier Shawn Smith of an effort called the U.S. Election Integrity Plan — a group that claims election irregularities and fraud in the 2020 elections in Colorado. One of their requests to Broerman during the meeting in May: give access to the county voting equipment and allow a third party to conduct “a forensic audit.” Broerman declined, but he described to them in detail the redundant systems of election security measures to show why elections in his county are secure and reliable. The clerk said Smith, of Colorado Springs, then responded, “Clerk Broerman, we will either do this with you or through you.” “I took that as a threat that if I didn’t do that, that there would be repercussions for not doing what they wanted me to do,” he said. That wasn’t the last Broerman heard from this group or others. He, like other local elections officials across the country, have been facing increased pressure from people trying to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections using unfounded claims of election fraud, spreading the lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

Full Article: Colorado county clerks defend against voter fraud claims

Georgia’s race to oversee voting pits an election denier against an election defender | Miles Parks/NPR

Over cheeseburgers, onion rings and fried chicken salads, people shared what they’d heard. Something “crooked” was going on across the country. In California, for instance, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom hadn’t actually won his recall election last year by the 3 million votes that was reported. “They found boxes of ballots months later, all for the other guy,” someone whispered. The TV over the bar at the Flying Machine restaurant in Lawrenceville, Ga., was turned to Fox News, and Republicans gathered to talk about what they’ve been talking about for much of the past year and a half: voter fraud. “How many feel that the 2020 elections were a little sketchy?!” asked DeKalb County GOP Chair Marci McCarthy, to cheers. “Everybody should be raising their hands!” The restaurant event was the 12th and final stop in a three-day “election integrity” tour put on by one of the nation’s preeminent election deniers, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga. Hice objected to the 2020 election results at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just hours after it had been stormed by a violent pro-Trump mob. And now, the former pastor is running to oversee voting in Georgia as the secretary of state.

Full Article: Georgia secretary of state race pits Hice against Raffensperger : NPR

Michigan clerks ask lawmakers to ‘put politics aside,’ pass election changes before November | Samuel J. Robinson/MLive.com

Two associations representing Michigan clerks are calling for lawmakers to put politics aside in favor of bipartisan changes to the state’s election procedures. A letter signed by Delta Township Clerk Mary Clark, president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks and Menominee County Clerk Marc Kleiman, president of the Michigan Association of County Clerks, laid out what needs to happen before the November 2022 election this fall. “As we face another major election year with insufficient funding, continued high volume of absentee voting, and increased scrutiny due to the 2020 cycle, we need our leadership to focus on problem-solving rather than political wins and losses,” leaders wrote in their letter. “There is no doubt that Americans are divided over the past election; but improvements that lead to better run elections have the power to lessen the tensions of mistrust and unite us in a common goal of accessible and secure elections.” Bipartisanship has been absent from conversations regarding election rule changes since the November 2020 election, when former President Trump and his remaining allies cast doubt on the election results through a series of unfounded allegations that have failed to hold up in courtrooms across the nation. Though most Republicans in the Michigan Legislature concede President Joe Biden won fairly, they remain committed to overhauling voting laws based on concerns expressed by those within their base who do not trust the November 2020 election results.

Full Article: Michigan clerks ask lawmakers to ‘put politics aside,’ pass election changes before November – mlive.com

Nebraska Secretary of State Evnen: ‘No credible evidence’ that voting machines have been mistaken | Paul Hammel/Nebraska Examiner

Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen, in often emphatic terms, rejected allegations Wednesday that the state’s ballot-counting machines could be hacked by “foreign adversaries.” Evnen, testifying toward the end of an afternoon-long public hearing, said Nebraska’s ballot-counting machines are never connected to the internet and are designed so they cannot be connected to the internet, so they cannot be “hacked.” He said the machines were recently certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent U.S. government agency created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Beyond that, Evnen said each machine is subject to three runs of “test decks” of ballots before each election, to ensure their accuracy. “There is no credible evidence to show our ballot counting machines have rendered a false result,” said the secretary, whose office conducts the state elections. Evnen testified before the Legislature’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs against a bill that would require extensive testing of each ballot-counting machine prior to an election to assure that it could not be somehow connected to the internet. Evnen, a conservative Republican seeking re-election this year, said Legislative Bill 1121 was unnecessary and would be an “astronomical” waste of taxpayer money. “I believe in the rule of law. I have dedicated my entire life and career to the rule of law,” Evnen said.

Full Article: Evnen: ‘No credible evidence’ that voting machines have been mistaken

Nevada lawmakers split on regulations enshrining switch to mostly mail election | Sean Golonka and Jacob Solis/The Nevada Independent

Lawmakers on the Legislative Commission approved most, but not all, of more than two dozen largely technical election regulations Monday that had drawn staunch opposition from state Republicans. During the meeting, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Mark Wlaschin told the commission that the regulations — including what some may consider controversial changes amid the election integrity policy climate — were clarifying laws that already existed, including some major changes passed last year. Approval came ahead of a Feb. 28 deadline for those regulatory changes to be in place for the 2022 primaries in June. The commission, a panel of legislators charged with giving final approval to proposed regulations from state agencies, is composed of six Republican and six Democratic lawmakers, which allows for partisan disagreements to sink certain regulations — such as the college student vaccine mandate, which failed to pass in December. A majority of the election regulations — 18 of 30 — were approved without further discussion, and another four were approved unanimously after concerns raised by commission members were addressed by Wlaschin. But not every regulation made it through the process unscathed. Two were held up after the commission deadlocked on votes, with Democrats in support and Republicans in opposition.

Full Article: Lawmakers split on regulations enshrining switch to mostly mail election – The Nevada Independent

New Jersey bills advance to allow early counting of vote-by-mail ballots, increase poll worker pay | Michelle Brunetti Post/Press of Atlantic City

Bills to increase poll worker pay and allow elections officials to begin opening and processing mail-in ballots 10 days before Election Day were passed out of a Senate committee Thursday. Under S856, early votes may begin to be counted 24 hours after the conclusion of the early voting period, and elections officials can begin opening the inner envelopes and canvassing each mail-in ballot 10 days prior to Election Day. The Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism & Historic Preservation Committee passed the bill, with only state Sen. Vince Polistina, R-Atlantic, voting against it. “Rather than allow the potential release of information, why not get more machines and people (to count the votes on Election Day),” Polistina said. “Let’s get the right number of machines and people.” Currently, mail-in ballots cannot begin to be counted until Election Day, and early votes cast during the early voting period can only be counted after the polls close. Disclosure of results prior to the close of polls on the day of the election is a crime of the third degree.

Full Articl: Bills advance to allow early counting of vote-by-mail ballots, increase poll worker pay | Govt-and-politics | pressofatlanticcity.com

South Carolina House effort to expand early, no-excuse voting gets unanimous support | Emily Bohatch/The State

House Republicans rejected a push from within their own party Wednesday to close the state’s primary elections, and instead unanimously advanced a bipartisan proposal that would add two weeks of excuse-free early voting and allow local election offices to count ballots early. Lawmakers passed the bill, sponsored by House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, in the wake of a record breaking number of absentee ballots cast in 2020. South Carolina offered no-excuse absentee voting because of the ongoing pandemic. As a result, more than a million residents took advantage. Under current law, South Carolina voters can only cast absentee ballots if they meet certain criteria, such as a disability or older than 65 years old. The House bill would set a permanent, no-excuse necessary in-person voting period Monday through Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., in the two weeks ahead of general elections, primaries, primary runoffs, special and municipal elections. Voters who look to vote absentee by mail, however, would still be required to have an excuse. The bill also contains provisions that would allow election workers to begin tallying absentee ballots one day earlier than is currently allowed. Specifically, election workers would be allowed to look at outer envelopes of returned absentee ballots the Sunday before Election Day, and they would be allowed to begin counting ballots the Monday morning before.

Full Article: SC lawmakers expand early voting, quash move to close primaries | The State

Tennessee: Shelby County Election and County Commission chairs propose voting machine compromise to end lawsuit | Katherine Burgess/Memphis Commercial Appeal

The chairs of the Shelby County Election Commission and Shelby County Commission have come up with a compromise on voting machines that they hope will lead to the end of litigation between their two bodies, Election Chairman Brent Taylor announced Monday. Whether that will happen hinges on the votes of the members of the two commissions, with election commissioners voting in support of the plan Monday night. The compromise is simple, Taylor described Monday: Voters at the polls will be offered the choice between using a ballot marking device or filling out a hand-marked paper ballot. “What both the County Commission and Election Commission want to make sure of is the election workers do not couch this in a way where we’re exhibiting a preference to where they cast their ballot,” Taylor said. Later that day, Taylor announced his resignation from the Election Commission and that he would be announcing his plans in the coming week. A Republican who has served on both the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, he is expected to seek further public office. Taylor said the proposed compromise arose from conversations with County Commission Chairman Willie Brooks Jr., who was not present at the news conference Monday in which Taylor announced the proposed solution.

 

Full Article: Shelby County Election, County Commission chairs: voting machines

Texas: Travis County not saying what led to website crash on election night | Ryan Autullo Sarah Asch/Austin American-Statesman

As Travis County voters fired up their digital devices Tuesday night to check the results of the county’s Democratic and Republican primaries, they encountered what would be the most perplexing development of the evening: There were no results to be found. As results from the early voting period began to flow in from other major Texas counties, in Travis County — home to some of the world’s most powerful technology corporations — there was nothing but an error message on the Travis County clerk’s office elections website. “Error establishing a database connection,” the site showed. The website remained down for about 40 minutes, at which time the clerk’s office said on social media that its information technology department was working to publish the results on Travis County’s main website. About 10 minutes later, after nearly an hour with voters and candidates not knowing what was happening in the races, the results were finally posted. It’s still not clear what caused the problem — no Travis County officials would discuss it or answer questions on Wednesday, despite multiple requests for comment from the American-Statesman. Travis County spokesman Hector Nieto referred questions to the county clerk’s office. Victoria Hinojosa, an executive assistant in the clerk’s office who handles media requests, did not respond to multiple messages left Wednesday.

Full Article: Travis County not saying what led to website crash on election night

Wisconsin: Gableman report calls for decertifying 2020 election. The Legislature’s nonpartisan lawyers say that’s not possible. | Shawn Johnson/Wisconsin Public Radio

The special counsel hired by Wisconsin Republicans to investigate the 2020 presidential election told lawmakers Tuesday that they “ought to take a very hard look” at decertifying the election, a move that has been widely dismissed as legally impossible. Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman also said private grants used to run the election constituted “election bribery” and called on lawmakers to “eliminate and dismantle” the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The commission’s administrator, he said, should be fired. The suggestions to lawmakers come a week after the state Assembly held what Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said was likely the final session day of the year. Vos, who hired Gableman last year, had also billed these recommendations as Gableman’s final report. But Gableman, who acknowledged some uncertainty over his own contract with the Legislature, vowed that his investigation would continue. “This will not end today,” Gableman said at the start of the hearing. “This is an important topic, and there’s a lot of work to do. And I will be back.” Gableman’s assertion that the Legislature should — or even could — decertify the presidential election has next to no support, either in the judicial system where he once served, or among lawmakers from either party in the Wisconsin Legislature.

Full Article: Gableman report calls for decertifying 2020 election. The Legislature’s nonpartisan lawyers say that’s not possible. | Wisconsin Public Radio

Louisiana: Amid national controversy, commission to select new voting system | Mark Ballard/The Advocate

Born from the widespread, if incorrect, fears that American elections are tainted, the Voting Systems Commission met five times over the past six months. The commission’s work could conclude Wednesday when it votes on recommendations to Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin on how to conduct Louisiana elections into the future. Many conservatives argued to the commission that they want to replace voting machines with hand-marked paper ballots that are counted by hand. And that method is among the four options to be considered Wednesday by the commission. But an abundance of problems attends that system, not the least of which is disenfranchising disabled voters without sight or use of their hands. “My preference at this point is ballot marking devices (that prints a paper receipt) that the voters can verify and then put into an electronic scanner that maintains an electronic copy of it and a paper copy for audit purposes and tabulates it, so that we can have election results on election night,” Ardoin said in an interview. “I prefer that option because it gives us an opportunity to provide for our disabled individuals to be able to vote as independently as possible.” It’s a method he sought in two failed proposals before controversy over the 2020 presidential election results turned the temperature high on the issue. Ardoin has no idea of how much that system would cost, even a ballpark figure. He suspects it’ll be very expensive. “That’s why the law says ‘recommendations to the secretary.’ I’ve got to be able to make responsible decisions. I might want a Porsche, but I might only be able to afford a mid-sized van,” Ardoin said.

Full Article: Amid national controversy, commission to select new voting system for Louisiana | State Politics | theadvocate.com

District of Columbia: New legislation could bring mobile voting but experts warn that the technology isn’t ready | Lauren Lumpkin/The Washington Post

New proposed legislation could bring mobile voting to the District, a measure that supporters say would enfranchise more eligible voters throughout the city. Meanwhile, some experts warn that the type of technology needed to support mobile voting on such a large scale isn’t ready and could further erode the public’s trust in elections. In December, several groups signed a letter to District officials urging them “not to adopt, test or develop internet voting of any kind.” … “The appeal is obvious. We all can agree that if there’s a safe way to make it as easy as possible for eligible voters to vote, we should do it. People very much want mobile voting to be that,” said Mark Lindeman, a director at Verified Voting, which focuses on election technology. “But we haven’t figured out a way to do it safely and verifiably.” Part of the problem stems from the way the Internet was created, Lindeman said. “The Internet still is, foundationally, what is was built to be by academics going back to the 1970s, and academics weren’t really thinking of building a system that was private and secure,” Lindeman said. Their priority, instead, was sharing information as quickly as possible. During an age in which millions of Americans bank and shop online, casting votes on the Internet may seem safe enough for some. But J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan professor and electronic voting expert, said standards for voting should be higher. “In banking, a certain amount of fraud is just accepted as the cost of doing business. But that’s just not how we view elections. We want there to be no fraud in elections,” Halderman said. “Frankly, it’s phenomenally retrograde to consider Internet voting in the present moment because we know sophisticated attackers have our election systems in their sights.”

Full Article: District bill could bring mobile voting to city in 2024 – The Washington Post

Utah bill to end default mail-in voting fails in raucous hearing | Bridger Beal-Cvetko/Deseret News

A bill that would have returned Utah to in-person voting by default failed to advance from committee on Wednesday after opponents argued that it could disenfranchise voters and had few discernible security benefits. HB371, sponsored by Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, was heard in the House Government Operations Committee before an at times rambunctious crowd of supporters who filled five separate overflow rooms. Committee vice chairman Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, had to repeatedly remind them to refrain from outbursts. Lyman said his bill was a necessary step to protect Utah elections from fraud and reinstate voter faith in elections. From a security standpoint, “our elections are pretty wide open,” he said — a claim that lacks evidence and Utah election officials contest. Although the bill would require voters to specifically request an absentee ballot be mailed to them, Lyman said the key provision in the bill was one that would require an independent audit after each election. He falsely claimed that precincts in Salt Lake and San Juan counties saw voter turnout as high as 200-300% in recent years and said that matching voter rolls to mail-in ballots “becomes really problematic.” “In essence, what we’re doing … is we’re blanketing communities with ballots assuming that the people that we’re sending them to are legitimate on the voter rolls, whether they requested it or not,” he said.

Full Article: It’s time to ‘get down to what’s real’: Utah bill to end default mail-in voting fails in raucous hearing | KSL.com

National: Election Workers Are in Crisis. Will Congress Actually Help? | Sam Brody/Daily Beast

Defiance County, Ohio, does not loom large in the story of the 2020 presidential election. This rural slice of northwest Ohio—population 38,000—went for Donald Trump by more than 30 percentage points. The county has long favored Republicans, and it hasn’t been competitive in a very long time. But for the people who run elections in Defiance County, the job has never been harder. “In the last three years, this job has basically tripled,” said Tonya Wichman, the county elections director. It’s not just the endless stream of calls and letters. It’s what they entail for election workers these days: near-constant harassment and denigration from people who, largely spurred on by Trump’s election fraud conspiracies, have developed a toxic distrust of the election system and those who run it. “It’s a disheartening thing… to have people tell you how bad you do your job when you’re going above and beyond what they expect from you,” Wichman says. “They’re listening to people speak about our jobs without asking us about our jobs.” In response, the Defiance County elections office has upgraded every aspect of its security, and there is an additional physical barrier between staff and those who walk in. They instruct poll workers what to do if they see a suspicious car at a voting location, which Wichman says has not been necessary before. Wichman stresses that election workers love what they do and are committed to protecting the integrity of the system—no matter what. But for some in the field, the work has simply become too overwhelming.

Full Article: Election Workers Are in Crisis. Will Congress Actually Help?

National: Judges are narrowing voting protections. Some fear lasting damage | Carrie Johnson/NPR

The nation’s premier tool to protect voting rights is in mortal danger, threatened on multiple fronts by the Supreme Court and lower-ranking federal judges, scholars and civil rights advocates say. The latest blow to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 came this week in Arkansas, where a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump dismissed a case over new statehouse maps. The NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the maps diluted the power of Black voters. But the judge said he found no way for the outside advocates to proceed. “Only the Attorney General of the United States can bring a case like this one,” wrote Judge Lee Rudofsky. The ACLU said the decision flouts decades of precedent and vowed to appeal. “This ruling was so radical that there was no choice but to appeal it,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “Private individuals have brought cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect their right to vote for generations.”

Full Article: The Supreme Court takes on another Voting Rights Act case : NPR