National: Security experts warn of foreign cyber threat to 2024 voting | Ayanna Alexander/Associated Press

Top state election and cybersecurity officials on Thursday warned about threats posed by Russia and other foreign adversaries ahead of the 2024 elections, noting that America’s decentralized system of thousands of local voting jurisdictions creates a particular vulnerability. Russia and Iran have meddled in previous elections, including attempts to tap into internet-connected electronic voter databases. Distracted by war and protests, neither country appeared to disrupt last year’s midterm elections, but security officials said they expect U.S. foes to be more active as the next presidential election season draws near. The first primaries are less than a year away. Jen Easterly, director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, referenced Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the U.S.-led effort to supply weapons and other aid to the besieged country as a possible motivator. She said the agency was “very concerned about potential retaliation from Russia of our critical infrastructure.” She also mentioned China as a possible source of election interference, especially as the relationship between the two countries has deteriorated, mostly recently over the suspected spy balloon that floated across the country before being shot down by a U.S. fighter jet.

Full Article: Security experts warn of foreign cyber threat to 2024 voting | AP News

Georgia bill tries to remove bar codes from ballots | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A bill introduced in the Georgia Senate would make the printed words on ballots the official vote instead of bar codes that are unreadable by the human eye. State election officials urged caution before lawmakers change Georgia’s voting system and impose new costs on taxpayers. The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Max Burns, said Thursday that he wants voters to know that their choices are counted correctly rather than having to trust votes encoded in bar codes, also called QR codes. “The intent is to make sure that the voter has confidence that what their paper ballot indicates is what was actually counted,” Burns said of Senate Bill 189. “If you look at the QR code, that gives some people concern because they can’t read it.” Georgia’s voting system relies on a combination of touchscreens and printers, which produce a sheet of paper that includes a bar code along with a human-readable list of the voter’s choices. Then, voters insert their ballots into optical scanning machines that read the bar code, which counts as the official vote. Election security advocates have said that bar codes could be manipulated by hackers, though there’s no evidence that has ever happened. But the state’s voting technology, purchased in 2019 for over $100 million, doesn’t include the ability to interpret printed text. Instead, optical scanners interpret bar codes from in-person ballots and bubbled-in choices from absentee ballots.

Full Article: Bill introduced in Georgia seeks to eliminate ballot bar codes

National: Election deniers face a nationwide wave of pushbacks | Amy Gardner, Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

When the new Arizona attorney general took office last month, she repurposed a unit once exclusively devoted to rooting out election fraud to focus on voting rights and ballot access. In North Carolina on Tuesday, the State Board of Elections began proceedings that could end with the removal of a county election officer who had refused to certify the 2022 results even as he acknowledged the lack of evidence of irregularities. And later this week, a group of secretaries of state will showcase a “Democracy Playbook” that includes stronger protections for election workers and penalties for those who spread misinformation. These actions and others reflect a growing effort among state election officials, lawmakers and private-sector advocates — most of them Democrats — to push back against the wave of misinformation and mistrust of elections that sprang from former president Donald Trump’s false claim that his 2020 defeat was rigged.

Full Article: Election deniers face a nationwide wave of pushbacks – The Washington Post

National: Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret | Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter. The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court. About a dozen people at the firm worked on the report, including econometricians, who use statistics to model and predict outcomes, the people said. The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Trump continues to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen despite abundant evidence to the contrary, much of which had been provided to him or was publicly available before the Capitol assault. The Trump campaign’s commissioning of its own report to study the then-president’s fraud claims has not been previously reported.

Source: Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret – The Washington Post

National: Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Trump’s Election Fraud Claims | Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson/The New York Times

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air. The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020. Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not. The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.” On one occasion, as Mr. Murdoch watched Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on television, he told Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”

Full Article: Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Trump’s Election Fraud Claims – The New York Times

Alabama: Prefiled election bills require paper ballots, ban internet-capable voting machines | Maddie Biertempfel/WHNT

One state lawmaker is working to codify some of Alabama’s election rules into law. The first election-related bill from Sen. Clyde Chambliss (R- Prattville) would require paper ballots for all elections. The second prohibits any vote county machines from connecting to the internet. The current administrative code already has those rules in place. Chambliss said these bills would cement them into law. “If there is a problem, say a lightning strike or computer failure or something like that, we always have a paper trail to go back and to make sure that we have the count exactly right,” Chambliss said. New Secretary of State Wes Allen supports the proposals. He said even though Alabama has secure elections, strengthening the current rules is important to voters.

Full Article: Prefiled election bills require paper ballots, ban internet-capable voting machines

Arizona Court of Appeals rejects Kari Lake’s election challenge | Brian Rokus and Jack Forrest/CNN

The Arizona Court of Appeals has rejected Kari Lake’s challenge to the result of the Arizona gubernatorial election after she appealed an earlier ruling from the superior court. Lake had requested a declaration from the court that she – and not her opponent, Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs who won the election by about 17,000 votes – was the actual winner of the election. “Her request for relief fails because the evidence presented to the superior court ultimately supports the court’s conclusion that voters were able to cast their ballots, that votes were counted correctly, and that no other basis justifies setting aside the election results,” the Court of Appeals decision stated. The appeal rejection marks the latest defeat for Lake, who has continually doubled down on her support for former President Donald Trump and false claims that he 2020 election was stolen, a central rallying call in her 2022 gubernatorial bid.

Source: Arizona Court of Appeals rejects Kari Lake’s election challenge | CNN Politics

Georgia legislators answered Trump’s call to overturn election | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With his chances of winning Georgia slipping away in December 2020, then-President Donald Trump hit upon a novel scheme to stay in power: State legislators would name him the winner. So, while his allies spun dubious tales of voting fraud at the Georgia Capitol, Trump’s campaign called nearly 120 Republican legislators to ask whether they would appoint a slate of presidential electors who would vote for Trump instead of Democrat Joe Biden. A log of those phone calls recently released by congressional investigators shows some lawmakers were eager to help. “Hell, yes,” said one. “100%,” replied another. “Very supportive and ready to go,” a third lawmaker told the campaign. In all, about 30 Republican legislators expressed some level of support for allowing the General Assembly to name Trump the winner of the presidential election, according to the call log. The log and other documents released by investigators suggest scores of other lawmakers also may have supported the plan.

Full Article: Jan. 6 documents: Georgia legislators answered Trump’s call to overturn election

Hawaii Republicans lose challenge of 2022 election audit process | Candace Cheung/Courthouse News Service

Republicans nationwide continue to question election integrity — despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud — but a Oahu Circuit Court judge put a stop to one such complaint at a hearing Friday afternoon in Hawaii. The Hawaii Republican Party had accused the state’s election office of violating election statutes during the post-election ballot auditing process for the 2022 general elections, where Democrats won a majority of the races including for governor. The complaint, first filed two weeks after the election, named the State of Hawaii Office of Elections and Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago in his official capacity as defendants and asked for a proper election audit to be completed. The GOP’s suit relies on an assortment of witness statements and affidavits from election observers who claimed to have seen election officials using digitized images of ballots to tally votes rather than the paper ballots as required by state law. Defendants argued the Republican Party did not have any concrete evidence to any kind of wrongdoing and said the party’s assertions were without any evidence and called them “pure speculation.”

Full Article: Hawaii Republicans lose challenge of 2022 election audit process | Courthouse News Service

Michigan Secretary of State once again calls for firearms ban at polling locations | Priya Vijayakumar/Michigan Radio

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced Thursday that she wants to see legislation to ban firearms within 100 feet of polling places. “The time for only thoughts and prayers is over,” said Benson at the annual Judge Damon Keith Memorial Soul Food Luncheon. Benson issued a similar directive to local clerks to ban the open carry of firearms at polling places in 2020. But a judge struck down that directive. The plan now is to include the gun ban in legislation on voting rights that’s being drafted. “Our kids deserve to go to school free from fear of gun violence. They deserve to go to church or synagogues or mosques with their families to worship free from fear of gun violence,” said Benson. “They deserve to live in a democracy where their voices are heard and where they can cast their ballots free from intimidation or threats of violence. That is the world I am fighting for.” Benson is collaborating with lawmakers and local election officials on the legislation.

Full Article: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson once again calls for firearms ban at polling locations

New Jersey: Monmouth County recount after ES&S screwup changes results of 2022 election | David Wildstein/New Jersey Globe

A court-ordered recount in Monmouth County after the nation’s largest voting machine manufacturer, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), admitted to a programming error that caused some votes to be double counted, appears to have changed the outcome of one race in the November 2022 general election. In the Ocean Township school board contest, a hand recount of ballots in Ocean Township shows Jeff Weinstein with a four-vote lead, 3,408 to 3,404, against Steve Clayton. After the votes were tallied in November, Clayton had defeated Weinstein, then the incumbent, by 20 votes. Clayton took office last month. Clayton lost 119 votes from his November total, while Weinstein lost 95. Attorney General Matt Platkin has ordered an investigation into the the ES&S system failure. Once the new result is certified, the contest will likely head back to Superior Court Judge David Bauman for instructions on removing Clayton and seating Weinstein.

Full Article: Monmouth recount after ES&S screwup changes results of 2022 election – New Jersey Globe

Pennsylvania Court won’t force release of election records | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania appellate court said Thursday that it will not order Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration to produce records on voters and election systems sought by Republican lawmakers in a quest inspired by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The decision by the Commonwealth Court came a year-and-a-half after a Republican-controlled state Senate Committee voted to issue a subpoena seeking detailed state election records. Those records include information that Democratic lawmakers and the state attorney general’s office said were protected by privacy laws, including the driver’s license numbers and last four digits of their Social Security number of 9 million registered voters, as well as details about election systems. The court said that the Senate committee voted to issue the subpoena under its own internal rules and can enforce it under the state’s contempt laws. But that process, it said, does not involve seeking a court order to enforce it. “The Senate Committee has chosen to seek the election-related materials by legislative subpoena, and it is bound by that choice,” Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote in the 21-page decision.

Full Article: Court won’t force Pennsylvania to release election records | AP News

South Dakota Senate wants post-election audits | Bob Mercer/KELO

South Dakota counties would be required to conduct post-election audits of ballot-counting machines under a plan moving ahead in the Legislature.State senators voted 34-0 on Monday for SB-160. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives where the lead sponsor is Republican Rep. Drew Peterson. Republican Sen. David Wheeler said state government will pay counties for the cost of the audits. He said South Dakota is one of the few states where post-election audits aren’t done. “It’s appropriate for us to do a spot-check, and that’s what this would do,” said Wheeler, the bill’s prime sponsor. Counties would check the two statewide contests that are closest in outcome each election. “So people can have confidence the machines are counting correctly,” Wheeler said. Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s office testified in “soft” opposition during the Senate committee hearing, according to Wheeler. She plans to conduct a study this summer. One of the points she ran on last year was the need for post-election audits.

Source: Senate wants post-election audits for South Dakota

Texas: Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

In the November 2020 election in Williamson County, Texas, flawed e-pollbook software resulted in voters inadvertently voting for candidates and questions not from their own districts but from others in the same county.  These voters were deprived of the opportunity to vote for candidates they were entitled to vote for—and their votes were wrongly counted in elections that they shouldn’t have voted in.  This wasn’t the voters’ fault, but it does mean that the results in elections for local offices were affected by this screwup by Tenex Software Solutions.  Tenex’s e-pollbook malfunctions call into question the results of the 2020 school district races, municipal elections, potentially a county commissioners race, and state legislative races in Williamson County. As more and more states use e-pollbooks in vote centers, election administrators should understand this failure, because it could potentially affect any kind of e-pollbook that prints ballots on demand. I’ve written about other screwups caused by election software or hardware—in Antrim County MI, in Windham NH, in Mercer County NJ—but in all those cases, voters marked the paper ballots they were entitled to vote on, and election officials can and did recount those ballots to report accurate election results.  That is, all those screwups were recoverable, and election officials took immediate action to recount and recover—to get an accurate result.

Full Article: Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County TX – Freedom to Tinker

Wisconsin: Bipartisan vote tracking measure brings parties together on elections | Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

A Republican-authored bill with bipartisan support in the Wisconsin Legislature would allow voters to track the status of their ballots through text messages sent to their cell phones. Currently, absentee voters must log into MyVote, the Wisconsin Election Commission’s information portal, to make sure their ballots have been received by a clerk. Under Senate Bill 39, introduced by Sens. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) voters who apply for absentee ballots can sign up for free text message updates letting them know when their ballots are received. The Secure Democracy Foundation, a national nonprofit group dedicated to building confidence in elections and improving voters’ access to the ballot box across the United States, applauds the Wisconsin measure. … Voters in 49 states including Wisconsin have some sort of ballot-tracking system, and at least eight other states use a system to actively notify voters about the status of their ballots, according to the group.

Source: Bipartisan vote tracking measure brings parties together on elections – Wisconsin Examiner

Wyoming election security bill stumbles but continues progress through the legislature | Hugh Cook/Wyoming Public Media

A bill that would impact the election systems and codify existing rules established by the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office is continuing its journey through the legislature. House Bill 47, sponsored by the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Interim Committee, was received for concurrence on Feb. 13 but failed on a 6-54-2 vote in the House due to issues with amendments. “We had a standing committee amendment that went through the rules and found, ‘Okay, so here’s a list of rules that are not being codified,’ and then we just decided to codify them,” said Rep. Jared Olson (R-Laramie). “That’s where the bill left. The amendment is a little peculiar, because it basically adopted half of our standing committee amendment and then went back in and backtracked and erased half of our standing committee amendment.” The bill takes rules on election certification from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office related to federal certification of election systems and would codify them if signed into law. It was laid back or delayed on its third reading in the Senate but later passed that chamber on a 24-7 vote on Feb. 13.

Full Article: An election security bill stumbles but continues progress through the legislature | Wyoming Public Media