National: Election denialism emerges on the left after Trump’s win | Kat Tenbarge and Bruna Horvath/NBC

In the days following the presidential election, a familiar strain of denialism and conspiracy thinking began to emerge in the corners of some social media platforms. On the right, familiar conspiracy theories about voting popularized by President-elect Donald Trump continued to circulate. But similar ideas also took hold among some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris and have continued to spread. Max Read, a senior research manager for elections at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank studying extremism, hate and disinformation, said the post-election denialism popping up on the left is “the most significant” effort to dispute or undermine elections he has observed from that side of the aisle. Read Article

Voting is harder than ever for Native Americans, study shows | Graham Lee Brewer/Associated Press

A new study has found that systemic barriers to voting on tribal lands contribute to substantial disparities in Native American turnout, particularly for presidential elections. The study, released Tuesday by the Brennan Center for Justice, looked at 21 states with federally recognized tribal lands that have a population of at least 5,000 and where more than 20% of residents identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. Researchers found that between 2012 and 2022, voter participation in federal elections was 7 percentage points lower in midterms and 15 percentage points lower in presidential elections than among those living off tribal lands in the same states. Earlier studies show voter turnout for communities of color is higher in areas where their ethnic group is the majority, but the latest research found that turnout was the lowest on tribal lands that have a high concentration of Native Americans, the Brennan Center said. Read Article

National: Post-election lesson: The era of conspiracy theories and misinformation won’t end quickly | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

The past few elections have shown that American voters can be sore losers when the election doesn’t go their way, and sometimes the winners turn out to be disingenuous when it does. On one hand, after years of making spurious allegations, those promoting election conspiracy theories on the right have been notably silent about Donald Trump’s clear win in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. On the other hand, certain people on the left — who have been raging about their faith in democracy for the past eight years — are grumbling about the possibility that something went wrong on Election Day. Read Article

National: Multiple election offices report receiving mailed ballots misdirected from other states | Christina A. Cassidy, John Hanna and Amy Beth Hanson/Associated Press

Terry Thompson had an election to run for voters in Cascade County, Montana. Why then, she thought, was her office in Great Falls being sent mailed ballots completed by voters in places such as Wasilla, Alaska; Vancouver, Washington; and Tampa, Florida? It was only about a dozen ballots total from voters in other states. But she said it still raised concerns about the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to deliver election mail and whether the errant ballots would ever be counted. While a stray ballot ending up in the wrong place can happen during election season, the number of ballots destined for other states and counties that ended up at Thompson’s office is unusual. The Associated Press found it wasn’t an anomaly. Election offices in California, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere also reported receiving completed ballots in the mail that should have gone to other states. Read Article

National: DARPA-backed voting system for soldiers abroad savaged | Thomas Claburn/The Register

In February, VotingWorks, a non-profit election technology developer, showed off a prototype of an encrypted voting system. With funding support from DARPA, the project aims to make it easier for service personnel to vote in US elections when stationed outside of the United States. Their proposed system – dubbed CACvote in reference to military smart ID cards called “Common Access Cards” – consists of four elements: voting kiosks at military bases for military personnel; a computer system that receives ballots from those kiosks; a cryptographic protocol for encoding and transmitting ballots, which also get printed and mailed; and a risk-limiting audit (RLA) protocol intended to detect integrity violations (eg, hacking) that alter an election outcome, and to correct the outcome. The latter two elements – the cryptographic protocol and the RLA – collectively are known as MERGE, which stands for Matching Electronic Results with Genuine Evidence. Paper ballots represent said evidence. According to an analysis paper from Andrew Appel, professor of computer science at Princeton University, and Philip Stark, professor of statistics at UC Berkeley, MERGE “contains interesting ideas that are not inherently unsound” but isn’t realistic given the legal, institutional, and practical changes necessary to make it work. Read Article

National: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the 2024 Election | Julia Edinger/Government Technology

During a Congressional Internet Caucus Academy briefing this week, experts argued the impact of artificial intelligence on the 2024 election was less extreme than predicted — but deepfakes and misinformation still played a role. There were major concerns leading up to the 2024 election that AI would disrupt elections through false information; overall, the impact was less extreme than experts had warned it could be. However, AI still had an effect, as seen by way of deepfakes, like the Biden robocall and misinformation from AI-powered chatbots. Read Article

Arizona: As Cochise County certifies election, Peggy Judd looks back at the vote that upended her life | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Peggy Judd knew exactly what she needed to do. Judd, a Republican on the board of supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona, had to vote yes Wednesday on whether to certify the county’s presidential election results. If she didn’t, she would be not only breaking the law, but also violating the terms of her plea agreement. That’s because, two years ago, after the 2022 midterms, she made a different choice. She and another Republican supervisor voted to delay the certification of that election past the legal deadline. That decision made her one of a handful of local Republican officials around the country who unsuccessfully tried to halt or delay certification of an election. It also upended Judd’s life. Read Article

Georgia: Hand-count election audit verifies Trump’s victory | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A hand-count audit of Georgia’s presidential election reported miniscule discrepancies from the machine count, confirming President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. The results of the manual review released Wednesday showed 11 more votes for Trump and six fewer for Harris out of nearly 750,000 ballots reviewed by election officials across the state. “This audit shows that our system works and that our county election officials conducted a secure, accurate election,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, “they are the cream of the crop.” Read Article

Massachusetts: Post-election report shows accessibility, ballot and registration issues | Willoughby Mariano/WBUR News

There were 50 incidents on Election Day that hampered the ability of people with disabilities to vote in Massachusetts, according to a report issued Wednesday by a commission of several voting rights groups. Voting assistance machines for those with disabilities broke down, while main entrances and exits to some precincts could only be accessed by stairs, according to the report issued by the Massachusetts Election Protection Coalition. Four polling places in Boston had a shortage of ballots. “Democracy shouldn’t be available on a first-come, first-served basis,” said Geoff Foster, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, which is part of the coalition. Read Article

Michigan managed to speed up election results, but some things just take time | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Michigan set itself up to blaze through its 2024 ballot counts. New policies were in the state’s favor, including pre-processing of absentee ballots as well as early in-person voting, and voters and election officials took full advantage. But elections are ultimately a human process, from who participates in them to who runs them. And it was mostly a set of human factors that prevented the state from releasing unofficial results until the middle of the day on Wednesday. Getting results any faster in future elections is likely to prove difficult, officials say. But that doesn’t mean they’re not going to try. Read Article

Nevada’s top election official eyes changes to speed up ballot counting | Eric Neugeboren/The Nevada Independent

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar on Thursday admitted that he was frustrated by the pace of election results this year, and that he would be working with legislators to determine ways to speed up the counting of ballots. Aguilar said many of the ballot counting difficulties likely stemmed from staffing levels in Clark and Washoe counties, despite efforts by both counties this year to accelerate ballot processing. Aguilar has been complimentary of how the state’s elections ran this year — and he reasserted Thursday that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud — but he acknowledged there is room for improvement. Read Article

North Carolina Republicans pass sweeping changes to consolidate power | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

Republicans in North Carolina rushed a bill through the legislature this week to boost their power before they lose their supermajority, approving a measure to give their party more control over elections, eliminate the jobs of judges who have ruled against them and limit the authority of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. Republicans hold three-fifths majorities in the legislature and have used that power to override vetoes by Gov. Roy Cooper (D). In January, they’ll lose the ability to easily roll back vetoes by incoming Gov. Josh Stein (D) because they’ll no longer hold such a large majority in the North Carolina House. The GOP response has been to flex their power now, while they still have it. They loaded up a $227 million Hurricane Helene relief package with an array of provisions that weaken the hand of Stein and other Democrats in the battleground state. Hours after unveiling the proposals, the state House passed the bill Tuesday night, and the state Senate approved it Wednesday. Read Article

Oregon election officials clear up confusion about ballot counting | Aviva Bechky/The Oregonian

Oregon’s elections office reassured residents Thursday that this fall’s ballot counting is sound and accurate, after some Oregonians questioned the office’s ballot return reports. The confusion stemmed from two documents the office posted online that showed how many ballots county elections offices had received each day, including on Election Day and the day after. The inconsistency that social media users noticed is that an initial state report, released Nov. 6, said about 2,140,000 ballots had been returned by end of day Nov. 5, Election Day. A second report generated on Nov. 14 said that Oregon voters turned in nearly 5,000 more ballots on Nov. 6 — but that the state somehow surpassed 2,300,000 ballots cast in total that day. Read Article

South Carolina: Aiken County election’s office fails first effort to certify | Anna Wilder/Hilton Head Island Packet

Despite initially certifying the wrong election results and failing its audit, all votes in Aiken County have been accurately counted and certified, despite a software glitch, state and county election officials said. South Carolina Election Commission spokesperson John Michael Catalano said some of the vote totals in Aiken were incorrectly counted in the wrong voting-method category, but the total votes for each candidate were correct. “It was the makeup of the vote, and it was basically absentee votes were showing up in election day totals,” Catalano said. Catalano said no other county has failed an audit since 2020 when South Carolina changed the voting system process to include paper ballots. Read Article

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey concedes race against Dave McCormick amid recount | Julia Terruso and Katie Bernard/The Philadelphia Inquirer

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) conceded to Republican Dave McCormick on Thursday, formally ending his reelection bid and acknowledging defeat two weeks after the Associated Press declared McCormick’s victory and after a statewide recount of the race had been triggered. Casey had resisted conceding, citing thousands of votes that still needed to be counted and entering court fights to maximize the number of ballots included. But as final ballots were adjudicated Thursday, Casey’s roughly 16,500-vote deficit was too large to overcome and so large that a recount would not affect it. “I want to thank the people of Pennsylvania for granting me the privilege of serving them for 28 consecutive years in public office as auditor general, state treasurer, and United States senator,” Casey said. “Every day I served in public office, I’ve fought for Pennsylvania workers, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and our veterans. … It has been the honor of my lifetime.” Read Article

A Texas election official feels the strain of unrelenting scrutiny | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

At election time, Trudy Hancock spends a lot of time in her car, delivering equipment to polling sites scattered around Brazos County and visiting poll workers who need her help in the field. She keeps the car radio on, and always tuned to Christian music. Recovering from a tiring Election Day last week, the longtime county election administrator recalled hearing one song that resonated with her. It’s called “The Truth,” and opens with the lyrics:

How many times can you hear the same lie
Before you start to believe it?

At her desk that morning, she recited a version of those lyrics as best as she could remember them, softly, haltingly. “But I know the truth,” she added, as she tried to hold back tears. “It gets hard Read Article

Wisconsin: Conspiracy theorists again seize on Milwaukee election error | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

In the early morning following Election Day in 2020, Claire Woodall, then Milwaukee’s elections chief, mistakenly left behind a USB stick carrying vote totals at the city’s central absentee ballot counting facility. Election conspiracy theorists quickly seized on the mistake, accusing Woodall of rigging the election. Their claims were baseless, but the mistake increased scrutiny on the city’s election staff and led Woodall to create a checklist to make sure workers at central count didn’t overlook any critical steps in the future. This year, despite the checklist, Milwaukee election staff at central count made another procedural mistake — and once again left the door open to conspiracy theorists. Somebody — city officials haven’t said who — overlooked the second step outlined on the checklist and failed to lock and seal the hatch covers on the facility’s 13 tabulators before workers began tabulating ballots. For hours, while counting proceeded, the machines’ on-off switches and USB ports were left exposed. Read Article

Wisconsin Supreme Court hears case over fate of elections chief Wolfe | Jessie Opoien/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The state Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in a case that will determine whether Republican lawmakers can remove or replace Wisconsin’s top elections official as she remains in the post beyond the expiration of her term. Dane County Circuit Judge Ann Peacock ruled in January that Senate Republicans do not have the authority to remove or replace Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe — a decision legislative Republicans appealed and brought to the state’s high court. Peacock ruled Wolfe legally retains her position beyond an expired term because of a 2022 ruling that allowed Frederick Prehn, a holdover from Republican former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, to remain on the state’s Natural Resources Board nearly two years after his term ended. Read Article