Texas election bill aimed at increasing transparency could sow chaos for election officials, experts say | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Key Texas lawmakers are reviving legislation that would require election officials to respond within set time frames to requests to explain “election irregularities” from certain party officials and election workers. If the complainants aren’t satisfied, the bill would let them take their requests to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, which would have to decide whether to investigate further and conduct an audit. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who authored the bill, said it will help clear up “any misunderstanding” about elections. But experts and local election officials said Texas already has policies in place that have increased election transparency and security. Read Article

Wisconsin Republicans will cast electoral votes for Trump in line with federal, not state, law | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

Wisconsin Republicans will meet Tuesday as required under federal law to cast the state’s Electoral College votes for President-elect Donald Trump, not a day earlier as state law calls for, after elections officials and the state Department of Justice agreed that is the proper day to do it. The Wisconsin Republican Party sued last week seeking an order to resolve which of the two dates it should meet. The state Department of Justice and the Wisconsin Elections Commission agreed that the votes should be cast Tuesday in accordance with federal law. The Justice Department asked that the case be dismissed. U.S. District Judge James Pederson dismissed the case Thursday because everyone agreed that federal law should be followed, essentially making the lawsuit moot. Read Article

How Wisconsin election chief Meagan Wolfe navigated years of job pressure | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Shortly after former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman commenced his error-ridden and fruitless investigation into the state’s 2020 election, he raised eyebrows when he derided chief election official Meagan Wolfe’s clothing choices. “Black dress, white pearls — I’ve seen the act, I’ve seen the show,” he said on a conservative radio program in spring 2022. Not long after that comment, Wolfe was scheduled to appear at a county clerk conference, and a county clerk bought fake pearl necklaces for everyone in the room, according to Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican. “Every one of us, men, women … were wearing those pearl necklaces to show support for her,” he said. “There’s nothing but support from the county clerks for Meagan and the job that she does.” Read Article

National: Desinformación: Responding to Targeted Spanish-Language Misinformation | Roberto Cordova/Brennan Center for Justice

Spanish-speaking communities in the United States are uniquely vulnerable to the unmitigated spread of election misinformation. These communities face risks other communities do not: misinformation often exploits their unique socio-political experiences, and social media companies typically engage in poor moderation of Spanish-language election falsehoods. For example, in the final stretch of the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump’s campaign ran a Spanish-language ad on YouTube that was shown more than 100,000 times in Florida over just eight days. The ad falsely depicted the political party aligned with Nicolas Maduro, the authoritarian leader of Venezuela, as supporting Joe Biden. It appeared to be part of a larger effort by the Trump campaign in Florida, a state with a large Venezuelan community, to connect Biden to Latin-American authoritarians like Maduro and Fidel Castro. Read Article

National: Postal Service touts timely delivery of mail ballots despite concerns from election officials | David Sharp and Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

The U.S. Postal Service said Monday nearly 100% of completed mail ballots were returned to election offices within a week for this year’s presidential contest, despite hurricanes, some misdirected election mail and delivery concerns raised by state officials. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said postal workers processed more than 99 million general election ballots — making extra deliveries and collections and working to identify problems that could lead to incorrect deliveries. They also ensured ballots were delivered even after hurricanes brought devastation to parts of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina just weeks before Election Day, he said. Almost 99.9% of general election mail ballots were delivered to election officials within a week and 97.7% of them were delivered within three days, postal officials said. The three-day return rate was similar to 2020 but slightly lower than the rate during the 2022 mid-term elections. Read Article

National: Election denialism has staying power even after Trump’s win | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

President-elect Donald Trump may have quieted his lies about widespread voter fraud after his win earlier this month, but the impact of his effort to cast doubt on the integrity of American elections lingers on. Although this post-election period has been markedly calmer than the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, there were isolated flare-ups of Republican candidates borrowing a page from Trump’s playbook to claim that unsatisfactory election results were illegitimate. In Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Senate challenger Eric Hovde spread unsubstantiated rumors about “last-minute” absentee ballots in Milwaukee that he said flipped the outcome of the race. Though he conceded to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin nearly two weeks after the election, his rhetoric helped stoke a spike in online conspiracy theories. Read Article

National: Local elected officials in US faced uptick in hostility in lead-up to 2024 election | Jason Wilson/The Guardian

Local elected officials in the US faced escalating insults and harassment in the immediate lead-up to the 2024 election, with women and minorities experiencing disproportionately high levels of hostility, according to new research. The latest survey from Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) and governance non-profit CivicPulse found that 53% of local elected officials reported receiving insults and 39% reported harassment between July and October, marking a significant increase from the previous quarter. Read Article

National: Fox News loses bid for Smartmatic voting-tech company’s records about Philippines bribery case | Jennifer Peltz/Associated Press

Smartmatic won’t be required to give Fox News a trove of information about U.S. federal charges against the voting machine company’s co-founder over alleged bribery in the Philippines, a judge ruled Thursday. Fox News and parent Fox Corp. sought the information to help fight Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation suit over broadcasts about the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Smartmatic says its business was gutted when Fox aired false claims that the election-tech company helped rig the voting. Read Article

National: With the Voting Rights Act facing more threats, advocates renew a push for state laws | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

With Republicans set to control Congress and the White House starting next year, some voting rights advocates are renewing their focus on protections against racial discrimination in elections that don't rely on the federal government. Several states have enacted state-level voting rights acts over the past two decades, and Democratic-led Michigan may be next. This week a state House committee voted to refer a set of state Senate-approved bills to the House floor. Supporters of this emerging type of law see it as a bulwark at a time when Democratic-led efforts to bolster the federal Voting Rights Act are likely to remain stalled under a GOP trifecta of power in Washington, D.C. Read Article

Arizona: With new leaders, Maricopa County’s well-guarded elections may see shake-up | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

A new crew of Republican politicians will soon take control of Maricopa County’s high-profile elections, a major change for a key swing county that has for years contended with unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. The outgoing Republican officials built national profiles for fiercely defending the county’s elections against critics within their party. But the newcomers — also all Republicans — have signaled a different approach, saying they will be looking for ways to improve the system. The incoming recorder, Justin Heap, in particular, has been a consistent critic of the county’s elections, and is pushing for major changes. Heap, currently a Republican state representative, defeated incumbent Recorder Stephen Richer in the primary and went on to win the general election in a race that drew national attention. Read Article

A California Republican won a seat he didn’t want. Now taxpayers are paying for a new election | Ryan Sabalow/CalMatters

San Joaquin Valley Republican Vince Fong was on the ballot this fall for an Assembly race, but he didn’t want to win it. After all, he left that job for Congress earlier this year, and he planned to stay in the nation’s capital.He even went so far as to endorse the Bakersfield city councilmember who was listed as running against him on the November ballot. But voters chose Fong anyway for the Assembly. They chose him again for Congress, too, since he was listed on the same ballot twice. Now, since Fong “won” his Assembly race, Kern and Tulare County taxpayers in Assembly District 32 will end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a special election to fill the seat that Fong doesn’t want any more. Read Article

Colorado’s election equipment password breach explained | Bente Birkeland and Kiara DeMare/Colorado Public Radio

The revelation that BIOS passwords for ballot tabulation machines in 32 of Colorado’s 64 counties were posted for months in a hidden tab on a spreadsheet on the Secretary of State’s website set off statewide shockwaves in the days before the November election. The Secretary of State’s office was originally notified by an election equipment vendor who had spotted the tab. The passwords were removed on Oct. 24, after being online since June. Shawn Smith, a retired Air Force Colonel and conservative activist, wrote in an affidavit that he discovered the hidden tab much earlier, on Aug. 8, and checked twice in October that it was still there, without informing the state. The public became aware through an email the Colorado Republican Party sent to its supporters on Oct. 29. Read Article

Georgia: Trump’s lawyers move to dismiss election interference case | Dareh Gregorian and Charlie Gile/NBC

Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump asked a Georgia appeals court Wednesday to dismiss the Fulton County racketeering case against him because a "sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal." In papers filed with the Georgia Court of Appeals, Trump's attorneys argued the 2020 election interference charges should be tossed because of "the unconstitutionality of his continued indictment and prosecution by the State of Georgia" now that "he is President-Elect and will soon become the 47th President of the United States." The case has been stalled for most of the year as Trump's lawyers have challenged a ruling that denied their request to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office from prosecuting the case on conflict-of-interest grounds. Read Article

An Idaho County Will Publish Everyone’s Ballots to Combat Mistrust | Mike Baker/The New York Times

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, as supporters of Donald J. Trump scoured the nation for any malfeasance that might explain his defeat, the county clerk’s office in Boise, Idaho, was inundated with queries. Voters wanted to know who had built the county’s voting machines. What software were they using? Did any parts come from China? Were the machines vulnerable to hacking? Outlandish claims were spreading in conservative circles across the country that votes had been discarded or altered in a coordinated effort to rig the election. Trent Tripple, a Republican who had worked in the Ada County clerk’s office and was elected to lead it starting last year, said he was convinced there was a solution that could help people gain confidence in their elections once more: It was time to publish the ballots for everyone to see. Read Article

Michigan Voting Rights Act moves forward despite concerns from local clerks | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

A set of bills that would expand voting rights for non-English speakers and voters with disabilities is moving closer to becoming state law after the House elections committee voted Tuesday to advance the bills championed by Democrats and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. In a vote along party lines, the committee passed four bills that make up the proposed Michigan Voting Rights Act. Next, the bills will go before the entire House for a vote. They were approved by the Senate back in September after spending nearly a year in that chamber’s committee. The bills aim to expand ballot access by providing ballots in more languages, create a voting data clearinghouse, codify protections for voters who may need help casting their ballot, and broadly aim to prevent voting suppression. Read Article

Minnesota Republicans sue to force election rerun in tight House race where 20 ballots are missing | Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

Minnesota Republicans filed a lawsuit Monday to try to force a rerun of a state House race where the incumbent Democrat won by 14 votes — but in which investigators concluded that election workers probably destroyed 20 valid absentee ballots after failing to count them. It’s a race that could determine the balance of power in the Minnesota House, where leaders from both parties are working out the details of a power-sharing agreement that currently presumes a 67-67 tie when the Legislature convenes next month. A Republican victory in a special election could shift that balance to a two-vote, 68-66 GOP majority. Democrats have a one-vote majority in the state Senate. So regardless of the outcome in the disputed race, Minnesota will be returning to some degree of divided government in 2025 after two years of full Democratic control. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court GOP Candidate Asks for Hand Recount as Party Pushes Controversial Bill | Courtney Cohn/Democracy Docket

North Carolina Supreme Court GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin requested a hand recount after he challenged thousands of ballots across the state in the tight race against his Democratic opponent Allison Riggs, who declared victory. “Recounts are a normal part of the process in a close race. What isn’t normal is the way my opponent is attempting to engineer a new outcome by challenging more than 60,000 votes across our state,” Riggs said in a post on X Monday. A couple of weeks ago, Griffin asked for a machine recount, which showed that Riggs won the election. In an email statement on Tuesday, Riggs said that the “results of the recount were identical to the original vote count” and that she won the race. Read Article

Pennsylvania investigations into suspicious voter registration forms yield no charges yet | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Investigations by five Pennsylvania counties into the submission of suspicious voter registration forms haven’t resulted in any charges yet, and three of the counties aren’t releasing details about the progress of their inquiries. Votebeat and Spotlight PA followed up with the five counties — Lancaster, Monroe, Lehigh, Berks, and York — that announced investigations before Election Day into what they described then as hundreds of potentially fraudulent voter registration forms dropped off near the Oct. 21 deadline. There is no evidence in any of the counties that the forms under scrutiny resulted in any ineligible voters casting a ballot. Officials emphasized that the suspicious applications were not processed. Read Article

Texas ballot secrecy draws attention in Legislature, courts | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas officials had to issue emergency guidance this year to patch holes in new election transparency laws that threatened to expose the choices people made on their ballots. Now that the 2024 election is over, the issue of protecting ballot secrecy is receiving renewed attention in both the courts and the legislature. A national conservative nonprofit last week filed a federal lawsuit against Harris County, alleging the county isn’t taking steps to protect voters’ right to a secret ballot. Another case involving an activist who claims to have uncovered the ballot choices of more than 60,000 voters is ongoing. Read Article

Washington legislation would put security cameras near ballot drop boxes | Tim Clouser/The Center Square

After an individual set fire to two Clark County ballot boxes in October, a Republican state lawmaker filed legislation Tuesday that would create a new security camera grant program. Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, filed two bills on Tuesday: Senate Bill 5010 to create the grant program and Senate Bill 5011 to update what’s written on ballot boxes. While seemingly minor, the proposal follows ballot tampering leading up to the Nov. 5 general election that destroyed hundreds of ballots. The first incident happened on Oct. 8 when someone put an “improvised incendiary device” on a Clark County ballot box, setting fire to the ballots inside. Then, on Oct. 28, just over a week from the election, someone did the same to another Clark County box and one in Portland, Oregon. Read Article