Jimmy Carter sought to expand democracy worldwide long after he left the White House | Farai Mutsaka and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Amid everything else on his desk — the Iran hostage crisis, domestic economic turmoil, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a grueling 1980 reelection fight — President Jimmy Carter elevated the independence of a country in southern Africa as a top agenda item. Carter hosted then-Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe at the White House soon after his country achieved independence and later described Zimbabwe’s adoption of democracy as “our greatest single success.” Three decades later, Carter, who was long out of office, found the door slammed shut when he and other dignitaries sought to visit Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission to observe reported human rights abuses after a violent disputed election in 2008. He had become a critic of Mugabe’s regime and was denied a visa. Read Article

National: What did US election officials learn about our democracy from 2024’s vote? | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Until the 2020 election, local election officials worked in obscurity and anonymity, ensuring that the election was fairly administered and complied with state and federal laws. But ever since the president-elect’s loss in 2020, they have borne the brunt of his efforts to sow doubt about the integrity of US elections. They have faced vicious harassment campaigns, been bombarded with public records requests, and been on the frontlines combating misinformation about voting. A number left the profession altogether. Many election officials had been preparing for an intense period of uncertainty after election day, concerned that, as in the 2020 election, the winner of the presidential election would be uncertain and they would face immense pressure as Trump and his allies sought to subvert the election results. But when the race was called fairly quickly for Trump, the results were widely accepted, with few questions about who won. Read Article

National: The Year of the AI Election Wasn’t Quite What Everyone Expected | Vittoria Elliott/WIRED

In the spring, the US saw what was likely its first AI candidate. In a brief campaign for the mayor of Wyoming, virtual integrated citizen (VIC), a ChatGPT-based bot created by real human Victor Miller, promised to govern entirely by AI. At the outset of 2024, many suggested that even if not winning office, generative AI would play a pivotal role in—and pose significant risks to—democratic elections, as more than 2 billion people voted in more than 60 countries. But now, experts and analysts have changed their tune, saying that generative AI likely had little to no effect at all. So were all those prognostications that 2024 would be the AI election year wrong? The truth is … not really. Experts who spoke to WIRED say that this might have still been the “AI election”—just not in the way many expected. Read Article

National: The rise in mail voting comes with a price, as mismatched signatures lead to ballot rejections | Audrey McAvoy and Ayanna Alexander/Associated Press

As with many voters on Maui, Joshua Kamalo thought the race for president wasn’t the only big contest on the November ballot. He also was focused on a hotly contested seat for the local governing board. He made sure to return his ballot in the virtually all vote-by-mail state early, doing so two weeks before Election Day. A week later, he received a letter telling him the county couldn’t verify his signature on the return envelope, jeopardizing his vote. And he wasn’t the only one. Two other people at the biodiesel company where he works also had their ballots rejected, as did his daughter. In each case, the county said their signatures didn’t match the ones on file. Read Article

National: Vote-swapping campaign for 2024 fell short of its aims | Meghnad Bose and Uzma Afreen/Votebeat

Progressives determined to defeat Donald Trump but unsatisfied with Kamala Harris’s position on the war in Gaza were offered an 11th-hour voting option this year: In October, a group called Swap Your Vote began offering to match voters in politically “safe” states with those in swing states. The idea was that a prospective Democratic voter in a reliably blue state could instead cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate on behalf of their match in the swing state. The swing-state voter would feel like, through the trade, they were voting their conscience without putting their broader election aims at risk. Read Article

National: State Department sanctions Russian, Iranian groups for election interference | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

The U.S. State Department has sanctioned two foreign organizations and one individual who it alleges worked on behalf of Russian and Iranian intelligence agencies to interfere in the 2024 U.S. general election. “These actors sought to stoke sociopolitical tensions and undermine our election institutions during the 2024 U.S. general election,” said State Department Press Secretary Matthew Miller in a statement. “Today’s sanctions build on numerous previous U.S. government actions that have disrupted Iran’s attempts to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and Russia’s global malign influence campaigns and illicit cyber activities.” Read Article

Arizona official who delayed county’s 2022 election certification didn’t have immunity, court says | Associated Press

An appeals court has rejected an Arizona official’s argument that felony charges against him for delaying certification of his rural county’s 2022 election results should be dismissed because he has legislative immunity. In an order Tuesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby’s duty to certify the election results wasn’t discretionary. The court also said certifying election results is an administrative responsibility and that legislative immunity doesn’t apply to Crosby’s situation. Read Article

Iowa: Trump fraud lawsuit against Register unlikely to succeed, experts say | William Morris/Des Moines Register

Legal experts representing different ends of the political spectrum say the recent lawsuit by President-elect Donald Trump against the Des Moines Register is based on a strained interpretation of Iowa law and is unlikely to find success in court. Trump filed suit Dec. 16 against the Register, its parent company Gannett and longtime Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, alleging violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. The complaint centers on a poll published by the Register in early November that understated Trump’s support, showing Vice President Kamala Harris with a 3-point lead over Trump in Iowa just days before Trump went on to win the state by 13 points. Trump’s suit alleges the poll was fraudulent and an attempt at election interference. The Register has said it stands by its work. Several experts who have reviewed Trump’s petition say his legal theory is a stretch. Read Article

Kansas once required voters to prove citizenship. That didn’t work out so well | John Hanna/Associated Press

Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there’s one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas. That’s because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory. The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018. Read Article

Missouri: Local election authorities say Hoskins’ plan to increase hand-counting ballots would cost counties time, resources | Hannah Falcon/WGEM

Missouri’s new secretary of state-elect wants to increase the amount of ballots that are hand-counted in any given election, but some local election authorities say that would take more time and resources. Currently, Missouri’s local election officials have to hand count 5% of ballots after the election to make sure that sample size matches the results from the voting machines. Hoskins proposes an increase, to hand counting 10% or 15% of the ballots instead. Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller said this would increase the time needed for audits. “So you would essentially triple the time that it would take, the cost that it would take, and then you would also need to make sure you have the time needed to actually conduct that audit,” Schoeller said. Read Article

North Carolina: Stein, Cooper revamp lawsuit against GOP bill on elections | Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi/Raleigh News & Observer

Incoming Gov. Josh Stein and Gov. Roy Cooper sought to expand a lawsuit on Monday to challenge a new wide-ranging law passed by the GOP-led legislature that removes power from incoming Democratic officeholders. Cooper and Stein had already filed a separate lawsuit earlier over the wide-ranging bill known as Senate Bill 382, but that case focused on a change making the State Highway Patrol a standalone department, removing it from the N.C. Department of Public Safety. On Monday, Cooper and Stein added to an ongoing lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court to target the portion of SB 382 that transfers the governor’s power to appoint members of the State Board of Elections to the state auditor, as well as the part of the bill that shifts the power to appoint the chair of each county board of elections from the governor to the auditor. Read Article

Pennsylvania court sides with state over Fulton County’s handling of voting machines after 2020 election | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania court on Tuesday ruled 6-1 that the secretary of state has the authority to direct counties not to allow “unauthorized third party access” to voting machines or risk having those machines decertified and unable to be deployed for elections. The Commonwealth Court said the Department of State does not have to reimburse counties when they decertify machines, a defeat for Fulton County in a dispute that arose after two Republican county commissioners permitted Wake Technology Services Inc. to examine and obtain data from Dominion voting machines in 2021. That led the state elections agency to issue a directive against such third-party access based on concerns it could compromise security. Fulton’s machines were decertified as a result of the Wake TSI examination and the secretary of state was sued by the county as well as Republican county commissioners Randy Bunch and Stuart Ulsh. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission seeks answers on uncounted Madison ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously authorized an investigation Thursday into Madison’s mishandling of nearly 200 absentee ballots from the November 2024 election that were never counted. It’s the first such investigation that the bipartisan commission has authorized since becoming an agency in 2016. The review will allow the agency to probe whether Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated the law or abused her discretion. Read Article