Arizona counties block access to cast vote records, citing law, privacy | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

After Kari Lake lost her U.S. Senate race in November, some skeptics cried election fraud. They doubted that so many people who voted for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who carried Arizona, would split their ticket and back Ruben Gallego, Lake’s Democratic opponent. In the past, local election analysts could counter such claims by analyzing a dataset known as the cast vote record — an electronic record of each anonymous ballot cast and all the votes recorded on it, including split-ticket votes. But for this election, they’ve hit a roadblock: They can no longer get that data. The counties that gave out their cast-vote record in the past now say that it is not a public record, or that they’ll provide only a heavily redacted version, without ruling specifically on whether the public is entitled to see it. Read Article

Texas: Dallas County scrambles to secure voter check-in software before May 3 election | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

Less than four months until voters return to the polls, Dallas County is scrambling to secure new check-in software after failures during the Nov. 5 general election. And the window for getting it done is tight. The county’s electronic pollbooks from Election Systems & Software malfunctioned during last year’s election, resulting in nearly 4,000 people voting with ballots tied to precincts where they do not live. As a result, the Texas secretary of state decertified that version of the pollbook software in December, said Judd Ryan, ES&S senior vice president of sales. Read Article

‘Evangelist for democracy’: Carter started election observation and fought fraud | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Once the victim of his own stolen election, Jimmy Carter later launched an international election observation operation that continues to watch for fair and democratic results. Part of the former president’s lasting legacy, the Carter Center’s election monitoring work started in 1989 with missions to Central American nations and later expanded within the United States after the 2020 election. Carter saw a need for greater accountability through election observation efforts to help ensure the results reflect the will of the voters, said David Carroll, director for the Carter Center’s Democracy Program. Read Article