Voting rights groups are concerned about priorities shifting under Trump’s Justice Department | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The Justice Department appears poised to take a very different approach to investigating voting and elections. Conservative calls to overhaul the department by removing career employees, increasing federal voter fraud cases and investigating the 2020 election are raising concerns among voting rights groups about the future of the agency under Pam Bondi, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump who will face a confirmation vote later this week. Bondi supported Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 Pennsylvania election results, has reiterated his false claims about his loss that year and during her Senate confirmation hearing refused to directly state that former President Joe Biden won, saying only that she accepted the results. She pledged to remain independent. Read Article

Internet voting proposed for overseas voters from Georgia, but experts warn of perils | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Internet voting could be introduced in Georgia for voters who are members of the military or living overseas, an idea fraught with election security risks. Georgia’s election directors association this week proposed that the state Legislature study electronic voting during the 2025 session as a way to help international voters return their ballots in time. While voting over the internet would bring speed and convenience to citizens living abroad, critics and some experts say it introduces the danger of vote tampering if ballots are transmitted wirelessly. “It’s unsafe and unsecure,” said C.Jay Coles of Verified Voting, an organization that focuses on election technology. “It could be a completely different ballot that shows up at the election office, marked completely differently than the voter intended. It’s not far off to think that could happen.” Read Article

National: Job satisfaction among election administrators continues to sink, survey shows | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

The vast majority of America’s local election administrators would not encourage their children to do the same job, and a shrinking share of them say they would be proud to tell others about their work. The findings come from a survey conducted every federal election year by the Elections & Voting Information Center, an academic research group. While it contains small bright spots — election administrators largely find the job personally rewarding, for example — the number willing to encourage their children to follow in their footsteps has decreased by nearly half in the past two election cycles. In 2020, 41% said they would do so. In 2024, that number dropped to 22%. Read Article

National: Trump’s quick executive actions could redefine who counts in our democracy | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

The tense final days of President Joe Biden’s administration and the frenetic early hours of President Donald Trump’s second term muddied the waters on critical issues that could reshape our democracy. First, Biden. News of his final days in office centered on his use of presidential pardon power and his announcement that he considered the Equal Rights Amendment to have been ratified by the states, a legally controversial opinion that still requires more steps before it goes into effect. Then Trump came into office, and immediately raised his own set of constitutional questions. He issued sweeping pardons to people charged or convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He also rescinded a raft of Biden’s executive orders, including one related to the census, signaling that he may revisit an abortive effort from his first term to alter the scope of the decennial count. Read Article

National: Trump’s perceived enemies brace for retribution with plans, dark humor | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez , Sarah Ellison , Patrick Marley and Holly Bailey/The Washington Post

Sitting in front of a fireplace on New Year’s Eve, a battleground state official asked a relative to consider a grave question before they kicked off their celebrations. Would she be willing, the official asked, to take care of her child if authorities or allies of President Donald Trump detained her? “You can’t be serious,” the family member responded. The official wished she wasn’t. But, like others around the country who have crossed Trump, she was preparing for dire scenarios. She was meeting with a private lawyer and security officers and was visiting a shooting range so she could begin carrying a firearm should Trump’s supporters take matters into their own hands. She had already lined up rides home from school for her child. Read Article

National: No, Trump can’t cancel the 2028 election. But he could still weaken democracy. – Nathaniel Rakich/538/ABC

Political scientists who have studied the erosion of democracy in other countries emphasize that it’s a gradual, even subtle process that often leaves the trappings of democracy in place. In fact, those experts say, U.S. democracy was already eroded under Trump’s first term — and the most serious danger is that his second will see more of the same. Let’s get one thing out of the way: No, Trump cannot run for a third term or cancel the 2028 election. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” and even if Trump tries to defy that, he would almost certainly be universally rebuffed by the courts and election officials. Read Article

National: US cybersecurity agency’s future role in elections remains murky under the Trump administration | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The nation’s cybersecurity agency has played a critical role in helping states shore up the defenses of their voting systems, but its election mission appears uncertain amid sustained criticism from Republicans and key figures in the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has not named a new head of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and for the first time since it was formed, there are no plans for anyone in its leadership to address the main annual gathering of the nation’s secretaries of state, which was being held this week in Washington. On Thursday, a panel on cyberthreats included an update from an FBI official who said the threats remained consistent. Read Article

Alaskans don’t have a right to correct errors on absentee ballots, state judge rules | Sean Maguire/Anchorage Daily News

An Anchorage judge has ruled that Alaskans don’t have a constitutional right to correct errors they make on absentee ballots. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, the Native American Rights Fund and the firm Perkins Coie sued the state in 2022, arguing that the lack of a process to fix defective by-mail ballots violated the Alaska Constitution. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the League of Women Voters, the Arctic Village Council and two individual Alaska voters who said their rights were violated because they did not have an opportunity to correct mistakes on their ballots, which meant their votes weren’t counted. Read Article

Arizona State senator revives election conspiracies in Senate committee | Joe Duhownik/Courthouse News Service

An Arizona Senate committee advanced three bills aimed at election integrity in a meeting rife with unproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 and 2022 elections. In the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee meeting Wednesday, state Senator Mark Finchem, a Republican from Phoenix, parroted a theory from the popular documentary “2,000 Mules” that “hundreds of thousands” of fraudulent ballots were shipped into Arizona and other swing states during the 2020 election. The creator of “2,000 Mules” has since admitted that the film was inaccurate and removed it from all platforms. In order to combat the apparently nonexistent threat, Finchem introduced Senate Bill 1123, which would require all paper ballots to be outfitted with watermarks, holographic foil, unique barcodes, invisible ink or any other unique marker that could be used to track ballots and ensure they were printed and distributed in the state. Read Article

Georgia’s top judge wants to scrap partisan judicial elections | Rosie Manins/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s top judge urged state lawmakers Tuesday to end all remaining partisan elections for state judges, saying widespread efforts to politicize the courts are as concerning as the increasing attacks and threats of physical violence against judges. In his third annual State of the Judiciary address, Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Boggs said proposed legislation to end the few remaining partisan elections for probate and magistrate judgeships in Georgia has the full support of the impacted courts. Most of the state’s 1,600 judges are subject to nonpartisan elections, but some probate and magistrate judges are still elected in partisan races, where judges campaign with a party affiliation like Republican or Democrat. Boggs said the politicization of courts impedes public trust and confidence in the judicial system. Read Article

Michigan GOP proposes proof-of-citizenship requirement for voters | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

A new proposal from a top Michigan House Republican seeks to require would-be voters to provide proof that they are U.S. citizens when they register. The proposal to amend the state constitution isn’t likely to pass the Legislature with required two-thirds support, but conservatives are already gearing up for a petition drive to try to put the proposal before voters on the 2026 ballot. The proposed amendment is the latest in a growing movement across the United States to create barriers to noncitizen voting, even though there’s little evidence that a significant number of noncitizens try to vote. Federal laws already ban noncitizens from voting in elections, and the risks for them are high, including felony charges and the loss of their residency status. Read Article

Mississippi: US Supreme Court leaves in place state’s voting ban for people convicted of some crimes | Mark Sherman/Associated Press

The Supreme Court on Monday left in place Mississippi’s Jim Crow-era practice of removing voting rights from people convicted of certain felonies, including nonviolent crimes such as forgery and timber theft. The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from Mississippi residents who have completed their sentences, but who have been unable to regain their right to vote. The court’s action let stand a ruling by the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected the claim that permanent loss of voting rights amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution. Mississippi legislators, not the courts, must decide whether to change the laws, the 5th circuit said. Read Article

New York’s Voting Rights Act has survived a constitutional challenge | Dan Clark/Albany Times Union

The New York Voting Rights Act, which sets guardrails for localities to follow in administering fair elections, was upheld as constitutional Thursday after a state appellate court reversed a decision that struck it down last year. The case was filed by residents of the town of Newburgh who claimed its at-large election system diluted the vote of racial minorities in violation of the state law. Read Article

North Carolina: They Followed Election Rules When They Cast Their Ballots. Now Their Votes Could Be Tossed Anyway. | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Republican state appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin has spent more than two months trying to overturn his narrow defeat for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by arguing that around 60,000 ballots should be tossed out. But many residents have only recently learned that their votes are in danger of not being counted and say they have done nothing wrong. Elizabeth MacDonald, who registered as an unaffiliated voter and lives in an area of Western North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene, made sure to cast a ballot, even though she was still consumed by both the devastation of the storm and the demands of caring for her infant. “The prospect of losing my vote for arbitrary and political reasons is especially painful given the personal and communal trauma we’ve endured over the past several months,” MacDonald wrote in a letter to Griffin. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Efforts to replace outdated, glitchy voter registration system are months behind schedule | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

More than a year after the Pennsylvania Department of State canceled a contract to upgrade the state’s voter registration system, there’s still no replacement contract in place. The state has been trying since 2019 to upgrade the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, a database of the state’s voters that was built in the early 2000s and still undergirds many of the functions of running elections. Local election officials complain that the system is outdated, has a tendency to crash, and requires complex workarounds for some processes. State officials had hoped to have a replacement contract for the upgrade in place months ago, but have not said what is holding it up. Read Article

Texas counties scramble after ES&S pollbook decertified | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

With city and school elections just a few months away, election officials in more than 60 Texas counties are scrambling to replace a key piece of voting equipment that’s no longer in service: the electronic pollbooks they use to check voters in at the polls. The state decertified widely used pollbook software from voting machine company Election Systems & Software in December after several thousand voters in Dallas County received the wrong ballot during the November presidential election, a problem local officials attributed to glitches with the e-pollbook. Now county officials have to decide whether to wait to see if ES&S’s updated software is certified in time to prepare for the May elections, or choose a different certified vendor, which could be expensive. They must also consider whether any new option would be compatible with their existing systems and whether they have enough time to train poll workers to use it. Read Article

Wisconsin: Who knew about Madison’s 200 uncounted ballots? Voters get conflicting accounts. | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Madison voters and state investigators are getting conflicting accounts from city and county officials about what happened after batches of uncounted ballots were discovered in the weeks after Election Day in November. Madison’s city clerk says her office reported the first ballot discovery promptly to the county. The Dane County clerk says that didn’t happen. And the mayor’s office says it didn’t get word from the city clerk either. The communication breakdown, wherever it occurred, meant that ballots that still could have been counted after they were found weren’t included in the state’s final tallies. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is investigating. Read Article

Wyoming: Hand counting votes? Ban on ballot drop boxes? Election bills move through Legislature | Chris Clements/Wyoming Public Media

A slate of bills aiming to change the way Wyoming conducts elections is gaining ground in the state Legislature. Highlights include a prohibition on the use of ballot drop boxes by county clerks, the authorization of hand count audits post-elections and a new requirement for Laramie County to use pen and paper ballots for its election process. Many are supported by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and its ally, Secretary of State Chuck Gray. Read Article